Who Dat?

And that’s pretty much all I’ma say about the Super Bowl…I was gonna write something that had to do with the Super Bowl, but I’ma keep it real…I don’t get into football like that…although I know the Saints will be marching in by the end of the day…How can they lose with a name like that?

So after I saw the third article on this topic, I knew I had to discuss it here on this blog…In one article I read, former Us Weekly Editor-In-Chief Janice Min made more in one paycheck than her husband made in a whole year!!!(Apparently, she made roughly $2 million a year…I would say that is PHENOMENAL for a journalist. READ: Can I get somma dat some day?) According to an article in The New York Times, more men are likely to marry women who earn more money than they do than ever before according to Pew Research Center data….NPR,  in another article,  “Modern Marriages: The Rise of The Sugar Mama,” explored the same topic using the same data. In this article, one husband is married to a woman who works at the same company as he does — except she is two management levels above him. And THREE of his wife’s brothers are in a similar situation…Below is an interesting excerpt from the same article…

“I think this is really an example of an outdated idea,” says Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage: A History. Coontz says that in a 1967 poll, two-thirds of women said they’d consider marrying a man they did not love if he had good earnings potential.

“Now, women have a completely different point of view,” Coontz says. “They say overwhelmingly — 87 percent — that it’s more important to have a man who can communicate well, who can be intimate and who will share the housework than to have someone who makes more money than you do.”

So how do y’all feel about that? Could you marry a man who makes less than you do? A friend and I were discussing relationships yesterday as we often do. We talked about how some of us who are still in the game (the dating game) still tout money as one of the main qualities that a eligible man must have. She said the term “love” rarely comes up as a quality – meaning that women rarely talk about a man loving them as an important quality. She cited a Bible verse…

 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33

In sum, husbands are commanded to love their wives, and women are commanded to respect their husbands…So I wonder if women need to look at love as the most important quality to look for in a man…But then again, some women may not be able to respect a man if his earning potential is less than hers…

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.  I Timothy 5:18

Now to be fair, providing for your household does not mean that you have to make more in my opinion. It does means that you have to provide your share…But some women may interpret that verse as meaning that a man must make more money than they do…What do you think? What do I think…

Well, when I was in j-school (journalism school), I found out pretty quickly that journalism was not one of the careers you chose if you are simply trying to get paid…People typically become journalists become they love the written word and have an insatiable curiousity. (READ: Me in a nutshell.) And now that our country is in its current economic state, journalism, as y’all probably know,  has become even less lucrative across the board…With that in mind, would it make sense for me to marry a man that makes less than I do…I’m honestly not sure…but judging from what I’ve seen in the news, some of the world’s richest, most powerful men make the worst husbands…And then again, just because a man is not rich and powerful doesn’t mean that he’s a keeper either…

Any thoughts?

To honor Black History Month, I will offer a memorable quote from someone in black history on each post I write this month…

“No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.”  Alice Walker….(Did y’all know that Alice Walker has a blog?)

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