![]() Earlier this year, he quit his job to start a three-year program to be a nurse anesthetist, a profession that pays more and will help “make her life easier, and in turn, make our kid’s life easier,” he said. “I don’t want her to have so much of the financial burden,” Knicky, 27, said. Yet the current income gap between her and her husband means it’s not feasible. She is not looking to replicate their arrangement, though she now wants the option to cut back, particularly if she has more children. Vora’s mother stayed at home when she was growing up her father provided the income. In January, when they had their first baby, people asked, “‘How are you going to work and be able to care for your kid?’” she said. I ensure I’m keeping myself healthy to continue to work a lot,” she said.ĭespite the pressures Vora faced to work and to earn, there were gendered microaggressions at the hospital - when they worked with a patient together, some assumed she was the nurse and Knicky was the physician. ![]() “I’m keeping my eyesight healthy and my hands healthy, because I need those. Vora worried what would happen if she suddenly could no longer work. Knicky’s job was demanding too: He had long, tiring shifts, including through the peak of the pandemic, that typically totaled 36 hours per week. College-educated women and women with no children are also more likely to be higher earners than their husbands.īefore she went on maternity leave in January, Vora got one day off each week from seeing patients, but could still be called in for emergencies or delivery anytime. Black women are more likely than other women to be the primary or sole earner in their marriages, a new analysis by Pew Research Center found. But the negative is I don’t feel like I could ever stop that unless I was with a partner that had equal or more income.”Īmong married couples in which both spouses work, the share of women who earned more than their husbands reached a record high of 30.6% in 2021, according to Census data provided to BuzzFeed News. “I get to do something I love, something I’m proud of, and I get to contribute to a lifestyle. “There are times where I feel a burden of having to work hard all the time to keep up with this lifestyle,” she said. Vora pays for their living expenses (as well as splurges, like upgraded flights), and they split most of the house chores like dishes and laundry. That didn’t arrive until they were engaged in 2021 and married the next year. “There was a period where I felt I was providing so much, and I didn't have that sense of 100% security that we were in this for the long term,” she said. In 2020, while they were dating, she bought a house and Knicky moved in. “It’s definitely had ups and downs,” Vora said. ![]() Their income gap has widened as their relationship deepened. “When you meet someone, and you’re falling in love with them, and you’re in your 20s - I wasn’t really thinking about what that difference would be like in years to come,” she said. ![]() At the time, she earned about $55,000 as a resident, roughly $10,000 less than Knicky was making as a full-time staffer, a gap that would reverse dramatically once she completed residency. Vora, 33, and husband Zach Knicky met about five years ago, when a woman delivered a baby in the ER lobby. She is one of the roughly 30% of wives who outearn their working husbands in the US, a growing and sizable minority of married households. As an obstetrician, Roma Vora earns over $300,000, roughly $235,000 more than her husband makes as an emergency room nurse working at the same hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |