What an absurdly disparaging article. The author has a bone to pick with stay-at-home mothers. Sad, really.
But what exactly did the wife bonus mean? It made sense only in the context of the rigidly gendered social lives of the women I studied. The worldwide ethnographic data is clear: The more stratified and hierarchical the society, and the more sex segregated, the lower the status of women.
The author seriously claims that these women have low status because they don't get even more money from their husbands. Let's not forget that the husbands are probably working 70 to 100 hours a week, while these women work nothing close to that. The author seriously has a problem with the bonus aspect... HOW? You spent a paragraph prior talking about how they literally get to do WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT, so why are you saying that this bonus is indicative of LESS freedom? It seems to be exactly the opposite of what this author asserts: the women are privileged over the men, as they are working less.
Rich, powerful men may speak the language of partnership in the absence of true economic parity in a marriage
What the fuck does this even mean? Is this about the prenuptial?
But it can’t buy you the power you get by being the one who earns, hunts or gathers it.
She IS earning it, she's being a mother. Stop talking about fucking bonobos hunting for vegetables, this is the way HUMAN culture has been for most of its history. Jesus fuck.
The wives of the masters of the universe, I learned, are a lot like mistresses — dependent and comparatively disempowered
Because of a probable in-joke about a bonus? Because the woman can ONLY board private planes and spend lavishly every night out, and not buy a fucking 10,000 table?
Just sensing the disequilibrium, the abyss that separates her version of power from her man’s, might keep a thinking woman up at night.
HOLY SHIT