Why money matters even when it seems not to

Why don’t you marry a plumber Kellie? —-> The intended headline for this post…

Sometime last year, one of my good married (male) friends was doing his kind act of the day; helping me get married. Married friends always do the most to help their single friends get married, bless their hopeless souls. So this friend asked me why I haven’t considered dating a plumber, or a fundi(general repairs guy), or even a construction worker. According to him, career women* in America date plumbers etc all the time and they marry them, Kenyan career women* need to stop being as picky.

Ok. Let us ignore the shallow disparities between the US and the Kenyan economies for a minute, and let’s talk about practical reasons why I haven’t married a plumber… For the record, the closest a construction worker has come to asking me out is shouting sexist comments to me while I’m out running. 😀

Money is important…especially when you have a family

Millenials (and I am one of them) do not like to hear this. We are romantics. We talk about the meaning and purpose of life, finding yourself, then finding your passion etc etc. That is all ok, but nothing kills this romanticism faster than having a family.

Getting children means paying a lot more for stuff. Last year while doing my budget analysis, I was shocked to realize I had spent upwards of 150,000 shillings to insure my 1.5-person family and my jalopy. I spent 150,000 bob on covering ourselves in case bad things happen, none of which happened thankfully. Then I spent a lot more to ensure we had a roof over our heads, that the .5 person was in school and clothed, that we had food, and that our staff of 1 helper was paid.

Very few Kenyan families have one child , so you can imagine how much more expensive life is for them. People get kids, then figure out finances later, which I guess is ok, though my approach is to decide the standard of life I want, the realities of my income, then have the number of kids I can afford at that standard of life and income level. I have been asked why I do not have a second child, and the reason is very simple; I cannot afford it right now. Whatever your approach, most rational people appreciate that a family is expensive to have, more so in Kenya where we do not have social structures to speak of. Jobs are no longer guaranteed for a lifetime, and should things go wrong, falling back on public healthcare/education system is no longer an option. They do not work any more.

More and more career men* are looking for partners who match their income levels, and we are applauding them for this. It is a rational, sane decision! Why then is it wrong for a career woman* to desire a man who makes as much or even more than she does? Money is important.

A family = more work for the woman

Our society has made a lot of progress in ensuring that women have more opportunities in the work place, but I’m afraid we have not made much progress in the home front.

I am ok marrying a successful woman as long as she’s a CEO at work, but a wife at home

This is a popular statement with pseudo-progressive men. Being a “wife at home” means, assuming your role as the home manager, ensuring food is cooked (the ambitious ones expect you to cook it yourself), that the children are clean, fed, well behaved and out of the way by evening, that the home is clean etc, and doing as much as you can to make you spouse feel comfortable about the fact that you earn more/you have a superior career. Basically, as a woman, you are the primary caregiver and home manager, no matter your status at work. You may delegate some of this work to a house help/chef/whatever, but it is your KPI (Key performance indicator), you are responsible for it, you will be judged for it.

There are very few Kenyan (African) homes where the man takes the lead on the home front. Even where the woman is the breadwinner, or she has the busier career, she still has to be the “wife” at home, and in cases where the man “helps”, it is with the understanding that this is temporary, and that she should be super grateful that he’s helping with work that is supposed to be hers.

The same expectation of gratitude is however absent on the bread-winning side; the man isn’t expected to be grateful that his wife is picking up the bills, in fact, her role as a wife is to be as careful as possible not to hurt his ego about paying bills. Men are not expected to desire to be caregivers, or to not want corner offices. A man who chooses to lead on the home front is seen as lazy. We (society) have socialized our men to attach their self worth to the money they bring in, and this makes it incredibly hard for women to be married to men who earn less. Men have not been socialized to view childcare and home management as their duty as human beings who; 1. played a role in the child coming to earth, and 2. also need to eat and wear clean clothes just like women.

Can you see why a reasonably intelligent woman would just rather hold out for a man who matches or exceeds her income, even when money is not an issue?

If the woman is going to be expected to add “Home Manager” and “Soother of Ego” on her job description, in addition to “Work Manager”* at work, then there has to be some sort of payback for the extra effort right?

What I write about above is true for most Kenyan career women* homes, but is not true for all homes in the world. This week on the newsletter, we discuss cases where men took over at home, to enable women pursue their careers and how that has worked out for them. If you haven’t signed up to my weekly newsletter, please do so.