Money, Power and Sex in the Big FlipBackground research on the dynamics of money, power and sexual attraction

when wives win the bread and husbands man the house

Izzy ChanStrategist and director of documentary film

“THE BIG FLIP—STORIES FROM THE MODERN HOME FRONT”

Having researched the rise of breadwinner wives for the last few

years, I’ve read a fair share of studies and articles documenting

the trend. Here are some of the most thought-provoking pieces of

writing and information on the complex issues of money, power

and sexual attraction that affect Big Flip families.

ALPHA WOMEN, BETA MEN

11.23.03

Sexuality is based on respect and admiration and desire. If you’ve lost respect for somebody, it’s very hard to have it work.

“Women need to admire their partner,” says psychologist Harriette Podhoretz. “They need to find something that doesn’t interfere with their passionate glue, that keeps the marriage charged up and alive.”

Sometimes it’s the Alpha woman who needs reassurance that she’s still feminine.

“When you’re a big money earner and your husband isn’t, it makes you question how feminine you are,” says Barbara Corcoran, the ubiquitous real-estate broker. “I felt I was less feminine than if I was a supporting wife, or a second fiddle, or ‘Mrs. Higgins.’ The struggle was as much mine as Bill’s.”

When Emily comes home, she doesn’t always want to be the boss. But she says her husband no longer has the authority to take over. “I want somebody to take that power role away from me,” she explains. “Ultimately, it gets down to pretty basic stuff. It’s hard to be the power broker every day and then be the femme fatale. I’m not going to pay the bills—I feel like his mother—and then come home and suck his dick.”

[Jami Flehinger] She also balks each time someone tells her how lucky she is to be married to “a saint.” “While I applaud Kurt’s forward-thinking and out-of-the-box approach to his life, no one ever comes up to a woman who has two children and says, ‘You’re a saint.’ She’s just a mom doing what’s expected of her.”

Excerpts from New York Magazine’s “Alpha Women, Beta Men”

ALL THE SINGLE LADIESAs women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind. We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up—and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.

NOV 2011

American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity...

In societies where men heavily outnumber women... women are valued and treated with deference and respect and use their high dyadic power to create loving, committed bonds with their partners and raise families. Rates of illegitimacy and divorce are low. Women’s traditional roles as mothers and homemakers are held in high esteem. In such situations, however, men also use the power of their greater numbers to limit women’s economic and political strength, and female literacy and labor-force participation drop.

One might hope that in low-sex-ratio societies—where women outnumber men—women would have the social and sexual advantage... But that’s not what happens: instead, when confronted with a surplus of women, men become promiscuous and unwilling to commit to a monogamous relationship... fewer people marry, and those who do marry do so later in life. Because men take advantage of the variety of potential partners available to them, women’s traditional roles are not valued, and because these women can’t rely on their partners to stick around, more turn to extrafamilial ambitions like education and career.

Excerpt from the Atlantic’s “All the Single Ladies”

THE ACCIDENTAL BREADWINNER12.12.08

The Cuddle Bum [author’s ex-husband]’s idea of his role as house husband involved pouring a bowl of cereal for each child before school, playing videogames for 10 hours, and then grudgingly making dinner at 6. For almost a year, I told him that wasn’t working for me, that if he wasn’t going to care for the entire household the way a wife would (vacuum on Mondays, dust on Tuesdays ...) then he needed to go back to work.

I DIDN’T set out to be the breadwinner. I assumed that one day a guy would come along and I would marry him and, well, he’d take care of it.This is one of the fundamental ways in which men differ from women. Growing up, boys assume they’re going to make the money, or at least half the money. Rare is the boy who imagines that marriage will spell a free economic ride and so nurtures his incredible hotness to that end.

... within our first year, the Cuddle Bum [ex-husband] quit his job on a whim. The Cuddle Bum hated his job — and who could blame him? He wanted to get into another field, perhaps one that required his going back to school.

When we divorced, he wanted alimony, child support and the house — the house that was purchased with my money, in my name. During one of our last conversations, I wept with incomprehension. He wanted my house?

[Author’s new partner Jim] He’s a computer consultant who pays his own way and buys me the occasional unexpected present. Once I admired a fountain pen in the window of a shop that sold only fountain pens; while I was waiting at the corner for the light to change, he ducked in and bought it for me. I swooned.

Sometimes he buys the groceries, and sometimes I do. But he always pays for both of us when we go to the movies, and spends lavishly on buttered popcorn and Milk Duds. I am always touched by this.

Excerpt from The New York Times’ “The Accidental Breadwinner”

HUSBANDS WHO DO HOUSEWORK HAVE LESS SEX

1.21.13

Husbands who do a lot of cooking, cleaning, laundry and other traditionally female forms of housework may do their marriages some good—but, contrary to popular belief, they are not rewarded with more sex, a new study finds.

Instead, it's the guys who do the most lawn work, car repair, driving and bill-paying – traditional men's jobs – who have the most sex in marriage, the study suggests.

The same is true for women who do the most traditional female housework, according to the study published in the February issue of American Sociological Review.

For better or worse, the authors say, heterosexual married couples may still be reading from traditional "sexual scripts" when it comes to both housework and sex.

In other words, the study concludes: "Men or women may, in essence, be turned on (however indirectly) when partners in a marriage do more gender-traditional work."

The study comes with one major caveat: It is based on data collected two decades ago. While the researchers say little has likely changed since then, some other experts disagree.

"Some women may find a guy more sexy when he's fixing something around the house than when he's doing the ironing," says Stephanie Coontz, director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. "I'm not surprised that there are many women and men who still find the old ways more sexy. But there also are couples who now find egalitarian relationships more sexy and a better prescription for long-term happiness in marriage."

A survey conducted today likely would find more couples in the latter category, says Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Excerpt from USA Today’s “Husbands who do housework have less sex”

SOBERING FACTS

Husbands whose wives make more money

are 61% LESS HAPPY.

The National Marriage Project, University of Virginia, 2010

WIVES who are primary breadwinners

are significantly LESS HAPPY

about family life than other women.

The Impact of Relative Earnings Among Dual-Earner Couples onCareer Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction, Cornell University, 2009

Men are

5 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO CHEAT

when they’re completely dependent on their wives’ incomes.

American Sociological Association, 2010

DIVORCE IS

40% MORE LIKELY when a woman makes over 60% of the family’s income.

Journal of Family Issues, Western Washington University, 2010

WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT THESE NUMBERS.

WE’RE GOING TO CHANGE THEM.

Join us atBigFlipDocumentary.com