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This conversation is scaring me. I have never, ever had a thought like this in my life, I swear. Either that's because I grew up with no money (although I suppose that could have had the opposite effect). Or because I am of a different generation. How did this happen, that it's suddenly old school to think that, as a woman, you should be able to independently support yourself, even if you are married? I wonder if this is because I grew up in the Donna Summers era, when all my friends' moms were getting divorced, so they had to be self-sufficient. There are moments in my marriage when I feel I am drifting into dependency, letting my husband take care of all the bills and car repairs, etc. And then I feel very, very annoyed with myself. I was very happy when Tami, Coach's wife on Friday Night Lights and my favorite TV wife, finally got a paying job and put baby Grace in day care. Am I like some kind of retro-feminist now?
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Jessica, I fear I am solidly, if not proudly, in Abby Ellin's camp. It's not that I want to be rich, exactly, but I do want those upper-middle-class comforts: separate bedrooms for the kids; occasional family vacations to far-flung countries; the assurance that I'll be able to send my kids to the college that's right for them, even if it's not the cheapest option. And, at least at age 8 or so, I also wanted a second car for my house in the country ... but that's a dream I'm willing to give up.
I remember in college having a long discussion about exactly what kind of sugar daddy would be right for me. I figured an investment banker or corporate lawyer wouldn't really work, since I find those professions fairly dull and have always had high on my List of Traits for My Future Husband that he have a job I enjoy hearing about at the dinner table. The other obvious choice was old money, but that didn't seem right either—I had spent a year of high school at a ritzy Manhattan private school (sandwiched among 12 years of public school in suburban Maryland) and found it tough to relate to the über wealthy there. By the end of that college conversation—still completely unaware of what my starting salary would be after graduation or if I'd even manage to snag a journalism job—I had at least one thing sorted out: I'd need to find an inventor of some kind, a creative thinker entrepreneurial enough to turn his grand idea into an equally grand paycheck. And then I'd need to marry him.
I don't think that any of that fantasizing (creepy as it was) took away from my assumption that taking care of myself would be my responsibility long before I brought a partner on to share the burden. My first priority out of college wasn't finding that inventor; it was getting health insurance. And unlike Karen Karbo, I've never let my boyfriends pick up all the tabs.
But I will say that I get it. I get how someone with a strong working mother can still grow up with this notion that she will be provided for in a vague sense that, when probed, starts to materialize as a man. And although I'm sure part of that stems from growing up in a society that continues to trumpet the notion—although obviously more subtly these days, than in the Mad Men era—of woman being cared for by man, I think another part is just the general tendency for people of both sexes to imagine things they can't have, then make the logical leaps to whatever missing factor might make those things possible. I've known for a long time that I won't have a job that gives me that extra car for my country home. And it seems less dangerous for me to occasionally wonder if a marriage might make that possible than to start hoping something like the lottery will.
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Hilary Black, the editor of an anthology called The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money, and Relationships, was on the Today show this morning, gabbing with Ann Curry about—what else?—love and money. I read a good chunk of the anthology earlier this week and was struck by a thread running through several of the essays, most of which were written by women who supported themselves as freelance writers. Many of these women came from upper-middle-class backgrounds, and while it took them a while to admit to themselves, they all secretly expected that some wealthyish dude would ultimately rescue them from their quasi-bohemian, small trust-funded existences. Abby Ellin described it best in her essay, "Tool Belts, Not Tuxes":
And okay, there's this: I've always been taken care of. My family never had great wealth, but my parents managed to send me to camp and college and graduate school—an extraordinary gift for which I'm eternally grateful. And they even bought me an apartment. ... And so this leads to a mortifying admission—especially for a feminist who was taught that every woman should possess both her own bank account and the ability to be self-sufficient. On some level, I always believed that eventually someone else would take care of the big stuff. That someone, of course, would be my husband.
Another contributor to the anthology, Karen Karbo, expressed similar sentiments in her essay "The Secret Economy of Women" (which appeared in a truncated form in the Times Modern Love column as "Accidental Breadwinner"). All of which leads me to the larger question: Do loads of smart, educated, feminist women avoid less flexible, more time-consuming career tracks not because they're fulfilling their inner artist or because they want to have time for kids but because deep down they still expect that some man will take care of them? Or, as Ann Curry put it this morning—does every freelance writer secretly want to be a princess?
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