A sociologist explains why wealthy women are doomed to be miserable
The point is not that we should feel sorry for women with a personal chef and a house in the Hamptons. Rather, my goal is to illuminate who gets to be both wealthy and morally worthy in our society. In the modern-day US, our concept of meritocracy is inherently gendered. This means that women bear the brunt of negative judgments about wealth—and raises questions about what women “deserve,” and on what basis, that cut across social class.
…
Not bringing in money left some of these women feeling vulnerable. A parenting expert told me, of the wealthy stay-at-home moms she worked with, “They feel so guilty that they’re wasting their degrees… They feel so ‘less than.’”
Helen (a pseudonym, like all other names in this piece), who had been an investment banker and had left her career reluctantly, told me, “[I’m] well-educated. I had a career. You know, where is all that now?” She said she sometimes felt like she was “working for” her husband. She added, “There are power dynamics, where he’s the breadwinner now, and I’m really not. And yet, I do so many things for the family that you can’t put a number on it.” Her unpaid labor is hard to measure, and therefore hard to appreciate.
Bridget worked part-time, bringing in much less money than her husband did. She said he gave her “a hard time” about spending but felt free to buy what he wanted. She put this dilemma succinctly, saying, said, “I can’t make enough money to impact our life. And how am I ever going to make enough money to deserve something, if I don’t just say I worked for this and I made this money?’” By bringing in the money, men often get the power to decide how it is spent. Equally important, they also get the right to feel like they “deserve” what they have.
The other reason wealthy stay-at-home mothers are vilified is that they are imagined to be excessive and self-indulgent consumers, in a world where over-the-top consumption is often seen as a moral failing. Women, more associated with consumers in general, bear the brunt of this kind of judgment, especially when they are thought to be spending only on themselves.
…
Stephanie prided herself on being an attentive mother, making Halloween costumes for her son and baking “beautifully decorated” cookies for his school. She also explained in detail the stresses of managing their home in Manhattan and their weekend home, saying, “I’m the one that deals with all of it.” But, she said, her husband “thinks that I’m, you know, eating bon bons all day. It’s hard.” He also hassled her about spending too much, though she protested that she bought clothes at Target and cut her own hair and nails, while he splurged on expensive meals for his friends.
When the roles were reversed, women did not exert the same judgment over their husbands’ spending. The women I interviewed who earned more than their husbands, or who brought the bulk of the money into the household through inheritance, described this state of affairs as threatening to their husbands. Rather than control their husbands’ expenditures, they went out of their way to make men feel like they were contributing too, by letting them control the family’s investments or by legally turning over some sum of money to them. So the power dynamic here is about masculinity—not just about who brings home more of the bacon.
i feel like reading this article is a good way to test whether or not you have fully accepted that misogyny does not get canceled out by anything, including obscene wealth
“Not bringing in money left some of these women feeling vulnerable.” I’m surprised this article doesn’t mention the most obvious issue with being dependent on your husband for money: how hard it is as a “wealthy” woman to leave your husband when none of your “wealth” actually belongs to you. I put “wealthy” in quotes because of course these women aren’t actually wealthy in their own right; they’re married to wealthy men, which is very different. These women have nothing of their own, which is a very scary place to be in – living in luxury while knowing that none of it is yours and it could all be taken away at any minute.
I’m speaking from experience as someone who grew up in a very wealthy neighborhood where the domestic violence shelters were full of battered women every night, most of whom would go back to their rich husbands in the morning because they were scared what would happen to them and their kids if they left. These men had the best lawyers and could take everything in a divorce, including the kids (a doubly scary option for a mother if your husband is abusive).
Money is power. When your husband is also your employer (as in, he supports you financially in exchange for which you provide domestic/emotional/childcare labor), that means he has the power to dictate what you do “on company time”, so to speak (which, since a marriage has no contract, no predetermined salary, and no fixed hours, is all the time). Many a man believes he has a right to dictate how his wife spends “his” money, including how she spends her free time, where she goes, what she wears, who she socializes with, how she raises “his” kids, and so on, because he’s paying for all of it. And the difficult thing is, so do we, because even without the misogyny we as a capitalist culture are deeply invested in the idea that paying for something gives you certain “rights” over the thing you’re paying for, and that naturally the person who “contributes” more should have a bigger say in how things get done.
THIS THIS THIS.
Also, at least in the mostly-defunct middle and upper middle classes, husbands and financial advisors often pressure the wife to put any money or property she brings into the marriage into a joint bank account/ownership. The financial and tax systems are set up to encourage joint ownership— or at least, so they say.
Why wouldn’t this raise red flags in a woman’s mind? A 19-to-20something newlywed may not think of divorce as a possibility, and she may be delighted if her partner has a spreadsheet and a system for paying the bills. Who wants to do that? So husbands often take charge of finances, have the bank account passwords, numbers, and a line to their bank rep, and if they’re wealthy, he’s the one talking to their financial advisor and/or lawyer.
Shockingly, lawyers, bankers, and husbands sometimes manage to transfer the wife’s money and/or property into a joint account or trust without her permission or knowledge. My mom found this had happened — on my dad’s instructions — after she had clearly stated to their estate planner that she wanted to keep her money inherited from her parents in a separate trust. My aunt’s lawyer— in a different state— did the same thing without being instructed to do so.
TL;DR: even in this day and age, “joint ownership” often winds up meaning, “The woman gives up sole ownership of any property or resources she brought to the marriage, and later finds she can’t access it without going through her husband.” I hope the custom will die off with the Boomers… but I doubt it.
