In the run-up to my decision to leave academia, I had one huge asset: my wife’s career.

People quit their jobs for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they’re not paid enough, sometimes they’re not valued enough, sometimes they’re ready for a change, and sometimes they realise they need to get out for the sake of their mental and physical health.

But people also don’t quit their jobs, even when they should. Even when a lot of those reasons are present. People will continue going to work in situations and at institutions where they’re unrewarded, unvalued, unhappy, and sometimes even mentally or physically unwell, often because they feel they can’t afford to walk away (this assumes – not necessarily correctly – that the personal cost of staying, both mental and physical, is less damaging than whatever uncertainties leaving will bring).

Last year, when I was weighing up whether or not to stay in academia, I was extremely fortunate in knowing that I could resign. I was lucky to know that I could take my time, within reason, to find something new. I was lucky to have the knowledge that the household budget wouldn’t fall apart if I did the right thing and walk away from a situation that was taking too much of a toll on me.

I was lucky that my wife has her own career.

We’ve always supported one another’s career ambitions, and perhaps never more so than when my wife walked away from a permanent position so we could relocate to Germany, enabling me to pursue my dream of being a group leader. After we became parents, I took extended paternal leave and in terms of pushing for gender equality in the workplace, I still think that both parents taking near-equal time off after childbirth is one of the easiest and most proactive and progressive steps a couple can make. 

While those contributions undoubtedly eased the load, and I’m personally very happy that I was there to participate in those early days and be actively involved as a caregiver, they perhaps weren’t super-helpful for my wife’s career at the time. More consequential was the switch to working from home two days a week after child number 2’s birth. Probably most helpful of all was moving from Würzburg to Aschaffenburg, which lengthened my commute from being <30 min to minimally 100 min each way, so that my wife’s new firm was brought within daily commuting distance.

By supporting each other’s career needs in these ways, we’ve created conditions that mean the family unit wasn’t and still isn’t wholly dependent on either of our salaries. 

Nowadays, it’s possible for couples to find an equilibrium that works for them. There are circumstances when it may make more sense for a couple to go for the 1950s-style breadwinner/homemaker model, in which household income and domestic responsibilities are both set to roughly 0/100% allocations. At the other extreme, both parents can work full-time and split the parenting so that everything is 50/50%. What’s important is that there’s a freedom to choose, an equality of decision-making, and a dialogue between both partners in a relationship to explore what’s best for them as individuals, for the relationship, and for the household. 

It’s obviously up to all couples – especially those with children – to figure out what kind of work/household model works best for them, and there can be singular circumstances that makes those 0/100% or 50/50% extremes uniquely favourable. There is however a growing recognition that systems of any kind are more robust when they are more diverse, and diversifying a household’s load by spreading the responsibility for earning is likely to create a more elastic network that can better withstand medium- and long-term fluctuations.

I’d contend that sharing the load in this way can be a positive thing for you as a parent, as a person, and as a professional in a way that transcends gender. If I had been the sole breadwinner in our relationship, then resigning would have been potentially catastrophic for the family finances and required fast and possibly rushed adjustment. With a more equal distribution of household responsibilities, I had the enormous luxury of knowing that we could tolerate the disruption more easily, and I could afford – literally! – to assess things before making my next career move. 

It shows that you don’t have to be a power couple to still wield couple power.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to MM and EK for feedback and edits. Artwork generated by Midjourney using text prompts.