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Is It Really Just A Woman Thing?

Juliet, I also think we're talking about at least two different kinds of fantasies in this sugar daddy conversation. On one hand, there's the writer's desire for a magical windfall that allows her to pursue her pure-hearted literary dreams unfettered by dirty money business. (And on that point, Virginia Woolf has us all beat by a few decades with her sugar-auntie scenario in "A Room of One's Own.") I'm not convinced that that fantasy is particularly gendered, or even generational, though I'm sure it has a lot to do with one's class upbringing.

The other fantasy is about wanting someone to swoop in and take responsibility for all the big, scary, money-related issues that loom in grown-up land: mortgages, tuition payments, health insurance, 401Ks. And that, to me, has more to do with Americans' seeming inability/unwillingness to face their own economic realities and make responsible financial choices than a failing in American women, specifically. (My mother, a financial consultant who is always trying to convince me that America's days as a superpower are numbered, likes to point out that people in Asia put something ridiculous like 25% of their paychecks into savings. The mind boggles.)

On both points, I direct you all to Meghan Daum's excellent essay, "My Misspent Youth," which I think is an excellent cautionary tale for young, creative urbanites, female or otherwise. Daum was a very successful New York-based freelancer who realized, at some point, that she was way over her head in debt and decided to move to Lincoln, Nebraska, and she's particularly good at illuminating the kind of double-speak and self-justifications creative types make in the face of impending financial doom (and this was written almost ten years ago).

Whatever Will Be, Will Be

Oh, Bonnie, thanks for that inspiring and wise post. With a job I love, a child that is a serious contender to the title of world's greatest kid (I know every parent thinks that, but hey, one of us has to be right, right?), not to mention a partner so devoted, hardworking and cute I recently compared him Wall-E, I know I have precious little to bitch about. (Not that that's ever stopped me before.) The story of your years as a single-mom private investigator in D.C. is riveting (have you pitched this to Showtime yet?), and that vision of happily-ever-after--you and your honey pursuing your writing on separate floors, with occasional YMCA breaks -- is something to aspire to. (Oh, and thanks for calling me "thirtysomething." Heh.)

And Samantha, because you solicited our thoughts on what to say to a daughter daydreaming about Prince Charming: though I'm sure it is likely happen at some point, I would be horrified. This is why I plan to keep her away as long as possible from Cinderella, Snow White, The Little Mermaid--pretty much any Disney movie or other narrative of heterosexual rescue fantasy. Can't she have a few years of imagining her life in some way unbound by those narratives?

My grandmother used to sing my siblings and I a song, "Que Sera Sera" (it's the song sung by Doris Day to her son at the creepy climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much.) The lyrics of the first verse go like this: "When I was just a little girl/I asked my mother, what will I be?/Will I be pretty, will I be rich?/Here's what she said to me ..." Now, since I'm put off by the the values espoused in those lines, I sing it to my daughter like this: "Will I be happy/Will I be strong?" I know my doctored version won't keep the princess fantasies at bay forever, but whatever will be will be.

On Happily Ever After

Not to be overly clichéd here but, Dahlia, Hanna, Emily, and Dana, you are right now having the best and most exciting moments in your crowded, demanding, and conflict-filled lives and are incidentally superb role models for Jessica, Samantha (welcome to both!) and Noreen's Gen Y cohort. You awe-inspiring thirtysomething mommies can enjoy who you became for the next couple decades while only having to work like dogs to keep the inconsistencies and chaos (brunch and a birthday party?) at a tolerable level. When I was in the throes of work-life balancing, long before Queen made it a lyric, I used to whisper to myself during especially hectic periods, "These are the days of our lives." Not much time to appreciate them, but deeply exhaustingly satisfying. (Speaking of role models, Dana, Pearl sees that her mommy loves her work. One day your little boss lady will thrive in her own professional glory.)  

As the most chronologically advanced of the women in this discussion (though the least experienced writer), my career and education opportunities were measured by an entirely different rubric than either of you post-feminist generations of women. In the late '70s, I was a high-school educated, comparatively underprivileged, unwed mother raising a first-grader in Washington, D.C.'s pre-gentrified Adams Morgan neighborhood. I was not expecting Prince Charming to rescue us. I cobbled together day care, latchkeys and a series of live-in babysitters for my little girl while I used my investigative talents to earn our keep. I earnestly tried freelance writing but the reality of 10 cents a word, even counting in 1978 dimes, was unworkable.

As it was, my long hours on client matters spilled over to homework hastily completed in the McDonald's booth after bedtime. When my daughter was 12, I married a guy who wrote books for a living. He poured the proceeds from five novels into shoring up our collapsing kitchen. He adopted my daughter, and we adopted him. Since he and I were in our mid-30s and each owned a mortgaged D.C. row house, we wondered if we needed a prenup. This was it: We each declared soberly, "Everything I have is yours."  

Who supports whom in a marriage is always a matter of perspective. Either way, we pooled our resources. Two incomes are better than one. My steady investigative work and his sometimes lucrative flights of imagination paid for "private schools for future children." My daughter grew up a steadfast professional who loves her demanding work as a documentary maker, pays her own mortgage, and looks forward to having children to complain about. My Prince Charming and I are now child-free, both at-home writers' with offices on separate floors. Some days we leave the house only to work out at the YMCA. Samantha, you and your generational cohorts may not build the same cozy lifestyle as your parents but you may be thrilled to discover you build something more exciting and enriching when you work harder for it. In the end, the fantasy is whatever you make of it.

2 Types of Sugar Daddies

Richard Gere Need Not Apply

The more I read these posts about the struggle of the work-life balance, the more I realize that I should refine my initial definition of the sugar daddy that I at some level, coldly practical though it may be, want. To have a true sugar-daddy/daughter relationship (wow, it sounds a whole lot grosser when you add the "daughter" half), the woman is supposed to be sort of indebted, right? Even if he tells her she isn't? I'm picturing a Pretty Woman scenario: No matter how much you've changed his life in that sexy red dress of yours, as long as he's still the sole provider, you're still the whore.

That's not what I want. That's humorously far from what I want, and I'd imagine the same is true for many women my age. But Melinda, I've had those co-workers you mention, the ones who pull me and other twentysomething women aside and tell us that they're making less money now than they did before they left to raise their kids. It doesn't make me resent them; it makes me terrified.

So the fantasy, as June calls it, of the rich white knight who takes all your money worries away is just my flippant answer to the troubling questions that bubble up when that co-worker spouts the truth about salaries after a lengthy maternity leave, or when I read those doomsday articles. I don't really think a man will take all my troubles away, nor do I let that vague hope prevent me from the sort of aggressive self-promotion you advise, E.J. (Believe me, it took a painful amount of that to get hired at Slate!) But instead of tackling how I'm actually going to make the whole thing work—which at this point seems more an exercise in self-induced anxiety than practicality—I just pencil in the easiest solution, the fantasy solution: a rich husband. (For the record, in that fantasy, he's someone I love and respect, and part of that means he's someone who wants me to keep up my job and be successful. He just wants to pay our bills while doing it.)

The part that troubles me is that I think males probably pencil in something different when they're confronting problems, and it's probably more along the lines of "work harder." So as much as I believe I'm doing my damnedest to get ahead despite my deep-pocketed-dream-man backup plan, I wonder if I'd be going at it differently if I hadn't grown up thinking "maybe my financial situation will someday be solved by marriage," and instead had spent those years expecting that I'd have to fix it myself.

A question for the mothers of the group: If your daughter ever said "When I marry my rich husband ..." as I started doing from a frighteningly young age, would your stomach drop? Would you think you had failed somehow as a role model?

How Work-Life Balance Is Like the George Bush Center for Intelligence (Oxymorons R Us)

On Not Sugarcoating the Future

That's a good question, Dahlia, and the answer for me is definitely wanting that economic security later. I don't claim to speak for all of twentysomething ladies, but when I fantasize about my work-life balance, I want what my parents had. They're both doctors who met in med school. My mother is a psychiatrist, my father, a cardiologist. From the time my brother was born, we had a housekeeper who did not live with us, but was with the family from 9 to 5 on weekdays. When I was 8 or so, my mom went into her private practice full time, and so worked from home, though was largely not available during the day. We always had dinner as a family and when we were little, my dad did the majority of the playing with my brother and me. Also, we went to a good suburban public school, if that's relevant. My parents both still work more or less full time.

Do I expect the full time housekeeper on a writer/editor salary?  Of course not. Does it sound nice in my fantasy world? Dear God, yes. As both Dahlia and Dana expressed, I have no idea what the reality of working motherhood is like. As Noreen points out, this is all still theoretical. I agree that the scars of this financial downturn will change the way Gen-Y thinks about money, Noreen. However, I also think we're more resilient and technologically adaptable than some of the generations before us. Even before this meltdown, we didn't expect company loyalty or consistency, so beyond the cosmetic (less conspicuous consumption, botox, and $400 strollers) I don't think there will be a major restructuring of romantico-fiscal relationships (and yes, I just made that word up).

And even though I aspire to my mother's example, she still likes to tell the story about how my brother burst into tears at his kindergarten class picnic because she had to leave and go to work. "You can't leave me!" he cried. The story is told jokingly, but you can tell that 25 years later, she still feels vaguely guilty. Maybe, as Dana suggested, Obama can help move policy toward helping working women, but I'm not holding my breath. Nor am I expecting to not feel conflicted about my work-life balance. Jeez, this conversation is making me really glad that I'm living in child-free, economically unencumbered sin with my boyfriend.

Mama, Can I Come to Your Lifehacking Seminar?

Dahlia, now I'm cracking up at the image of you racing off to give talks on work-life balance while two midgets yank at your coat begging you not to go. "Hands off! I have to go talk about work-life balance!"

The Economic Terror Dream

For most of us, the 20s aren't the most financially stable decade of our lives. But it doesn't seem that bad, since we've been instilled with the sense that there is a way to practice what E.J preaches, to "figure out how to dive in and turn your education and talents into your own income." Eventually the instability will be a charming memory, and you'll be nostalgic for a simpler era when you ate scrambled eggs for dinner multiple times a week.

Except if you're in your 20s right now, you're likely to toggle your browser from your slim checking account to front page headlines not just about staggeringly high unemployment rates and the collapse of the financial system as we know it, but also the slow death of various industries, perhaps including your own. Building a sustainable career in certain industries starts to seem less achievable, even one that's not the sparkling husband-supported freelance romp we're all debating. So, on the one hand, the Samantha scenario seems coldly practical. But, as June aptly pointed out, it's also a delightful fantasy, one that seems tailor-made to counteract the scary front-page news these days. If, as Susan Faludi has written, that after 9/11 we collectively fantasized about cowboys and supermen, retreating to old-fashioned gender roles to comfort our terror, what fantasy are we going to cook up in this depression, when we're confronted not with death but with financial ruin? Maybe it's just that stable guy or girl who is just as much checkbook-affirming as life-affirming.

And of course, these fantasies aren't just coming from our isolated brains, as my sister pointed out in an e-mail to me this morning, "In romantic comedies that the heroine is always somewhat artsy or in publishing and 'independent' and powerful, but then the guy comes in and typically one of the plotlines involves her professionally and personally dissolving." There will probably be lots more film moments like the odd Mama Mia! one Dana noticed coming up, since naturally we love to see comfort fare when we're down. But what will be really interesting will be to look in ten years or so, when the Gen Y-ers have made more of our choices. Dahlia's right that it all seems a little theoretical now for most women my age (the Mr. Howell fantasy is at least in part a way of buying mental space and allowing yourself time to work on your career without making money your main motivation) but philosophy shapes practice. So how will the scars of this scary financial moment affect the way we structure our careers and marriages? Or will they—am I overblowing this?

Now or Later?

Here’s the only quibble I have with your smart (if depressing) post, Dana. I wrote yesterday assuming that younger unmarried women are fretting about such things as work-life balance when constructing their fantasy lives. But on second thought, I wonder if that’s really what’s driving Sam and some of Jessica’s young writers into the arms of Daddy Warbucks. I'm reconsidering because I’m sometimes asked to speak to students about work-life balance, and two things always strike me: 1) Men never show up to these talks;  and 2) women can’t really imagine what its like to have a toddler yelling “mommy don’t work” as they struggle into their Spanx, because until you’ve actually experienced the sheer lunacy of working motherhood, it seems like it might be sort of manageable. So I guess I am asking the younger women in the group to clarify whether they want Mr. Howell for now or for later?

Sugar Pie in the Sky

Jessica, I want to know: What are these fabulous, creative, part-time jobs that we would all be enjoying if only our putative sugar parents would subsidize us? Is there a job, freelance or no, that offers "lucrative assignments and continued relevance" (not to mention a dental plan) and that doesn't entail longer and more backbreaking hours of work than anyone with a child (or anyone who wants a rich personal life outside of work) can possibly spare? I fear that Dahlia's stark assessment of the reality of working motherhood is soberingly true: If you dedicate yourself to excelling in your field, you will daily find yourself enacting scenarios from the Harry Chapin ballad "Cat's in the Cradle," that AM-radio classic in which a busy father misses out on his son's childhood because ... oh, don't make me describe that song, I'll start weeping. I talked about this a bit in Slate's Movie Club yesterday when I described my daughter yelling "Don't work!" as I hustle off to yet another movie screening at 6 p.m. To be a working mother is to be told daily by everyone, including an authority as irrefutable as your own 2-year-old, that you're doing it all wrong. And they're all, in some way, right—but what's the alternative? Is there any middle ground between "Cat's in the Cradle" and sitting home smoking Djarums on someone else's dime?

It seems to me that what Jessica's asking for—and it's a completely legitimate thing for the next generation of women to want—isn't so much a wealthy suitor as a restructuring of the American workplace, not to mention the American educational system. Why marry Thurston Howell III to ensure your kid a spot in private school when there's a good public school down the block? Maybe Barack Obama will be our Prince Charming. But with the economy in the shape it's in, he ain't gonna be anybody's sugar daddy.

I Was a Sugar Daddy

It's Not My Generation

Hanna, I think it's a misnomer that wanting a "sugar daddy" is a generational thing. While I posed the initial question, it was more an observation based on themes in The Secret Currency of Love rather than a personal conviction. Purely anecdotally, I've noticed that my fellow Gen-Y female friends would rather die than "opt out," sugar daddies or no. We've heard horror stories about women leaving their fast-paced jobs for several years to tend to their children, and when they come back they're unemployable; we've seen women of our mothers' generation spend their days with the PTA until a divorce sends them back into a workplace for which they're ill-equipped. Here's a cautionary tale that I often think about: A female rock star from the '90s with a cult following now has an incredibly rich and well-known boyfriend. I heard through the grapevine that all she does these days is sit in his townhouse and smoke cloves and go to yoga. She never writes music. That story makes me want to barf.

As a group, I think we're incredibly ambitious, and I can at least say for myself that I would hate going freelance unless I was so wildly successful that I could guarantee a series of lucrative assignments and continued relevance. It would make me too nervous otherwise. I like having a title and, like Dahlia, a dental plan.

I think what Sam is getting at is not that women in their 20s want a benefactor; it's that they want to work hard and succeed in the field of their choice and not worry about paying for private school for their future children. Perhaps in these economic times it's entitled, E.J., or a pipe dream, June, but I don't think it's an entirely unreasonable hope.

Sugar Is Power

Dahlia, how would a sugar daddy give you the freedom to work and take care of your kids, too? Because then you can outsource the rest of the treadmill, not just doing the dishes but also buying Hanukkah presents?

My own feeling about work-life balance is that the problem isn't work and it isn't the kids: It's all the other expectations of middle-class life, some of them, at least, self-inflicted. Do I—do my husband and I, I should say—really need to have friends over for brunch this weekend and throw my older son's birthday party? And so I do fantasize about a fairy godmother who whisks all the errands away. (In the meantime, shopping on the Web helps. A lot.) But I'm with Hanna, for this reason along with many other good feminist ones: Money is power. If you make it, you also make decisions. If you don't, you often end up deferring to the breadwinner. Not always, but often, and no matter how well-intentioned and theoretically equality-espousing both partners or spouses are. Such is my observation, anyway.

Let's Not Forget the Sugar Babies

Dahlia, I think you've introduced the missing ingredient that Dana, too, stirred into the equation: kids. And Hanna, mother of three, I wonder what you say to this: the fantasy of having the security (courtesy of a spouse with a regular, and large enough, paycheck or some other source of support) to mix being the person overseeing the kids and their care with being a freelancer who also pursues meaningful, if sometimes less-than-predictable, work.

Isn't that a reality that plenty of well-educated, lucky couples pursue, or would like to? (I'm not saying they choose each other with that in mind, or that it's the savviest course given the prospect of divorce, but it's where they end up.) I agree that it's more often the woman who gets the child + part-time work gig, while the man does the more regular breadwinning. And I would say that she may well sometimes publicly gnash her teeth that she isn't the one who's been able to pursue the "real" career while perhaps privately not really being so sorry that she gets to be with the kids a lot and have a more flexible, and often less stressful, work life. Does she face up to the contradictions of her predicament? Perhaps not; we all have our fantasies. But sometimes—increasingly, I would hope—the man may well be the juggler, and my bet is he's all but guaranteed to be belly-aching rather than thanking his sugar-mommy, whatever he really feels.

All Day Long I'd Biddy Biddy Bum ...

I agree with June. Except it’s not that I suspect that all journalists secretly fantasize about becoming freelancers (two words: dental plan). I just suspect that every working woman secretly fantasizes about marrying someone with boatloads of money. Not because, as Jessica suggests, we all secretly dream of princess-hood. No, I think it’s because the myth of work-life balance has been so thoroughly demolished at this point that any rational woman understands it’s not to be had.

Sarah Palin? Bad mom for refusing to defer her career for her kids. Caroline Kennedy? Bad senator for refusing to defer caring for her kids to pursue her career. Only way out? Marry someone so rich, you can work and take care of your kids at the same time! I’m not sure that opposing such a strategy makes you a retro-feminist, Hanna. I just think that given the sheer impossibility of balancing work and kids, a young woman isn’t totally insane to dream of a corner office and a nanny.

Don't Pour Some Sugar on Me

I’m with Hanna, June, and E.J.: I prefer my sugar self-administered and have never entertained the fantasy of being kept by a sucrose parent of either sex. (Having money and nice things, without having to work hard to pay for them … that’s a whole 'nother fantasy.) Before going on (unpaid) maternity leave, I freelanced like a mofo to sock away money, embarrassed by the prospect of going to my partner hat in hand—though I’m sure he would have been both willing and able to spot me on living expenses had I run short at the end. Maybe this is a result of growing up with a Jill Clayburgh-ian '70s working mother (though my parents stayed married and were well enough off). Honestly, I’ve never even understood what still seems to be an acceptable default assumption that a man should pick up the tab in restaurants on dates. Why, because I have a physiognomy that’s potentially capable of childbearing, should I not be responsible for providing my own nutrition? And doesn’t that moment when the guy gets out his wallet and you don’t do jack make the whole dinner feel like a sordid transaction?

Of course, there’s a world of difference between “someday my prince will come” and a couple with a child making a life that makes sense for them: You work while I take care of the kid for a few years. Then later, when the kid is in school, I go back to work, or maybe we take turns. For people doing it, this arrangement, which often makes more financial and emotional sense than “let’s both work like dogs to pay the baby-sitter,” is often experienced as the furthest thing from a luxury.

I remember thinking about this stuff when Meryl Streep’s character sang “Money, Money, Money” in Mamma Mia!, as a fantasy sequence showed her being kept in style by a zillionaire. The character Streep played, an independent ex-hippie single mother running an inn in Greece, seemed an odd candidate to entertain such a reverie. But, you know, they had to work all those great ABBA songs in somehow.

All Writers Are Whores

Or so said Harold Robbins. And I agree. Twelve years in the freelance game—sometimes making a lot of money, sometimes making very little money—oh, what I wouldn't do for a sugar daddy. Freelancing is a tough, lonely business. The idea of a man lining my pockets with enough cash to not have to worry about the rest and focus on the writing sounds like a small slice of writerly heaven to me.

Walter Benjamin: "For you ask all too timidly: 'Either all women are prostitutes or no women are?' No: 'Either all people are prostitutes or no one is.' Well, choose your own answer. But I say: We all are. Or should be."

I'd venture if the stigma was lesser, there'd be more male writers out there riding the sugar-mommy train. Too bad feminist rhetoric doesn't pay my bills.

Nice Fantasy, Shame About Reality

Isn't the sugar daddy—or, for some of us, the sugar mommy—just a lovely fantasy? And aren't people's fantasies supposed to be off limits for criticism? (I'm not entirely sure what the official position is on that last issue these days.)

I love my job, but are there times when I wouldn't rather pursue my own wonderful creative flights of fancy—research and write the stories I think are fascinating and important? Sure! Doesn't everyone with a full-time job fantasize about walking away, at least now and again? For those of us in journalism, that fantasy has a name: going freelance.

Of course, the reality is rather different. There are many successful, high-earning freelance journalists—several of them contribute to this blog—and then there are a lot of people struggling to pay the rent and others being subsidized by their families.

I would never voluntarily go freelance—I'm an immigrant, and I don't have family who could bail me out if I didn't sell enough stories or if a check didn't come through—but naturally I've dreamed about that special someone reaching across the dinner table and saying, "Pookie, your ideas are so wonderful, I don't want to deprive readers of them any longer. Why don't you give up your job and just focus on your own projects? Don't worry; I'll take care of the bills so we can stay in our lovely apartment in this fabulous neighborhood, and we can keep premium cable, and have a fresh batch of bonbons delivered every Monday. ..."

And then I wake up.

In other words, writers (and just about every other group of people) would be crazy not to have this fantasy. Just so long as they don't expect it to come true ...

Please Keep Your Sugar Daddies To Yourself

Samantha and Jessica: My objection to the sugar-daddy system is that I don't think it actually helps female journalists or journalism. Instead, sugar daddies have contributed to a Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe effect among women writers. Rather than serving as the means to a career goal, these men and the lifestyle they've supported become the material. And women, who are still not often enough asked to contribute content that has nothing to do with gender, aren't doing themselves any favors by writing more personal essays about marrying up or how-tos on the art of the affair.

Entry-level journalism jobs are high on gruntwork and low on both pay and respect, it’s true. And while I'm not sure how much a sugar daddy would help the respect aspect of that equation, they do help stave off being broke. So I don’t have a problem so much with the existence of sugar daddies—I just don't want to read about them.