London - After a week of racking up airmiles across Europe as an HR director for one of the world’s biggest multinational corporations, Karen Rivoire was finally home.
As she kicked off her shoes and prepared to relax with a gin and tonic, she could hear her husband Damien - a full-time dad - in the kitchen preparing a meal for their sons.
As usual, he had collected their three boys, aged between six and 12, from school, helped with their homework and would shortly be putting them to bed.
But as she scrolled through her Blackberry messages, Karen, a former boss at Unilever, admits one thought crossed her mind.
“I realised I’d become the man I wouldn’t have wanted to marry.
“Damien was so good on the home front, as a mother I was superfluous. He dealt with everything from cleaning to the household budget, booking the holidays and even putting pictures in the photo albums.
“He is such a brilliant chef, that if I cooked a meal, the boys would groan. Thanks to Damien, the house worked perfectly well without me.”
For Karen, that prompted a conflict of emotions. On the one hand, she was delighted her husband was running the family’s home life so well. On the other, the reversal of traditional gender roles made her feel insufficient as a wife.
“Damien is trained as a business coach, but out of the two of us I make more money, so we agreed five years ago the best way for us to make headway was for him to care for Elliott, Jules and Tristan and me continue to work.”
Though it was the best decision financially for the family, Karen admits that personally it has required her to make certain sacrifices.
“There have been times when I have abused the arrangement and worked like a mad woman, 22 hours a day, because I knew Damien was handling everything at home,” she says.
“I also know there are years I have lost with my children that I can never get back. But I always appreciate that the boys are happy with their dad, because he is the one better suited to staying at home - and it works for us.”
Just ten years ago, Karen’s domestic arrangements would have been exceptional. Now, across the nation, more women than ever are finding themselves in her shoes.
In one of the most seismic shifts of our time, a quarter of women in the UK are now their family’s main breadwinner - five times the number at the start of the Seventies, according to Oxford University research.
It’s also the future for a generation of women who have just entered the workforce. A study released last week, by the Universities and College Admission Service, found that twenty-something women are now out-earning men of the same age.
While the number of working men has dropped from 92 percent to 78 percent, the number of working women has rocketed from 56 percent to 70 percent.
At the same time, women’s earnings have soared 44 percent, compared with six percent for men.
What started out as a slow-burn in the past few decades is now careering forward at breakneck speed due to the “man-cession” - the economic trend in the UK and US resulting in more men losing their jobs than women.
But as we enter uncharted territory between the sexes, a new book reveals the biggest challenge faced by women is not in the office - but at home. For the new alpha women, the most important negotiations are not so much with their colleagues - but with partners about how to make it all work.
It can be a difficult challenge, according to business coach Dr Suzanne Doyle-Morris, author of Female Breadwinners: How They Make Relationships Work.
Over months of interviews with female high-flyers, she found that while an increasing number of men are delighted for their wives to bring home the income, others nurse deep-seated resentments at being forced out of traditional alpha-males roles. For many, it remains a taboo subject.
Dr Doyle-Morris says: “In previous generations, a man would show up and everything would be taken care of by his wife, from the children to the housework.
“As long as he held on to his job, he was doing right by his family. Now couples have to renegotiate the way they relate to each other in relationships.
“While some couples adapt very well, for some men it can raise deep-seated fears about what it is to be a man. That’s because his worth has always been based on his ability to provide for his family.”
Jealousy and competition can corrode a female breadwinner’s relationship, particularly when both partners met in the same profession, says Dr Doyle-Morris.
Josephine and Pierre Johnson have been married for a decade, after starting out at the same time in telecoms. But when Josephine’s career took off, and Pierre’s didn’t fare as well, they decided it would be better if she stayed in the office while he cared for their daughters.
He now works from their home in South-West London one day a week, prepares their daughters for school and cooks most of the meals. Looking back to when they first met, Josephine, 39, says her husband loved her ambition.
“Now,” she smiles ruefully, “I’m sure he’d like to put the brakes on me a bit.”
Although Josephine says Pierre is proud of her, she is also hurt by his sexist jokes at her expense.
“When I told him I was being headhunted for a bigger job, he said: ‘Pretty soon you’ll be able to wee standing up.’
“It made me laugh at the time, but shows there’s a part of him that is not completely comfortable with the strides I’ve made.”
Annie, a documentary-maker from Edinburgh in her early 40s, broke up with her first husband Jonathan, a freelance graphic designer, over his resentment of her success.
But she admits she also lost patience with his insistence on turning down better-paid regular work to concentrate on his art, while she was responsible for making the money.
“By the time Jonathan and I got marriage counselling it was too late. I know my earnings were an issue because he complained once in couple’s therapy: ‘Well, it would be helpful if every time we have an argument you don’t tell me to go and get a bloody job’.”
“Eventually, every argument descended into money talk. Towards the end, he would lash out at anything to undermine my confidence. He gave me a hard time about my driving, which was something he thought he did better than me.
“It took a year after we got divorced before I could bear to get behind the wheel again.”
It’s not just men who aren’t yet ready to abandon traditional roles - women are reluctant, too.
Deep down, many are still grappling with the fear that by letting fathers take on parenting and “housewife” roles, which were once a woman’s preserve, they are abdicating their duties.
Indeed, somewhat provocatively Dr Doyle-Morris believes that unless alpha women give up their dreams of finding career fulfilment and being a perfect mother, they will never truly be happy. “Even when dads are doing a great job, mothers have become fixed in the attitude that there’s no stronger bond than that of mother and child,” she says. “Many hang on to duties, such as laundry, to remind themselves they are still needed.”
Grace Thomas, 43, from Surrey, runs her own PR company and is married to Dan, 41, a cabinet-maker who works from home.
She says: “I would call up from a client’s office and quiz Dan on everything from how the children were getting to activities, to what they were eating. Needless to say, he clearly felt I was barking orders down the phone. Now I’ve learned to leave all of that to him.”
According to Dr Doyle-Morris, that’s the sensible option. If he’s at home all day with the kids, you can’t complain he’s not doing the dishes the right way. “He doesn’t come into your office criticising your reports. How likely is anyone to continue to offer to help, when their contributions are only met with criticism?”
Instead, she says her research found the most satisfied mothers were the ones who had come to terms with the fact that, if their husbands were going to be full-time dads, they had to give up on the idea of being the perfect mom.
Even though role reversal is working well for many couples, the fact the woman earns more still remains “a dirty little secret” for many. Because of this taboo, she found women who kept the truth about their earnings from their own parents for fear they would judge their partners badly.
Others let their men pay for everything in public, including meals with friends, so they don’t feel emasculated.
To save their feelings, many wives tell the outside world their husbands are setting up consultancies, starting businesses, or playing the money markets - anything but calling them stay-at-home dads.
On the other hand, Dr Doyle-Morris believes there are signs that real change is under way - with a growing number of men admitting to enjoying traditionally female roles.
More than 600,000 UK men - or six percent of men with dependent children - now look after their kids while their wife or girlfriend work.That’s a ten-fold rise since 2000, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Three-quarters of men say they feel lucky to be spending time with their children - and 29 percent find it more rewarding than going out to work, according to research by Aviva. Only one in ten found looking after children made them “less of a man”.
So what’s the best way to safeguard a relationship when a woman earns more? In her research, Dr Doyle-Morris found there were some common factors that made relationships with a female breadwinner happier.
She says: “The most relaxed men were those who had other roles outside the home, even if they weren’t the biggest breadwinners, such as being president of the local rugby club or school governor.”
But she also found many men are not truly happy until they get the approval of their mates for their situation.
“Even if a woman bends over backwards to say ‘Darling, you are doing such a great job at home with the kids’ and ‘I couldn’t do this without you’, men were happiest when male friends told them they were envious of their set-up.
“It was then they’d start to think: ‘So, this is a good deal after all’.”
But aren’t we just pandering to the delicate male ego by thanking our men profusely for a job women have done without question for generations?
Above all, young women need to find a man secure enough not to rate his worth on the size of his pay packet, says Dr Doyle-Morris.
“They used to say behind every great man there’s a great woman.
“But in next 20 or 30 years, that could well be the other way around.”
*Female Breadwinners: How They Make Their Relationships Work And Why They Are The Future Of The Modern Workforce by Suzanne Doyle-Morris is out now, priced £14.99. Some surnames have been changed by request.
Dr Doyle-Morris’s six steps for a happier home-life for female breadwinners
* Ask your partner for the help you need;
* Don’t criticise his efforts at helping;
* Make deadlines but don’t step in if those deadlines are missed;
* Use cash to get the domestic help you need;
* Show gratitude;
* Remind him research shows that shared chores make for a better sex life. - Daily Mail