The Men Who Send Their Wives to the Email Mines

Lots of high-earning men want their wives to work, even if their wives don't want to

A week or two ago, I saw a Twitter user (and married man) joke about men who, despite making more than $500K per year, still “send their wives to the email mines.” Hopefully he doesn’t mind that I’m stealing this term:

Now, the easy answer to why a man making $500K per year would still have a working wife is that many women enjoy their careers and want to work. For many affluent couples, there is a mutual agreement that both people will work, and typically they’re both fine with that. Being a SAHM can be very busy when kids are little, but after kids are in school, a lot of women might prefer working to being at home. Or perhaps both people just enjoy their careers and derive personal fulfillment from them. Maybe they like the status it affords them in social settings. Maybe even though they’re already rich, they want to be richer. Maybe they’re aiming for early retirement—who knows?

It also makes logical sense that many high-earning men would have wives who still earn a lot, even if it’s less than their husbands’ incomes. Often these couples met in college, grad school, or other settings full of fairly high-earning people. Despite what the manosphere guys claim, wealthy men outside of crypto are not frequently wifing up random attractive 18-year-old waitresses. (Or their hot nannies- see my article about the people claiming that sexy young nannies were in danger of replacing girlboss wives.) If a guy meets his wife in law school (many such cases) guess what? They’ll likely both wind up becoming lawyers. No big story there!

Although I haven’t released the full study yet, of the hundreds of men who filled out my survey for high earning ($200K+) men, 94% of married or otherwise partnered high-earning men had a partner with at least a college degree, and 77% of them had a partner who worked. 90% of these men wanted their partner to continue working. This largely reflects my expectations. Despite the stereotypes of trophy wives and women trading beauty for financial security, most affluent couples are just a girlboss married to a boyboss.

Of course, outside of the affluent, most dual-income couples are both working because they need to. I know some will say they don’t really “need” to and they could always “scrimp and save,” but I think it’s perfectly reasonable to not want to live paycheck to paycheck, or to want to pay for your kids’ college educations. I acknowledge for most couples this isn’t really a question of luxury or frivolity. But that wasn’t what the original question was about. People weren’t asking why a man making $40K would have a working wife. If a man makes a lot of money—maybe not $500K but maybe $250K or some other top tenth percentile or above income…why does he send his wife to the “email mines?” especially when she makes considerably less than he does?

I frequently see takes like the below, from guys who believe that it’s unheard of for men, especially ones who make enough for their wives not to have to work, to actually prefer a working wife. But as someone in what this poster later referred to as an “over-educated bubble,” I see this phenomenon all the time. Lots of guys aren’t just tolerating their girlboss wives—they want girlboss wives.

Now, I know I focus a lot on terminally online sickos, but today I’m going to at least attempt to pivot away from them and talk about real people. I have a strong suspicion that a lot of men—including men who make handsome salaries—want their wives to work, sometimes even when their wives don’t want to (30% of men who filled out my survey fell into this boat.) And for many of these couples, it’s a source of tension.