Reversal of fortune
IRELAND is no longer a country where women are expected to stay at home while men provide for them. But have the social changes of the past two decades been entirely positive? The 2011 Pfizer Health Index says 36% of working women are the sole earners for their households. What pressure does this place on these women? Does it affect their relationships with their husbands/partners? What impact has it on family?
Niamh Bonner, from Athenry in Galway, knows about being the breadwinner. She met her husband David when they were students in the UK, 23 years ago. They pooled their money. “We always had a joint account,” she says. “It’s never been a case of ‘this is my money and this is yours’.” They had equivalent salaries until they moved to Ireland in 2000. Since then, David has moved from job to job while nurse Niamh has been the main earner.
“He’s had lots of jobs but the collapse of the economy and an injury caused him to lose them all,” says Niamh.
David was jobless for two years. The couple don’t have children but David did the household chores, though not as Niamh anticipated. “Men don’t see what needs doing,” she says. “They don’t see the piles of washing in the corner. If you give them a list of things to do, they’ll do it. If you don’t, you’ll come home and be disappointed. And then you’ll nag.”
Their friends teased David for being a ‘kept man’ but Niamh says this didn’t affect him. “He wasn’t embarrassed,” she says. “He’s English and doesn’t have an Irish mammy. It might have been different if he’d been Irish.”
Niamh’s mother influenced how she views money and work. “She raised six of us and never worked outside the home,” says Niamh. “This meant she always had to ask our father for money and now has no pension of her own. The one thing she wanted was for us to have our own money. That’s rubbed off on me. I want to work.”
David wants to work, and does in Dublin two days a week, in a job that benefits him more than it does the household finances. “What with the petrol and cost of being in Dublin, he’d probably be better off if he didn’t work” says Niamh. “But he’d miss it if he stayed at home.”
Niamh and David have adjusted their finances. “He’s earned more than me in the past,” says Niamh. “It all balances out in the end.”
The recession forced Alison O’Neill to rethink her plans for her family. She and her husband, Niall, live in Dundrum in Dublin with their two-year-old son, Ruadhán. She intended to return to part-time work in social care after her maternity leave, while Niall worked full-time as a cabinet maker. He lost his job. “I have been the sole earner for the past year or so,” says Alison. “I am out at work an average of 50 hours a week and Niall looks after Ruadhán.”
Their situation turns convention on its head but this is not what bothers Alison. She resents not spending more time with her son. “I wanted to care for our son and there are times when I’ve been angry about the collapse of the building industry, which resulted in Niall losing his job and my being forced out to work when I felt I should be at home with Ruadhán,” she says.
Alison just wants more time to be a mother. “There are times I feel hard done by, having to be the one out at work, having to shoulder that responsibility and not having a choice,” she says.
Alison and Niall have done their best to adjust. “The way we look at it is we’re both working,” says Alison. “It’s just that I leave the house and get paid for what I do.”
This means they make financial decisions together. They try to share the housework, though this can cause arguments. “Let’s just say there have been heated discussions,” says Alison. “But, as time goes by, we are getting closer to being happy with the sharing of the workload.”
They share the childcare, too. “We wanted one of us to be at home with him until he starts primary school,” says Alison.
“If it can’t be me, Niall is the best person Ruadhán can be with and I try to spend as much time with him as I can. I play with him in the mornings before I go to work and I put him to bed at night.”
It’s the lack of choice in Alison’s life that bothers her. “It’s a cruel torture having to leave your baby,” she says.
“There are days when Ruadhán is under the weather or my work is very demanding, and I think I should be at home looking after my own child instead of looking after other people’s.”
Alison feels for people in similar circumstances. “Do what suits you best,” she says. “Don’t be too hard on yourselves for the decisions you make. It’s tough when you only have one salary to live on.”
Bríd Carter’s husband, Paddy, had to learn to adapt to a role reversal in their relationship. There were occasions when he was referred to by her surname instead of by his own.
“His name is O’Dwyer and he really didn’t like it when he was referred to as Mr Carter,” says Bríd.
Based in Phibsboro in Dublin, Bríd and Paddy have been married for 20 years, and during that time their financial situation changed significantly.
“I worked in the public sector and Paddy was a tour guide,” says Bríd. “Our incomes were roughly equal when we met, but four promotions later I was chief executive of a small State body and earning four times what he was.”
The couple have now retired and are drawing their pensions. Hers is far greater than his.
So, what does Paddy feel about the fact he is not the main breadwinner in his household? “I don’t think he ever felt threatened by it,” says Bríd. “It might be because it happened over time. It wasn’t a sudden change. My husband was always proud of me and the more income coming into our house, the more comfortable our lives were.”
Paddy did have a problem with Bríd being too assertive.
“There were times I took more decisions than he was comfortable with,” says Bríd. “But I think that had more to do with my being chief executive than with me earning more money. I’d bring that decisive attitude home with me and he’d have to say: ‘Bríd, you’re not at work now, you know’,” she says.
There were also times when he thought she was spending too much on clothes and shoes. “He never said anything, but I did get some raised eyebrows,” she says. “If he had said anything, I’d just have said that it was my own money I was spending and I could spend it as I liked.”
Bríd says the fact that they shared a bank account helped to make life easier. “The money I was earning was available to him too,” she says.
It also helped that there were no arguments about household chores, because they had enough money to pay for a cleaner. The only problem Bríd had was that she felt their situation placed pressure on her.
“I felt trapped in the traditional man’s role,” she says. “I had to continue to bring in the money. I couldn’t take time out to focus on other things or go part-time. It just wasn’t possible.”
Overall, though, Bríd doesn’t regret her situation or feel it had any detrimental impact on her relationship.
“Maybe it depends on how important money is to you,” she says. “But for us, it wasn’t really an issue.”
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