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][quote=Anonymous]
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]
How much does your DH earn. Is it a similar amount? [/quote]
No, it's about 2x what I earn (harder to say, because his bonus percentage is much higher and can exceed his salary).  I know I could stop working, but I really don't want to. DH would actively not support that decision, because he thinks I'd go crazy if I weren't working (he's probably right).[/quote]

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