The financial burden

and what drives it?

So following last week’s article, I put up a poll and some questions on my social media regarding who should take the financial burden in the relationship. What answers came up, made me rethink all my own opinions and gave me a fresh perspective to look at things.

Firstly, I realised that many factors affect how the financial burden in the home is perceived. Culture, religion, people’s past experiences, class, gender, and most of all, how respectful the relationship is in general make all the difference. Men had two distinct opinions, either sharing equally or only the men to provide. This was completely dependent on where they were in life and how much financial stability they had.

For women, I think it was more interesting and complex. Following culture, a woman said it’s only the men who are supposed to provide. Another clarified how her mum had begun providing at home and that encouraged the father to completely let go of any responsibilities - I have seen that happen much more commonly than not. When women don’t go out to work and bring money, they are responsible for running the home, looking after the kids, and making sure everyone’s needs and preferences are met through their food, laundry, schedules, etc etc. For which the opposite is not true. A stay-at-home dad (which also is so looked down upon in many cultures) either just stays at home and does nothing or does the bare minimum. I knew of a friend whose husband was a stay-at-home dad and did manage the house most of the time, but the wife still had to meal prep for the whole week, do the laundry on weekends, set timetables for the children, etc.

You then have women talking about sharing the financial load in some share or another. Like some taking over savings and vacations, others share equally and others share proportionately to how they work. One thing common I noticed in all of these was some kind of understanding between the partners. Communication, respect and understanding are of course the main ingredients in any good partnership.

The other most disturbing part of the questions was the lack of agency. There were some relationships where women either were forced to work or faced emotional and mental abuse for not helping out in the house or were forced to stay home and sacrifice their careers completely. This is sometimes also true for men, who are emotionally and mentally abused for not bringing in enough money or working. What I see at play here is the ingrained patriarchy where we assume roles for a certain gender rather than personal relationships and how they would work.

So next time, before you get into a debate of who should pay for what, I think we can ask how much are we willing to communicate, respect and understand our partners to talk about these sensitive but important conversations.

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