My wife earns more than me – and it doesn’t feel great

This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would be the point. And how annoying that some people would call it ‘brave’, meaning shameful.

I’ve always earned a lot less money than my wife. There, I’ve said it. Is that still a big deal these days, a difficult thing to admit? Yes and no – and the ambiguity is rather interesting. Our culture claims to be liberated from old stereotypes about gender roles. But is it hell. Even its progressive urban elite is ruled by stubborn visceral traditionalism when it comes to gender and money.

I’m prompted to share these thoughts by a news story. An economist at Durham University called Demid Getik conducted a study of 20,000 Swedish couples to see whether ‘expectations about breadwinners’ have been changed by egalitarianism. He found that husbands who are out-earned by their wives are 11 per cent more likely to have mental health problems. ‘It seems like there is a certain preference still to have the male in the family earning more,’ Getik said.

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I texted my wife the story, adding the words ‘No shit’. She replied with a laughing-crying emoji. She is too busy at work to write long texts. I was idling my day away in a public library before doing a few hours’ teaching.

When we got together in our late twenties, 25 years ago, the writing was already on the wall. I had just finished a PhD in theology, which is the career equivalent of cutting your legs off before starting a running race. She had tried being a teacher, then drifted into a job at a design and marketing company, which felt a bit random and strange to her, but she found she could do it, so she got on with it.