Cup, thanks for answering. I don't usually like to personalise threads but it is very interesting to others why people end up where they are.
In our case (we had a 20 years marriage) I was a student and he was working when we met - both graduates. He owned a house in the North. I had already secured a job in a London law firm (after 139 applications and 25 interviews over 6 months - it was a massive effort and very hard in the early 80s) and had won a scholarship to university after sitting 3 hours x 3 of competitive exams, was top of first year, won univesrity prizes etc. My siblings and I all did career specific degrees in careers that tend to pay well - one of my siblings is a doctor (consultant) etc. So I am sure our parents whose own parents had come from relative povery - my grandfather left school at 12 and self educated and set up his own estate agent and valuation business etc.
So there was clearly a desire that we all had careers that would keep us out of the mining, ship building and other local industries from which many of the family came.
Thus even before we got engaged we agreed I would stick with the job in London, he would move down as soon as his house was sold and find a teaching job down here - head of department - which he did. We also discussed before we married that if childcare did not work out then he would give up his work - but it did work out. So we both worked full time. Then ultimateily I earned 10x what he did.
My parents were not sexist. i remember my father taking us to some science lectures put on for children at the local university in my early teens. We all went to single sex schools as did my 5 children so there was no science is for boys only although my own school was not at all good for science A levels.
On a couple by couple basis if people are hapy with the man or woman earning more it doesn't matter at all. on an overall society level if women keep marrying up and taking loads of time off when babies come (I didn't) and then regret it (see the many divorce threads on MN where the man runs off with all the money then it can be a problem.
the comment above about guilt is interesting. I have been reading my diaries and got to about 2005 when a feature was published about me on women who were quite successful. The journalist said that for all of us we did not have the guilt some other women had. We all felt we could do a good enough job at work and then leave it behind and do a good enough job at home. The perfectionists tended to have the problem always worrying about things.
In my own case once the children were at school I set up on my own based at home although a lot of that time I was out every day, flying abroad, meetings all over the place, loads of travel. Then we had twins and that was much easier as I could feed them when they needed it one on each side, not have to express milk at work as I had done for the older ones. I would not have turned down a partnership at the city firm but it was not offered to me. I don't think that was due to sexism - there is just a fairly low chance of it anyway and it's worked out fine.
Now in my 50s people who became partners at the big firm are often now retiring and I can do what I like when I like instead and totally control how and when I work I have given up distance meetings last year for example as I don't like them so will sometimes say to a client - there are lots of lawyers who would be happy to do meetings - why not use XYZ. I would never have said that 20 years ago when we needed every last penny.
Wantofind's post is interesting. I agree. I think in my case I just don't have the guilt and that might be partly before my mother worked teaching full time for about ten years whilst they were married before children (quite unusual) and when she did stop work she didn't seem veyr happy with that (although our father who did a lot of childcare, all the night feeds for those bottle fed and loads of house cleaning which was not my mother's forte) and would moan about having just done housework that morning etc. Whereas her own mother and grandmother were both widowed and probably therefore were kind of in charge, single person, head of the family, earning etc In essence I almost feel I came from a family where women work and like it. Even my father's grandmother had to work (she had a drunken husband who was often away and had ten children). She was born in 1839. Even her sisters ended up working - one owned and ran a pub and then let apartments out. one of her daughters qualified as a nurse in the 1890s and another worked in a haberdashery shop. Anyway I have got off topic I suppose..... which was supposed to be what is life like on a high income (or was it what is it like to earn nothing but your husband earns a lot? I've forgotten which now).