According to CareerBuilder.com Mother’s Day survey 43% of working mothers would be willing to take a pay cut if they could spend more time with their children and 51% of working moms from two-income households would quit their job if their partner’s income was enough to support the family.

I wasn’t surprised when I read the first part. I was at an event recently where I met working mom after working mom who changed careers or modified her job to have more time for family and kids. On days when my stress level is through the roof and I can’t seem to get enough work done or spend quality time with my daughter I often start thinking whether I should be doing something to dramatically change my career path and make it less demanding and consuming. I love to work and I’ve never thought about staying at home full-time, but I do know that if I worked less, it would be easier to juggle. 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 »

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 »

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.