Why don't I get a wife bonus?

Have you asked your husband for a 'wife bonus'? Photo / Thinkstock

The subject of marital finances is always popular. When I revealed my antipathytowards joint accounts, a great deal of reader feedback ensued. Some people, like me, preferred to give joint accounts a miss. Yet many people were big fans of these accounts and wondered what was wrong with me.

The latest marital economic controversy centres upon the "wife bonus" which involves full-time mothers getting lump-sum cash rewards from their high-earning husbands in return for running the household and wrangling the sprogs. When the author of a tell-all piece shamelessly boasted of Chanel ballet pumps and Mulberry handbags, she reinforced the idea that the "kept" women who receive such bonuses are shallow and high maintenance.

Do Stay-at-Home Moms Deserve A Salary? asked Vogue magazine. Stay-at-Home Mothers (SAHMs) are sometimes frowned upon for simply existing. In an age when many households need two incomes to stay afloat, it's seen as a luxury to have one partner at home with the children. As noted in the Vogue article, being a SAHM "can be construed as a ... show of wealth ... A sign that your salary is frivolous because your partner is getting paid handsomely." (This is Vogue; it's not a magazine likely to acknowledge couples that struggle and make sacrifices to have a partner at home.)

Mike Hosking may have recently declared that his wife, a SAHM, was worth $98,000 annually but putting even a notional price on such unpaid work raises eyebrows. That's why the concept of wife bonuses is receiving widespread condemnation. It's just not right, you see, to receive payment for tasks you're supposed to undertake for love, for the sake of playing your part. Evidently, it's patronising and demeaning to receive a bonus from your other half.

One reader of an article in The Telegraph wrote: "If you have to pitch your husband for money on the basis you have been a good wife, you've reduced yourself from equal relationship partner to employee and implicitly stated your marriage is a financial transaction." Ouch.

Then there's the feminist angle. Even the writer of the tell-all piece admitted that the "concept of a 'gift' for being a good little wife seemed to assault all my feminist senses". A commenter on the Vogue article wrote: "What fresh anti-feminist hell is this". Hopefully any woman arguing against the wife bonus on the grounds of feminism wasn't "given away" at her wedding and didn't take her husband's surname upon marriage. Both of these quaint "anti-feminist" traditions are so insidious we barely pause to register their misogynistic symbolism.

As revealed in the comments responding to my initial piece, many people believe there is no such thing as separate funds in a marriage. They claim that ideas such as "his money" and "her money" cease to exist once you say "I do"; from then on there is only "our money". Some people hold this view strongly and reckon that anyone who operates differently is wrong, mistrustful and/or heading for the divorce courts.

Readers who praised joint accounts often cited superior levels of trust and communication between spouses as reasons they were comfortable with such an arrangement. It must have come as a shock then to discover that "[a]bout a third of people who have combined their finances with a significant other say they've hidden cash, a purchase, a bank account or a credit card from their partner". Perhaps there's not quite as much trust involved as they imagined.

But that doesn't matter, anyway, because financial secrets just might be healthy. Evidently, having a secret running away fund is the key to a happy marriage. I've had one of those from the outset - a fund, that is - except it's never been secret. "That's going straight to the running away fund," I'd occasionally joke when money came my way. The only trouble is I just spent every last cent on a new horse. For the first time in 22 years, my running away account is empty.

I have just one question: Where's the wife bonus when you need it? Okay, two questions: Can they be backdated?