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Men As Beasts of Burden
There are five widows for every widower.
Kevin, 37, is a computer programmer, making
$80,000 a year, $48,000 after taxes. His wife,
Lisa, stays home to take care of their two-year
old. She is pregnant with another child, and eager
for them to buy a home. Kevin doesn’t like
being a programmer, but fears that a career change
will mean a salary cut.
I asked Kevin, “Is owning a home important
to you?” He replied, “It’s very
important to Lisa.” I asked him how he felt
about having the second child. He sighed,
“Okay, but Lisa really wants it.”
I asked, “When you first called me, you
said you feel the stress is killing you. Should you
be shouldering all the family’s financial
responsibilities?” He pursed his lips:
“Lisa reminds me that before we got married, I
agreed to have two kids. She says, and I guess I
agree, that to bring our kids up right and maintain
a home is a full-time job. And she doesn’t
have my earning capacity.” Kevin rubbed his
head.
Over the past 17 years, I have been career coach
to 1,500 middle and upper class women and to 500
middle-to-upper class men. Because of our
relationships’ confidentiality, I have learned
much about what women really think on a number of
issues.
Most surprising to me, is that at least half of
the women, including many graduates of elite
colleges, either don’t want an income-earning
job or will only work part-time in an unusually
pleasant job.
A recent New York Times article suggests that my
clients are not an anomaly. It reported that the
number of stay-at-home moms has increased 13
percent in less than a decade, and among working
women, 2/3 work part-time. This is true even of
graduates of prestigious colleges, women who were
bestowed a fiercely competed-for slot at an elite
college on the assumption they would use that
coveted degree to make a big difference in the
world.
Few of those women’s application essays
indicated they planned to be housewives. Yet among
Stanford’s class of ’81, in just their
first decade after graduation, 57 percent of
mothers spent at least a year at home full-time.
One in four stayed home full-time for three or more
years. A survey of the women from the Harvard
Business School classes of 1981, 1985, and 1991
found that only 38 percent of all women—even
if childless--were working full time. And beyond
the elite colleges, among white men, 95% of all
MBAs in the U.S. work full time, while the number
for white women was just 67 percent.
And “full-time” doesn’t mean the
same for men and women. Among my 1,500 female
clients and many friends, very few are willing to
sacrifice work/life balance to work the 60+ hours a
week it normally takes to rise to the top of a
profession.
Yet women’s groups complain that women are
“underrepresented” in the power
professions: senior executives, professors, etc.,
because of a glass ceiling they claim is erected by
men.
Of course, there are many ambitious, achieving
women who are men’s equals or superiors. But
many of my female clients and friends prefer the
life of a housewife, perhaps augmented by a
pleasant little part-time job, even if it means
their husband, whom they claim to love, must work
long, hard hours on jobs few women would consider.
For example, the vast majority of people who work
in iron foundries, coalmines, and other clanging,
polluted environments are men. According to the
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 92
percent of workplace deaths occur to men.
Dan, a client of mine (name changed) avoided
breathing carcinogenic air, but his life is still
at risk. He has two masters degrees in counseling,
but in the big city, where it seems there’s a
therapist under every rock, hasn’t been able
to land a job as a counselor. He has a few private
clients, which in total earn him $6,000 a year. He
adds $8,000 as a mock patient in a medical school,
and at night, Dan, 54, moonlights as a waiter at a
large restaurant. He says, “It’s almost
¼ mile from the kitchen to the farthest table,
so when I get home at one in the morning, I’m
exhausted. But I’m still so wired, I need a
couple of glasses of wine to get to sleep. If
I’m lucky, I get five hours of sleep before I
have to get up again.”
Dan’s wife Denise, a Cornell graduate, is
47 and says she’s a musician. But in their
years together, her net income has averaged just
$800 a year. When Dan encourages Denise to get a
job that pays, she objects:“ But I love being
a musician. I’m trying to make a living at
it.” He keeps urging her to get a paying job,
but after a while, he gives up. He can’t make
her get a job.
Meanwhile, Dan continues to drag himself through
life like an ox yoked to a plow, a beast of burden.
“I don’t know how long I can keep this
up.” Statistically, he’s right. Medical
science is unequivocal that stress and overwork
kills. No doubt, that contributes to their being
five widows for every widower.
To be fair, many men prefer their wives to stay
home, but often, the impetus comes from the woman.
Many women use dubious arguments to convince their
husbands that they should have, at most, a
part-time job:
It’s better for the children. Yes, on
average, kids with a stay-at-home-mom do somewhat
better, but that is largely because couples that
can afford to have mom staying at home are, on
average, from a higher socioeconomic class, which
confers many other benefits on the child.
A number of studies indicate that being a
working mom doesn't hurt and may even help the
child. For example, the most recent study (July
2003) Caring and Counting: The impact of mothers'
employment on family relationships by Tracey
Reynolds, Claire Callender and Rosalind Edwards,
reports, "...the mother's work had a positive
impact on their family relationships. The mother's
employment provided skills and resources that meant
they could meet their children's emotional,
developmental and material needs better. Their
relationship with their partner was enhanced
because they shared the financial burden of
providing for their family and had more common
interests." The book, Ask The Children, is based on
in-depth interviews with 600 parents and more than
1,000 children in the third through twelfth grades
from diverse backgrounds. It found that "having a
working mother is not predictive of how children
assess their mothers' parenting skills, based on a
number of attributes strongly linked to children's
healthy development and school success. These
include 'being someone I can go to when I am upset'
and 'knowing what is really going on in my life.'"
This study's results were reported to the public in
a cover story in Working Mother magazine called
"Hey Moms, Drop the Guilt!" Millions of children
with working moms do just fine. What counts most is
quality time: reasonably consistent, loving,
limit-setting but not punitive parenting, even if
it begins after the workday.
Lest you think I haven’t practiced what I
preach, my wife went back to work full-time, nine
weeks after our daughter was born, and she turned
out just fine: well-adjusted, voted UCLA’s
outstanding undergraduate student, whereafter she
got a White House internship, after which she went
to Yale Law School, is now a successful attorney
and about to marry a wonderful guy.
And even if a child accrues some advantage from
having a stay-at-home mom, that advantage is
usually more than outweighed by the pressure added
to the husband’s life and the lifestyle
decrement that comes from the lack of a second
income. One such decrement is that men who must
earn all the family income are precluded from
considering rewarding but not lucrative careers
such as teaching, and most jobs in non-profits, the
arts, journalism, etc.
Adding to the unfairness, women, on average, are
more motivated than their husbands to have children
to begin with. The man is often pressured, subtly
or not subtly, into parenthood, with all its added
financial and time demands.
Taking care of the kids and home is a full-time
job. These women stretch homemaking into a
full-time job with activities far less beneficial
than a second income to the family and certainly to
her husband’s health and quality of life:
preparing home-cooked dinners most nights, sitting
with other moms watching a playgroup when a
babysitter could do that, etc.
Being a homemaker is at least as stressful as
being in the work world. These women point to their
having to deal with a frequently crying baby or
claim that being at home is a three-ring circus.
But fact is, a significant percentage of many
stay-at-home moms' days are spent on low-stress
tasks such as supermarket shopping, playing with
the baby, making dinner, and chatting with friends
while baby is napping.
That life is much less stressful than most
out-of-home jobs, which are filled with
unpredictable commutes, ever increasing workloads
because of the relentless downsizing, bosses with
unrealistic expectations, co-workers who don’t
pull their weight, and tough tasks, which if not
completed satisfactorily can result in criticism or
even firing.
I don’t have your earning power. Dr. Warren
Farrell’s research debunks the flawed research
that claims women earn 79 cents on the dollar. When
controlled for hours on the job, performance
evaluations, and years of experience, women earn
$1.01 for every dollar men earn.
And the reason women have fewer years of
experience is that they disproportionately elect to
stay home with their children, or even if they work
“full-time,” they work far fewer hours
than their male counterparts so they can spend more
time with their kids or on their avocations. Many
more women than men —full-time workers and
not-- ensure they have time for yoga, get-togethers
with friends, art class, gardening, and visits to
the day spa. Since 2000, despite the economic
downturn, the number of spa visits nationwide, the
vast majority of which are made by women, has
doubled!
Women don’t just spend on day spas.
They’re, overall, the bigger spenders. Yes,
men buy more tools and technotoys but women, even
when they contribute little or nothing to the
family income, are the predominant spenders:
clothing, jewelry, therapy, home redecorating of no
interest to the man, etc. Most shopaholics are
women. Every expenditure loads additional pressure
onto the primary breadwinner, which is usually the
husband.
Most of my male clients have accepted their
plight of having to work, work, work at
unrewarding, even dangerous jobs. Biology, parents,
and society have programmed men to be the hunter,
the provider, to keep their nose to the grindstone,
no matter what. Too many wives only encourage it.
Just today, a client of mine who earns more than
$200,000 a year as a not-partner attorney at a
major law firm, exclaimed, “If I don’t
push NOW to make partner, my wife will kill
me!”
Usually, the wife won’t kill the husband,
but often will divorce him, at least in part
because “he wasn't a good provider.” And
most courts reward her with custody of the child
and a requirement that the father pay child support
and/or alimony.
When I ask a male client to step back and think
about it, many of them realize that their wives
have tried—usually successfully--to subtly or
not so subtly coerce them into being the primary or
sole breadwinner, the beast of burden. Those women
make the above arguments, plus use manipulative
techniques such as crying, guilt-tripping,
screaming, avoiding the topic of getting a job, and
forever promising to look for work but making
feeble efforts.
Meanwhile, many men live bleak lives: work 10+
hours, commute home, and drop into the couch
exhausted. And their reward: an early grave.
Despite obesity being more prevalent among women,
there are five widows for every widower. Yet all we
hear about is another fundraiser for breast
cancer.
If a husband hasn't done so already, he should
consider having an open discussion with his wife
about work and money. For example:
“Will buying a house or having another
child put too much financial pressure on
us?”
“If we decide to make those high-cost
expenditures, do we want to put all the financial
burden on one partner so the other can stay home to
raise the child? Or should it be divided more
evenly?”
“Should I refuse to work at an unrewarding
high-stress or dangerous job?”
The elite colleges should issue the following
exhortation to their students, male and female: "As
you well know, the diploma you will receive from
this institution will open the doors of influence:
from medical research to non-profit directorship,
from corporate leadership to stewardship of the
arts. In accepting one of the precious few student
seats at this institution, you tacitly accept the
responsibility to society to make the most of that
coveted degree. We encourage you to aim high, to
use that degree to make the biggest difference you
can for humankind. As important as being a good
parent is, you don't need an elite degree to do
that."
(I changed a few irrelevant details about my
clients to protect their anonymity.)
© 2007, Marty
Nemko
* * *
Marty
Nemko holds a PhD from the University of
California, Berkeley, and subsequently taught in
Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. He is
the worklife columnist in the Sunday San Francisco
Chronicle and is the producer and host of Work With
Marty Nemko, heard Sundays at 11 on 91.7 FM in
(NPR, San Francisco), and worldwide on
www.martynemko.com
 .
400+ of his published writings are available free
on that website and is a co-editor of
Cool
Careers for Dummies.
and author of The All-in-One College Guide.
E-Mail.
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