Tag Archives: Money

Who Pays?

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On the Good Men Project this morning, my GMP colleague Emily Heist Moss and I have an exchange about first dates and who pays for them. Excerpt:

Hugo: Add in the reality that women pay more for haircuts and drycleaning (often substantially more), and there’s little doubt that the average young American woman has probably spent a lot more money getting ready than has her prospective beau. In that light, expecting him to pay for the date is less unreasonable than it first appears.

Emily: I think it’s fair to assume that we all are constantly trying to impress our desired partners, but we go about that in different ways. Having a higher income is and of itself a “burden” that men have to bear in order to make themselves more desirable to women. I’m not advocating that that’s right or fair (it isn’t), only that financial expectations are placed on both genders, they just manifest differently. Given that framework, I’d prefer that both of us approach a first date as individuals. I don’t expect him to pay because I don’t want him to think that his money is part of his appeal, and I don’t want him to treat me because he thinks that I can’t make as much as he can or because I spend my income on beauty maintenance.

Emily and I reach consensus by the end. Read the whole thing.

Men, money and marriage: the Times drops the ball

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The blogosphere and the mainstream media have (when they aren’t rightly focused on the continued heartbreak of Haiti and the implications of the Scott Brown victory) had much to say about the Pew study released Tuesday that shows that more than ever before, men are likely to marry women with more education and earning potential than they themselves have. From the Times story:

“Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women,” said Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center. “In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men.”

The analysis examines Americans 30 to 44 years old, the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Women’s earnings have been increasing faster than men’s since the 1970s.

“We’ve known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being,” said Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy group. “Now it is becoming increasingly important to their economic well-being as well.”

Some of this is attributable to the much-discussed “mancession” (the startling reality that 75% of all jobs lost since the start of the current downturn have been held by men). But this is more than a short-term trend; as the study notes, more women than men receive college degrees. Not only are women more likely to hold jobs in sectors less impacted by the recession, women’s superior educational attainment makes them more attractive hires, particularly for better paying jobs.

Of course, the Times piece — like many of those that commented on the Pew study — chose to take the opportunity to emphasize the exact opposite of what the study actually said. The Sam Roberts article begins and ends with anecdotes from a successful 28 year-old, Beagy Zielinski, who recently broke up with her less-well-educated beau because, as she put it, he was “extremely insecure about my career and how successful I am”. The tone of the piece suggests that despite the evidence that a great many men are willing to marry women who earn more than they do, “being too successful” is still a threat to a woman’s chances of finding love.

Here’s one key tidbit from the article:

While marriage rates have declined over all, women with college degrees are still more likely to marry today than less educated women.

There’s the fact. So why does Roberts conclude the piece with this bit from Zielinski?

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

I’m not just picking on the reporter who wrote the piece, though ol’ Sam is deserving of some serious criticism. She (or he) is only reflecting what we’ve seen over and over again in the media for decades; the tone of the article is just a repackaged version of the old warning “Don’t show the boys you’re smart, or none of them will want you.” As women continue to enjoy greater and greater access to economic and political power (it should be noted that the gains for white women have outstripped those of women from other groups), there is mounting evidence that younger men in particular are comfortable with dating and marrying women whose educations and incomes are equal to or greater than their own. But the old discourse that “real men” (Zielinski’s ex was a blue-collar shipyard worker, a profession redolent with masculine caché) won’t accept an independent woman as a mate continues to exert influence, even in the face of the facts.

Marriage rates are dropping. A growing number of people see the institution as archaic and unnecessary; others continue to delay marriage far later than earlier generations, sometimes because of unrealistic expectations about what is needed in order to enter into wedlock. But the happy evidence is that as fewer and fewer marry, those who do marry are increasingly likely to reject (in practice if not in their hearts) the traditional ideal of man as “breadwinner” and woman as “homemaker.” Despite what grandma or the New York Times may say, the evidence is clear and unmistakable that for women who still do want to marry a man, having a college education and a career increase their chances of finding a husband.

Empty reservoirs, empty coffers, more men on campus

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Since I came to Pasadena City College in 1993, I’ve never seen such a bleak start to a new academic year as I’ve witnessed this week. This lovely foothill city remains shrouded in smoke, as the Station Fire continues to smolder, threatening the gorgeous canyons, cliffs and fauna of the nearby San Gabriels. On campus, it’s difficult to breathe and the stench of burnt material wafts through air conditioning vents and offices. After getting into the low 100s Monday and Tuesday, we might only see mid-90s today. The toxicity of the atmosphere matches the frustration and anxiety here at school.

Public community colleges, dependent on plunging state revenues, cut their course offerings and delay hiring new faculty in a recession. At precisely the same time, as unemployment rises, demand for classes grows as more and folks seek retraining. In a booming economy, our enrollment always drops (this actually became a bit of a problem around 1999-2000); in a slowing economy, the opposite effect happens. It’s not just unemployed folks, either. Many high school graduates who might have chosen to enter a healthy job market have decided to focus on their education for the time being, with plans to drop out or take a break as soon as hiring prospects improve. This means that invariably, increased demand coincides with falling resources. (Much, I suppose, like food banks.)

We don’t have the updated demographics from our admissions office, but here’s something many of my colleagues and I have noticed: we have far more men in our classes than usual. PCC is majority female, and my survey classes average about a 60-40 woman-to-man ratio in a normal year; my gender studies classes tend to have a much lower percentage of lads than that. But looking at my rosters, all four sections of my Western Civ survey courses have more male than female students — something that hasn’t happened before in all the years I’ve been here. The percentage of guys in the hallways seems higher as well, and the colleagues I’ve chatted with say they’ve noticed a similar shift.

Most evidence suggests that more men than women have lost jobs in the current economic slowdown. While this doesn’t mean that we’ve come close to achieving the vital feminist goal of pay equity, it does mean that layoffis in traditionally female-dominated fields (like health care and education) have been less draconian than in male-dominated fields such as manufacturing, construction, and sales. This may well-explain why after years of a slow but steady rise in the ratio of women to men, the situation may well be reversing itself. One wonders if that’s true at more selective institutions.

In any case, I have never had to say “no” to as many students who wish to add my classes; my wait lists, which usually average 10-20 aspirants, now average twice that number. Everyone seems to have a real, desperation-tinged tale to tell about why they need the class; I’m familiar with the appeals, but sense a different level of urgency — and in some, a heartbreaking sense of despair — that I’ve never seen before.

Five generations of my family have graduated from California public colleges and universities. Three generations have taught at one level or another in the post-secondary education system. But not in living memory has the situation been this dire, not in living memory have the barriers to achievement been this high. The rungs are being sawed off the ladder into the middle class. It’s heartbreaking.

But I’ll teach with my customary over-caffeinated energy, crowding as many students as I safely can into the rooms, and to the best of my most imperfect ability, offer inspiration and encouragment.

My prayers this week have a hydrological theme; rain for our mountains and hillsides and depleted reservoirs, and mighty streams of revenue for our depleted state coffers.

“First, Last, Security Deposit”: Women’s savings, feminism, and the steps to getting a room of one’s own

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This summer session in my women’s history course, I’ve been more conscientious than usual about suggesting proactive solutions for young feminists to use as they navigate their way through a difficult and misogynistic world. I’ve got a compendium of tips, all of which ought to be collected into a single blog post at some point. But one suggestion I’ve made repeatedly, and which I’ve seen proven useful again and again, is that young people of both sexes (but especially young women) set aside money for themselves.

It comes from something I heard years ago from a feminist colleague of mine. She remarked, apropos of nothing that I can remember, “You know what freedom is? Freedom is having first, last, and a security deposit.” (Most landlords require a first month’s payment and a last month’s payment in advance before renting an apartment; most require a security deposit, often equal to another month’s rent.) For young people living in unhappy home situations with repressive parents, or for women in abusive relationships, the ability to leave and begin a different life is tied to access to money. Feminists rightly celebrate the importance of “choice” and “autonomy”, but we must always acknowledge that it is far easier to exercise these two fundamental goods when one has resources over which one has direct control.

This is not a new point, of course; Virginia Woolf said as much in her indispensable “A Room of One’s Own.” Some years, I’ve given my students excerpts from Woolf to read; many identify all too well with the famous point about Shakespeare’s sister. But whether they read it in Woolf or hear it from a professor or pick it up from their friends, it’s vital — particularly for those from families with few resources — that women start putting aside money that will be theirs and theirs alone. Perhaps, yes, money with which to rent a room of one’s own; perhaps money with which to buy a car. Perhaps money with which to take a life-changing trip abroad. The freedom to become who one was called to be is considerably easier with money of one’s own.

This all sounds obvious, of course. But for many of my students, setting aside even small bits of money is very difficult. The “pleasing woman discourse” is pervasive, and it makes it all too easy for whatever amounts of spare cash are accumulated to be offered to the invariably needy and demanding multitudes that surround far too many young women. In some families, young women are expected to contribute to their parents’ rent and to the grocery money; for many of my working-class students, particularly in the current Great Recession, living at home is as much about helping their family survive as it is about remaining under the control of overly-watchful parents. Continue reading →

“Feminism made women too picky”: more on male rage, sexual entitlement, and backlash

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I can never figure out the blogosphere. I start blogging less frequently, and my traffic — and comments — go up. May 2009 has seen my highest number of visitors this year, despite a notable reduction in the number of posts. Go figure. Perhaps less is more?

Lots of discussion below last Thursday’s post, much of it both civil and thoughtful. I’m appreciative. Once again, the theme of male insecurity has been raised and discussed; once again, we find ourselves discussing the topic of feminism’s impact on men. Reading the comments, however, I’m struck by something that seems both logical and ever more apparent: one source of the resentment so many men seem to feel towards feminism and what it has wrought lies in their perception that it has made women less, rather than more, sexually available to them.

We recently debated the “problem” of men “never feeling hot.” Commenters of all sexes shared painful stories of feeling unattractive and unwanted. No question, it’s hard to live with the sense that one is physically undesirable, particularly in our beauty-obsessed culture. The psychic toll that sense takes on men and women alike is real and undeniable. But where it gets really ugly (intended word) is when we see flashes of male entitlement, part of what is often called the “Nice Guy” syndrome. That entitlement manifests as the angry, indignant claim certain men make that women “should” see past their physical shortcomings and their social ineptness: Why can’t they see what a nice guy I am? Why are women such superficial bitches? Many women have been on the receiving end of hostile, sometimes whiny tirades such as these. Whatever sympathy might be possible for the unlovely and the awkward vanishes utterly in the face of such astounding entitlement.

I wrote last fall against the tired old “male responsibility requires female vulnerability” thesis peddled by an array of social conservatives from Brad Wilcox to Kay Hymowitz. The thesis is that men “need to be needed”, and in the absence of feeling needed (by women) they will behave badly. Therefore, women need to make themselves vulnerable and dependent, forcing men (or giving them the opportunity) to take charge, to play the role of the knight-in-shining-armor, to feel indispensable. To listen to the right-wingers tell it, once men are given the sense that they are indispensable, they will shape up and fly right, illegitimacy and crime will vanish, the rise of the oceans will cease, and all God’s children will say “Amen.” Or something like that. Of course, in order for men to feel indispensable, women will need to surrender, become docile and nurturing rather than independent and ambitious. We’ve heard this hooey a million times before, but like supply-side economics, this belief in the “responsibility for vulnerability” transaction remains a difficult bogeyman to slay. Continue reading →

The road out of serfdom: gender roles and social democracy

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Charles Murray, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the infamous “Bell Curve” study from a few years back, weighs in with this month’s load of good old-fashioned hooey: The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism. Murray makes his living from an organization devoted to the defense of the indefensible: that unbridled American capitalism, married to conservative Protestant religious values, is the last best hope for humankind. He does his wealthy patrons proud in this essay and lecture, attacking the Obama Administration for its apparent zeal to remake the USA in the image of Western European-style social democracies.

Would that it were true; as fond as I am of our new lad in the White House, I doubt even he can move this country that far to the left in the short time he has been given. I’m certainly fond of Western European style social democracy; I hold an EU passport as well as an American one, and have close family scattered across half a dozen nations of that splendid continent. I’ve seen the strengths and weaknesses of the systems in Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom in particular and have found much that is enviable. But I’m not a political scientist nor an economist, and will leave the arguments over the specifics of the welfare state to those better equipped to defend them.

There’s much that is risible in Murray’s defense of the American “free enterprise system”, but nothing so jaw-dropping as his thesis that working class males need weak public institutions in order to feel like, well, real men:

When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t.

To paraphrase a line from a fine old Guns n’ Roses song, “You’d better start sniffing your rank condescension, Chuck.” Murray, probably intentionally, is repeating one of the Great Lies of Masculinity: men — particularly working-class men — only feel useful and valued when the women in their lives are weak and dependent. In other words, Murray is peddling the myth that male responsibility is inextricably linked to female vulnerability. Provide a social safety net that permits women to survive on their own, that allows them to raise their children without the “good provision” of a hard-working man, and all sense of purpose magically vanishes from the lives of these lads, or so he argues. Continue reading →

“Boob Wars”: reflections of a new father on breastfeeding, class, and feminism

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In the thirty years or so since I entered puberty during the Carter Administration, I’ve spent quite a bit of time contemplating women’s breasts — and my own (not to mention other men’s) fascination with them. But in the last few months, as a first-time father and partner to a breast-feeding mother, that fascination has morphed into a new kind of reverence. And I’ve become aware of what might, for lack of a better term, be called the “boob war” — a sub-conflict within the larger “Mommy War” that continues to rage, exasperating and frightening and dividing women. And into this fight comes a bombshell article in the new Atlantic Monthly: Hanna Rosin’s The Case Against Breastfeeding. More on the article later. (Cap taps, belatedly and with apologies, to Rod Dreher and to Scott.)

The term “Mommy Wars” generally refers to the public and private debates, common among the middle and upper-middle classes of the developed world, about what makes a “good” mother. For years, the chief front in these wars has been the battle over daycare and work outside the home, though other conflicts rage in areas like nutrition and natural childbirth. As a women’s studies professor, I of course had a professional acquaintance with these battles — but as a first-time father these past few months, I’ve gotten an entirely different perspective. As a man, my cultural and physiological privilege immunizes me from attack; yet as a devoted partner and father and feminist, I cannot help but be involved.

When we first announced to people that we were expecting a child, we got (along with the hugs of congratulation) many queries and unsolicited nuggets of advice. In particular, my wife was regularly asked about her plans for nourishing the baby; whether she intended to breastfeed, and if so, for how long. The merits of “pumping” versus “not pumping” were presented with bewildering detail; and, at least in our social circle, the evils of infant formula were repeatedly stressed.

We chose a midwifery team and a pediatrician based on recommendations from friends and a series of interviews (trust me, we were thorough in the latter). The pediatrician we ended up choosing is a delightful man, a fellow vegan with a prominent reputation as an opponent of a slavish adherence to the vaccine schedule and a proponent of both breastfeeding and attachment parenting. He charmed us with his attention and his devotion and his irreverance, as well as his conviction that child health and animal rights can be entirely compatible commitments. When we first met with Dr. G. weeks before our daughter was born, we also met with his professional lactation consultant, who promised to come in the hours after the delivery to help my wife breastfeed. It was clear that in this practice, formula at any time in the first six months — even the first year — was considered tantamount to child abuse. Continue reading →

“People like you should be parents”: of Nadya Suleman, Alfie Patten, and well-meaning but problematic classism

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The octuplets born to Nadya Suleman came into the world on January 26, 22 days ago — and just three hours or so after our daughter was born. (And in Bellflower, a working-class Los Angeles County community some twenty miles away from us.) Our first child shares a birthday with the world’s first surviving group of eight babies born at once, and in the midst of all the hubbub and upheaval that goes with having a new addition, I’ve paid at least some attention to the coverage of Suleman and her (now) fourteen children. I’ve also noticed, more than I might otherwise, the coverage of the birth earlier this month of little Maisie in London — a girl whose father is apparently Alfie Patten, age 13.

Maisie and the Suleman octuplets have been welcomed into the world in the harsh light of the media glare and nearly-universal censure. The mental state of Nadya Suleman (a single woman who recently reported she has been celibate for eight years) and the foolhardiness of her fertility doctor have been much decried; Maisie’s arrival has been greeted with the not-particularly-original lamentation about how awful it is for “babies to have babies”. In the Suleman case, it’s that she’s had too many babies without a husband or the obvious means with which to provide for all of these children. In both the Patten and Suleman case, we’re dealing with folks who have been labelled “unfit” to be parents, and the orgy of hand-wringing commenceth.

I contrast these infamous stories with the reaction to the birth of baby Cerys, born as she is to a well-off, heterosexual married couple (husband in his early forties, wife in her mid-thirties). Baby Cerys was longed for and planned for and wished for, not only by her now-doting (if exhausted) mother and father, but also by an army of grandmothers and aunts and uncles and friends and cousins and even acquaintances. (One of our chinchillas, Ninotchka, regularly expressed enthusiasm by allowing my wife to hold her while she was pregnant, but only near the growing belly.) My growing family has been showered with love and with gifts and with warm words of praise, as if we have done something new and surprising and wonderful. Admittedly, many in my family “never thought they’d see the day” when the inconstant black sheep of his generation became such a devoted papa, but that surprise and delight at this change in me is only partly a reason for such enthusiasm.

My wife and I have been given a compliment many times in the past three weeks, sometimes with direct reference to the Suleman case. Both friends and family members have said to us: “You two are the sort of people who should be parents.” It’s a sentence loaded with meanings, only some of which may be intended by the many who have spoken and written it to us. What’s meant, at least by most, is that my wife and I are “ready” to be parents. We are in a stable relationship (married three and a half years, together for more than six). We are homeowners, employed, insured. We are certainly not young parents, but not so old that folks start to question whether we will be physically up to the challenges of raising small children. We are in good health physically, and at least for the past decade, mentally. We are planted in a strong and supportive spiritual community, and so on and so forth. And we’re feminists, which at least to a great many people is an encouraging sign in the parents of a newborn daughter.

It’s true that all of these things are helpful, though in and of themselves none of them are guarantors that we will be great parents. But I can’t help but hear a tinge of classism in at least some of the voices that have proffered this well-meaning phrase in one form or another. Though it is true that my wife and I are, of course, delightful human beings, I’m troubled by the implied comparison between us and the likes not only of Nadya Suleman or Alfie Patten, but all of the vast army of new parents who lack our educational background and financial good fortune. It’s hard to say “Hugo and Eira are the sort of people who should be parents” (the emphasis is generally the speaker’s) without wondering who it is that the person offering this insight thinks ought not to have reproduced.

Most of us think there’s something just a bit odd about Nadya Suleman. Most of us think having eight embryos implanted after having had six children is a bit unusual at best. And most of us think a thirteen year-old boy and fifteen year-old girl are woefully unready to be parents. But it’s not as if our sense of outrage and judgment is limited to the likes of these. The praise and encouragement lavished upon my wife and me is sometimes explicitly linked to a sense that we will have the resources to provide comfortably for Cerys and any other children whom we might have. Continue reading →

“The thoughts of six-hundred-pounders”: professional feminism, class privilege, and the responsibility to teach wisely and well

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Yesterday, I posted Lauren’s response at Faux Real Tho to Courtney’s Feministing piece on a day in the life of a feminist activist, and Ann’s, also at Feministing response to both. I’d rather that folks read the exchanges, but the best summary that I can offer is that these posts capture the stark reality of economic, geographic, and professional privilege — a reality made all the more stark by the dismal nature of the current global financial crisis. The discussion at Feministing (again, I highly recommend reading all the posts as well as the comment threads) has turned to what feminist life looks like in the current climate, with unemployment and under-employment and collapsing social services all around. It’s a sobering, as well as uplifting discussion.

This is in my head this morning as I read about the projected state budget deal which will strip $8 billion from California schools and community colleges. The bleak summary:

This month, tax refunds were suspended, along with payments to vendors and some welfare and college grants. And now much of state government is shutting down two days a month, furloughing most employees without pay.

Under the new budget agreement, cuts to other state services would be deep and long-lasting.

Schools and community colleges, which account for nearly half of all state spending, would lose nearly $8 billion. Only part of that would be backfilled by Washington. Several state requirements on how schools allocate their money — including on class size reduction — would be suspended for several years.

School officials say the plan could lead to the elimination of after-school activities, elective classes such as art and music, classroom supplies and thousands of teaching jobs.

Kevin Gordon, a lobbyist for school districts, said, “For the first time, people are really going to see tangible negative impacts from cuts.”

State colleges and universities, where tuition has been steadily rising for years, would lose $890 million.

Scheduled cost-of-living increases for public-assistance recipients would be canceled, and mental health and early childhood education programs created by voter-approved ballot initiatives would be cut by over $830 million. The state would cut spending on local public transit by $459 million.

My newborn daughter is, on her father’s mother’s side, a seventh-generation Californian. I am saddened to think that she will not know the California I knew growing up, just as my parents and grandparents were (I have been told many times) sad that I would never see what the Golden State looked like in their eras. The dream that brought my ancestors and my wife’s here — from places as disparate as Croatia and Colombia, Ulster and Illinois, Austria and the Piedmont — is not now what it was, nor is it likely to be so again.

But this is not the place for nostalgia. Frankly, I’m as concerned about my students as I am about my daughter. My classes are more crowded than ever before, as a changing economy sends more and more people desperate for new skills back to the community colleges for retraining. At the same time, middle-class parents who might once have been able to afford to pay for four years at university for their son or daughter now encourage their kids to spend two years at a far more affordable (if obscenely over-crowded) community college like my own PCC. And as always happens in an economic downturn, state services are cut at precisely the same moment that demand for those services increases.

In thinking about what Ann and Lauren and Courtney are blogging about, I think about my role as a gender studies professor and feminist educator. Should how I teach — and what I teach — change, at least in some way, to address the current crisis? I take great pride, and have for years, in the number of my former students who go on to major in Women’s Studies or Gender Studies in part because of what they got out of my classes. I’ve always held that students should major in something they love, rather than something that they think will get them a job. I’ve preached the (at best, optimistic, at worst, criminally misleading) mantra that “If you do what you love, the money will follow.” That was always a questionable proposition, particularly for those students who don’t have access to the kinds of networks which traditionally provide the social and financial capital with which to turn dreams into a sustainable living. Is it even more of a questionable proposition now, as we face what could be a prolonged recession with potentially massive unemployment?

Pursuing Gender Studies as a major is obviously no guarantor of financial security. But neither is a degree in finance; look at the massive layoffs in the banking industry. A career in construction is no more promising, nor a career in real estate. (If I had a dollar for every student I knew who was working on a real estate license during the peak of the housing boom between 2004-06, I’d be able to take an entire class to lunch.) When I was an undergraduate, with the Cold War still the defining global dynamic and with Reagan in office, many people I knew at Cal were studying aerospace engineering. They figured on a never-ending buildup of arms and materiel to confront the Soviet Union; the “smart money” said a career preparing for the defense industry was a sure thing. The Berlin Wall came down five months after I graduated college, and for the next dozen years, aerospace jobs were shed like dog hair. The point is an obvious one: for a student in her late teens, looking ahead to four or five decades in the work force, there is no major at college that will guarantee a steady and reliable income. In times of great instability, a major in something “impractical” like history or women’s studies makes no less sense than anything else. It is not, I insist, irresponsible to point so many undergraduates towards academic gender work.

But I worry that my own privilege may lead me to give poor advice. Continue reading →

Plus ça change… the more work remains to be done

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Men’s Rights Activists are eager to make the case that divorce and family custody laws in Britain and the USA discriminate against men. The Guardian reports today otherwise:

Divorce makes men – and particularly fathers – significantly richer. When a father separates from the mother of his children, according to new research, his available income increases by around one third. Women, in contrast, suffer severe financial penalties. Regardless of whether she has children, the average woman’s income falls by more than a fifth and remains low for many years.

The research was carried out by Professor Stephen Jenkins, a director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and chair of the Council of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth.

His survey, Marital Splits and Income Changes over the Longer Term, is the first to track the changing wealth levels in Britain associated with a marriage breakdown.