What bothers me is that they rarely admit it.
I’ve earned enough money as a writer since the fall of 1997 to support myself, but I’ve never been able to support a wife and kids without additional income coming in (yes, I feel like less of a man because of this failing). But if my wife made as much money as me, we’d get by.
I discussed these things with my friend Steven I Weiss:
Luzdedos1: women who are single and freelance writers must believe a man is gonna come along and provide
StevenIWeiss: i’ve certainly met my fair share of women in all industries who adopt a very income-unfriendly lifestyle, and whether they admit it or not, it becomes obvious in their behavior and pursuits that they are/were, overall, expecting a man to come in with the income.
StevenIWeiss: and you do see that plenty in ny media, too.
StevenIWeiss: what’s interesting is that jessica grose is a great counter-example
Luzdedos1: what gets me is they won’t admit it
StevenIWeiss: here’s a woman who’s, i think, 27 or so
StevenIWeiss: and she’s kicking ass and taking names
StevenIWeiss: soon to be the editor of slate’s women’s-issues site
StevenIWeiss: she might even be younger
StevenIWeiss: there’s also another reality that feeds into that, though
StevenIWeiss: which is that if you look around, women have lower incomes at the same level of employment as men, and often at the same employment level as men are better-trained, higher-skilled, and harder-working
StevenIWeiss: the first part of that is fact, the second part is anecdotal based on my observations
StevenIWeiss: but you definitely see a lot of women, and in new york and in the jewish community and in the orthodox jewish community you see it a lot, of all these women whose basic plan was to have no plan — or, rather, to get married asap and do nothing else, and then there seems to be some moment when that hasn’t worked out when you begin to see them thinking "well, what now?"
StevenIWeiss: i think there was a times article about that phenomenon, relating to men who’d earned something not wanting to partner with women who hadn’t
StevenIWeiss: i think it might’ve even had a jewish focus
