Perhaps I missed this op-ed by Michael Lewis back in March of 2005 because I was, in fact, not at wife at the time. But I heard it discussed recently on a podcast I listen to, so I decided to look it up.
You know Michael Lewis: author of Moneyball, author of The Big Short, former bond trader, husband of Tabitha Soren.
Oh yes, that Tabitha Soren, the cuter, feminine Kurt Loder.
So that's what happened to her after MTV News: her husband put her out of business.
But what does that even mean? And is this the destiny of all working women? And the secret goal of all of their husbands?
It's all tongue-in-cheek -- or at least I hope it is -- but Lewis offers three basic guiding principals to put your wife out of business: (1) never mention money because she knows the value of it, having earned it herself, and she suspects that you may use your money-making as a weapon against her; (2) cushion her fall because she will suffer psychologically from stepping out of the spotlight of a dazzling career; and (3) lie a lot, mainly about the fact that their unemployment is temporary. "The longer you have her believing [that she can go back to work whenever she wants and that demand for her skills is higher than it ever was], the less true it becomes." It's a short essay and worth your time to read it.
Here's what it really says to me, though: It's really hard to choose to be a stay-at-home-mom after being a very powerful professional . . . or even a semi-powerful professional. And, indeed, women may suffer psychologically from the shift from, say, a seat before the Court to a seat before a highchair. The loss of financial power can also be acute and, indeed, can be weilded as a weapon by some men against their formerly-working wives. And, certainly, there is a belief among lots of SAHMs that they'll go back to work when the kids are older. And I believe that some of these women harbor a secret (and probably well-founded) fear that their skills and professional usefulness are deteriorating while they are out of the workforce.
Love for your children is a powerful thing, but it is not the only thing. I do worry about the women who want to step out of careers "temporarily." I wonder how temporary it will really be. For me, it has never been a question, because I never assumed I would leave work. And that's partly because I like to work and partly because I feel like my skill set would diminish if I left the profession for a time. There are lots of article about women having trouble re-starting their careers. And if those article are worrisome to me, they must be terrifying for the "temporary" SAHM.
I also wonder about the concept that Lewis puts forward of the new sort of trophy wife. Used to, the trophy wife meant smoking hot (by a certain metric), big boobed, empty vessels. Lewis suggests that the new trophy wife has a Harvard MBA and that it is an accomplishment to acquire her brain and then ensure that that brain is not gainfully employed. I wonder if some men really think that way. Maybe men want to marry the Harvard MBA because she's more interesting to talk to than the empty vessel. But it's still hard for me to understand why the Harvard MBA would want to quit work. Why get the Harvard MBA if your career is going to be SAHM?
Anyway, as I said, the essay is very much tongue-in-cheek . . . but it tweaks, it disturbs, it rankles. Just as, I'm sure, he meant it to.
And, P.S., Michael Lewis didn't put Tabitha Soren out of business. She just changed the sort of business she was in. Take a look her photography.
