I’ve been reading The Feminine Mystique for the first time, by Betty Friedan. First published in 1963, Friedan creates a much more reachable picture of the 1950s housewife. She felt the mystique herself – the “something missing” beyond roles as wife and mother. If you haven’t read it, as Arianna Huffington quips on the cover of a newer version, read it now. I’m pretty early on in the book, so I’m certainly not providing a synopsis here, but rather, I want to expand on something that struck me – the concept of Feminine Morality.

We know that women have always been held to standards that are different than men. When I was in high school in the 1990s (It is crazy that I have to put the 19 in front of that and think of it as a long ago century), the double standard was sex. Boys were “supposed” to want and have sex. Girls were supposed to ward it off at all costs. This is not so different from, well, all past centuries – but it’s what I grew up in, so give me a minute.

Obviously my Baptist upbringing added a lot of rules around sexual morality, mostly that girls should do nothing to tempt the boys, like wear tight clothing. We weren’t supposed to dance, either. Literally. There was a sign in our Fellowship Hall that listed the rules of using the space, and No Dancing was one of three. For extra confusion, my identity was ‘dancer.’ I grew up tap dancing, I took ballet and jazz and poms, I was a cheerleader and then on our dance team. We just held that tension in my family I guess – just don’t bring it up with the church folk. But set aside the dancing – the outfits alone were enough to put me in the “OMG” category of women.

This sexual morality issue was a huge theme throughout my life. The evangelical church of my 20s and early 30s preached intimacy in marriage directly from the pulpit, not to mention a super uncomfortable premarital primer class. Yikes. But prior to marriage, well, women were not to even be thinking about sex. There were far bigger issues to deal with, like finding a life partner and kowtowing to his masculinity (no matter the lack of it in actual fact). I see this so far back in everything I read and watch and hear – society is always of two minds about women. The Madonna or the Whore. The Housewife or the Career Woman. It’s always either/or, and you carry a scarlet A in the latter category. If you think this is no longer the case for women, just pull up instagram and search for #tradwife and you’ll see.

What does this have to do with money? Well, as I see it, both sex and money are representations of one thing – POWER. Call it power, control, leadership, what have you, but sex and money go hand in hand with it. Money, and its control by the male of the species, keeps women in their rightful places of wife and mother.

But society doesn’t really work this way now. You really can’t run a household on one income in most echelons of society, and so the morality of women has to shift. We must be out in the big scary world, to be earning money for our family to thrive. But that means that women now have some power, some control over the money that they bring into the household, gasp. I know there are still families in which the money is turned over to the husband for safekeeping, but in mine, this has shifted entirely. And I have to say, as much as I adore being the breadwinner of the household, the feeling of the power being somehow in my hands, the shame that comes with it is some days almost too much to bear.

This whipsaw effect is real. My generation was that of the latchkey kid, so we do understand what it’s like to have two working parents. In my family though, my mom worked when she needed and had to, but my dad was certainly the breadwinner and my mom, she was there for us in everything we did. She picked up, she chauffeured to dance and theater and gymnastics and twirling and competitions and parades and recitals. She made dinner. She only kind of escaped the #tradwife route when necessary for financial demands (mostly all those dance classes). My maternal grandmother, however, worked in a factory for a lot of her life. I know this drove my mom to want to stay at home, which in turn drives me to get the hell out of the house every day and work. When my kids were really little and I started letting them pick their own outfits for preschool and didn’t “fix” their hair, my mom once quipped to me that she never had her hair fixed like the other girls at school, because her mom worked. The insinuation being that I was letting my girls run the risk of being social pariahs due to their lack of hairstyle. When I snapped back with “THEIR MOM WORKS!” I honestly think it surprised her to hear this information. In her mind, I am the generation that should be able to do both. In American society’s mind, this is what rings true. Women should be able to do both. The double edged sword of feminine morality strikes again.

I know that work like mine, earnings like mine, are a privilege that is a result of privilege. I was able to attend college, get a degree (with debt), and climb the rungs that women had been putting in place for a while now (though many women burned those rungs right behind them, but that’s a separate topic). But with that privilege and the inherent power of being the breadwinner, there is a responsibility that I fear I wasn’t raised to bear. There are things we have to deal with that men just… didn’t. Ever. The masculine/feminine dynamic, for one. My husband is pretty darn masculine – he’s a football coach for Pete’s sake. But I don’t dare bring up the financial inequality in our house – it’s an incredibly taboo subject. My job, one of many wifely duties, says the church and great swaths of American society, is to preserve and elevate his masculinity. Also, when my husband contributes to the running of the household, which he does in spades, it’s still considered “helping” by many people. What a great husband he is, how lucky I am, that he will do these things for me. I’m pretty sure people don’t say that when the wife does the cooking and the dishes and picks up the kids after school. Eve Rodsky has nailed this whole subject in her book Fair Play.

So here I am with the money. Here I am running the household finances. Here I am paying the bills, deciding what gets saved and of that, what gets invested. As a high school science teacher, my husband couldn’t care less about where the money goes, and I love that he has this mindset 75% of the time. But I’m lonely in these money decisions. I’m carrying immense guilt that 10 years into our marriage, we don’t have liquid savings comparable to our friends. We are fine and well above the average American household, but if we expect to retire and live off of our portfolio at age 55, then I’ve failed by all definitions to prepare us for that outcome. And I’m alone in having done that, because I’m the one driving the bus here. I pick the trips, the vacations, the cars, the classes for the girls, the extras. I buy too many clothes. I, I, I… I am responsible. I try to bring him in, I really do – but I see this as a Financial Planner all the time. One spouse is the money person. The other wants to be anywhere but in that meeting talking about money, and their eyes glaze over. It’s totally normal – but it’s usually the wife who is ready to get the hell out of there.

I don’t have the answers, but I want to be part of turning the tide. I want my daughters to feel empowered by their finances and by their knowledge of how to make good decisions. I want them to be free of a false construct of ‘morality’ in money. This means my script has to change too. I don’t need to hide in the basement in my spreadsheets and hide my money decisions like my mom hid the shopping bags. I have to bring it into the light, I have to engage my partner. I say to clients all the time – you don’t have to know how the watch is made, but you do have to know what time it is. My family needs to know what time it is, and like it or not, I’m the one with the power here, and as a result, the responsibility.

I know I’m not alone in these feelings. If you feel them too, I would love to talk to you. I have experienced what you are going through, and I’m ready to listen, right here.