"And then there were the wife bonuses. I was thunderstruck when I heard mention of a 'bonus.'..."

"A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup and distributed on the basis of not only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance — how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got into a 'good' school — the same way their husbands were rewarded at investment banks. In turn these bonuses were a ticket to a modicum of financial independence and participation in a social sphere where you don’t just go to lunch, you buy a $10,000 table at the benefit luncheon a friend is hosting. Women who didn’t get them joked about possible sexual performance metrics. Women who received them usually retreated, demurring when pressed to discuss it further, proof to an anthropologist that a topic is taboo, culturally loaded and dense with meaning...."

From a NYT op-ed about the Glam SAHMs (glamorous stay-at-home-moms) of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, written by Wednesday Martin, who is identified as a writer and "social researcher." She has a memoir coming out called "Primates of Park Avenue."

4 stray thoughts:

1. The illustration at the link is really good.

2. Don't confuse this topic with the more general subject of stay-at-home mothers (a topic I prefer to call single-earner household). This is about how very rich people structure things.

3. It made me think of that excellent Woody Allen movie "Alice."

4. The book title "Primates of Park Avenue" made me think of another title that it took me a long time to drag out of the 1980s canyon of my mind: "Slaves of New York." Remember that? Tama Janowitz. That was a big deal back in the days of "Bright Lights, Big City" and "Less Than Zero." Here's the NYT review of it from 1986, by Jay McInerney (the author of "Bright Lights, Big City"):

Eleanor longs for the good old verities of marriage, the kind of legal bondage under which she'd have a few enforceable rights... Heroically passive, Eleanor has half a mind to think about doing... something. ''If I ever get some kind of job security and/or marital security, I'm going to join the feminist movement.''

When a friend calls from Boston to say she's thinking of moving back to New York and living with her old boyfriend, Eleanor advises her not to do it. She'll be a slave. ''Your only solution is to get rich, so you can get an apartment and then you can have your own slave.''