N wouldn’t mind if I made more money. Both more than he makes and more in general. He’d never say no to more money because he’s worried about having enough in old age.
I would mind, though. I don’t want to be a standard Soviet woman with a decorative husband.
This is one of those areas where the individual circumstances probably matter tremendously. It probably doesn’t matter if both are working hard and doing well in their respective fields, and the woman just happens to be in a career field that tends to be higher compensated; e.g. a male humanities professor married to a woman who is a doctor or an attorney. The problem is when the man is the unambitious, decorative husband type. It isn’t the money that’s the problem, it’s the mismatch in effort and ambition.
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If there’s a big mismatch in the salaries, the woman will feel entitled to make all the financial and lifestyle decisions. And rightfully so. So she will be contributing the children, the money, and making all the decisions.
What is the husband contributing? Other than making his wife present like a loser to her peers, what is he contributing?
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Hmmm, exactly what vows did you swear?
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If it was an orthodox wedding: there are no vows 😉
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It’s not about my specific marriage which survived many hardcore things but more generally about why women don’t go for lower-earning men.
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That’s the thing, though. With the wage gap narrowing, and women more likely to have college and advanced degrees than men, won’t this behavior (“do not go for lower-earning men”) result in less family formation? If women become the majority of high earners and still prefer men who earn more than they do, while men are falling behind in income and education, the math doesn’t work out. There just won’t be enough “suitable” partners (especially in upper income or highly educated brackets) for every woman seeking one. This mismatch is already showing up in demographic data (declining marriage rates, highly educated women delaying or skipping marriage altogether, etc.).
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It’s true but I’m not sure there’s a way out here. Women derive their entire value among the female peer group from their relationships. It isn’t their jobs, their hobbies or sports that women talk about in female groups until they are way past the fertility stage. I can’t imagine this somehow going away.
You’re absolutely right.
And to remind you about things you probably already know, it’s all about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – where successful status differs depending on who you are and who you love.
It’s why (in the UK at least) there is no gender pay gap, though there is a Primary Childcare-giver pay gap – rightly, because people have different priorities in a sexually dimorphic family relationship.
Yeah, and how is that attitude working out for them? Here’s a clue, according to an estimate by Morgan Stanley by five years from now almost half of women between the ages of 25-45 will be single and childless.
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From the American black, to the Russian prole, from the BIA tribe to the London chav: Daddy government’s pimp hand trashes families equitably.
Much diversity; very inclusive
Dead useful to destroying a people, too.
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My theory is that for most of human history, men were the primary earners, so they’ve had generations to figure out how to lead a household without making their wives feel bad for not bringing in money. Women outearning men is a much newer thing, and a lot of them haven’t quite figured out how to be “in charge” without making their husbands feel like total losers lol.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
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