‘My partner can’t seem to multitask when he’s at home with our daughter, meaning he doesn’t do any housework. I’m exhausted,’ says Rachel, a full-time working mother, who says she does more around the house than her partner despite earning all the household income.
Jade, who became the breadwinner of her household after her partner lost his job, told me she ‘has to manage him... to get simple stuff done like the washing, dishes and schoolstuff’.
These women are among dozens I interviewed for my new book, Breadwinners. In the UK, about 26% of women now out-earn their male partners, a number that has been steadily increasing. However, while the number of female breadwinners is rising, assumptions about gender roles at home lag stubbornly behind.
One common pattern emerged among the women I spoke to: even when they earn more, they still do more housework and childcare, as well as the less visible mental load – the hidden planning and logistics that make a household tick over. In fact, the only time when men did more childcare was when they didn’t work at all and were stay-at-home fathers. Even then, breadwinner wives often reverted to doing more on weekends.
Studies show that when men are the breadwinners, they do less at home. So, it might seem logical that the same would apply when the woman earns more – but thanks to deeply embedded gender norms, this isn’t the case. Breadwinning women continue to feel expectations around the domestic sphere in a way that breadwinning men do not. Or, as Linda, who I spoke to for my book, told me, ‘I have to constantly think about my kids and their activities even though my work is very full-on.’
Another reason is due to the guilt some working mums feel. One study found women tended to overcompensate at home because they felt they were missing out on time with their children. Mary told me she felt she was being judged as an ‘absent parent’ by the staff at her children’s nursery. ‘I had the feeling I was such a bad mother. You have to get over that, but it’s hard.’
This resonated with Linda, who told me that her partner was uncomfortable with the idea of feeling ‘like a kept man’ due to his ideas about masculinity embedded from a young age. ‘If my partner was a woman, this would not be an issue; this is definitely a gender thing,’ she says.
Research shows that, like Linda’s husband, some men struggle when they aren’t the main financial providers. Men have been found to have lower life satisfaction when they are out-earned by their female partners, a finding common among the women I spoke to.
Stay-at-home fathers also tend to be more isolated than stay-at-home mums. Felicity’s husband struggled to connect with other parents at baby groups and the school gate, despite being the primary carer for their son. ‘He told me he ended up talking to all the nannies, because the other mums weren’t interested. It was very difficult for him to meet other dads.’
A related factor is that men who are stay-at-home dads are often in the role out of circumstance rather than choice, either because of job loss or a partner’s higher earning potential. Meanwhile, recent studies also show that higher-earning women are more likely to become burnt out, because they’re still carrying the load at home.
Despite these challenges, shifts are taking place. I interviewed numerous men and women and found there’s an increasing number of fathers who want to spend more time with their children and are happy to support their breadwinning partners at home. They showed they were willing to work through any discomfort or outside expectations and spend more energy focusing on what their family needed, rather than worrying about how they were perceived.
After all, for breadwinning women to thrive, their partners need to step up and shoulder more of the visible and invisible domestic work, as well as advocating for more flexibility for themselves at work. This requires us all to value paid work and care work equally. Doing so will allow couples to address gender inequality in a way that benefits them both. And, with the right support, it will enable higher-earning women to continue to pursue their careers – without feeling like they have to pick up the slack at home too.
Melissa Hogenboom is a BBC film-maker and author. Her new book, ‘Breadwinners And Other Power Imbalances That Influence Your Life’, is out now