MANY wives have become family breadwinners -2/00

Tue Feb 29 19:16:06 EST 2000

from: Smart Marriages

In domestic shift, many wives have become family breadwinners 

"Statistically, marriages in which wives bring in the most income are not 
significantly more likely to end in divorce."

By Amy Goldstein Washington Post, 2/29/2000 

ASHINGTON - Susan Goldmark works on energy projects for the World Bank 
here, putting in 11-hour days, shuttling to Latin America and drawing a 
salary in the top 2 percent of Americans' income. Her husband, Kai Bird, 
spends his days writing in the study of their Adams-Morgan house in D.C., 
working for years at a stretch on historical books that have earned 
favorable reviews from critics.

Praised as his biographies have been, Bird said, ''my wife will be quick 
to point out that they don't sell.'' After 25 years of marriage, 
including 18 in which she has supplied most of their money while he has 
produced three books, ''I might have a best-seller, and I'd still not be 
able to pay back the years of dependency on her.''

Their lopsided economic relationship once would have been rare. In a 
striking rewriting of the age-old compact between husbands and wives, the 
proportion of couples in which the woman is chief breadwinner has been 
increasing so markedly that nearly 1 in 3 working wives nationwide now is 
paid more than her husband, compared with less than 1 in 5 in 1980. The 
trend is particularly pronounced among the most highly educated women, 
nearly half of whom have incomes higher than their spouses, according to 
the most recent federal data.

The financial attainments of this army of American women - some 10.5 
million earned more than their husbands in 1998 - are, in turn, testing 
traditional gender roles in ways far more concrete than the feminist 
movement of a generation ago. According to economists, sociologists and 
couples themselves, wives' heightened wages have unbalanced other aspects 
of the equation of marriages: housework and child care, economic power, 
egos and expectations. ''This guy and I have worked out something that is 
very special for any kind of relationship; we each have areas we have 
expertise in,'' said Debra Judelson, a 48-year-old cardiologist in 
Beverly Hills, Calif., whose husband has never held a full-time paying 
job, except for a stint when he was on her corporate payroll.

Judelson earns more than $300,000 a year. Over the years, her husband, AJ 
Willmer, has designed high-end stereo speakers, developed an early 
expertise in computers, won election to their school board, invested her 
income in the stock market, and been the main parent in charge of raising 
their two daughters, now teenagers. They've been together since they were 
students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

''My male friends found it the most uncomfortable, and some found it 
disturbing,'' said Willmer, 45. ''Almost none understood. ... I've 
enjoyed my lifestyle.''

Wives' rising incomes are an outgrowth of underlying social changes since 
about the time Judelson's medical career began. According to Richard B. 
Freeman, a Harvard economist who has studied couples' earnings, these 
include a dramatic change in education habits (by the 1990s, US colleges 
and universities were graduating one-fifth more women than men), combined 
with other well-known trends: women's increasing tendency to work full 
time, to divert little time away from their jobs to raise children, and 
to join an array of occupations that were dominated by men a generation 
ago.

The effects of these changes have been so widespread that roughly 30 
percent of working wives of all ages - from their 20s to their 60s - are 
paid more than their husbands, according to Freeman's analysis of data 
from the most recent federal population survey.

Widespread as they have become, many couples nevertheless say that the 
new rules of family income remain out of synch with their ingrained 
notions of marriage. ''In a place deep down inside that I don't like to 
visit very often,'' Goldmark, 46, said, ''I think I expected him to earn 
more than me. And in some sense still (do) today.''

Statistically, marriages in which wives bring in the most income are not 
significantly more likely to end in divorce. But Kathy Meyer, director of 
the Business Enterprise Trust, a national organization based in Palo 
Alto, Calif., that promotes corporate responsibility, said that 
''financial disparity'' was a major reason why her marriage failed.

Her higher income ''was so unusual at that time,'' recalled Meyer, 51, 
who married in 1971 and, with her husband, enrolled at Stanford 
University a few years later to get an MBA. Armed with their degrees, he 
ventured into low-wage nonprofit work, she into well-paid corporate jobs.

''Consciously, we were feeling, `Well, aren't we the pioneers?''' she 
said. But he was troubled by the teasing of his friends, and she felt she 
was shouldering too much of the burden. ''We underestimated how we had 
been brought up and (the power of) traditional roles.''

**************************
This FREE online newsletter shares information on marriage, divorce and 
skills-based educational approaches.  Opinions expressed are not 
necessarily shared by members of the Coalition.

To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to the list, mail majordomo at his.com
Leave the subject line empty. In the body of the 
message type: subscribe smartmarriages or unsubscribe smartmarriages 
(do this on the first line, do not skip a space at the top)

- to CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS, follow the directions to unsubscribe your old 
address and subscribe your new address.  

- this is a moderated list.  When you send a reply message it is read by 
Diane Sollee, director, only.  

Newsletter archive - all past posts to the newsletter:
http://archives.his.com/smartmarriages/index.html#start 

4th Annual Smart Marriages conference/June 29 - July 2, 2000, DENVER  
http://www.smartmarriages.com/conferencedetails.html 
for registration, hotel and travel information.
up to 57 hours CEU -APA, SW, MFT, NBCC, CFLE

List your program in the Directory of Providers at:
 http://www.smartmarriages.com/directory_browse.html 

Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
5310 Belt Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961
www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332  (FAX 202-362-0973)   Email: cmfce at smartmarriages.com 