Reply to Why is it that the higher up you go in the social ladder, the more enforced gender norms are?

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Reply to "Why is it that the higher up you go in the social ladder, the more enforced gender norms are?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I see two different trends.

On the one hand, a lot of UMC families I know have dual high wage incomes and these relationships are not absolutely not gender typical. In one, he does almost all the cooking and both he and she are light on cleaning and laundry as they have an au pair and weekly housekeeping. In another family, she travels a lot, he has a government job and does more kid pick ups/kid sick days, and they eat out a lot. In a third, she works a lot, he works a lot, they have a nanny, they have a food service (which she says saved their marriage) and their house is a wreck, so even though they have weekly housekeeping, I'm not sure either of them is spending time "picking up." She has told me he does a lot more laundry than she does (mostly because she admits with a laugh that he breaks down sooner than she does), but I've seen her do the yard work...

On the other hand, I know an equal number of UMC families with very gender typical division of labor with high paid executive men whose careers have been furthered by SAH wives who are socially graceful and helping their husbands work a million hours a week by doing all the kid/house duties. In one of these families, he makes several million a year and she is a bombshell, has a personal trainer and a personal shopper, their house is gorgeous (they do have a housekeeper, yard service, and a dogwalker) and she does 100% of the kid and home duties. In another family, he is a high powered lobbyist. She is really fun outgoing, goes to manicurist once a week, goes to hairdresser before each "do" (and they seem like they have 2-3 of them a week), she does all the cooking and shopping (they throw a do about once a week), and they have a nanny who does most of the kid duty. She plays a lot of tennis at a fancy country club. In a third family, she is a SAH mom, he travels a lot for some job in international finance, and I would not be surprised if he truly does not even know how to drive a car (he takes a company car to the airport, etc.) or do anything for himself. She maintains their calendar and he has a personal admin who reminds him about all his work stuff. She told me once that he phones his admin with her birthday/anniversary present lists...![/quote]
This is all fine, but I don't think these are representative of UMC families and gender dynamics.

I am highly-educated (PhD), grew up UMC, and am currently UMC. Most of my friends are similar, though not all of them grew up UMC. I would say that the vast majority of us are in dual-income households where the woman takes care of the majority of the traditionally female responsibilities (kids, cleaning, etc) and has also made decisions to limit or slow career advancement in order to support those responsibilities. I can't speak to the reasons for everyone I know, but I can speak to my own. There are some idiosyncracies around finding jobs in the same place for DH and I, which resulted in us ending up in a location that was best for DH's career. My observation is that somehow or another, most of my friends up in a similar situation (location based on DH's career). Because of the geographic transition, DH was out-earning me when we had kids. I have had a couple of opportunities for much higher-paying, more demanding jobs, and I ultimately turned them down. My reasoning was that: 1) we could not both have extremely demanding travel and work schedules, 2) I was not confident that DH would step down as much as needed in his career, 3) I wasn't willing to take that risk with small babies, and 4) truth-be-told my career isn't the most important thing to me. It's not for DH either, but he's not shown himself willing to sacrifice any aspect of it. Details for others' are different, but pretty similar. Unlike some of my friends, I think DH is perfectly capable of handling the home front. I'm just not confident that he will; and I value being able to make some of those day-to-day decisions (esp. since one of my kids has delays). Some of my friends don't even think their DH's could handle the homefront...

I'm doing just fine in my career (Director at a company with very few of them, primarily WAH, ~$250K salary)...but I could be doing much better. I've taken on traditionally feminine responsibilities both by choice and by necessity.[/quote]

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