I’ll confess. This is the week that I force the kids and the dog into their Santa hats and take our annual Christmas card photo. Over the years the picture has gone out on everything from the cheapest stick–it-on-yourself to the most expensive hand-engraved cards. Last year, in the interest of saving time, money, paper, and the planet, I finally succumbed to attaching the photo to an e-card and found it highly satisfactory. Like so much to do with family, our annual tradition has become at once a chore and a delight. Should I give up on the card altogether? Probably not until the chore part outweighs the delight.

Today it seems that Jane Roper might have reached this point. She describes her reasons below.

Every year around this time, I ask my husband the same question: Are we doing holiday cards? And every year his answer is the same: an emphatic no. In the past, I’ve responded by calling him a crank, a curmudgeon, and a Scrooge with no sense of tradition, and sent out cards (from both of us, of course) on my own.

But over the years, I’ve grown increasingly ambivalent about the whole thing. And I think 2009 may be the year I finally end up in the Grinch-y no-cards camp with my husband. Here’s why:

1. So over the politics. If someone sends us a card, are we obligated to send them one, too? Can we drop people from our list if we fall out of touch, or do we have to keep sending to more and more people every year? If someone drops us from their list, does it mean they’re mad at us? It’s like trying to put together your wedding invitation list every year. Ugh.

2. Children. We have two of them, twin girls who are almost three. I try not to play the working-mom-with-young-kids card too much, but in this case, I think I may be justified. My free time is so limited, so precious; do I really want to spend it buying cards, chasing down my friends’ current addresses, trying and inevitably failing to print labels from my computer, adding the all-important “personal note,” to each card, and stuffing envelopes? As opposed to, say, reading a book or going to the gym? Call me selfish if you want. I can’t hear you over my daughters’ outside voices.

3. Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, cell phones, etc. The tradition of holiday cards dates back to a time when people weren’t constantly, obsessively in touch with each other. Is it really necessary to reach out to my friends and acquaintances in this manner when we can go online and read about what the other had for breakfast on any given day? Why send one another pictures of our kids when we can just post jpegs?

4. Money. We have a lot of friends and relatives. Decent cards start at $.50 each. Stamps are $.44. Can I just donate what we would have spent on holiday cards to a worthy charity? I can be lazy, cheap, and sanctimonious!

5. The environment. This is a biggie. In the age of virtual everything, it’s nice to get a real-live card in the mail—creamy hardstock, glitter and all. I like it, too. And I know that e-cards just aren’t the same. But I also know that I feel a tree-sized pang of guilt a few weeks after Christmas when I dump a six-inch stack of cards into the recycling bin. Consider the millions of holiday card recipients around the globe doing the same thing, the factories that manufacture and ink the cards, the mail trucks and planes that deliver them, and you’re talking one big, jolly carbon footprint.

6. Other forms of holiday cheer. Buying gifts, putting up decorations, making cookies and other holiday fare, going to parties and other festivities, spending time with friends and family. These things are time-consuming in and of themselves, and to me they’re a lot more fun and meaningful than sending and receiving small, folded pieces of paper. A girl’s gotta have priorities.

And still, spite of all of these arguments against them, I’ll admit it: I’m not entirely convinced that I won’t give in and send cards this year. There’s an old-fashioned part of me that loves the tradition, the personal connection. And some of our friends do send pretty kickass cards; I’d hate to fall off their lists.

So maybe we’ll split the difference and just send to the friends and relatives we never see, either in the flesh or online. I’ll use recycled cards with vegetable-based ink. And make the twins lick the envelopes.

Jane Roper is a Boston-based writer. She blogs at Baby Squared.

Tags: Facebook, holiday cards, twitter

Before I became a journalist, I taught. My first job in New York was as a high school English Literature teacher. Back then, I was only six or seven years older than my students, which to me seemed like a lifetime and to them felt like 10 minutes. I lived in a different part of the city, so rarely encountered my students outside school. I can only remember one occasion when seeing them flustered me. I was at a bar in SoHo when two or three walked in. As we caught sight of each other my face fell, while their faces lit up.

"Hey Miss Gilbey," they sang out. "Seeing as we're all in a bar, can we call you Emma?"

"No," I replied briskly. "You may not."

Jessica Rosevear reminded me of all of this when she sent in today's piece about being a teacher in a small town. She never gets to escape from her students. She has my sympathy.

I laughed in recognition at Emma Pillsbury, the young, goody-two-shoes educator on Fox’s new smash-hit show Glee. Five days out of the week, as a public high school English teacher in New Jersey, I was exactly her, right down to the red hair and overwhelming sincerity. It wasn’t because I wanted to be, but because to be a role model and win the respect of my students and colleagues, I had to be. The only problem was that unlike most teachers who go home to their real lives and take off the stiff sweater sets at the end of the school day, I lived in the 4.4-square-mile town where I teach. As a single 26-year-old, this makes things tricky.

It started out as cute. I’d see students in the produce aisle at Stop & Shop, give a friendly wave, and turn back to the task of selecting a head of iceberg lettuce. I didn’t realize how much of a problem it would be until one day, while buying a bottle of wine at the liquor store, I spotted a senior trying to pick up a case of beer. Throwing my money at the cashier and rushing out of the store, I felt more like I was the one committing a felony, not him. The tired human being craving a peaceful evening at home with a book and a glass of white suddenly became the wayward teacher, buying booze that she would drink alone in her yoga pants.

It snowballed from there. On a jog after school one day, I was mortified when the entire cross-country team passed by me on the sidewalk during their practice. I’ve been spotted on dinner dates with my boyfriend. When I got pulled over for talking on my cell phone while driving, I was more upset at the thought of being seen by students from whom I’d confiscate cell phones regularly than the thought of receiving a ticket. Last year, after realizing that two families from the school lived in my apartment building, I began covering the pajamas and thongs in my laundry basket with a big towel every time I went downstairs to the laundry room. I stopped ordering takeout for fear that one of my students might take an after-school delivery job.

“Be careful,” my colleagues warned me. “People talk in a small town.”

Paranoid, I envisioned the board of education discussing my tenure at a public meeting. “Her skimpy workout clothes, her traffic tickets, her boyfriend—she is a depraved, promiscuous young woman,” the board members would say, looking at each other and shaking their heads. Mothers fan themselves; fathers purse their lips. “How can we, in good conscience, keep this young woman working in our public schools?”

On the flip side, some kids enjoyed these run-ins that I found nightmarish. After running into one of my pupils several times between trips to CVS and Starbucks, I finally confessed my residential status. “I might move, though, so I don’t run into students as much,” I told her.

She looked chagrined. “But I love running into you!”

“You don’t need to see me buying US Weekly and cookie dough at Stop & Shop.”

“But it’s nice to know that you’re a real person,” she said.

Yes, teachers are real people who engage in real-life activities. And sometimes, being a townie helps me to connect in ways I never expected. Last year I frequently ran into one student’s mom in the mornings at the local bakery. At the end of the year, she told me how much her son enjoyed my class as we stirred our coffees at the milk counter during that last week of school. “He said he hopes his little sister gets you next year when she starts her freshman year,” she added.

I drove the rest of the way to school on a cloud that day. There are few compliments better than a student saying he hopes you go on to teach his little sister. Sometimes those moments happen more easily while ordering lattes than when erasing the blackboard. Maybe it’s good to get a little personal, not just be a talking head at the front of the classroom.

But I’m still picking another jogging route ... at least until I turn 30.

Jessica Rosevear teaches at the former high school of Glee star Lea Michele, writes for Instructor magazine, and blogs at www.jessicarosevear.com.

Photograph of teacher by Comstock Images/Getty Images.

 

Tags: Emma Pillsbury. New Jersey, Glee, kids, teaching

Some girls start making lists of their children's names when they're still kids themselves. And some girls don't. Some of us graduate from college and spend our 20s and 30s living life to the full with no interest in babies. For some, that lack of interest lasts a lifetime. Because some women just don't want to be mothers. And that's OK. But often that choice is judged negatively, as if not being a mother means you are not a real woman. If the reaction isn't negative it can be patronising, as if it hasn't been a real choice and you'll change your mind. Why can't we be more respectful of this decision? Hillary Fields tackles the subject in today's piece.

It begins when, during my annual exam, I tell my GP that I’ve just gotten married. “Oh," she says, “You’d better start having your babies now. You only have two or three years.”

A-whah?

When I’m finished doing my double take, I am able to focus in on the tiny, earnest woman who is still talking at me. “Now that you’re married, you can start to have children. But since you’re 32, you should start now. Women over 35 have a much harder time conceiving and carrying healthy babies.”

I haven’t been living under a rock for the past three decades, so this is not news to me. “I hate to break it to you, doc,” I say, “but I was capable of bearing children before I wed. And you didn’t bring up the subject then.”

She smiles as though this is a very funny joke, and then gets serious again. “No, really. Start thinking about your family right away, or you will regret it.”

“Dr. ___,"I say, “I’m really not sure I want to have kids.”

This does not appear to be information of great import to my physician. “Even so, you should do it now. You don’t want to wait until it’s too late, and you find out you haven’t any eggs left.”

Demurring as politely as I can under duress, I reply, “I’m not going to have children just in case I might someday want them. That doesn’t sound like a smart idea.” I figure this will be the end of the subject, and we can turn to more important things, like my ludicrously high cholesterol or the mole on my back I’m not sure I’ve always had.

But no.

“I’m serious,” she stresses with the air of a woman who wants to be 100 percent diligent about discharging her duty. “You should know that if you delay now, you may regret it later. I’m just giving you the facts.”

This is a bit pushy, even for me as a native New Yorker used to dealing with pushy people.

“I get it, Dr. ____. I’m just not in a position to bring a child into my life at this juncture. Financially, we’re not set up for it. We’d have to string the kid from a hammock on our studio apartment’s ceiling to make room for it.” Time for a new topic now, surely.

Nope.

“People have children all the time when they’re not secure financially,” she presses.

“Do those kids go to college?” I shoot back.

Finally the exam (or cross-exam) is over and I’m back on the street. I find myself fuming mad, but also ... ashamed.

Because the truth is, I’m not sure I’ll ever want kids, and apparently, this is unnatural.

What’s wrong with me? I’ve got oodles of awwws for puppies and kittens. I melt over baby pandas and bunnies and such. But human offspring? Not only do they all resemble Winston Churchill to me, they elicit no such admiration as did the great man. They drool, they squawk, they poop all over themselves—when they’re not vomiting, sneezing, or coughing up a tiny, itty-bitty lung.

Oh, I’ve heard the reassurances. “It’s different when they’re your own.” This pap doesn’t reassure me, however. What if it’s not different? And, hey, what if I simply don’t have a maternal bone in my body?

I’m not sure what makes me more uncomfortable. Seeming unfeeling—and unfeminine—to society at large, or wondering if, later in life, I will regret it if I don’t have children. Will my life seem empty? Will I wrestle daily with what-ifs? Do people like my doctor know something about life I don’t know?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve sworn up and down I’d never have children of my own. Unless I were visited by the Ghost of Kiddies Future, begging me to bear them, I’ve always felt it’s ... I don’t know ... presumptuous to bring a life into the world without permission. Perhaps this is because, until I was in my late 20s, I myself wasn’t particularly glad to be on the planet. I suffered from major depression (among other things) and had a difficult childhood raised by parents who, it was clear, would have been better off not being parents. I was always loved, but love was an odd thing sometimes. And my mother was no great model of maternal mushiness. She was (and is) a great woman, but she simply didn’t do Donna Reed.

But wait ... what about hubby? I married a man as emotionally connected as I am detached, a fella who coos “boojie boojie boo” at every tot who happens to occupy a high chair at a nearby restaurant table, a man so sweet, so full of love that I just know he’d be the best papa ever in the world. Does he secretly long for a little girl or boy? A little. But he knew the drill when he married me. I told him I might never get to a place where I wanted rug-rats.

Still, wouldn’t it be a great gift to give the man I love the children that might make his life more complete? Don’t I love him enough to rearrange my world and my expectations and my comforts, change the course of my future so that his will be fulfilled?

Honestly, I don’t know. Two-and-a-half years after that uncomfortable doctor’s appointment, trembling on the verge of statistical ovarian decrepitude, nothing has changed. I’m still child-free, still not feeling a crater of emptiness in my womb or any place else. But will that still be the case in five years, or 10, when it’s just too damn late?

I want some sort of sign to help me decide what to do. And here’s where I curse my sluggish biology. My hormones simply haven’t kicked up a ruckus to help sway me toward being a mother. They aren’t weighing in, making emotional demands, the way I hear they’re supposed to. Legend speaks volumes about the fabled biological clock that starts ticking for women, a haunting toll that begins following you around like Poe’s telltale heart, growing louder and more urgent the longer you wait. For my mom, it was one of the deciding factors in having me and my brother. One day, she says, she started looking at kids in strollers and thinking they were cute, when she had never noticed them before.

Well, they’re still not cute to me. Not yet. I wonder if someone’s smothered my particular alarm clock with a pillow, or unplugged it, or what. Because, if my doctor is to be believed, I’m counting the final seconds off on my fertility countdown, and if I don’t act soon, the option will be off the table.

Perhaps the silence is, in itself, the answer for which I’ve been waiting. Maybe it’s not meant to be, not for me.

I just wish I knew for sure.

Hillary Fields is a New York-based writer, editor, and web producer.

Tags: choice, Hillary Fields, kids, motherhood, women

All I can say about the following piece by Emily Piacenza is that if it doesn't make you want to race out and get fitted for a bra, I don't know what will. Have a great weekend, everyone.

In my own defense I would like to clarify that I am not obsessed with boobs. My younger brothers are. Many of my friends are too. My students talk about them constantly, and I laugh at their ever-evolving mammary euphemisms: tits, totes, chesticles, gazongas, fun bubbles. I actually detest the word "breasts," always tripping over it clumsily or unintentionally emphasizing it. But I am not obsessed with boobs. I am interested in well-supported lady lumps, though, and the way that women become happier when theirs are comfortably secure. I am interested in feeling strong and sexy, and having my friends feel that way, too—all of which, I guess, is to say that I am actually obsessed with bras.

When I was 10 or 11, I wished very sincerely not to have breasts. They seemed inconvenient and unfair. My well-endowed soccer teammates looked ridiculous when theirs bounced painfully down the field. I watched mine grow against my will, charting their progress in the bathroom mirror, and hoped that maybe they would stay small and get in my way as little as possible. I was angry that one was larger than the other: At the very least, if they were out to ruin me, they could do so symmetrically. The idea of wearing a bra filled me with dread, and when I finally did graduate all the way up to underwire support, I cursed the daily discomfort, the slipping straps, and the permanent red marks left on my ribs. My mother and sister could never really relate, tiny-titted as they are. (“You clearly get those from your father,” my mother even once observed, to my great confusion.) I knew I should appreciate my icons of womanhood, but I did not love them. Eventually I learned to overlook the itching, sticking, and digging because I realized that my breasts looked better supported than they did just hanging free on their own, and though I felt restricted, I knew I appeared more attractive and more professional when harnessed in—and suffering.

But two years ago, a friend changed my life by telling me that she had been fitted in a fancy store in New York City and that her bras never rode up or down or anywhere that they weren't supposed to be. I didn’t really believe her. She said people had started telling her, "You look great!" as soon as she bought her new bras. "Eighty-five percent of women are wearing the wrong size bra," she told me. So it came to pass that, skeptical but vaguely hopeful, I headed to Madison Avenue on a Saturday afternoon, figuring brassieres certainly couldn't get worse and hoping to at least acquire something sexy in the process.

Inside the store, I was seated briefly in a tight corner, surrounded by lingerie and hosiery, and there I filled out a questionnaire about my goals. I was interested in comfortable, everyday bras, not "special occasion" lingerie. Yes, I often found that my straps slid down and that underwire left marks. I did not have a problem with bras being too tight. I wasn't sure if they were too loose. No, I did not need a lot of padding. Yes, my breasts were two subtly different sizes. In the space marked "other concerns," I wrote, "I am a schoolteacher and cannot have my nipples visible at any time. Thank you." A small bespectacled woman eventually approached me through the screens of silk and lace, collected my paper, and glanced over it quickly. "OK, Emily, please follow me into the dressing room," she said, not really smiling, and back we went.

In a small, curtained cubicle she asked me to take off my top and bra, and I stood uncomfortably aware of my boobs as she looked at them quickly and quizzically and then left. Alone, I gazed at myself in the full-length mirror, but before I could do a thorough analysis, she was back, armed with twenty bras. She chose a plain black one with lacy straps, held it up in front of me, and then with one swift movement hooked it around me. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had actually helped me put on my underwear, and so distracted was I with that thought that I didn't even really notice that she was tugging at the bra and adjusting the straps, the band, and my breasts. She stepped away to give me a glance into the mirror. I stared.

My gazongas looked gorgeous. The bra felt a little bit tight but my new mentor explained that the band should be bearing almost all of the responsibility for supporting the bust. Most women, she said, relied heavily on the straps for support, and they shortened them when the bra felt loose. The tightening in turn caused the back of the bra band to ride up, which tipped the breasts forward and thus actually helped them droop. She showed me that the bra should be worn down lower than I thought, across the smallest part of my back. "You're a 32D," she told me. "And here you’ve been wearing a 36C all these years." Fascinated (a D?!) I tried on the rest of her selections for an hour, ultimately choosing just three practical bras and one fancy one. Choosing was difficult. The ones I bought were expensive. I didn’t care.

The next day I wore a new bra to school and two colleagues asked if I had been working out more lately. At first I thought they were joking. When I took my new acquisition off that night, I had no red marks on my body where the bra had just been. I felt sexier. I was converted.

Some people didn't believe me. ("Your boobs are way too small to be a D!" they said, and "A bra? That changed your life? What about your education? Please.") I guess it seemed too easy. But women wear bras every day, and bras should not, therefore, be an afterthought, picked up off the floor and donned in haste. They should be as comfortable and as attractive as possible. We don't settle for terrible haircuts, and we wear those every day, too. Why should we settle for ugly, poorly cut underthings?

These days, my friends call me the Bravangelist and roll their eyes when I start talking about underwear. One has accused me of having a breast fixation and has even bought me an erotic magazine as a joke. But several of them have been fitted and have discovered that their daily comfort and quality of life has been improved with this one simple change. My cousins have purchased new bras. My roommates have purchased new bras. Some of my colleagues have sought their true size, at my urging, and not one person regrets the experience. ("I’m so ashamed that I can’t even clean my bedroom!" one friend wailed recently. "My floor is just strewn with ill-fitting bras!") Now I walk straighter, feel happier, and love myself more. I like my fun bubbles buoyant, thank you very much. And recently when a creepy male friend of a friend approached me at a bar and drunkenly said, "Hey, you. Listen, I have a special gift. I can guess cup size from just a quick breast squeeze ... let me try yours and show you!" I was able to tell him thanks but no thanks. 32D. And yeah, I'm sure of it.

Emily Piacenza is a writer and teacher living in Connecticut.

Photograph courtesy of Emily Piacenza.

Tags: boobs, bras, breasts, lingerie

With Thanksgiving looming on the horizon we are headed into what might be one of the most fraught times of the year—the holiday season. With its heavy and sentimental emphasis on family, this can be a tough period for those whose relations don’t necessarily come bearing damp-eyed hugs. Not everyone will be gathering around the piano for a lusty singalong during the last six weeks of 2009. I wonder how many of you are dreading seeing one or more person at dinner next Thursday? This feels like the right time to run the following essay by Rebekah Cowell, who describes how she came to split up with her parents. Sometimes we have to make our own families from friends who come to mean more to us than those we were brought up with. Sometimes we start anew by having our own children, vowing not to reproduce the childhoods we experienced. If any of this sounds familiar, and you would like to share your story, write to me at emma@thecomebackbook.com. Now over to Rebekah.

When you’re seeing a guy or gal who your closest friends suspect isn’t good for you, there will be one tough-love friend who will pull you aside and say, “It’s a toxic relationship, and you need to move on.”

It’s a little different when we’re talking about toxic parents and family.

For six years, I’ve been trying to sort out the meaning of that one word—family—and how it relates to me and my decision to estrange myself from those who are my flesh and blood: the mother who carried me in her womb, the father who rocked me in his arms as a baby.

Recently, I ran across an article in the New York Times by Richard A. Friedman, M.D., "When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate."

One sentence stopped my breath. He writes: “The assumption that parents are predisposed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true.”

This is the hardest concept for many of us to grasp.

When I make new acquaintances and the topic of family finally arises, and I tell them I’m estranged from my parents, the response never varies. First shock, then pity. Usually I must assert, “No, I’m happy. I’m healthier without them.”

Running into the same person later, I might hear, “Have you talked to your parents?”

As a society, we need to believe in certain moral imperatives to survive the darker sides of human nature. For example, most of us want to embrace the idea that a parent and a child should maintain a close relationship for the rest of their lives. At the very least we want to hope that this new parent will love their child no matter what and nurture it with love and compassion.

Friedman writes about a patient he advised to forgo a parental relationship when this patient came to him severely depressed over being disowned by his religious parents for coming out as a gay man.

Though terribly hurt and angry, this young man still hoped he could get his parents to accept his sexuality and asked me to meet with the three of them.

The session did not go well. The parents insisted that his “lifestyle” was a grave sin, incompatible with their deeply held religious beliefs. When I tried to explain that the scientific consensus was that he had no more choice about his sexual orientation than the color of his eyes, they were unmoved. They simply could not accept him as he was.

My greatest sins were going to a liberal arts school and not marrying in the faith.

When I blew out my wrist in college, ending my dreams of becoming a concert pianist, my mother said, “God took away your music because you weren’t serving him.” My injury was supposed to draw me closer to them and this God of theirs.

But it didn’t.

I finally cut them off after struggling with anorexia and trying to take my own life, events that illuminated my revelation that I was actually a better, healthier, and happier person without their negativity and hostility in my life.

Less than a year later, I became pregnant, as they say, “out of wedlock.”They did not know of my pregnancy until my daughter was a week old—they have never met her.

Giving birth healed pieces of my soul. If anything, becoming a mother has made me ever more unflinching in my resolve that there is no excuse for ever abusing a child.

When I hold my daughter close, and I see the love, security, and stability she has, I want to weep for what I lost to two people who were not stable enough to be parents.

My daughter is 3, and traveling along this path alone without a family hasn’t been easy. Fortunately, my partner is an invaluable parent, and he believes, as do I, that our daughter’s happiness and security are our most imperative priority.

So many friends assured me that having my daughter would change things. They believed I would reconcile with my parents and that we would create a new relationship—that my status as a mother would give us a new and healthy way to connect.

I never saw it that way, because that is exactly where my parents let me down: in parenting itself.

How would I sit down with my mother and talk about raising my daughter? What advice would I even begin to accept from the woman who had physically and verbally abused me? What parenting skills would I learn from her?

If I took her parenting advice, I would tell my daughter about an angry God, and I’d fill her mind with stories of demons and the devil. A family member gave me a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas when I was 5, and it was taken away because it was considered “heathen.” My parents did not allow me to attend school past kindergarten, I was forced to wear long dresses that covered me up every day, and I had to attend church several times a week. They told me that any career other than being a wife and mother was a sin.

My parents forced me to learn Bible verses and squelched my beautiful creative soul with a steady diet of “nos" and spankings. Would I make my own daughter kneel on her little knees and ask God to forgive her for her sins at the age of 4, and then have her baptized before she understands what “sins” were?

No, I would not.

Though I believe that the instinct for mothering and parenting a child with love is strong at birth, I think it can be overridden by environment (and in my family’s case, religious dogmatism). A toxic relationship, whether with a father, mother, or lover, makes us weaker, not stronger. For one’s health alone, letting those relationships go may be the very best chance any of us have for blossoming into the beautiful souls we were created to be.

I’d like to say I’ve sorted out what the word family means to me, but to be honest, the word still conjures more questions than answers. In the last few months, my daughter has picked up what a family is from her books and stories; recently, she grabbed my hand and her father’s hand as we sat together and looked up at us, brown eyes filled with love, and said, “We’re a family.” And perhaps that is my answer.

Family is a concept defined by what you create, and, as corny as it sounds, where your heart belongs. My heart did not belong to the people who conceived me, but it has found its home.

Rebekah L. Cowell is a freelance writer for local newspapers and national publications based in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Prior to motherhood and taking the writing path, she was contemplating law school (what else do you do with a Philosophy degree?) and/or living aboard a sailboat.

Photograph of mother and daughter by Jack Hollingsworth/Digital Vision/Getty Images.

Tags: abusive parents, family, holidays, motherhood, Thanksgiving

As DoubleX begins to create its new website identity, I’d like to shine the spotlight on the activities of the next generation of women, the so-called fourth wave of feminists, as today’s teens and tweens have been labeled.

On Monday night I took my two girls to a tween production of Keep Your Eyes Open, put on by the Arts Effect Theater Lab in New York.

The cast of nine girls ranged in age from 10 to 12, and the performance was a kind of mini stage-version of DoubleX. The heroine launched a website, complete with webisodes, to deal with the same issues that we talk about here. Her aim was to challenge the girl v. girl mindsets that take root in middle school and turn them into a girl + girl equation. She wanted to create a community, both on the Internet and in her daily life. And she did. She was discouraged by negative comments on her blog, to the point where she almost quit, but she came back and kept at it. In the process she took on mean girls, superficiality, consumerism, harassment, diet, and boys. Quite a feat for a two-hour show.

The play was created a couple of years ago by its cast under the writing and directing guidance of Katie Cappiello and Megan McInerney of The Arts Effect All-Girl Ensemble. The performance I attended marked the real-life launch of their new website, Operation Girl Power! It’s been created to become for tweens and teens what DoubleX is for the rest of us. Or, to put it in the words of the creators, it’s “a girls-focused transmedia movement designed to empower, motivate and unite tween/teen girls throughout the mediums they LOVE most.”

So there are blogs, reviews, forums, news, social-networking, and videos. Best of all are the videos. Regular soap-opera style webisodes of girls' lives are streamed onto the website. This week, if you want a quick dose of one girl’s highly entertaining trip to the school bathroom, go to the home page and prepare to laugh.

Anything that has women and girls supporting and listening to each other gets my vote, but Monday night's show wasn’t aimed at me, it was meant for my daughters. I watched them as they were riveted during scenes of teenage fights over designer clothes, sad girls crying at their sense of isolation, and party girls dancing to highly sexist lyrics that were then deconstructed and revealed to be offensive and derogatory. Nicholas Kristof was the the show's pin-up because he is "the only columnist who writes about women's issues." (Hard to believe any 10-year-old would actually say that, let alone know who he is.)

Middle school was shown to be a harsh, angry world. Middle-school girls were depicted as intelligent and articulate women of the future, prevented from being kind sympathizers by peer pressure. My girls thought the play was brilliant. I hoped it was an escape from reality, rather than a depiction of reality itself. I loved the fact that they will have their own website. There can't be enough websites for women.

Tags: artseffectnyc.com, fourth wave, girlpowerdaily.com, katie cappiello, keep your eyes, meg mcinerney, open, teens, tweens

If shouting is the new spanking, what’s swearing? I ask this with a little trepidation, having been brought up in England, where some of our more colorful profanities were regularly used as punctuation marks. My childhood was spent in a somewhat repressed culture where affection was uneasily expressed. “Come here, you bloody dog,” for example, when shouted at your pet, was known to be a sign of overwhelming and undying love.

Bringing up children in America, I have learned to be more cautious in how I speak. But I am aware that my curse bar is much lower than my husband’s. My language is ... not pure, to put it mildly. My children seem to relish my slips of the tongue, sensing that it gives them license to speak their own minds without censure. It’s hard to say "Do as I say, not as I do" to your children when it’s applied to speech.

So I felt tremendous solidarity with the following piece by Vinita K. Mendiratta on the subject of cursing. It’s one thing to hear your swear words come out of your own mouth; it’s quite another to hear them uttered by your 2-year-old.

If the “Mother Police” is patrolling my neighborhood, as Ayelet Waldman warns in her recent book, Bad Mother, I fear my own three kids might be on the force. Despite my conservative Indian upbringing, they have heard mommy utter some of the finest profanity the American language has to offer. My little vice is an unspoken secret between me and my children, since we live in a straight-laced, suburban community where many parents ban SpongeBob because he says “stupid,” but more importantly because my peace-loving—some would say saintly—husband highly disapproves. I don’t curse all the time, like in regular conversation, nor would I ever swear at my children. The bad words just pop out of my mouth during stressful moments, particularly when we’re rushing to get out of the house. One morning, I spilled my entire cup of coffee on the driver’s seat. The "S word" squeezed out. When I almost hit a runner while backing my SUV out the driveway, I thought that warranted the "D word." Having to go back up the driveway three times to get a lunchbox, a homework assignment, and a sweatshirt, only to realize I’d grabbed the wrong sweatshirt, now that really made me want to scream the "F word. " But exercising self-restraint, I reluctantly muttered the D word again, this time preceded by the guy who clearly wasn’t on my side that morning, God.

After an episode, as I like to think of them, I tell my children that Mommy said a bad word but shouldn’t have. I explain profusely why it was a very stressful, messy, dangerous moment that justified why a grown-up might accidentally swear, but if children ever used that word, it would sound really, really bad. And nice children never use bad words. They smirk at each other and nod in agreement. Thankfully, they’ve figured out this would not be good dinner conversation, as their dad is the kind of guy who only swears when strongly provoked, well out of their earshot, and insists I don’t resort to profanity even during our most contentious fights. This Anti-Cursing Even Though Mom Is a Closet Curser Plan was working great until my 2-year-old daughter started talking. We came home late from my brother’s one night, after a family birthday party turned sour because he and I had an argument. I was in quite a mood, and with my 6-and 8-year-old sons tucked away in bed and my sleeping toddler on my shoulder, I deemed it safe to tell my husband how I really felt about the evening. While I was raging, my daughter’s party favor, a metal Hello Kitty lunchbox, fell out of her hand onto the kitchen floor, abruptly ending my rant. “And why they had to give her this f-ckin’ box is beyond me!” I shouted as I stomped up the stairs and put my daughter to bed.

The next morning, my sleepy princess came downstairs clutching her blankies looking as innocent as any 2-year-old should look.

“Where’s my f-ckin’ box, Mommy?” she asked. Dropped the final “g” and all!! I almost fell to the floor. In all these years of hearing me swear while they were wide awake, my boys never once uttered a bad word, not even stupid (not in my presence at least). Yet here was my angelic baby girl, sucking her “ni-ni finger,” throwing around the F-bomb as casually as a sullen teenager hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she said it again. I looked around the room frantically, thankful that her brothers, and more importantly, my husband, were not around. I handed her the lavender and pink lunchbox that had now become my enemy, and said, several times, in an exaggeratedly clear voice, “Here’s your Hel-lo Kit-ty lunchbox, sweetie. Hel-lo Kit-ty.”

But she knew. Knowing my little girl now, four years later, she definitely knew. She said the word again and again. Just out of the blue. For no reason at all, except just to say it.

My mind flew forward, imagining my daughter at the next family dinner with my in-laws, throwing her chicken on the floor, screaming, “Where’s my f-ckin’ box?!” At Thanksgiving, when my uncles sat around the cocktail table drinking scotch, I feared their laughter would screech to a halt when she bounded into the circle, asking Nana if he’d seen her “f-ckin’ box.” I couldn’t let this happen.

I didn’t grow up in a curse-throwing family, and even now, would never swear around my parents. On the rare occasion my dad shouted “Idiot” at another driver, my brother and I would fall into silent hysterics, amused at the way it sounded in his hard-edged Indian accent, while terrified because he'd said a Really Bad Word. My only exposure to familial swearing was in Hindi, by my aunt who hurled some horrific sounding words at my cousins. Cuthi was her favorite, which I didn’t recognize as the "B word" until many years later when my cousins and I sat laughing over too many margaritas.

Determined not to be the newest generation of maternal cursers, I tried to convert my daughter’s F to a T, and every time she said the dreaded word, I said, “Yes, honey, we’re going truckin’.” “Look at the truck.“ “Truckin’ is fun.” She wasn’t interested in truckin’, though, and decided to play with her new word for a full day, blurting it out when I least expected. Finally, she must have tired of torturing me, and just stopped saying it. Does her mother swear anymore? Well, I try not to. I say the word in my head, I mutter it under my breath, and I come up with new frustration words like “focaccia.” My now-6-year-old daughter keeps me in line, primly reminding me to turn off an inappropriate song on the radio and commenting with obviously feigned disapproval when she hears a bad word, her expanded vocabulary lingering as a silent threat between us.

Vinita K. Mendiratta lives in Ridgewood, N.J. with her husband and three kids. She's a "recovering lawyer" writing her first novel.

Promo photograph by Barbara Penoyar/Photodisc/Getty Image. Article photograph courtesy of Vinita K. Mediratta.

Tags: parenting, shouting, spanking, swearing

I’ve been mulling all week over the wrinkle that kids seem to throw into the harmonious balance of a dual-earning couple. Without children, it seems that marriages hum along fairly placidly, no matter who is bringing home more bacon. Yes, there are bickering matches over chores and credit, but for the most part there is a sunny view of "our money, our life."

And then a child is born. I’ve had so many interesting pieces on this aspect of balancing finances that I am ending the week with as many submissions as I can. Today’s post is longer than usual, even though I have cut some submissions for space. Still, you have the whole weekend to chew it over.

So what changes our attitude toward money with the advent of motherhood? Cara wrote in mulling this as she looks forward from her sunny spot of today, to a future that she imagines will be considerably darker.

I currently enjoy our very outwardly progressive situation. (I'm in the sciences, he's in the arts, and I'm the higher earner.) I'm worried what will happen if/when we have children and have to make decisions about child-care. I wonder how progressive women who've made practical decisions and end up finding themselves in very traditional situations feel. I can't imagine being happy if I depended on my husband's salary. I think I'm terrified of waking up one day and finding that my life looks the same as my mother's—working a part-time job, depending on my husband's salary, doing all the housework, and longing for appreciation.

I think she sums up what we all fear as we become mothers ourselves. We don’t want to live a retro life, but somehow all of us end up incorporating more of a traditional lifestyle than we imagined when we were childless.

Another mother (a "white-collar professional") described a situation in which the plans she and her husband made are not being borne out in the reality of day to day life. As a result she longs for a more traditional setup.

I recently accepted a much higher-paying job that requires long hours and a very long commute. We talked ahead of time about the fact that I would not be around the house as much, and how unhappy I was about the reduced amount of time that I would be able to spend with our daughter. We agreed that we would maintain our frugal lifestyle and aggressively pay down debt so that I would have more flexibility in the future to work part-time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. My husband seems to really enjoy spending the money I'm making now, but has no observable plans to save any of it. Further, I arrive home (late) to a house that looks like a disaster zone and a child who is being ignored because my husband is too busy watching sports with friends. I have about one hour each day that is unaccounted for, and I generally spend that entire hour doing laundry and cleaning the house. His domestic contributions are limited to an occasional load of laundry.

I didn't like earning less than him, but I really dislike earning more than him. Before, if I lost my job, it meant some adjustments to the family budget and some belt-tightening, but wouldn't force us into homelessness. Now, it would mean the loss of 2/3 of our total income. It feels like a constant yoke on my spirit. And I resent the fact that he hasn't picked up any of the slack at home, but am too uncomfortable with confrontation to really discuss it with him. I also feel helpless because I can't tell him how to raise our daughter, and I'm not there enough anymore to do it myself. I wish our roles were reversed. If he were making enough money to support both of us I could stay home part- or full-time with our daughter, and keep the rest of the aspects of our lives organized.

Jennifer wrote that her husband is now the stay-at-home dad and that her home continues to be happy with the "our money" attitude remaining solidly intact.

I have been married to my husband for 12 years. He is a stay-at-home dad to our two young children, while I work full time as an actuary. Needless to say, I make more than he does in the small amount of freelance work he’s able to fit into his schedule. It was always our plan, even before we were married, for him to stay at home with the kids while I worked. We share the housework, with him taking the greater share. He pays the bills out of our family income. We make money decisions jointly. In our household, it doesn’t matter that the paycheck has my name on it. We both feel strongly (me even more than him) that it’s not my money. It’s the family’s money. I almost called what we have a reversal of roles, but I stopped myself. That implies that there’s a way things are supposed to be, and there is no such thing other than whatever works for a particular family. I’m glad my daughter and son will grow up with the notion that women and men needn’t be assigned family roles based on gender. I love telling people that I’m the breadwinner while my husband cares for the kids. I almost always get a positive reaction. When I don’t, I like to emphasize how well our family works. Maybe it will open some eyes.

One mom who is a lawyer described a job that takes her out of town regularly—something she can only do because of her husband’s contributions at home.

For the past three years I have managed litigation as an in-house lawyer. My current position requires a fair amount of travel. I am based in the Midwest, but have to be on the East Coast once a month for a two-night, three-day trip. I also travel to various U.S. locations as the need arises—probably another two-night, three-day trip every six to eight weeks in addition to the monthly obligation already mentioned. My daughters are now 8 and 5, and while they never like it when I have a trip, they're used to it by now, and, I think, are doing OK with it. Obviously my husband has a lot to do with that, as well as my parents, who live nearby and are able to fill in the gaps when, for example, one of my overnight trips occurs on a night my husband has a class.

Another attorney wrote that she was the major breadwinner before she had a child, but that she and her husband had always planned that he would one day overtake her. She explains why.

I work at a mid-sized firm in the Southeast, and my husband is a consultant. Both of us are well-paid by most standards, but I made about 20K more per year than my husband from my base salary, after his bonus.

We had a child a little over a year ago, and we stuck to our plan of helping my husband be the primary breadwinner. I went back to work full-time after the baby was born, but we quickly realized that I was unable to meet my firm's expectations, especially considering my husband's increased travel schedule. In May, I decided to go on a "reduced schedule," taking 80 percent of my former salary for "allegedly" 80 percent of the work.

This new arrangement now sees my husband making more money than I (although not by very much), but he works considerably more.

Economically, it would have made more sense for me to continue full-time at the firm and try to become a partner because that would have probably ensured my family the highest guaranteed income. My husband could have taken a less onerous job. But I feel more comfortable having him in the more traditional breadwinner role. I considered myself a feminist at an early age and never expected this, but I feel a visceral need to be close to my child that I can't ignore. And the thought of being away from them both while my husband spends more time at home sends me into a fit of jealous rage (and this is only imaginary!).

I never expected for this to be my life or my choices, but I'm just taking it day by day and trying to figure out what will make me happy and be best for my family. I hope I don't regret these choices later, when my children are grown.

Some marriages don’t survive the juggling and the reinvention required of them. A divorcee described what happened after she—the breadwinner—had kids.

His lack of career direction took an incredible toll on us. My income enabled us to pay for in-home childcare, so he never had to do much, and, in fact, seemed to do less with the kids than many dads who had full-time jobs. He also became more and more disagreeable and difficult to live with on a day-to-day basis. As time progressed, I resented his lack of contributions more and more. I told him I wanted a divorce. We had a brutal legal battle. Three years, 10 days in court and hundreds of thousands in legal fees later, we are finally divorced. I was able to retain 60 percent of the marital assets, but was forced to pay an enormous amount of alimony relative to my income. I will never marry again. Courts do not fully recognize the contributions made by breadwinner wives—they often retain main responsibility for children despite their financial responsibilities.

Finally there is the story of Lori Bourne, which feels like a happy note on which to end this particular subject. Thanks again to the huge number of you who wrote in over the past two weeks. Keep me posted on your lives—and good luck! Now over to Lori.

I outearn my husband. For many years he was the primary breadwinner, even when I was working full time. Then my kids were born and I stayed home with them, so he was our sole provider.

About five years ago I started selling educational materials online as PDFs. I began doing this on eBay and was quite successful. In short order, I launched my own website and worked my business like crazy. Most of this was done in the evening after the kids were in bed.

This past year, my earnings were greater than his salary as a business analyst for JP Morgan Chase. In fact, this fall we decided that he would quit his job and work with me (for me?) to grow my business even more. This was based on a lot of factors, including his long commute and the burden that my business puts on me. (I home-school my two kids so I'm unbelievably busy balancing everything.)

We'll see what the future holds (and if we're able to get along or not) but we're both excited about this new venture.

You can visit Lori’s website at www.montessoriforeveryone.com.

Photograph of parents and child by Thinkstock/Getty Images.

Tags: childcare, commute, divorce, kids, wives out-earning their husbands

The recession has had a big impact on marital finances, and many couples have been hit by job losses. We know that more men than women have become unemployed, so it wasn't surprising that readers sent in a number of e-mails about becoming the major breadwinners when their husbands were fired. Christina wrote in telling of a firing that occurred just before her wedding, and then described how she and her husband have coped in the year that followed.

“My fiancé got laid off on Oct. 24, 2008, and we got married on Nov. 8.” she began.

There was a solid 24 hours of panic with a lot of tears and questions. How could this happen to us? Can we even afford our honeymoon anymore? (Yes!) Will your parents still let you marry me? (I’m 90 perecent sure he was just joking on this one.) Maybe it was the pre-wedding stress, but it seemed like the worst thing that had ever happened at the time, and, come to think of it, it was the biggest event to test our relationship. Then it was Oct. 25, and it didn't seem as bad. It was moving day, and I was officially moving out of my apartment to his house to start our new lives together. Finally, some positive thinking.

Fast-forward to a year later, as we prepare to celebrate our first anniversary, and I’m still working and he still isn’t. The timing of everything was less than ideal. By the time we got back from the honeymoon and came down off the newlywed high it was the holidays, and let’s face it, not many companies hire around the holidays ... especially in this economy. Even when my husband was working, I was earning just a little bit more than he, but we were never in the position where I could be the sole earner of the household. Has it been hard? Yes. Has it been as hard as I thought? No. Have there been some serious discussions about money? Yes. Do we sit at home and never go out any more? No.

There have been a lot of obstacles to overcome, especially since we just started living together and sharing expenses when the layoff occurred. This was very new territory for the both of us, and we are still establishing our household roles. There was always the understanding that I would be the one in charge of the money flow in the household, but it becomes a bit more complicated when it is only your money. I came into the relationship with a lot of savings, while my husband brought a lot of credit-card debt, and while there were some initial feelings of "Oh my gosh, I'm losing all my savings while paying off a debt that isn't even mine!" I quickly learned I can't think like that. We were in this together, and it was all about making smart decisions for our future.

The hardest part of this whole thing has nothing to do with money and more to do with my husband's confidence in himself. He was definitely born with the male provider gene and I think it's hard on him that he isn't contributing financially to the household right now. I'm confident in him, though, and no matter how long it takes to get back in the job market, we have proved that we can weather the storm. It was an unexpected bump in the road, but we are surviving, and I think that's a pretty good start to a solid future together.

Not every marriage can sustain unemployment. Another reader wrote in with the following story.

While we were married, my husband lost his job three times. He wanted to "pursue a career as an independent consultant" and grow his own software company (this was in the early 2000s). My employer merged with another company, and the new boss told me I had a job in North Carolina, when we lived in Atlanta. Hubby had been out of work for a year but cried when I told him we had to move and said I was ruining his life. We moved anyway, and divorced a year-and-a-half later.

My current income is twice the level of my boyfriend’s. I have always felt that whoever earns the least should do more of the domestic chores. Unfortunately, men don’t think that way. I still do my "second job" (housekeeping), while my boyfriend continues to work. And this makes me resentful, to be honest. What exactly did we gain from 100 years of social movement if I can’t get my (lower earning) boyfriend to pull his own weight?

Finally, a story of a husband who wasn’t fired but who quit to take care of his daughter. I’ll run a bunch of submissions on dealing with children and finances later this week, but for now, here’s a taste from Ariel.

I have been the primary earner in my household for most of my five-year marriage and the sole earner since July. When our nanny left us, we looked at the options and decided that my husband would leave his contract position as an IT systems developer to stay at home with our 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter. In the year leading up this, he had dropped to four days a week to spend Fridays with her, and earned about half what I did as in-house lawyer for a small company. When we finally ran the numbers we figured that, after paying the nanny, taxes, and commuting costs, he was working for somewhere near minimum wage. We had some cash saved, and are able to live on my salary, although it is very tight and we have had to cut costs and redefine the way we think about spending. We do miss the extra money, but my husband and daughter seem to be doing very well under the current arrangement. Our agreement when he started his new career as stay-at-home-dad (or, as I like to think of it, Director of Domestic Development) included the reassignment of all things domestic to him. He tries, but is a fairly lousy housekeeper and family finance manager. He is working on developing his cooking and organizational skills and the like, but his real strengths remain in the stereotyped “dad” realm—playing, transportation, etc.

The fact that I make more than my husband doesn’t seem strange to either of us, probably because it has been our norm for so long, and because so many of our female friends out-earn their husbands as well. My husband supported me through school and neither of us thought it was strange, so neither of us gives much thought to which of us fills the family coffers. I never thought of it as “his money” when he earned it, and I don’t think of it as “my money” now that I do, although I confess to badgering, “Where are you going to get that money?” when he overspends or spends unwisely.

I am salaried and fortunate in my position, and neither the domestic shift nor the current economy has piled more work or stress on my job, so I still see my family and contribute to the housework, but I do resent having to do work around the house when he is, for lack of a better phrase, "home all day." Mostly, I imagine that if I were the one staying home with our daughter, the house would be clean, the chores would be done and dinner would be on the table when he got home from the office. This idea remains untested, so I retain my imagined domestic moral superiority.

The dark underbelly of our current situation is that I am secretly glad for the widespread domestic shift the current economy is causing (with men bearing the brunt of the layoffs, no doubt in part because they were earning $1 for every $0.70 I make)—it has made our situation that much less eyebrow-raising. These days, nobody treats you like a social deviant for working outside the home while your husband stays home with the kids.

Although he still gets far fewer playdates than the "other mommies."

Photograph of bride and groom by Digital Vision/Getty Images.

Tags: recession, unemployment, wives making more than their husbands

A lot of what I cover here at Your Comeback comes back to a woman’s sense of identity, and this week’s financial theme is no exception. C. W., who wrote the piece below, conveys real confidence about who she is, in her relationship with her husband and in the world at large. She also described a confident partner, which answered—in this case—one of the questions that has been on my mind while reading your e-mails. What is the male perspective on being the lower earner? I wondered how C.’s husband feels when relatives and clueless acquaintances discover the "shameful secret" that she makes more than he does. From the sound of things he is able to shrug the attitude off. But perhaps that’s harder to do in other setups?

Let me know if that thought resonates with you. Write to me at emma@thecomebackbook.com. Meanwhile, enjoy today’s account of a utopian setup.

My husband and I have been together nearly eight years, since 2002, when I was a college student and he was a waiter. He entered graduate school after we'd been together a year or so, and since I entered the working world in September 2005, I've made significantly more money than he. The actual amounts have varied, but right now his grad-school stipend is less than half of my salary, which is about where things have been for the past four years. We've been married since April 2008, but have been living together and sharing household expenses since 2003.

Periodically, relatives or clueless acquaintances will "figure out" that I must out-earn my husband, and it's always presented like they've discovered a shameful secret. Whenever this happens, I end up confused, because it's not something that bothers me—or something I really think about at all. I'm terrible with money management, so my husband handles our monthly budget. Rent, cable, Internet, phone, car-renters' insurance, and a few other regular expenses come out of my checking account. He pays for pretty much everything else.

Since a grad student's schedule is much more flexible than an office worker's, he's always been the one to get the car's oil changed and buy groceries. In the past couple of years, he's regularly cooked dinner for both of us—sometimes having it ready when I get home, sometimes with me sous-chef-ing for him (he's a fantastic cook and I'm much less creatively capable in the kitchen). If he's doing a load of laundry, and I manage to get my non-hand-dry clothes separated, he'll throw my stuff in with his and I usually help fold. Other household chores are more or less split between us: I clean the bathroom, he handles the vacuuming and general straightening of the living room. Any major "let's get all this crap put away or thrown away" cleaning sessions are usually conducted jointly, although the other day he surprised me by doing a massive overhaul of the entire apartment.

So it's apparent that he does a lot around the house to help both of us out—something that I'm already well aware of and grateful for. But I'd be loath to characterize his role as "house husband" or anything of the kind, and I certainly don't expect him to cook dinner on a given night, nor do I get upset if he got caught up in something and didn't have time to accomplish some household task.

Likewise, he has never tried to pressure me into finding a higher-paying job—when I actually took a pay cut a couple years ago to work in a less stressful environment, he was completely supportive. We talk about our somewhat unusual arrangement from time to time, and we both see things the same way: We're both contributing to our mutual happiness and our ability to enjoy the free time we have together. Whether that contribution comes in the form of "Good, we can pay rent," or "Let's eat this delicious meal in our clean apartment," both are equally valuable and necessary for our household.

We're aware that our current situation won't continue indefinitely. Eventually he'll get his Ph.D., and we'll have a whole new set of priorities to work out together, and we might someday have kids who complicate the division of labor. But I think our fundamental understanding will remain the same. If he were suddenly making a salary that we could both amply live on, I might quit my job and get an MFA—but if he could only find adjunct teaching jobs that required me to continue working, I'd be happy to stay where I am in an administrative role at a university or maybe get a nonprofit management master's that would boost my salary potential down the line.

Either way, we're both committed to being open and honest with ourselves and with each other about our priorities, and to ensuring that our number one priority is enjoying the time we spend together.

I'd like to think that our approach is viable no matter who's making the higher salary. As long as both members of a partnership are contributing something and there's no brewing resentment due to unexpressed feelings of unfairness, all that matters is that the bills get paid and that the domestic space stays livable. At least, that's our take on things.

Photograph of man by Jack Hollingsworth/Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: marriage, wives out-earning their husbands