From Peggy Drexler's "When mom earns more, it's tough on dad" at CNN:
But the answer, of course, isn't for women to revert to their traditional roles of cooking, cleaning and tending to the children while the man of the house is off bringing home the bacon. As more and more women rise to powerful positions in the workplace, the incidence of female breadwinners will continue to grow.
Husbands of these wives who may be experiencing feelings of depression and low self-esteem would be wise to have an honest conversation with their spouse, and themselves, to find out what's really bothering them. Oftentimes, it may not be the fact that their spouse earns more, but that their spouse may have less time to spend at home, or may be neglecting other areas of the relationship.Ha ha perfect. Often, what's causing female-partnered Western men to feel shitty when they're making less than a woman is not ancient, patriarchal, gender-essentialist narratives about men with which they've been socialized since birth and the unearned privilege that can engender feelings of deep insecurity at the merest hint of that privilege being threatened or eroded, but the possibility that their female partner is somehow failing them.
Amazing.
And yes, of course, sure, certainly, sometimes in relationships someone works so hard, by choice or necessity, that it can take a toll on the relationship. But let us not pretend that the primary source of all this male angst is neglect by female partners, especially when what is often called "neglect" is in reality "failing to come home from earning more money and act sufficiently submissive by performing traditionally female tasks in order to reassure a man earning less money that he is still the boss of you."
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