Wife bonus in the upper East Side! "Poor Little Rich Women (housewives)"

[marylander1940]

"Poor Little Rich Women (housewives)"

 

WHEN our family moved from the West Village to the Upper East Side in 2004, seeking proximity to Central Park, my in-laws and a good public school, I thought it unlikely that the neighborhood would hold any big surprises. For many years I had immersed myself — through interviews, reviews of the anthropological literature and participant-observation — in the lives of women from the Amazon basin to sororities at a Big Ten school. I thought I knew from foreign.

 

Then I met the women I came to call the Glam SAHMs, for glamorous stay-at-home-moms, of my new habitat. My culture shock was immediate and comprehensive. In a country where women now outpace men in college completion, continue to increase their participation in the labor force and make gains toward equal pay, it was a shock to discover that the most elite stratum of all is a glittering, moneyed backwater.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/poor-little-rich-women.html?_r=1

 

The British are already mocking us, LOL

 

Wednesday Martin, a social researcher who has been immersing herself in the lives of “Park Lane Primates” for over a decade, explains how the “wife bonus”, as she has called it, works in practice.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11612589/Meet-the-Manhattan-mothers-who-think-they-deserve-a-wife-bonus.html

[curiousnomore]

You gotta love First-World problems.

[BaronArtz]

I noticed the NY Times article as well. I think it's totally accurate. I see these women all the time at Equinox. Exercised into paper thin-ness. Until the husband gets even more affluent and a younger rival shows up. Next!

[marylander1940]

I noticed the NY Times article as well. I think it's totally accurate. I see these women all the time at Equinox. Exercised into paper thin-ness. Until the husband gets even more affluent and a younger rival shows up. Next!

 

reminds me of this:

 

[marylander1940]

You gotta love First-World problems.

 

I get your point, and I agree. We die because of being fat, some people in Africa die because of starvation...

 

but let's remember that Appalachia is also part of the 1st world and despite de 50 years socialist war on poverty it still many issues in common with a 3rd world country.

 

http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v2/image004.jpg

[McLeanspider]

NYC is a world of it's own.

[+ quoththeraven]

Fascinating (and enraging) article. The "wife bonus" makes these relationships look like employer/employee relationships. Money and status seem to be the driving factor in women with these talents and ability opting for a modern twist on traditional household structure. The term "gilded cage" comes to mind. Here's hoping they have pre- or postnups that will protect them if hubby moves on.

 

Slate's Hanna Rosin penned a fairly hilarious parody about a "husband bonus":

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/05/19/glam_sahms_and_the_wife_bonus_what_about_the_husband_bonus.html

[mike carey]

Fascinating (and enraging) article. The "wife bonus" makes these relationships look like employer/employee relationships. Money and status seem to be the driving factor in women with these talents and ability opting for a modern twist on traditional household structure.

Struck me that was as well, QTR, a bit like a marriage in the aristocracy in the late 18th, early 19th century. But without the self awareness of Elizabeth or Jane Bennet. Is this the traditional marriage of which the RWNJs speak?

[+ quoththeraven]

Click for story on ways in which the story doesn't check out or is exaggerated. Admittedly, it's the NY Post, but still

 

http://nypost.com/2015/06/07/upper-east-side-housewifes-tell-all-book-is-full-of-lies/

 

Since this is billed as ethnography/anthropology, it also ties into questions about sociologist Alice Goffman's account of living in a poor/working class black neighborhood in Philadelphia, On the Run, published by the University of Chicago Press, research she started when she was an undergraduate at Penn.

 

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/06/i-fact-checked-alice-goffman-with-her-subjects.html

 

It's interesting how little we hear (or care) about these controversies and yet hear and care so much about whether or not accusations of criminality against famous people (or people who are famous-adjacent) are true or not.