Breadwinners by Melissa Hogenboom And Other Power Imbalances That Influence Your Life
What's it about?
Breadwinners (2025) explores how shifting income patterns and gender roles reshape power dynamics in modern relationships, especially when women earn more than their partners. It draws on interviews and research to show how money, unpaid labour and social expectations intersect, and offers ideas for recognising and redressing those imbalances at home and at work.
You’ve probably heard that women are catching up at work, smashing glass ceilings, closing pay gaps. But walk into most homes and it’s a different story: the kids’ appointments, the never-ending to-do list, the cleaning, the mental spreadsheet of who needs what and when? That’s still usually sitting in one head. And very often, it’s the same head that’s also paying most of the bills.
In this lesson, you’ll see why the higher earner can still end up overloaded with care. You’ll also see what typically happens when a woman earns more. Some men feel threatened while others are quietly relieved. You’ll also see how money, culture and old gender expectations shape who feels free and who feels stretched thin. And most importantly, what couples can actually do to share power, time and responsibility more fairly. Let’s start with what happens when she earns more, but still does more, too.
Picture a couple where she has a demanding job and he’s at home with the kids. On paper the script looks flipped. You’d expect most of the childcare, planning and household admin to have shifted to him. And yes, he’s doing school runs, meal prep and bedtimes.
But she’s still the one holding the calendar in her head, tracking appointments, school forms and bills – all while bringing in most of the money. That mix of economic power and domestic overload is where many couples live. There are two versions of this setup: one person is the only earner, or both work but one earns a lot more. Women in either position are no longer rare, especially among younger couples. Attitudes are shifting too: fewer young men feel they must out-earn a partner, more young women feel uneasy depending financially on someone else, and that opens the door to different choices. But once you step through that door, old habits reappear.
Studies show that as a woman’s earnings rise, her housework only falls up to a point. When she starts to earn more than her male partner, many couples quietly slide back towards traditional roles. She may take on extra chores and mental load to cushion the hit to his sense of being a provider and to reassure herself she’s still a “good” partner and mother. Men, meanwhile, often use higher income to step back from domestic work. They hand over money while their partner manages everything from food budgets to holiday planning. At the same time, more fathers want to be hands-on but run into workplace and social penalties.
Men who ask for flexible hours or part-time roles can be labelled less committed and less masculine. This pattern is sometimes called the fatherhood forfeit. So couples who want a fairer deal have to be deliberate. Agree how money, time and care will be shared, notice when a higher earner is being “rewarded” with extra housework, and treat involved fathers as normal rather than exceptional. In the next section, we’ll look at how money specifically shapes status, stress and control inside these relationships.
If swapping breadwinner roles can unsettle people, adding money itself into the picture turns up the heat. Think of that moment in a restaurant when the bill is automatically handed to the man. In that tiny move sits a whole script: he earns more, he pays, he understands the numbers. In plenty of couples that simply isn’t true.
Large surveys even show that when women earn more, men often bump up their reported income and women quietly play theirs down to make things look more traditional. Where does that discomfort come from? It sits on top of class and background. These shape who already feels entitled to money and status. People who grow up with financial security are used to being taken seriously, so they move through life expecting to be seen as capable and worth investing in. Those who grew up with less are more likely to brace for judgement, to blame themselves when they hit barriers, and to feel out of place in high-status settings.
Over time, that low-status story makes it harder to ask for pay rises, apply for better-paid roles or step into leadership, which quietly keeps money and power flowing towards those who already have both. Our brains also care a lot about fairness. In classic experiments, people sometimes walk away from money altogether rather than accept an offer that feels insulting, and brain areas linked to anger flare when we’re treated as less deserving. Inside a couple, you see the same wiring: if one partner controls all the accounts or the other has to justify every purchase, things start to feel lopsided and humiliating, even if the bills are paid on time. But there are ways to address this. Sharing finances in a way that gives both partners a real say stops the lower earner feeling like a dependent and builds a safety net if the relationship ends.
Being open early on about earnings, debts, family background and career trade-offs strips away some of the secrecy and shame. And not letting the higher earner buy their way out of housework protects the resource couples feel most keenly day to day: time and energy. Now we’ll zoom out from money and look at how power itself reshapes how we think, feel and act in everyday life.
If money quietly sets the scene, power is the thing that flips the mood once someone feels in charge. The strange part is that we usually gain influence by being enthusiastic, kind, calm, open and reliable. Yet once we feel powerful, those exact traits are the first to slip. That’s the power paradox: empathy and cooperation help us rise, but unchecked power nudges us towards entitlement and narrow thinking.
You can spot this even in tiny moments. In one study, three people worked on a task and one was randomly labelled the leader. When a plate of five cookies appeared, that “leader” was the one most likely to grab a second biscuit and eat it more messily, ignoring the quiet rule about not taking more than your share. Other research finds that people who feel powerful care less about how their actions land, struggle more to see things from another person’s perspective. They even show less mirroring in the brain when watching someone else move. Power makes it easier to act and decide, but also easier to forget the humans affected.
The good news is that there is a different version of power. We use soft power every day when we really listen, take other people’s perspectives seriously and use encouragement instead of control, whether that’s sharing decisions at home or working with colleagues. Treating influence as a kind of responsibility keeps empathy switched on and usually earns deeper, more stable respect than being domineering ever does. We can also change our own mental settings so we’re less battered by hierarchies and status games.
Daily breathing and mindfulness practice can calm the stress response, steady your attention. This gives you just enough mental space to notice when power dynamics are pulling you off balance and to choose a better response instead of reacting on autopilot. Next we’ll look at how whole cultures and national policies shape who usually holds the power, and how that plays out in the way families divide work and care.
Ask a Swedish mother if she’s a “working mum” and you’ll probably just get a blank look. In her world, of course she works, fathers routinely take long stretches of parental leave, and both parents are expected to be hands-on at home. That everyday reaction shows how strongly culture shapes who earns, who cares, and what a “normal” family looks like. Across countries, those scripts differ a lot.
Some cultures lean individualistic and push people to stand out and chase personal success. Others are more group-focused and nudge people to think first about the collective. On top of that, every society has its own comfort level with hierarchy. In high power-distance places, people at the top are obeyed and juniors stay quiet. In low power-distance cultures like the Netherlands or Scandinavia, children are encouraged to speak up, workers expect to be consulted, and disagreement is treated as part of doing things well. These differences really show up at home.
Dutch and Nordic countries tend to mix personal freedom with strong equality norms and decent state support. As a result, people work fewer extreme hours, feel more rested, and the gap in housework and childcare between women and men is smaller than in many other nations. Sweden’s “use it or lose it” parental leave for fathers is a standout example. When dads are expected to spend serious time at home with a baby, mothers return to paid work earlier, their earnings grow, and fathers build real confidence as carers. Children see both parents as capable at work and at home, which quietly resets what they later see as normal. Even if your own country looks nothing like Sweden, there are ideas you can borrow.
You can shift from “how do I win? ” to “how do we do well together? ” when you’re making decisions that affect a family or a team. If you have any influence at work, you can behave in a low power-distance way by staying approachable, listening properly and inviting honest feedback. And if there’s any option for shared or flexible parental leave, you can take it, back others who do, or push for better policies, knowing those choices ripple through power, money and care at home for years to come. Next, we’ll turn to workplaces and leadership, and see how power and bias there spill over into home life.
Walk into most offices and you can see, almost immediately, who holds the real power. It’s the people who talk the most in meetings, whose ideas are picked up and acted on, and who feel free to push back. Others speak less, second-guess themselves, or quietly adapt because they expect to be overruled. Workplaces make these invisible rankings very visible: who feels entitled to lead, and who has learned to stay small.
Experiments back this up. When people are placed in low-power roles, their planning and decision-making get worse. They’re pulled into tiny details instead of the bigger picture. In real life, that looks like a junior colleague labelled as lacking vision when they’re actually trying to think under constant pressure. When leaders build psychological safety instead – where people can question, disagree and admit mistakes without fear – performance and creativity jump, especially for those who usually have the least say. Seen this way, stubborn gender gaps look less like a talent issue and more like a power issue.
In studies, once people are given power, men and women behave remarkably similarly. Out in the wild, though, boys are still raised to link their worth to pay and status, so some men feel directly threatened by women’s progress. At the same time, women are more likely to be promoted during crises, handed failing projects or unwinnable political seats and then blamed when they can’t perform miracles. Our mental shortcuts don’t help. On average, men overrate their abilities, women underrate theirs, and almost everyone thinks they’re nicer and more capable than the crowd. Narcissistic personalities are especially drawn to status and boosted by it, which is one reason loud, self-important leaders keep appearing, even when most people say they prefer kindness and fairness.
So what can you do in that kind of landscape? Look for role models who feel reachable rather than superhuman. Assume you may well be more capable than your inner critic suggests when you go for a new role. And if you hire or promote, treat empathy and a sense of responsibility as core skills, rather than fluffy extras. Next, we’ll bring all of this back into the home and see how the same power patterns show up in everyday relationships and the mental load at home.
If you listen to how couples talk about big decisions, a familiar phrase keeps popping up: “we decided. ” We decided to move. We decided whose job would come first. We decided which school to pick.
It sounds equal, but when researchers pull on the thread, a different pattern appears. One person has done most of the thinking – the research, the comparing, the deadline chasing – while the other steps in at the end to agree. Both sincerely remember it as mutual. That’s the myth of mutuality: hidden power dressed up as teamwork. You can see a healthier version of power when couples name the trade-offs out loud. Maybe her promotion means a move abroad and his job going on hold for a while.
They talk it through, treat it as a joint project. They use some of her higher income to pay for extra childcare and cleaning. He takes on more of the day-to-day logistics. Nobody pretends it’s perfectly equal, but both see the plan as theirs, not hers versus his. What really matters for happiness isn’t a spreadsheet-perfect split, it’s feeling you genuinely shape your life. Studies link that sense of power in a relationship to confidence, forgiveness and higher satisfaction for both partners.
Problems start when that feeling rests on shaky ground because one person holds most of the money and status while the other quietly carries the mental load. If that relationship ends, the partner who paused their own goals usually pays the higher price. The good news is that this is one area where small changes help a lot. Move planning out of one brain and into systems you both actually use – shared lists, calendars, meal plans. If you’re the default organiser, hand over whole tasks from the thinking to the doing. Resist swooping back in when your partner does things differently.
And if you know you have more power, notice how often things tilt your way and deliberately pick up more of the unseen work. In the end, power, money and love will always be connected, but they don’t have to box anyone in. Once you can see the patterns, you can start using whatever power you have to share freedom, security and time more fairly. That way, both of you get more of the life you want.
The main takeaway of this lesson to Breadwinners by Melissa Hogenboom is this: power, money and care are always connected, but they’re not fixed. Once you can see how earnings, culture, bias and mental load quietly decide who has freedom and who feels stretched thin, you can start changing the script. You can do this in small, practical ways. That might mean sharing decisions more openly, handing over whole tasks, or using your own influence with more empathy.
None of this requires perfection, just awareness and a willingness to make things fairer together.
Breadwinners (2025) explores how shifting income patterns and gender roles reshape power dynamics in modern relationships, especially when women earn more than their partners. It draws on interviews and research to show how money, unpaid labour and social expectations intersect, and offers ideas for recognising and redressing those imbalances at home and at work.
You’ve probably heard that women are catching up at work, smashing glass ceilings, closing pay gaps. But walk into most homes and it’s a different story: the kids’ appointments, the never-ending to-do list, the cleaning, the mental spreadsheet of who needs what and when? That’s still usually sitting in one head. And very often, it’s the same head that’s also paying most of the bills.
In this lesson, you’ll see why the higher earner can still end up overloaded with care. You’ll also see what typically happens when a woman earns more. Some men feel threatened while others are quietly relieved. You’ll also see how money, culture and old gender expectations shape who feels free and who feels stretched thin. And most importantly, what couples can actually do to share power, time and responsibility more fairly. Let’s start with what happens when she earns more, but still does more, too.
Picture a couple where she has a demanding job and he’s at home with the kids. On paper the script looks flipped. You’d expect most of the childcare, planning and household admin to have shifted to him. And yes, he’s doing school runs, meal prep and bedtimes.
But she’s still the one holding the calendar in her head, tracking appointments, school forms and bills – all while bringing in most of the money. That mix of economic power and domestic overload is where many couples live. There are two versions of this setup: one person is the only earner, or both work but one earns a lot more. Women in either position are no longer rare, especially among younger couples. Attitudes are shifting too: fewer young men feel they must out-earn a partner, more young women feel uneasy depending financially on someone else, and that opens the door to different choices. But once you step through that door, old habits reappear.
Studies show that as a woman’s earnings rise, her housework only falls up to a point. When she starts to earn more than her male partner, many couples quietly slide back towards traditional roles. She may take on extra chores and mental load to cushion the hit to his sense of being a provider and to reassure herself she’s still a “good” partner and mother. Men, meanwhile, often use higher income to step back from domestic work. They hand over money while their partner manages everything from food budgets to holiday planning. At the same time, more fathers want to be hands-on but run into workplace and social penalties.
Men who ask for flexible hours or part-time roles can be labelled less committed and less masculine. This pattern is sometimes called the fatherhood forfeit. So couples who want a fairer deal have to be deliberate. Agree how money, time and care will be shared, notice when a higher earner is being “rewarded” with extra housework, and treat involved fathers as normal rather than exceptional. In the next section, we’ll look at how money specifically shapes status, stress and control inside these relationships.
If swapping breadwinner roles can unsettle people, adding money itself into the picture turns up the heat. Think of that moment in a restaurant when the bill is automatically handed to the man. In that tiny move sits a whole script: he earns more, he pays, he understands the numbers. In plenty of couples that simply isn’t true.
Large surveys even show that when women earn more, men often bump up their reported income and women quietly play theirs down to make things look more traditional. Where does that discomfort come from? It sits on top of class and background. These shape who already feels entitled to money and status. People who grow up with financial security are used to being taken seriously, so they move through life expecting to be seen as capable and worth investing in. Those who grew up with less are more likely to brace for judgement, to blame themselves when they hit barriers, and to feel out of place in high-status settings.
Over time, that low-status story makes it harder to ask for pay rises, apply for better-paid roles or step into leadership, which quietly keeps money and power flowing towards those who already have both. Our brains also care a lot about fairness. In classic experiments, people sometimes walk away from money altogether rather than accept an offer that feels insulting, and brain areas linked to anger flare when we’re treated as less deserving. Inside a couple, you see the same wiring: if one partner controls all the accounts or the other has to justify every purchase, things start to feel lopsided and humiliating, even if the bills are paid on time. But there are ways to address this. Sharing finances in a way that gives both partners a real say stops the lower earner feeling like a dependent and builds a safety net if the relationship ends.
Being open early on about earnings, debts, family background and career trade-offs strips away some of the secrecy and shame. And not letting the higher earner buy their way out of housework protects the resource couples feel most keenly day to day: time and energy. Now we’ll zoom out from money and look at how power itself reshapes how we think, feel and act in everyday life.
If money quietly sets the scene, power is the thing that flips the mood once someone feels in charge. The strange part is that we usually gain influence by being enthusiastic, kind, calm, open and reliable. Yet once we feel powerful, those exact traits are the first to slip. That’s the power paradox: empathy and cooperation help us rise, but unchecked power nudges us towards entitlement and narrow thinking.
You can spot this even in tiny moments. In one study, three people worked on a task and one was randomly labelled the leader. When a plate of five cookies appeared, that “leader” was the one most likely to grab a second biscuit and eat it more messily, ignoring the quiet rule about not taking more than your share. Other research finds that people who feel powerful care less about how their actions land, struggle more to see things from another person’s perspective. They even show less mirroring in the brain when watching someone else move. Power makes it easier to act and decide, but also easier to forget the humans affected.
The good news is that there is a different version of power. We use soft power every day when we really listen, take other people’s perspectives seriously and use encouragement instead of control, whether that’s sharing decisions at home or working with colleagues. Treating influence as a kind of responsibility keeps empathy switched on and usually earns deeper, more stable respect than being domineering ever does. We can also change our own mental settings so we’re less battered by hierarchies and status games.
Daily breathing and mindfulness practice can calm the stress response, steady your attention. This gives you just enough mental space to notice when power dynamics are pulling you off balance and to choose a better response instead of reacting on autopilot. Next we’ll look at how whole cultures and national policies shape who usually holds the power, and how that plays out in the way families divide work and care.
Ask a Swedish mother if she’s a “working mum” and you’ll probably just get a blank look. In her world, of course she works, fathers routinely take long stretches of parental leave, and both parents are expected to be hands-on at home. That everyday reaction shows how strongly culture shapes who earns, who cares, and what a “normal” family looks like. Across countries, those scripts differ a lot.
Some cultures lean individualistic and push people to stand out and chase personal success. Others are more group-focused and nudge people to think first about the collective. On top of that, every society has its own comfort level with hierarchy. In high power-distance places, people at the top are obeyed and juniors stay quiet. In low power-distance cultures like the Netherlands or Scandinavia, children are encouraged to speak up, workers expect to be consulted, and disagreement is treated as part of doing things well. These differences really show up at home.
Dutch and Nordic countries tend to mix personal freedom with strong equality norms and decent state support. As a result, people work fewer extreme hours, feel more rested, and the gap in housework and childcare between women and men is smaller than in many other nations. Sweden’s “use it or lose it” parental leave for fathers is a standout example. When dads are expected to spend serious time at home with a baby, mothers return to paid work earlier, their earnings grow, and fathers build real confidence as carers. Children see both parents as capable at work and at home, which quietly resets what they later see as normal. Even if your own country looks nothing like Sweden, there are ideas you can borrow.
You can shift from “how do I win? ” to “how do we do well together? ” when you’re making decisions that affect a family or a team. If you have any influence at work, you can behave in a low power-distance way by staying approachable, listening properly and inviting honest feedback. And if there’s any option for shared or flexible parental leave, you can take it, back others who do, or push for better policies, knowing those choices ripple through power, money and care at home for years to come. Next, we’ll turn to workplaces and leadership, and see how power and bias there spill over into home life.
Walk into most offices and you can see, almost immediately, who holds the real power. It’s the people who talk the most in meetings, whose ideas are picked up and acted on, and who feel free to push back. Others speak less, second-guess themselves, or quietly adapt because they expect to be overruled. Workplaces make these invisible rankings very visible: who feels entitled to lead, and who has learned to stay small.
Experiments back this up. When people are placed in low-power roles, their planning and decision-making get worse. They’re pulled into tiny details instead of the bigger picture. In real life, that looks like a junior colleague labelled as lacking vision when they’re actually trying to think under constant pressure. When leaders build psychological safety instead – where people can question, disagree and admit mistakes without fear – performance and creativity jump, especially for those who usually have the least say. Seen this way, stubborn gender gaps look less like a talent issue and more like a power issue.
In studies, once people are given power, men and women behave remarkably similarly. Out in the wild, though, boys are still raised to link their worth to pay and status, so some men feel directly threatened by women’s progress. At the same time, women are more likely to be promoted during crises, handed failing projects or unwinnable political seats and then blamed when they can’t perform miracles. Our mental shortcuts don’t help. On average, men overrate their abilities, women underrate theirs, and almost everyone thinks they’re nicer and more capable than the crowd. Narcissistic personalities are especially drawn to status and boosted by it, which is one reason loud, self-important leaders keep appearing, even when most people say they prefer kindness and fairness.
So what can you do in that kind of landscape? Look for role models who feel reachable rather than superhuman. Assume you may well be more capable than your inner critic suggests when you go for a new role. And if you hire or promote, treat empathy and a sense of responsibility as core skills, rather than fluffy extras. Next, we’ll bring all of this back into the home and see how the same power patterns show up in everyday relationships and the mental load at home.
If you listen to how couples talk about big decisions, a familiar phrase keeps popping up: “we decided. ” We decided to move. We decided whose job would come first. We decided which school to pick.
It sounds equal, but when researchers pull on the thread, a different pattern appears. One person has done most of the thinking – the research, the comparing, the deadline chasing – while the other steps in at the end to agree. Both sincerely remember it as mutual. That’s the myth of mutuality: hidden power dressed up as teamwork. You can see a healthier version of power when couples name the trade-offs out loud. Maybe her promotion means a move abroad and his job going on hold for a while.
They talk it through, treat it as a joint project. They use some of her higher income to pay for extra childcare and cleaning. He takes on more of the day-to-day logistics. Nobody pretends it’s perfectly equal, but both see the plan as theirs, not hers versus his. What really matters for happiness isn’t a spreadsheet-perfect split, it’s feeling you genuinely shape your life. Studies link that sense of power in a relationship to confidence, forgiveness and higher satisfaction for both partners.
Problems start when that feeling rests on shaky ground because one person holds most of the money and status while the other quietly carries the mental load. If that relationship ends, the partner who paused their own goals usually pays the higher price. The good news is that this is one area where small changes help a lot. Move planning out of one brain and into systems you both actually use – shared lists, calendars, meal plans. If you’re the default organiser, hand over whole tasks from the thinking to the doing. Resist swooping back in when your partner does things differently.
And if you know you have more power, notice how often things tilt your way and deliberately pick up more of the unseen work. In the end, power, money and love will always be connected, but they don’t have to box anyone in. Once you can see the patterns, you can start using whatever power you have to share freedom, security and time more fairly. That way, both of you get more of the life you want.
The main takeaway of this lesson to Breadwinners by Melissa Hogenboom is this: power, money and care are always connected, but they’re not fixed. Once you can see how earnings, culture, bias and mental load quietly decide who has freedom and who feels stretched thin, you can start changing the script. You can do this in small, practical ways. That might mean sharing decisions more openly, handing over whole tasks, or using your own influence with more empathy.
None of this requires perfection, just awareness and a willingness to make things fairer together.
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