Female Supremacy Articles - Page 9

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New York Magazine

November 17, 2003 (edited for length)

After dropping off their children at their East Side private school one morning, Betsy and another mother shared a secret. "It was one of those things where you circle around each other," Betsy remembers. "I assumed they had a pretty conventional marriage."

By that she means, as with most of the other families at the school, the other woman's husband was a chest-beating breadwinner who set off for Wall Street each morning in his Town Car to bring home the six- or seven-figure bacon. Or, alternatively, both husband and wife slaved away at medium-to-high-powered jobs, neglecting their children, to pay for the August rental in the Hamptons and their $25,000-per-kid tuition bills.

The embarrassing truth the other mother confided to Betsy was that she was her family's sole support. She worked in advertising while her spouse, an "artist"predominantly in his own imagination, since he had not a single gallery show nor even a commission to show for his talentputtered around the house. "She kind of indicated they were living on her money, and I was surprised," Betsy says. And perhaps a little relieved. Betsy thought she was the only mother in their grade supporting a stay-at-home husband.