Skip to main content

Bread Sharing

Interesting story about how men perceive the value of the work their wife does. I could map the definition of bread-winner and bread-sharer to most men I know professionally. M comes to mind immediately in the bread-sharer category. He is married to his college sweet-heart, she travels a lot for work and they have two kids. Two things stood out to me about M when we first met at work. He goes the extra distance to make sure women's voices are heard and acknowledged whenever he is present to make that happen. Given his tenure and seniority in the organization, his efforts produce tangible results. 

The second thing I noticed was that M refused to take on people management responsibilities even though he is very well-liked and has no trouble leading and inspiring people. If anything, M would be the ideal people manager. He shared once that his wife always had the better job - both in terms of span of influence and money. In their marriage it was understood she would almost always be on the road and he would help with home and kids. Now that the kids are in high school, M is in a role that requires a bit of travel. "She is just a lot smarter than me, so its no surprise that she's doing so well" M said matter-of-factly. In his mind he is just doing what is logical to maximize the benefits for their family unit. 

Diametrically opposite to S is R - another guy I have worked with. He is married to a woman he met in b-school and they like S have two kids. R's career is thriving and he gives his job his full time and attention. The wife works at a low level job for which she is crazy over-qualified. She has fixed hours that she's organized to fit the school schedule of the kids. She takes care of everything at home. From what I have heard, this woman is intensely busy as R is not around to help with anything. He is very much the bread-winner type. He takes his responsibility to provide for his family seriously - nothing but the best for them.  Status at work and generally in the professional area mean a lot to him - he likes being recognized as a power-player, the guy on the speed-lane for promotions, bigger better opportunities. 

From my observations, neither S nor R are happy with the balancing act they have chosen in their marriage. R is very far from a misogynist. Like S he is very much about making sure women are treated fairly and their contributions are recognized. Women who have worked for R would rate him as an excellent manager, mentor and coach. He is not in a bread-winner role because he disrespects his wife or thinks she is his inferior. In their situation, the balance they have struck maximizes value for the family - no different than S and his family. S is not happy either seeing opportunities to expand his scope of influence pass him by. It's been said professional women cannot have it all but the same is true for men.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...