No one could help cringing through Silda Wall Spitzer's public humiliation last week - standing by her husband's side as he resigned after getting caught up in a prostitution scandal. Fortunately for her, even New York's snarling media has moved on to other topics. Bear Stearns has disappeared. Cranes are collapsing. Our new governor's marriage has apparently had its own ups and downs.
But it's worth thinking a little longer about the broader compromises of the Spitzer marriage, because while few educated, professional women will ever wind up facing the cameras for the same reasons, many others make the same choices she did.
In 1994, Silda gave up her own legal practice to devote herself to championing Eliot's career, doing charity work and raising their children. In this way, she is no different than the legions of doctors' wives, lawyers' wives, consultants' wives, political wives and others who decide that since their husbands' careers take so much time - and/or since their husbands earn enough money that they don't have to work - they will compensate on the family front.
In America today, high-achieving men and women marry each other. But then a reasonable number of those high-achieving women decide to scale back their own careers after they become mothers.
There is a positive side to this. Kids need their parents, and if fathers refuse to be closely involved on a day-to-day basis, then at least the kids in these high-wattage families will have one parent around. Certainly, it makes life easier on the man not to have to worry about family matters. Some studies have found that professional men who have stay-at-home wives earn more than men with wives who work full-time.
But there is definitely a downside to this bargain. For starters, the existence in the workplace of men with no family duties makes life that much harder for moms who don't opt out - and for the men who choose to be involved in the care of their families. People who don't have to think about what time the babysitter goes home don't mind so much if the meeting runs late - even if nothing important is getting done.
And second, while men have learned to be careful about saying their wives "work in the home" rather than "outside the home," switching from two careers to one in high-powered couples changes the power dynamic. Though this probably isn't the case with the independently wealthy Spitzers, in other families, a sole breadwinner can claim anything related to work is important because hey, if he loses his job, it's bad news for everyone. He knows he can get away with a little bit of bad behavior, because if his wife has severely compromised her ability to make a living, it will be that much harder for her to leave.
Most critically - and more germane with the Spitzers - I suspect that having another person devoted to making your career and life run smoothly can lead to a pretty profound sense of entitlement. That doesn't always result in the contempt Eliot Spitzer apparently felt for his wife. But disrespect is certainly a factor when your high-earning husband promises to take the kids for the night so you can get out, and then doesn't show up because something "important" came up at work.
I worry about this because there's been a lot of talk about the "opt-out" revolution of late. I'm a new mom, and while plenty of my college-educated and professional-degreed friends are continuing in their careers, a certain number have decided to eschew even part time work. Like all of us, they're in love with their kids. Their husbands work long hours (possibly because they need to... or possibly because they don't want to deal with crying babies). It seems like a compelling choice, particularly when you're trying to juggle back-up day care plans, your own crazy work schedule, getting the baby and yourself ready in the morning, and so forth.
But in that choice, young women should remember the image of Silda Wall Spitzer. News articles have said that Eliot's law school friends told him he didn't have a chance with her. Certainly he didn't deserve such a beautiful and brilliant wife - but 25 years later, he apparently thought he could get away with hiring prostitutes barely older than his daughters. Perhaps he would have still thought that if she were governor, and he'd scaled back his work to tend to the kids.
But I doubt it.