Comic/actress/writer Tina Fey does it all, while husband Jeff Richmond, according to Vanity Fair, cooks and sews for the family. (Caitlin Thorne Hersey)
Rachael Ray and and her husband John M. Cusimano attend Time’s 100 most influential people in the world gala at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center in May. (Getty Images for Time Inc)
Sara Moulton has always been the main breadwinner in her family — in more ways than one. Moulton is an award-winning chef who’s hosted multiple Food Network shows, served as executive chef at Gourmet magazine for decades, written several best-selling cookbooks and is a food editor on “Good Morning America.”
As for being the primary earner, well, it’s a role she’s come to embrace.
BREADWINNERS AT HOME: BIG BUCKS A BIG PAIN
“I really like providing for my family,” says the chef, who lives in Chelsea with her husband, Bill Adler — a music industry veteran who helped run Def Jam Records in its formative years — and their two children, 24 and 20, who are living with them temporarily.
“I pay the bills,” Moulton says. “I like planning trips. I like making sure we’re all safe and secure and taken care of.”
Meanwhile, Adler, who has a book about Def Jam due out next year, does most of the work on the home front.
“If Bill sat around and ate bonbons and didn’t clean up the house and never took care of the kids, I would have divorced him!” says Moulton.
“He works very hard. He’s a very interesting guy.”
Her husband, who describes himself and Moulton as former hippies, says neither of them had conventional expectations about what their roles would be. “It’s been a long time since my father’s generation, when he was the breadwinner and Mom stayed home,” says Adler.
Moulton’s certainly not the only woman bringing home the bacon. Here in New York, boldface examples of the gender shift abound. “30 Rock” creator Tina Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer for the sitcom whom she’s known since her improv days in Chicago. According to a January 2010 Vanity Fair profile of Fey, Richmond “cooks and sews,” and most of his credits are on shows she has either worked on or created.
Celebrity chef Rachael Ray, whose net worth is estimated at between $60 and $100 million, is married to a man who is alternately billed as an entertainment lawyer and as a singer for a band called (somewhat forebodingly) the Cringe. Lady Gaga’s boyfriend, Luc Carl, tends bar on the Lower East Side when he’s not on the road as part of her entourage.
And all are helping to take the old stereotype about men being the ones who “bring home the bacon” — and kick it to the curb. Female breadwinners, sometimes referred to as “alpha wives,” have never been more visible in everyday life, too. During the recession, 3 out of 4 jobs lost were men’s, and more women in formerly two-job households became, by default, sole earners. A study by the Pew Research Center earlier this year focused on “the rise of wives,” finding that female breadwinners (defined as earning at least 10 percent more than their partners) now head 22 percent of households.
Furthermore, the number of women earning six-figure salaries has gone up 14 percent in two years, according to new census figures — with NYC leading the trend.
“New York likely has the biggest concentration of women earning six-figure salaries in the country,” says Robert Drago, of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
It’s a far cry from the 1950s “Leave It to Beaver” model, where Dad earned the bucks while Mom stayed at home with the kids.
But while these female breadwinners might be common, it doesn’t mean everyone’s gotten used to them.
NoHo resident Judith Newman, a writer in her 40s, is the happy breadwinner of her home, but says the same arrangement is driving others in her social circle crazy.
“I do have friends who are the main breadwinners, and their husbands are struggling,” she says. “They’re all so pissed about it.”
The ambiguity over who does what, and its accompanying stress, is to be expected as gender roles change, says Andrea Doucet, Carleton University sociology professor and author of “Bread and Roses — and the Kitchen Sink.”
“The ‘mancession’ has been difficult on couples,” she tells The Post. “Many have told me that they did not expect to be in this situation. To suddenly have it sprung upon you because of job loss can lead to a rapid and stress-filled learning curve for both men and women.”
This was a curve that eventually sent Danielle (not her real name) off the rails. In her late 30s with a good job at a marketing firm, she started dating Tom (not his real name), five years her senior, to whom she now refers as “the man-child.” He worked in freelance sales, he said — but he didn’t work much.
“He never really went into the office,” she says. “He said he didn’t like the environment. At home he would order pay-per-view movies, not porn, but he’d sit there all day.”
Gradually, she started to encourage him to take care of the home front. “I would get up and go to work in the morning, and he would stay in bed and sleep,” says Danielle. “I was like, ‘I don’t care, but you have to make the bed.’ And he would kind of half-assed make it. I would be like, ‘You need to get your butt up and make the bed. Or clean.’ ” This, she says, did not happen.
One time when she was away, she let him stay at her place. When she returned, Danielle says, “There were beer cans everywhere … He was mad because I was mad!” By the time they reached the marriage-discussion stage, the relationship crumbled.
Part of this type of problem stems from residual notions of how much men are — or aren’t — expected to contribute at home (see sidebar). Allison Pearson, author of the best-selling alpha-wife novel “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” isn’t surprised there would be resentment — often on both sides. “The male ego is a fragile thing,” she says. “[And] women don’t want or need a man to take care of them. Except when we want and need a man to take care of us.”
Newman says she never aspired to be a stay-at-home wife. “I would rather be Don Draper,” she says. “Well, minus the compulsive philandering and horrible childhood.”
Her husband, a retired opera singer who is “decades” older than her, is fine with this arrangement — except, Newman admits, they both sort of wish they had a homemaker around. “I’ve wished I had a traditional ‘wife,’” she says. “And truthfully, he would rather have married Martha Stewart.” But other than that flight of fancy, she says, they’ve always been pretty content with the way things are — even if their friends in similar circumstances are not.
Ultimately, it may be up to the younger generation, which grew up with less gender-stereotype baggage, to truly normalize the female breadwinner role.
“I need to make money, and I want to do all the nice things I want to do, and I don’t need a man to help me do it,” says Cecile, 25, a media product manager who lives in Greenwood Heights and didn’t want her last name printed. Cecile has always aspired to be a female breadwinner.
That said, now that she’s in a serious relationship, her views on the subject have softened somewhat.
“I really like the idea that I’m able to take my boyfriend out,” says Cecile, whose significant other also works full-time in media, for about the same salary.
“But this relationship has really showed me that it’s less about wanting to have power, and more about just wanting to feel like I’m my own person. Like I’m financially whole.”