Role reversal

Men can be humbled in not being top earner

I can still picture my husband sitting slumped over his computer at our home in Scotland, head in hands. Next to him was an ashtray piled high with cigarette butts and a half-drunk cup of coffee — his fifth or sixth of the day.

“No luck?” I said, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. “What do you think?” he snapped. This was just two years ago — and for the previous eight our roles had dramatically reversed, as I became the sole family breadwinner.

Last week’s revelation by sociologists at Rutgers University in the U.S., that having a wife who is the primary earner is potentially dangerous for a husband’s health, holds no surprise for me. Retrograde as it might sound, proud alpha men still want to be top dog in the earning stakes. The study, carried out with nearly 2,000 couples over 30 years, monitoring changes in earnings and status, found much higher rates of stress-related illness as well as heart problems and Type 2 diabetes in “kept men” whose earnings were outstripped by their wives’.

For the first two decades of our marriage, Ross, 56, always earned the most as a reporter with Sky News. I was happy to be the one at home, tapping out freelance articles between bringing up our two daughters, Beth and Charlotte, in our lovely Oxfordshire farmhouse.

Ross relished his role, too. Having been part of awardwinning teams covering wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Sierra Leone, his career was fuelled by adrenalin and he thrived on the pressure.

But 13 years ago he decided he could not go on. Having achieved everything he wanted to at Sky, at the age of just 43 he was reaching burnout.

So Ross gave up his job, and set up a company making corporate films. At first it did well, with clients ranging from Tesco to the wine company Berry Brothers. But then the recession hit, and marketing budgets were slashed. He could see his work drying up.

In the midst of this we made the decision to upend our lives, selling our farmhouse in Oxfordshire to buy a huge crumbling 15-bedroom pile in Argyll in Scotland. Ross needed a change, and this would become his new career, managing the estate and setting up self-catering cottages and a B&B.

He put on about 25 pounds, had frequent headaches and was drinking far more than was good for him.

His stress levels soared, and he seemed to take no pleasure in anything, even his beloved fishing.

Gradually, however, things turned a corner. The cottages were finished, the three new B&B rooms at our home, Kirnan, were open for business. Ross started to take bookings. The money began to flood in.

As Ross’s earnings soared, so did his spirits. He stopped smoking and cut down on his drinking. He was back fishing his river when time allowed. In short, he blossomed.

Ross loves handing me a bundle of cash. “Buy yourself something pretty,” he says. We’ve always been equal, but being the breadwinner has brought this old silverback roaring back to life.