Don't Marry Career Women

[Adri]

A couple days ago, Forbes magazine published an article that includes gems like "When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase they'll meet someone they like more than you." Forbes took down the article after taking some heat and then put it up with a "rebuttal" article next to it.

http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html

Gawker requests that people not give the Forbes website more hits:

http://www.gawker.com/news/forbes/forbes-wont-buy-cow-when--it-can-get-milk-for-free-196287.php

So if you want a cut and paste copy of the article that's not on the Forbes website:

http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2006/08/forbes-dont-marry-career-women.html

Both articles seem to be insulting the intelligence of the readers.

[Linkmeister]

Here are some links to rebuttals:

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2006/08/boo-hoo-feminists-are-mean.html

[blueyecicle]

Sure is a good thing that daters have the Forbes articles to "help" them along!! :p

Since when do they give dating/marriage advice? :rolleyes:

[Adri]

Sure is a good thing that daters have the Forbes articles to "help" them along!! :p

Since when do they give dating/marriage advice? :rolleyes:

I wondered about that myself. Did they need a readership boost, even if it risked annoying at least some of the readership?

[lavagal]

Someone tell my husband that I should stay home instead of work. Of course, I guess we'd have to tell the mortgage company, too.

[jdub]

my dad married a career woman...a long time ago...and among my friends and associates, they remain one of the few marriages to remain intact...

[manoasurfer123]

One of the reasons I married my wife is that she was career driven!

[kaneohegirl]

the thing about it is it isnt the carreer its the amount of time spent together if both ppl spend sooooo much time focused on their jobs that they take no time to spend together then the marriage will suffer. its a known fact that women need more intimate time with their spouses it is a part of their chemical makeup to be appreciated for who they are and what they do and if someone at work gives that recognition more than the spouse then affairs /divorces tend to happen.... this is a both a male and female thing it can happen both ways! as long as you remember to take time in your relationship to appreciate eachother and eachothers accomplishments then the marriage can stay strong.


this is jus my opinion.... cause there are some that are just not meant for marriage.... EVER

[craigwatanabe]

When my wife and I got married and had kids, she stayed home to raise them while I worked two jobs. It came down to who made more.

My wife wanted to finish off her bachelor's degree so she did the night school at Chaminade when I started my own company to suppliment our income while working two other jobs. Meanwhile my wife did baby sitting watching a total of five kids including our own during the day.

In all we still barely had enough money to survive as we were in that gap group: Too much for government help, too little to eat steak. I ate late at night after the kids ate so I could make sure they had enough to eat sometimes I had to eat cereal because there wasn't enough left over.

I realized then that we were living that paycheck to paycheck mentality and I took my brother's advise and started investing and forcing myself to put money away even if that meant eating hamburger helper without the hamburger :D

When we were finally in the position many years later to afford to buy a home, the prices of homes skyrocketed out of range AGAIN! We were trailing a fleeing dream but it lead us to the Big Island.

The plan was big, to build a really nice home on Sunrise Ridge (Hilo's equivalent to Hawaii Loa Ridge) with an interior of 10,000 sq ft. The plans were drawn out and we were ready to start the financing part when Brenda woke up one morning sick as a dog. Uh oh with five kids I knew what that meant.

So baby Jesse threw a monkey wrench in our housing plans and we downsized...to our present $245,000 2500 sq ft home. As those who know my story it's not a bad house at all. This home would fit nicely in Kahala with an estimated value of over $1.5 Million back in 2004. Now it's probably worth twice that much.

I stayed back in Honolulu to help finance this purchase while Brenda stayed home here in Keaau to raise Jesse. About a year later Brenda got a job that would suffice our daily/monthly needs.

This is where this post becomes relevant: I quit my 22-year career job with the Gas Company, and my latest job with Clear Channel and put my business on hold while I made the transistion to the Big Island.

Coming up here we traded roles and I watched Jesse while Brenda worked full time. It's been that way for over 2-years now and I don't regret a single minute of what we did (although Brenda yearns for those daytime adventures with Jesse instead of sitting behind a desk).

My wife Brenda is now a career woman with a Masters degree in ECE (Early Childhood Education) as a manager for Head Start. I'm a house daddy that gladly gave up the 7-day 2-job thing plus my own business (Starcomm Hawaii: Sports Marketing and radio ad production).

My wife is happy now doing what she always wanted to do with the degree she always wanted to achieve. I'm happy too because I'm not that slave to the paycheck anymore and we live a decent life now. But it took hard work and sacrifice to get here. I still eat cereal late at night and we still eat hamburger helper albeit this time with lean hamburger now! But after years of doing so...I don't mind. Meanwhile Jesse is now 2-1/2 years old and playing in our large 20 x 40ft ceramic split level tile living room next to the 53-inch projection tv set (that I bought from the Salvation Army for $100 what a deal!)

I think as long as you keep your family's perspective in focus you can marry any which way you want. In my wife's case me being the career person she was my foundation when the stress of burning both ends of the candle and the middle started burning me out. Now she's the stressed out career woman and I'm her foundation of support. We both now know what it's like to be either the breadwinner that is stressed out and the stay at home mommy/daddy that needs the recognition for what they do for the family.

What was our secret of keeping us together despite the money situation? We agreed when we got married that it didn't matter who brought in what...the money that came into our household was "OUR" money, not mine or hers. That way when it came tight we worked together to bolster our income instead of fighting over it.

[Queenolu]

I can't believe that Forbes magazine will print such an article... in 2006.....wow.... now I know to never ever pick up their magazine.

Someone should be calling for a boycott of Forbes.

[anapuni808]

What a wonderful story - that brought tears to my eyes. You and Brenda and your kids are a very fortunate family.

When my wife and I got married and had kids, she stayed home to raise them while I worked two jobs. It came down to who made more.

My wife wanted to finish off her bachelor's degree so she did the night school at Chaminade when I started my own company to suppliment our income while working two other jobs. Meanwhile my wife did baby sitting watching a total of five kids including our own during the day.

In all we still barely had enough money to survive as we were in that gap group: Too much for government help, too little to eat steak. I ate late at night after the kids ate so I could make sure they had enough to eat sometimes I had to eat cereal because there wasn't enough left over.

I realized then that we were living that paycheck to paycheck mentality and I took my brother's advise and started investing and forcing myself to put money away even if that meant eating hamburger helper without the hamburger :D

When we were finally in the position many years later to afford to buy a home, the prices of homes skyrocketed out of range AGAIN! We were trailing a fleeing dream but it lead us to the Big Island.

The plan was big, to build a really nice home on Sunrise Ridge (Hilo's equivalent to Hawaii Loa Ridge) with an interior of 10,000 sq ft. The plans were drawn out and we were ready to start the financing part when Brenda woke up one morning sick as a dog. Uh oh with five kids I knew what that meant.

So baby Jesse threw a monkey wrench in our housing plans and we downsized...to our present $245,000 2500 sq ft home. As those who know my story it's not a bad house at all. This home would fit nicely in Kahala with an estimated value of over $1.5 Million back in 2004. Now it's probably worth twice that much.

I stayed back in Honolulu to help finance this purchase while Brenda stayed home here in Keaau to raise Jesse. About a year later Brenda got a job that would suffice our daily/monthly needs.

This is where this post becomes relevant: I quit my 22-year career job with the Gas Company, and my latest job with Clear Channel and put my business on hold while I made the transistion to the Big Island.

Coming up here we traded roles and I watched Jesse while Brenda worked full time. It's been that way for over 2-years now and I don't regret a single minute of what we did (although Brenda yearns for those daytime adventures with Jesse instead of sitting behind a desk).

My wife Brenda is now a career woman with a Masters degree in ECE (Early Childhood Education) as a manager for Head Start. I'm a house daddy that gladly gave up the 7-day 2-job thing plus my own business (Starcomm Hawaii: Sports Marketing and radio ad production).

My wife is happy now doing what she always wanted to do with the degree she always wanted to achieve. I'm happy too because I'm not that slave to the paycheck anymore and we live a decent life now. But it took hard work and sacrifice to get here. I still eat cereal late at night and we still eat hamburger helper albeit this time with lean hamburger now! But after years of doing so...I don't mind. Meanwhile Jesse is now 2-1/2 years old and playing in our large 20 x 40ft ceramic split level tile living room next to the 53-inch projection tv set (that I bought from the Salvation Army for $100 what a deal!)

I think as long as you keep your family's perspective in focus you can marry any which way you want. In my wife's case me being the career person she was my foundation when the stress of burning both ends of the candle and the middle started burning me out. Now she's the stressed out career woman and I'm her foundation of support. We both now know what it's like to be either the breadwinner that is stressed out and the stay at home mommy/daddy that needs the recognition for what they do for the family.

What was our secret of keeping us together despite the money situation? We agreed when we got married that it didn't matter who brought in what...the money that came into our household was "OUR" money, not mine or hers. That way when it came tight we worked together to bolster our income instead of fighting over it.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

The guy who wrote that article has the socio-economic wherewithal of a caveman and the editor who printed it is singing "ka-ching" because bad press or good press is still a lot of press.

[craigwatanabe]

What a wonderful story - that brought tears to my eyes. You and Brenda and your kids are a very fortunate family.


We have always been a charitable family, giving without asking in return. As renters in Honolulu there wasn't much to deduct anyway and the point of my business was to utilize the knowledge of what I knew in radio and make it work for us.

I couldn't afford $5,000 remote broadcast gear so with my electronics background from the military I made my own. Some nights the kitchen table was my workbench and the kids ate on the folding table in our small two bedroom apartment on the corner of Waiola and Paani streets in McCully. Come to think of it, our living room now was 300 sq feet bigger than our entire apartment.

The basketball game would start at 7pm and here I was a 5:30 with my soldering iron fixing a circuit that would "improve" the sound of the broadcast. I would pack my toolbox and during the commercials I would continue to make adjustments within the 2-minute commercial breaks while I would see the opposing team's broadcast team using state of the art equipment. I still have that "piece of crap" gear that I made to remind me of those trying times. Now with computers and wireless internet you can simply stream the audio and video anywhere in the world. Back then it wasn't that easy.

My wife stood behind me when I would be stressing out trying to get my equipment to work while the start of the game was minutes away. During the Maui Invitational my equipment looked more like a hobby project gone mad with wires sticking out everywhere while we sent our broadcasts back to Honolulu and the East Coast. But I made my company out of a shoestring budget of less than $500 and made plenty of promises to people willing to help me like my boss at The Gas Company who let me use one hour per day to do cold calling telemarketing to would be sponsors. And to some of my co-workers who loaned me money to pay off the radio stations for air time.

Thru it all my wife was there to keep my life focused while it unravelled around me trying to run this business and two jobs so we could afford to live.

Now that she's the career woman, I sit with her late at night and listen to her while she describes her stressed out day. It's tough enough having a stressful job, but when you're the breadwinner the stress is monumental because if you mess up in your job, you affect the entire family. I had that on my shoulders for a very long time and when the stress at the job was getting too much to bear I would drop into a mantra: I'm doing this for the family, I'm doing this for the family" and like a robot go back to work and complete the task. You then go home and it's nice to have a spouse that settles your nerves. We do this for each other when one gets overwhelmed and it helps a lot!

[hawaiidreaming]

no career here im a carer :)

[Adri]

On a more flippant note, it doesn't sound so bad to not have to work assuming the husband wouldn't mind providing all the income for the family and assuming the husband could keep the family in comfort. :p

Craig Watanabe: I really admire the way you and your family work together.

[oceanpacific]

My wife's first husband made the mistake of obstructing her career goals by not letting her spread her wings when she got frustrated by limited advancement. He preferred that she stay in a "safe" job rather than try for a federally-funded position that may or may not have been renewed. So, she packed up and left him. Lucky for me.

When she asked me about another opportunity which came up, I told her to "go for it" as I could make up the financial shortfall in case the position was not renewed. I was quite confident that after 25 years in the system, she'd be able to get another position anyway.

The fact is that her "asking" me about it was a mere formality - she had already accepted the new challenge and thought it was proper to at least ask my opinion.

[GeckoGeek]

I find it interesting that the original article cited several studies, but none of the rebuttals I skimmed did the same. Is anyone interested in the truth or just want to talk about what's PC?

Sure, the article had some sizable spin on it. Let's start with the fact that he seems to have a questionable grasp on statistics by suggesting that something that is more likely to fail WILL fail. But I just read that as so much journalistic hyperbole - at term that lately seems to be almost redundant.

[Jake's Ohana]

My family has been blessed five times over. Before we started with kids, both of us were the typical DINKs (Double Income No Kids). We both had solid careers and a lot going for us. We were blessed to find the dream job and allow us to save for a house of our own. After achieving our first home, which was more like a bungalow, gave us the determination that it is time to begin our family. However, I guess it wasn't in our cards as we waited and waited, but no luck on conceiving. After a few years later, and with the help of medical assistance, we conceived our first child. After our son was born and only 3 months old, we conceived our second, a daughter. :D Boy, it's true what they say about using fertility drugs. Afta da first, betta watch out, going get nudda one right quick.

As we were established in our careers, we generated enough income to afford a caregiver in our home during the day, as both sets of grandparents were still working full-time, or lived far away. During the course of our children's developmental stages, 0 - 1 1/2, my wife was not seeing the kids as often as she worked early east coast stock market hours. And with good ole L.A. traffic, her commute was taxing and lengthy on getting home. When she arrived, she was a treat to our kids, but still a stranger, as their nanny replaced many of the mothery qualities.

One day, my wife just sat at her desk and pondering the thought of what is she doing? She is getting a generous salary, but she is missing out on her family's most precious moments. During this time, the housing market in CA was at its infancy stage of what was to become the awakening of the sleeping giant in California's housing market. I thought rationally, and began to frantically search for a new home as we still had a double income and interest rates were like low hanging fruit. We took advantage of the housing market, sold our home and got into a little larger home to accomodate our growing family. Looking at our finances, we surmised that we would be able to make ends meat on my income alone. We currently live much like paycheck to paycheck, but sometimes have some good days, if Papa receives a bonus. :( Meanwhile, my wife is taking night school to prepare to go into nursing part time which would allow her flexibility with our kids as they get older.

It has been very tight for us, but after learning on the fly, on how to coupon shop, shopping for bargains, setting budgets, affords us the luxury of having our ohana kept together. :) I truly believe that the sacrifice that we make for our children will multiple many times over in Love, Respect, Kindness, and Happiness.

Jake's Ohana

[SouthKona]

its a known fact that women need more intimate time with their spouses it is a part of their chemical makeup to be appreciated for who they are and what they do
HUH??
"Known fact", really, evidence based?
"Chemical makeup" - just what chemical is that?

[WindwardOahuRN]

A quote from the article:

>>"I also find that the incidence in divorce is far higher in couples where both spouses are working than in couples where only one spouse is employed," Johnson says.<<

Anybody consider that the higher divorce rate when both parties have careers might be due simply to the fact that working women may be far more likely to be able to get out of rotten marriages?

How many of us know of women who have stayed in lousy relationships because they didn't have the financial means to go elsewhere? Especially when there are children involved.

Frankly, the whole article reads like the author has been dumped by a "career girl" (I gagged at that reference---what about the "career boys"?) and is crying in his beer. He wants a Blondie Bumstead. Good luck.

IMHO, a relationship is going to work based on mutual respect, caring, forgiveness, tolerance, and a whole lotta love. IME, the career stuff doesn't matter if these other things are there. All the studies, references, and oh-so-knowledgeable articles aside.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Vital necessities like health insurance, retirement plans, SSI/TDI/WC/LTD are tied to employment compensation. And with 80% (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Retirementandwills/Playingcatchup/P34625.asp) of American women choosing to have children, and they are the ones who leave the workforce for longer periods of time to bear the burdens of childcare and elderly care at a greater proportion than their fellow male citizens, this is going to be a lopsided issue. Also, divorce laws are changing; alimony is the thing of the past, and custody and child support start from the baseline that each parent is responsible for 50% of a child's well-being.

Nothing rankles my @ss faster than the old "SAHM vs WOHM" debate, and I have duked this one out enough times over the years that if requested to provide data to the most anal degree, I might be so inclined to take up that invitation. :cool:

[Leo Lakio]

Frankly, the whole article reads like the author has been dumped by a "career girl" (I gagged at that reference---what about the "career boys"?) and is crying in his beer. He wants a Blondie Bumstead. Good luck.As noted before, why would anyone turn to "Forbes" for romantic advice? Where is Genie Joseph when you need her? :rolleyes:

[blueyecicle]

Maybe we should all start reading the comics for career advice!! :p

[Leo Lakio]

Maybe we should all start reading the comics for career advice!! :p
Whaddya mean "start"? You mean, I've been the only one doing so all this time??? "Far Side" - "Calvin & Hobbes" - "Pearls Before Swine" - "Get Fuzzy" - "Bloom County/Opus" - "Mutts" --- my career counselors, all.

[manoasurfer123]

So that's your secret...

I could have sworn you were the writer of the comic The Family Circle :p