The men echo generations of housewives, voicing concern over a loss of earning power and car pool-induced torpor but also pride in their nurturing roles. The women describe themselves as competitive, tough and proud of every dollar they bring in....
A few women said that they resented the fact that their husbands did not cook or clean up, but that they had trouble telling them so, for fear that they would sound as if they were treating them like employees.
December 7, 2013
"Wall Street Mothers, Stay-Home Fathers/As Husbands Do Domestic Duty, These Women Are Free to Achieve."
"Along the way, the couples have come to question just what is male behavior and female behavior, noting how quickly their preconceived notions dissolve once they depart from assigned roles."
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39 comments:
It' very nice to be 75 sometimes.
So if I have it right nothing has changed, right. The team in the red put on blue uniforms and now fans of the blue team cheer? And vice versa?
Is this progress or regress?
The aristocracy always could behave in ways that hoi polloi couldn't, and that is what these people are in every way but royally endowed title --- the aristocracy. When you "discuss" your half million dollar salary, that's a good indicator you're in the aristocracy.
The question the article didn't ask: If you could wave a magic wand & exchange roles, so the wife could stay at home & hubby brings in the exact same amount of bucks, would you do it? In other words is this role reversal just making the best of a good situation ($500k a year is never a bad situation), or do the participants think that this is a marital model that should be more widespread?
Same old, same old...
Blah, blah, blah...
"These marriages are Wall Street-specific experiments in money, work, family and power."
Yes they are. They won't be applying anytime soon to people who work at fire stations, construction sites, lumber mills, engineering firms, farms, etc.
It'll be interesting to see the frequency that couples in these situations divorce and what the courts do about it.
The conflict which is fomented between men and women is at best ill-conceived.
Guys need to start wrapping themselves in Saran Wrap from when the power lady comes home.
That should put a stop to something.
Why would anyone making half a million a year not employ a housekeeper? "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
Stay at home husband to Wall Street wife: "Make me a sandwich"
A few women said that they resented the fact that their husbands did not cook or clean up, but that they had trouble telling them so, for fear that they would sound as if they were treating them like employees.
If you work on Wall Street and you can't afford a cook and a maid, you're a pathetic loser.
Freeman Hunt said...
Why would anyone making half a million a year not employ a housekeeper? "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
A wife in one of the accompanying videos made the "Two Income Trap" argument of Elizabeth Warren except, without the statist agenda, she could say the determinative factor is the effect of taxes on take home pay.
"Blogger EDH said...
It'll be interesting to see the frequency that couples in these situations divorce and what the courts do about it."
I see no reason for it. These husbands have obviously checked their testicles at the door.
It is an answer to a question I had after Murray's last book. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what happened to the kids of high IQ parents when they were raised by low IQ nannies.
I guess this is the solution short of polygamy.
I'm not saying they should both work and hire a housekeeper; I'm saying that if you make $500k, arguments about doing the housekeeping are not arguments you should be having.
Better hire a male housekeeper. Right, Arnold?
But how would that make the husband feel? These are uncharted waters.
A half a million would seem like a lot. But consider. A mortgage of a million dollars on a two million dollar home is probably sixty grand a year. Another thirty to property taxes and now you are at 90k . Oh, and the 500 k was pre tax. So here you are in Westchester paying NY and Fed income tax. Call that 200k combined. Now you have 210 left. You have two kids in private schools. Whoosh another 70 gone. Two cars at 800 a month plis fees and call that another 20k. Groceries at 1000 a month, eathing out at 500 a month. Another 18 k up in smoke. Insurance for health of our happy family another 12k per annum. Insurance on the dwelling and cars another 12k.
As you can see. No room for a cook and full time maids.
Michael said...
A half a million would seem like a lot. But consider. A mortgage of a million dollars on a two million dollar home is probably sixty grand a year. Another thirty to property taxes and now you are at 90k . Oh, and the 500 k was pre tax. So here you are in Westchester paying NY and Fed income tax. Call that 200k combined. Now you have 210 left. You have two kids in private schools. Whoosh another 70 gone. Two cars at 800 a month plis fees and call that another 20k. Groceries at 1000 a month, eathing out at 500 a month. Another 18 k up in smoke. Insurance for health of our happy family another 12k per annum. Insurance on the dwelling and cars another 12k.
As you can see. No room for a cook and full time maids.
You have my sympathy. Got a paypal account I can send 5 or 10 bucks to?
What fool making $500k has a car note?
But even with all of that, there was room for a full time housekeeper.
Michael K has a point but still, you'd think they could find a few bucks to pay someone to come in and clean, even in New York.
Almost all the O3 and O4 officers' wives I know stay home and almost all of them pay a for a weekly cleaning lady, and none of them make half a million a year.
The housekeeping argument isn't about money, it's about power. The husbands should become, "Gentlemen Who Lunch" and use their free time taking tennis lessons from sexy young female pros and arranging charity events.
Or maybe their wives could bankroll a business to keep the men busy, like a cigar bar or a deli?
It's guess the newspaper.
Yes, NYT.
" She has spent decades persuading women on her team not to quit, even when they are put on bed rest during pregnancy or give birth to a child with special needs."
This is just wrong.
Here's an idea: since in any given locality, there are probably only a very few stay-at-home dads, how about scheduling play dates with some stay-at-home moms? Like visits to a museum, lunch, walks, short hikes, that kind of stuff.
I don't see any down-side to this at all.
"Here's an idea: since in any given locality, there are probably only a very few stay-at-home dads, how about scheduling play dates with some stay-at-home moms?"
As a stay at home mom, this is the big hurdle I see for stay at home dads. Being a stay at home dad has got to be far more socially isolating than being a stay at home mom. I also don't see a way out of that unless there are more stay at home dads who can socialize together.
Even when there are other stay-at-home dads around, it's hard to get them to socialize in the way that moms do. My brother in law stays home with kids, and he finally gave up trying to organize playdates and similar activities with other dads.
Even when there are other stay-at-home dads around, it's hard to get them to socialize in the way that moms do. My brother in law stays home with kids, and he finally gave up trying to organize playdates and similar activities with other dads.
You know, that's the Times. In a city as big as New York, you can find anything you want you want if you look for it. I remember some years back, the Times ran an article about Hispanic converts to Islam. In a city with over a million Hispanics, there are apparently at least ten converts to Islam (0.001%). And in a city with a gazillion bankers, at least ten of them are women with stay at home husbands.
One sentence in, I thought "New York Times". No need to read further, the rest of the content could be reproduced from the standard template.
EDH said:
It'll be interesting to see the frequency that couples in these situations divorce and what the courts do about it.
************
Recently ran across an article in the British press about how some women who were the wage earners were SHOCKED to find that, upon divorcing their stay at home husbands, they were forced to pay alimony! SHOCKED!
The attorney/barrister interviewed had it right - stating: "Well, what did these women expect? They wanted equality - that includes paying alimony ladies."
If these guys had a sex change then they could have babies and then the rest would work out. But it sounds as if these persons are man-gendered in male bodies and they want a workshop in their cellar and other non-Manhattan amenities instead of a sex change. Perhaps they could work as Obamacare navigators and Common Core TA's leading to early dementia and a release from all problems.
If Juanita wants to take out 4 bags of trash fairly and Jose says there are 6 bags "filled with bottles from your drunken Wall Street friends" then how many bottles were broken by Jose and how many by Juanita?
Well...I am a man and I don't underplay my masculinity. And so these so called 'men' are nothing but a buch of sissy losers.
I am politically incorrect and so I can be honest. These so called successful women bankers have married caretakers and not men. Had they been genuinely interested in their husbands; they would not have been insensitive to their career aspirations.
But the blame lies on men who are not driven, not ambitious, not passionate enough to go out and achieve in their lives. The article really puts them across as 'Losers with Cougars'.
The sexist attacks on men who take the home front in a family are shameful. Men who take shots like that are, paradoxically, not too manly. The notion that your manhood depends on The Man giving you a job with a paycheck is some weird modern-day delusion. Those of you inside that delusion seem uncreative and impractical and, frankly, afraid of strong women. You like to think that a man married to a strong woman is a weak man and that only a man married to a woman who has her man off in a wage/salary-earning job is truly a man. What do you know of the alternative ways to live?
I've started a new post for that last comment of mine, which is a précis for a book I could write.
paul a'barge said...
> Stay at home husband to Wall Street wife:
> "Make me a sandwich"
Geek stay at home husband to Silicon Valley exec wife:
"sudo Make me a sandwich"
Popville,
That rates at least a chuckle. :-)
I am a stay at home guy. I am retired, my wife is not. She makes more money than I do. Earlier, I made more than she did.
Saying that a man is afraid of a woman making more money than he does is a stupid thing to say. There are women I am afraid of. Not because they make more money, but because they can get away with stuff a man cannot get away with—lies mostly.
Fortunately, my wife is not one of them.
I have learned first-hand that it's the "domestic duty" role switch that generates astonishment and rude comments. My husband and I have no children. I work outside the home and, as a workaholic with a PhD, I earn about 70% of our shared income. My husband works from home and logs off each day a good hour or so before I get home, so he then spends 30 minutes on a daily basic cleaning routine - making the bed, washing dishes, scooping the kitty litter, etc. It's no problem for him (he has discovered, as have many women before him, that the routine movements of cleaning are a good time to change mental gears), and it is a huge relief for me to come home to a clean house.
No one we know seems to find it odd that he works from home, but EVERYONE finds it odd that he does the daily housework. There are some family members I won't even discuss this with, given the number of times I have been declared "spoiled" and him "whipped." It's just bizarre.
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