Does it matter to you how much your partner earns?

[brusslesprout]

Not wanting to start a debate or anything like that just a general musing really if this is a really important factor for everyone?

I wonder when looking at the bigger picture does it make the relationship better/easier?

My bf doesn't earn much which bothers me a little sometimes but on the same merit has no debts or bad spending habits as he's always had to be careful.

Growing up my Dad had quite a well paid job but isn't too good with money so still is in a lot of debt when he should be relaxing into retirement.

So yes does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

Yes, but also to maintain and be responsible for the home!

But I would say watch this space ,the times they are a changing, women are out earning men in their 20's and early 30's, the changes to parental leave are facinating, I wish they'd been around when I had ds. I believe that attitudes like Bonsoir's will in a couple of generations seem as outdated as the idea that women are incapable of logical thought or riding astride a horse are now.

The pressure is to outsource the maintenance of the home - FT nanny/housekeepers are a tax-deductible expense.

Wishihadabs - and I think that the attitude that the home/family/children can be outsourced with no ill effects will be outdated! You mark my words

I think it is natural for parents to want to care for their children themselves. Both dh and I can relax and enjoy our time WOTH knowing the dcs are in the care of their parent. All the fathers I know who spend any significant amount of time with their dcs feel this way. I also know a fair few mothers who don't.

I do think my DH being a good earner is important right now as, if it weren't for his salary, we'd have nothing (my PhD funding has ended).

But it absolutely wasn't important when I met him. I didn't even know what his job was at first.

IMO it's human nature to be more interested in something if you are going to be held responsible for the outcome. That doesn't mean you shouldn't question why that responsibility is held to be yours and yours alone, when the activity could be achieved equally well or even better by sharing the responsibility for it as a team. Or that it doesn't make sense to question whether you really enjoy an activity and have chosen to do it free of constraints and pressures not of your personal making.

I know a lot of men in middle age who are questioning whether they really enjoy corporate life, or whether they feel trapped into pretending they enjoy it because alternative life choices are elusive.

As I've said repeatedly on this thread, I don't actually give a stuff what people do as long as they think about why they are doing it, acknowledge the myth of free choice and make provision for themselves and their families if the choices they think they've made get taken away from them. As this thread has moved on, it seems to me that it's crucial to keep questioning choices to see if they remain valid and relevant and never to assume that the people you are reliant on aren't doing the same thing, even if they aren't expressing it.

Leaven, yes men who want the home dealt with by a woman will often marry a woman who wants to give up work and look after them and the home. Plenty however of very successful men want an equal woman with a great career of which they are proud and expect the two of them to share the domestic stuff and hire a cleaner if they can afford it. Those successful men and women exist too. I know tons of dual career couples.

I think the worst combination is housewife who hates it with husband who l leaves her to do everything when she'd rather work. Also full time working wife married to a sexist man who leaves her to do everything at home. Full time working wife who hates working and her husband refuses to get a job and does not even keep the house very clean.

Obviously the best combinations are when you both work full time and want to and both take charge at home for dealing with home things on an equal basis - what we achieved. That is a not a non existent myth. In fact the more senior you get as am an or woman and the more you earn the easiest it is to organise things how you want them as you have money and power. It is when you're young and junior at work whether you are male or female that it's harder to arrange work to suit you.

Luckily the trend is to fairness and more women under 30 earn more than men so the days when the couple would automatically women will stop work on marriage or stop work on babies coming are long gone. Men and women both have more choices now which is a great thing.

Ha! Having pointed out that we're not all mindreaders and can't possibly know the full contents of another person's real thoughts, I'll share what I was thinking about when I wrote that last paragraph.

One of the women I referenced earlier who's been left high and dry without a safety net was a fellow parent at the kids' primary school. I first met her husband about 10 years ago and he used to do that 'I don't know how she does it' thing, speaking admiringly about her contribution and obviously believing he was saying all the right things. He probably noticed my deadpan face at these pronouncements and wondered why, but school plays and the like didn't seem to me to be the appropriate time or place for an equality discussion, so I think we both mentally decided to swerve eachother in future. I liked her though- and she never pretended to love housework and being at home. She just accepted it was her lot because of circumstance.

2 years ago this bloke buggered off with a peer manager and has been telling people that he'd always resented being the money-earner and his wife not working. His ex-wife's saying he's a history re-writer and that he never wanted her to work or get anything outsourced. That he imposed strict conditions on someone always being in the house for the kids when they arrived home, as long as it wasn't him.

History re-writer or someone who convinced himself this was what he wanted and enjoyed out of life? A bit of both perhaps?

The outcome though is that like others have said, he's been hiding assets all over the shop and has had the financial wherewithal to employ a shit-hot lawyer and accountant. His ex-wife doesn't have those funds and her only obvious assets are her share of the family home and his pension. Yes she can work now but because she gave up a low paid job in the first place, is looking at yet another low paid job at a time when work is scarce.

It's the same story elsewhere for some other women I know, although their ex-husbands weren't as memorably knobbish as the one above.

Blimey Laura, what a cross-post!

Yes, the choice we made was to both have equal responsibility for working, child-raising and house stuff. We were both senior in our professions before having kids and like you say, that made certain choices easier.

It depends on education, income and class whether women under 30 earn more than men, or the same as them. For people with poor or non-existent academic qualifications, men still outearn women. Look at that list of trades upthread and who does the higher-earning ones like plumbing and building.

Leaven that is exactly what I am seeing among peers atm. 2 in particular where the woman is left high and dry and one of the dh says he just assumed she would go back to work when children went to school but she never did. Last child got to 14 and he left for someone he met at work too.

Yes Noddy. I have zero sympathy for these blokes though. All of mine is with the women who've been left with so few options, who were given very bad advice years ago.

I don't think the blokes need sympathy though! They are doing exactly what they please and getting what they want from the situation while the ex wives have given up so much believing they were 'safe' and then have to make huge adjustments and start again. Apart from anything else starting again at that age with no job and no real financial freedom is very lonely

I feel most sympathy for the children.

Yes, rich fathers who leave non working mothers high and dry and the children suffer. I've had dinners with some of these men who on a first date will show off about how they hid money off shore from their ex wife. Why do they think that will make me want them? I can think of at least 3 examples of men like that.

Leaven, if though you go even further down the income scale there are a lot of women who can get jobs in call centres and shops and the men who father their children but never live with them have no jobs at all these days as the traditional male factory and mining jobs aren't there. Those women choose to live without a man as the man is just something which restricts their benefit to up entitlement so I am not even sure that at lower incomes women are not going to do better than men in earnings terms.

That's a whole other area of politics though Laura, but I don't think finances supplemented by benefits are any less precarious than relying on another person for survival; both are subject to threats in 2014 Britain.

WRT sympathy of course I feel for the children who are being short-changed by these asset-hiding fathers, but if one good thing can come of that parlous state of affairs it's that children learn the lessons early that fairytales can go wrong and it's unwise to put complete trust in another person if your survival depends on it. So I'll be honest and say I've got more sympathy for people who don't have their whole lives in front of them- and were sold a pup.

I watched my DM get screwed over twice during divorces and she worked full-time all her life.

Bonsoir, I think I agree that the couple/family unit should indeed be a priority. That's why, for instance, I have never shagged anybody else's husband. But I think that the way many people manifest that priority is by, you know, keeping a roof over everybody's head and ensuring that the wife/mother's career is respected as much as the husband/father's.

"But I think that the way many people manifest that priority is by, you know, keeping a roof over everybody's head and ensuring that the wife/mother's career is respected as much as the husband/father's."

And what about the children? Whose priority are they?

Which ones? The first family, or the new one?

Bonsoir, who was prioritising your DSS when you were the OW to your DP and his wife? Because it wasn't you or your DP, was it? And you didn't give much "priority" to their family unit, I think, no?

Bonsoir wrote "And what about the children? Whose priority are they?"

The way in which some men, previously thought to be "great dads" walk away into the arms of new women and drop contact with the DCs leads me to think that the children are generally the priority of the mother. I wish that were not the case but everything I see on here, and have experienced myself, leads me to the conclusion that in general it is the case. I do have a family member who bucks that trend - so I know it is not universally true.

As a mother my concern was that my dc would be taken care of, for me that involved making sure I knew I was able to provide for them financially should the worst happen.

and still don't iirc? Fond of critcising both the dss and their mother on the internet, aren't you?

Blimey Bonsoir, are you "the other woman"?

I admit I've skimmed this thread.

But if I am understanding what people say rightly, I disagree.

Sure, well-off women have historically preferred to delegate childcare/housekeeping (so in that bonsoir is wrong). But are people meaning to come across as if you think rich men/women are more likely to cheat? Cos that certainly isn't true. I do think there is a correlation between cheating and lying about your income/standard of living - but that is just because people who can lie in one situation can lie in another.

Plenty of rich, honest people out there ... and my suspicion is that they're also the ones who don't care how rich their partners are.

Anyway, to get back to the question: I think what matters a lot is not how much your partner earns, but how they act about their role in earning the money. A friend of mine in RL tiptoes around her partner because he acts as if working (at a job he loves, btw) is something huge that he does, and as if her job is not as hard as his because she earns less. I couldn't live like that no matter how much he was bringing in!