*Very sweet comment Fred Lapides!

I’d forgotten Mr and Mrs Gardiner in “Pride and Prejudice”. He is, indeed, in the City though not specified as what. He is clearly successful and the Gardiners are among the few in Austen’s novels who have a truly happy marriage and family. There are children, I recall. I wonder if that is the first example in English literature of an admirable businessman. There aren’t many. Hmm, I think this is going OT.

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.

Another ingredient for a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first!

(source)

His position was basically just that he’d love to have time to research the question. My position – because I’ll jump to such things – was that I think we’re in the earliest stages of the end of a major transition. (Got that?) Adding a second person in some families to the workforce gave those families more money to spend, initially. As more families followed suit, the addition of that second full-time worker became an inflationary pressure, ISTM (and to him). There was a lot of talk in the ’80s and ’90s about how a family just couldn’t survive on one income, and somewhat less talk about what constituted “survival.”

Back in the late ’90s, my husband and I each made just over $40,000 a year. We lived near downtown Seattle and had a mortgage and some student loans but no other debt. We’d undertaken an effort to fund our 401(k)s as fully as possible over about three years, so that if it became difficult or impossible for us to keep funding them at some point, we’d have the biggest possible nest egg as early as possible. When I found I was pregnant with our first, we started setting aside one of our four two-week paychecks a month, plus both “extra” paychecks that result from being on a two-week pay schedule each year, toward enabling one of us to stay home for at least a year after our child was born: we stopped buying anything we didn’t actually need and economized wherever we could. We succeeded in our goal, and listened to friends in our same educational and economic bracket tell us for years afterward how “lucky” we were to have had the chance to stay home with our baby.

So – the transition: I think maybe the pendulum is swinging back to a realization that family life is much easier if only one partner works full-time while children are in the mix, but it’s no longer taken for granted that the husband is that one partner. All my evidence is anecdotal. But I hope I’m right!

Thanks for your observation. Wentworth isn’t rich, but he did become successful because of the virtues the heroine had seen in him – and her family, looking only at money, had not (as I remember, it’s been a while). The aunt and uncle, making their money in trade, modelled a good marriage when the Bennett girls were exposed to few others.

I can’t remember where I read a blog that examined the Palin’s quite transparent financial statements; a financial planner was impressed that Todd Palin put money into long-term savings at an early age and both seemed to have a handle on planning in terms of their future and their children. Such planning prepares for the most important choice – a child.

Franklin’s advice on that kind of thing was useful, not because he believed in thrift (though he did) but because he understood that “an empty bag can’t stand upright.” A spouse who requires a series of bailouts from parents, who must dodge creditors, who destroyd the family’s credit so mortgages will be hard (and expensive) to get is either undisciplined or stupid. The family is placed in situations that endanger its integrity. On the other hand, if you have a nest egg and live under your income, you can resist pressures and even take gambles.

But they are not all Mr Darcy or even Mr Knightley. Captain Wentworth in “Persuasion” is a naval officer who becomes well off from prize money. Not terribly rich. Henry Tilney in “Northanger Abbey” is a vicar though his father is fairly rich so he will eventually inherit. The wet young man in “Mansfield Park” who marries the equally wet Fanny Price is a vicar and a younger son – will inherit but little. And so on, and so on. Riches do not really come into it.

I for one am married to what I lovingly call “an old-fashioned Good Provider.” I value this not only because our family is well-provided-for. Mostly because it is so interrelated with the character aspects I cherish: unselfish, resilient, uncomplaining, takes risks and tests and applies himself over time. It is a kind of male “nurturing,” and I tend just naturally to puzzlement whenever men suggest either they shouldn’t have to undertake such a classic character-building adventure, or that women shouldn’t appreciate it. Property, inherited or earned, is a good forum for such demonstrations of virtue; but men of property who offer only property are best avoided by the wise woman.

If modern men think they run into too many gold-diggers, they should both look for women with better values (churches contra bars), and develop their own presence and impact in the world. That pincer strategy should improve matters.

Would these novels & movies be as popular as they are with a female readership? Really?