The Trials of the 21st Century Wife

By Alessandra Whitney, Sirens Magazine. Posted March 12, 2009.

It’s not easy being a wife.

Eight years ago, my friend Olivia was planning her wedding. She and her boyfriend Jack had been together for seven years, living together for four. He had proposed on millennium eve, and they’d spent more than a year organizing a lavish party across the country, where most of her large family lives.

However, two months before the big event, with most of the details in place, she called me. "I don’t think I can get married," she said.

"Well, that’s okay," I said, snapping into automatic support mode. "You don’t have to. There’s no reason you should marry Jack if you don’t think he’s right for you. Better to realize that now … "

"No, that’s not it," she cut me off in mid-support. "It’s not Jack. I just don’t want to be married. I don’t want to be a wife. I don’t want to have the kind of marriage my parents have."

I’ve known Olivia for almost 20 years now, and have met quite a few members of her family. They are from the Mediterranean, and conservative. Girls in the family are expected to become wives and mothers, and make that their priority. Though both Olivia’s mother and grandmother (on Olivia’s father’s side) had advanced college degrees, neither made careers of them. One cousin, Olivia once told me, is a cancer researcher who is making inroads in curing the dreaded disease. But whenever this cousin goes home for a visit, her family won’t stop berating her for being single and childless.

Olivia, a rebel from way back, shocked her parents when she and Jack started living together. Her mother took to calling her long-distance, tearfully quoting Dr. Laura Schlessinger. When Olivia and Jack finally got engaged, she stopped. And it became Olivia’s turn to worry about what she was getting into.

Olivia wound up marrying Jack, but I don’t think I quite understood the depth of her concern until I got married five years later. That’s when I truly understood what a socially fraught term "wife" is, and how, despite the dynamics of my own relationship -- and I find myself happily married to a wonderful man going on three years now -- it is often difficult and tiresome to deal with such baggage.

And lately, as the economy quakes and the feminist backlash continues, I worry that the progress wives have made will vanish. True, wifedom has changed in the last century. Just ask Gloria Steinem, who got married at age 63, saying she thought society had made enough strides that an equal partnership between husbands and wives is now possible.

She wasn’t kidding that progress had been made -– but that’s mostly because there was no where to go but up. Until the 1850s in this former British colony (English women had to wait until 1882), married women could not own property. Additionally, any money they had before the marriage (usually through inheritance or dowries) went to their husbands. A married couple was considered "one person," and that "one person" wasn’t female. He had total legal control, and that included any children, who inevitably went to him if she wanted out of the marriage even though, in most cases, he was definitely not the primary caregiver.

For all the supposed status having a husband gave you back then (and even now, since as girls we are still socialized to think our greatest achievement is to get married), it seems the only way to be your own person was to be a spinster (with its contemptuous tinge) or a widow. If you were a widow, you’d also better hope dear departed hubby hadn’t spent all your money. And if you had sons, your financial future pretty much depended on their mercy, since they had full inheritance rights -- not you.

In spite of that crucial law change (we’ve got Elizabeth Cady Stanton, among other early feminists, to thank for that), the whole "one person" concept of marriage lingers in 2009. I still get an icky feeling when I get mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Only His Name. In fact, one big wife issue from the start is whether you should take your husband’s name. I changed mine. First, I used it socially and professionally, and, just recently, legally. But many others hang onto their maiden name as a symbolic way of maintaining their identity in wifedom.

"I liked [my name]," says Monica, a management consultant who married her boyfriend of 12 years last year. "It was mine. Why casually set it aside, especially after 30-plus years? I like that by keeping it, people I’ve known over the years and who I’ve ‘lost’ can find me and reconnect online. There are people I’ve looked for, but can’t find due to name changes, and that’s really a shame."

Nina, an attorney who married her college sweetheart 15 years ago, also kept her name for identity reasons. "I felt I’d worked hard for my degrees," she says, "and wanted to keep them all in the name I’d earned them in. And also [I wanted to feel] that I was more than just ‘Mrs. Him.’"

Olivia kept her family name for "ethnic pride reasons." Her husband is from Northern Europe, and his last name is very different linguistically from hers. As someone who takes pride in her culture, even as she despairs of its sexism, Olivia couldn’t give up that part of her heritage. Interestingly, Olivia says her usually traditional father seemed "secretly proud" of her decision. Her mother was another story, though. And then there was Jack, who, for all his belief in marital equality, was put out by his wife’s unwillingness to take his name.

See more stories tagged with: gender, women, marriage, men, child care, wife, housework

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Sex and Relationships! Sign up now »