What happens when marriage is reduced to a paid occupation is prostitution. Can we please start recognizing the fact that sex workers (paid in cash for sex) and SAHMs (paid in room/board/allowances/wife bonuses for sex/housework/childcare) are two sides of the same coin, and stop vilifying sex workers for choosing to…

How is anyone surprised by this concept? A super rich man marries a beautiful woman who gives up her identity, and people are shocked it’s not true love?

I would too - though I’d probably go back to work on my own terms eventually after a good long break and some further education.

As I see it, the issue isn’t not wanting to work. We’d all love to clock out permanently! The issue for me is the feeling of someone else bankrolling it. Even though I trust my husband…

Yeah, it's sounding a bit "and here's your allowance, little lady" to me too. This is some regressive bullshit.

I think that people get together because they feel love/ admiration/ lust / friendship for another, then on their way meet the unspoken, often unthought expectations they have on their life partner.

I’m a SAHM with a banker husband. I feel like a bad feminist sometimes, especially raising two daughters, but he looks after all the money stuff (earning, saving, managing spending) and I look after the kids and house. I don’t even know HOW much money we have, how many shares we have. Shoot, I don’t even know the…

We’re talking about the New York financial class. The assumption that they’re monstrous men is likely a safe one.

Your comment brings to mind a divorce that happened in the small town where I grew up. The wife quit her job to be a SAHM to their 3 kids, and the husband started a successful local business. They built a big house, bought some other businesses like gas stations and such, and then when they divorced she wanted her 50%…

if you’re marriage is set up with a joint bank account all income is household property, but just because you are married doesn’t mean that it’s shared property

Yeah. My parents have always just shared finances. If mom buys it dad either assumes we needed it or if it’s really egregious tries to make her realize it is. If dad buys it mom’s glad she didn’t have to or if it’s really weird she tries to inform him. If I bought something it was because they didn’t have time to and…

This is nothing new, by the way. Download “The Duchess” with Keira Knightly.

I really want to call this creepy, but at the same time, this is so far removed from my life I’m not really sure I’m in any position to judge is. So I’ll just settle for saying that rich people are weird.

Instead of offering a bonus, have you tried punishment?

A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup, and distributed on the basis of not only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance — how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got into a “good” school ........

That is an awesome comment. Can somebody bump you out of the greys?

As a stay at home dad, I feel like I should bring this up to my wife. I should also get the spare bed ready for a long stay.

It’s not just about working hard. A waitress on her feet all day is remunerated differently from a doctor on her feet all day, because the jobs are very different. A waitress will almost always make less than a doctor no matter how hard the waitress works. Because they doctor’s jobs requires skills that had to be…

This is my issue, too. I think the demeaning part is that they get a portion of their husbands’ salary in “payment” for taking care of his kids - rather than just having access to the whole salary. It makes it seem like the wife is another child who can’t be trusted to use “the man’s” money wisely. My husband makes…

So....this is basically just the formalization of the “kept woman” scenario, right? Giving that position a paycheck. “Congratulations, you’ve been hired as my kept woman. Here’s the baseline salary. Raises or docks will be applied depending on how well you....earn your keep.”

On the one hand, recognizing that the work a SAHM does benefits the family and is worthy of remuneration: I can see how this could arguably be a good thing, in a step-in-the-right-direction way.