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She Earns More Why aren't top-earning women happy? Ask their husbands. WHEN NORMA JEAN KEEFER met a hunky rugby player at a Miami bar nearly 20 years ago, his finances were the last thing on her mind. Initially, it didn't matter. She made roughly the same amount of money as he. (He was an engineer and she sold advertising at the Miami Herald.) Even after they started dating seriously, money was never an issue, other than the fact that they wanted more of it. Early on in the marriage, though, she landed a job earning twice as much as her husband. To her surprise, he wasn't very happy about it. Instead of celebrating her success, he controlled her spending, even though she was buying household goods and only spent money out of her own paycheck. It became such a bone of contention between them that he even suggested she quit her job. "I'd buy $300 worth of groceries for the family – most of which he'd eat – but he'd see the bill and complain," Keefer says. "We had been in debt; I got us out of it. Then when I wanted to buy something for the house, he was against it. Eventually I started my own checking account so I could buy things and he couldn't complain about it." Keefer's marriage lasted two years, and she maintains that money was one of the major reasons it collapsed. It may be an extreme example of what happens when women become breadwinners, but her experience isn't that unusual. About a third of all working women in the United States earn more money than their husbands, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that number is trending upward at a fantastically rapid pace. It jumped to 32.4 percent in 2003 from 23.7 percent in 1987, and it's likely to continue soaring given the fact that families are increasingly reliant on two incomes and women are now better equipped than men to enter the workforce. (Young women are more likely than men to have graduated from high school and have a college-level education, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census.) So what's the problem? When men lose control of what they often believe is their most important contribution to raising a family – an income – the balance of power gets skewed and loving relationships can become soured by a tangle of resentments. Men may resent their wives for stripping them of their importance; women may begrudge their husbands for not carrying the financial burden; or women may feel guilt for having more success than their boyfriends or husbands, according to Ruth Hayden, an educator and author based in St. Paul, Minn. "There's this societal belief that whoever has the money in a relationship has the power, and if she makes more money than he does, she's somehow going to take over," Hayden says. "He's going to be this poor, pathetic person without any say. It's not true, but people believe it." Miranda, a 33-year-old film producer in Los Angeles (who asked us not to include her last name), earned about the same salary as her fiancé when they started dating three years ago. Now she makes twice as much as she used to and her fiancé is out of work. She pays their expenses, which she says she is glad to do, but she worries that her fiancé's confidence and self-esteem have plummeted. "I think the most uncomfortable thing about this is that I'm always walking on eggshells," she says. "I feel like I'm emasculating him, but, more than anything, I just want him to be happy and feel good about himself." It's a modern problem that few couples are equipped to deal with. Most women have probably heard stories about friends who cut their hours at work or who turned down a promotion to avoid bruising their husbands' egos with a big paycheck. Experts, however, say such steps shouldn't be necessary to keep a relationship together; in fact, this approach could lead to bigger problems down the line. Part of the solution is confronting the issues head-on, Hayden says. Page 1 2 |
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