Janice Min reportedly made $2 million-a-year as editor-in-chief at Us Weekly, while her husband was a full-time dad. She tells why, even if a woman has it all, she still has to deal with grocery shopping and screaming babies.
I first met my future husband Peter at Columbia University during our junior year. He was extremely cute, assigned to the room next door to mine, and by our senior year we were a couple. I knew then I wanted to be a reporter; he wanted to be a teacher. It didn’t take a college degree to know we weren’t exactly picking the most lucrative careers.As if to prove that point, my very first job in 1991 was as a $24,000-a-year reporter for a local paper in Westchester County. I worked from 2 to 10 p.m. and weekends. Peter, for his part, headed to the Ritz Escoffier cooking school in Paris before entering a Ph.D. program for history. He would spend nine long years with modest cook wages and grad-student teaching fellowships. In year seven of that stretch, we were wed.
In 2003, five years later, on summer break from his high school teaching job, he convinced me to accept the editor-in-chief job at Us Weekly after my predecessor abruptly left. At first, I didn’t want it. Ever rational and intelligent, Peter explained why I should. And he was right. I nearly doubled circulation, and soon, I was making more money sometimes in one paycheck than he would make the whole year.So how did I feel about that?
Recent findings show that now nearly a quarter of American wives serve as the family breadwinner.
And from what I know anecdotally, I’d guess that about 60 percent of those women are perpetually annoyed about their breadwinner status. I’d be lying if sometimes I said I wasn’t, also. (The feeling usually burbled up on a Tuesday morning after a 3 a.m. late night putting the magazine to bed.) But for the most part, our arrangement worked out well.
Two months after becoming editor-in-chief, I became pregnant. (I’m sure my boss was not psyched, though he never let on.) Nine months later, I gave birth — just hours after closing an issue and an early morning “Today” show appearance to talk about J.Lo’s third wedding.
Around that time, my husband asked to work half-time. I often worked and traveled the hours of two jobs combined, and one of us needed to scale back. It made no sense financially or careerwise for it to be me. After our second child was born, my husband, unhappy in his job, left his position altogether.
Yes, there were times in my harried, chronically exhausted life I’d have a little daydream about being one of those tennis-playing wives with an investment banker husband. And we had plenty of arguments: His inability to go grocery shopping was a sore point — it never crossed his mind to buy food, even though he loves to cook. Another was how he managed to sleep through the kids’ cries in the morning. But our two boys now are 3 and 5. They are calm, smart, happy and kind, and I give my husband (and our great caretakers) much credit for that. I would venture to say he had a far more challenging job than I did.
I remember seeing a depressing segment on “Good Morning America” last year where a working mom described her loss of respect for her laid-off husband. He was enjoying spending time with the kids; she was seething with contempt. I felt sorry for them both, and I realized I am hard-wired a little differently than some other women.
As a girl growing up in Colorado, I never dressed up like a bride, guessed which boy I was going to marry or looked at wedding magazines. (Even though, oddly, I’d later go on to edit one.) To me, marriage wasn’t a goal, but something that happens to some and not others. I probably filled my mind with thoughts about being a journalist and working in media more than anything else. I was also the youngest of three kids to two working parents (my mom went back to work when I was in first grade), which meant I learned a lot about self-sufficiency early on and how to take care of myself. I always loved having after-school jobs because it meant not asking my parents for money.
At Us Weekly, there is a section of the office called “the pod,” where the junior members of the predominantly female staff sit. Every so often in my seven years at the magazine, a group squeal from the pod would spontaneously erupt. Inevitably, it meant one thing: Someone had come in with a new engagement ring. It was always a deliciously happy moment. For the rest of the day, the women in the office would talk about carat size, cuts and whisper about different diamonds.
I told a few women in the office the story of how when I was 27 I actually had refused to wear an engagement ring. Some of the women looked at me like I’d drowned their kitten; others were filled with awe. I explained that at that time in my life, I found something objectionable about how women judged other women by ring size (“poor so-and-so, her diamond’s so small” translated into “sucker, she’s marrying a poor guy”); and that the whole proposal and wedding ritual was, dare I say, a little sexist. (Grown men asking fathers’ permission to marry their grown daughters is a nice tradition, but honestly, it kind of gives me the creeps.)
Now I look back at that decision and realize what I was really resisting was the idea of turning over my independence — financial and otherwise — to someone else. It wasn’t my style. But it has never shaped my worldview. I dare you to find another editor in New York who has assigned more stories and photo shoots involving rings, wedding dresses and romance than I. I am a staunch believer in love, marriage and family, but not that a woman can’t out-earn a man or that a man shouldn’t change the diapers.
Today, I wear a beautiful emerald cut diamond that once belonged to Peter’s great aunt, and call it my engagement ring. But I only put it on a few months after our wedding.
Some might think that because I made the bulk of our family’s money that I have the upper hand, or the rights to call all the shots. But our relationship isn’t like that. It’s more a partnership than a dictatorship. I don’t think either one of us equates money with power, or finds its pursuit an essential part of living our lives. (Granted, we have that luxury after having so much income for so long.) When I was contemplating leaving Us Weekly last year, I made sure my husband was on board with the decision before making my move. “No brainer,” he said. “It’s time for something new.”
So I opted out, a little bit later than most mothers, and will opt back in doing new things at some point. As will my husband, now that our kids are old enough to be in school every day. Twenty years after first meeting Peter, I’d say that it is impossible for any woman to have it all, but a certain open-mindedness sometimes can get you closer.
Janice Min’s book “From Mousewife to Momshell” is due in 2011.