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| From the Editor: Worthy Notions |
Against the Ingrained
Dwight Cass
07/01/2004
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This is not
an isolated problem. James E. Hughes Jr., an attorney and wealth issues advisor,
explains that, as wealth continues to become distributed more evenly between the
sexes (unlike, for example, in the early days of the 20th century, when it was
overwhelmingly held by men), these problems will, in fact, become more
prevalent.
Affluent women bear a heavy burden in these relationships. They
must find a way to respect their spouses despite the financial inequity and all
the social baggage that it entails. To succeed, they must be able to set the
money issues aside, and focus on the other types of capital each partner brings
to the relationship.
Since the problem is rooted in expectations concerning
each partner’s financial role in the marriage, we need to pay more attention to
how those expectations are formed—through personal experience, social and class
mores and perhaps even a bit of biology.
Jaqueline Merrill, a facilitator of
seminars for women and couples who herself is in relationship of this nature,
agrees, but believes the solution lies less in our stars than in ourselves. “I
tend to place more hope on the capacity of the individual to become conscious
than I do on sociological change,” she says. “I think it is very important for
people to see where the fossilized vestiges of earlier ideas about class and
class values exist, so they can move on.”
Dwight Cass
Editor-in-Chief
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