I had lunch with a friend recently whose husband has been offered an amazing job… abroad. They have both worked abroad before and loved it, but this was before they had two kids. My friend had a super successful career in business before she took a bit of time off to be a mom, but has spent the last few years starting up a business of her own. It was just starting to pick up steam when this awesome job offer for her husband came through.

The decision to uproot your family and move a thousand miles away is never easy when you have kids (hey, we moved from New York to Boston and a year later, I am still recovering.) So much goes into consideration — living arrangements, schools, activities, work, etc. But when moving involves one spouse taking a dream job and another potentially slowing down her own career or business, it’s much more complicated. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a completely different post planned for today, but after glancing through the Elle/MSNBC Reader Survey about money I couldn’t resist this topic. (I should also use this opportunity to brag about my awesome husband, who bought me a copy of Elle, my guilty pleasure magazine to which I’ve forgotten to renew my subscription but which does a great job of putting my stress on the back burner for a few minutes.)

Anyway, back to the money survey. There are some fun bits on there — like the fact that 1 in 3 women said that they feel less pressure to have sex with the guy if they pay for their share of the date (which implies that 2 out of 3 do?) — but what caught my eye were the stats about women who make more than their partners. Here are a few:

• 1 out of 3 breadwinners resent paying for shared expenses

• 16% of breadwinners think that men should always be primary earners

• Breadwinners are more likely than other women to think that the primary earner should have more power in the relationship

• 1 in 4 female breadwinners keep strictly separate bank accounts Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day. Not in the 11 years my husband and I have been together, not with any guy I dated before then. It always felt too commercial, too artificial. (OK, in the interest of full disclosure, my high school boyfriend brought me a dozen carnations one Valentine’s Day and we got in a fight; I thought carnations were insulting.)

But I read this article in the New York Times tonight and I am re-considering my anti-Valentine’s Day stance. According to several studies mentioned in the article, the secret to keeping a marriage going and keeping it happy is to do new things together. Just spending quality time together — which for working parents is tough enough — isn’t the answer. You have to try new things, experience new things, go to new places. Read the rest of this entry »

If you said no, then you’re in the minority, according to a new poll. A wealth research firm (I had no idea these existed) polled more than 1,000 people nationwide and asked them this question:

How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?

Two thirds of women and half the men said that they were extremely or very likely to do it.

Are you surprised? I have to be honest, I was. I know no poll is entirely accurate and the way the question is stated it doesn’t necessarily mean that money would be the only or even the primary reason to marry this person. (Hey, I know many marriages where two people who liked each other and were reasonably good looking decided to tie the knot, and neither had much money.) But it does suggest that many women and men feel that money is a good reason to marry someone. Read the rest of this entry »

According to this article in the New York Times women who don’t speak up when fighting with their husband run the risk of having some pretty serious health issues. (We featured the article in our Media Watch and a few members shared their thoughts on the topic - check it out.)

But how many of us simply don’t have enough time or energy to argue with our husbands or partners due to the many demands of work and family and not enough time to get it all done?

I had lunch with a woman recently who told me that by the end of the day when the kids are in bed she is just too exhausted to raise issues with her husband. She thinks he is too and so they just let them go, choosing to watch TV or go to bed rather than have a heated discussion. I would be lying if I said that this never happens to me and my husband. Read the rest of this entry »

Something must be in the air related to women and housework. We’ve been talking about it here and here and here on Work It, Mom! and now I find this article and a great reaction to it online.

First, the article. It’s titled Women’s Liberation Through Housework and in it the author writes that when women went off to work by the millions a void was left in the home — the men did not step up to help with housework and with turning the home into a peaceful refuge for the family. Rather than concluding that men need to step up more — or that we, as working women, should put more pressure and/or demands on them to do it — the author uses the fact that women continue to do more around the house as evidence for it being part of our genetics:

…be it genetics or societal brainwashing, 40 years of liberation has not changed the fact that the female of the species is most often the one who cares about matching towels and well-equipped kitchens… Many of us for a few decades there refused to admit it, but deep down, we have a perfectly respectable desire to create an attractive, peaceful haven for our families and ourselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve made more money than my husband for as long as we’ve known each other, right up until the point when I took the plunge and gave up the security and fat paycheck of my finance job to do something I’ve always wanted to do - become a full-time entrepreneur. I’ve always worked in business or finance, where people make a lot of money, my husband worked in several industries where average salaries are much lower. It never bothered me.

And then our daughter was born. I was happy to go back to work - I like to work, I want to work, and I have to work - but as time went on and I struggled to be a mom and keep up my stressful big-money-making career, I began to feel some resentment. I’d catch myself in envy of moms who had less stressful and lower paying jobs which they could afford to have because their husbands were the primary breadwinners.

Mixed in with this resentment was a tremendous feeling of betrayal and even shame. I felt like I was betraying the feminist ideals that I’d achieved through very hard work - becoming a successful woman in a male-dominated career field and doing it on my own terms. Here I was, a super-achiever by most standards, and the stress of it, the pressure of it was crushing me. Why wasn’t I strong enough to handle it? Why was being the primary breadwinner stressing me out so much instead of making me proud of the fact that I was able to support my family financially?

I was so happy to read a recent blog post by Self-Made Mom about this very issue. She is a successful professional and a mom, but her husband is the primary breadwinner for the family. And she wrote about the fact that she is happy about this, that right now, she really appreciates having the ability to have a job that she has (which includes some flexibility to work from home) and not have to worry about making the majority of the money for the family.

We put so much pressure on ourselves as women - to be incredible moms, great wives and partners, successful and high-achieving professionals. The modern woman is supposed to be able to do it all - superwomen, high achievers, trailblazers, Alpha Moms are terms we see so much in media stories talking about all the amazing things women are achieving. And by many accounts, we are doing it all - recent data suggests that more and more women are becoming the primary earners in their households.

But boy, do I wish I could give myself a break sometimes. I will likely always be the primary breadwinner in our family and I am OK with that; what I wish I could be OK with is the fact that sometimes I wish I weren’t.

Mir wrote recently about taking on too many projects and having to work nights and weekends to get them done. This after she resolved to spend more time with her new husband and get her working hours under control. And while I made no such public proclamation to my husband, I can relate. I’ve been working until very late at night and on weekends for months now and my husband has been amazingly patient. (The other night he made dinner - I know, I know, he MADE dinner!!! - and called for me upstairs where I was working in the office. I said that I was coming in just a minute and an hour later we were warming up the now-cold dinner in the microwave.)

I’ve been telling myself that this is a phase - launching a new company, moving to a new city - and things will settle down. But that’s a lie. What I do for a living requires a tremendous amount of work and I am committed to making it happen. I’ve worked hard for as long as I can remember and the only difference now is that I work late at night because I take time during the day to be with my daughter. I know I am lucky to have the opportunity to work on a flexible schedule, but it has led to little sleep and very little time doing anything but work at night and many hours on weekends. My husband and I try to watch our favorite show at least a few times a week and a movie with takeout on weekends, but it’s not rare for me to do this while holding my laptop on my lap. We recently went away on vacation and I realized how little time we’d been spending together without our daughter there (we are all glued to each other on weekends and I love that time, but it’s family time, not my time with my husband.)

We talk often here about juggling work and kids, but I think we should talk more about juggling work, kids and our relationships. I think it’s really easy to take them for granted and I also know that is a huge mistake.

I’d love to hear what you think about this topic. Do you carve out special time to spend with your partner or spouse? (And if you do, how the heck do you manage that!?!) Do you feel that your relationship is not a priority since having kids and juggling work?

I had an interesting conversation recently with a mom I met through networking for Work It, Mom!  She is a successful marketing professional and her husband is a high-powered attorney. They have two kids, ages 3 and 7. Very early into our conversation this mom said something that made me stop and think:

“I relate really well to single moms. Yes, I have a husband, but he is never here. He works from 7am until 9-10pm every night, and when he gets home, he is exhausted and is asleep within an hour. On weekends he has client dinner or golf outings, and when he doesn’t, he tries to catch up on sleep. I know he loves the kids but he works so much that he is not there for them.”

A single married mom - now there’s a term I’ve not seen much in the media (wait, we’ll have a new mommy war soon, Single Moms vs. Single Married Moms or some other silliness.) I thought about my own family and the trade-off we’ve made where my husband works at a more flexible, less demanding job that allows him to be with me and our daughter more. (The trade-off being money.) We sometimes talk about whether he should find a different job where he would make more and work more and we usually get back to the conclusion that time together is more valuable. (These conversations became more frequent after I quit my high-paying job to become a full-time entrepreneur. Still same conclusion.) But I am living this choice and I can tell you that while I feel it’s right for us, it’s not an easy one.

Listening to this mom made me wonder how many other married working moms out there feel like they are pulling the full weight of taking care of their families. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Does your husband work long hours? How do you split up your responsibilities at home? Do you feel like a single working mom at times?

Well, at least according to a new Australian study that found that “every extra year of education a wife has under her belt significantly increases the chances her husband will report being highly satisfied with life.”

(Read more in our Media Watch.)

I’m struggling to rationalize why this would make sense beyond just saying that men like smart women. Which is great, if it’s true. Instead of starving ourselves to get that impossible 26-inch waist we can go back to school to learn.

What do you think? Are you surprised by the findings or is this what you’d expect?