A new Pew Poll came out last week saying women are now the only or main breadwinners in 40% of American families.  Some would say “Woo-hoo!  You go, girls!”  Fox News, of course, sees it as yet another sign of the apocalypse.  

I just want to check.  This is 2013, isn’t it?  I mean we are in the new millennium, aren’t we?  We’ve put several men on the moon, cracked open the atom and made huge strides in nanotechnology.  Why can’t we blast conservative pundits out of the 1950’s?

On Lou Dobbs’ finance program, Dobbs and three other giants of the intellectual realm decided that not only was this news bad, it was a sign that the very fiber of our society is being unhinged.  Erick Erickson said you only need to look at the animal kingdom to see that the male is supposed to be the dominant force in a family unit.  (Funny, they don’t like it at all when liberals talk about the natural world.  Then they say “We’re humans with souls.  We’re above the animals.”)  Juan Williams whined that women becoming family breadwinners was tearing all families apart and harming the children and that it is harming minority families even more than whites.  Somehow they even made this an abortion issue.

Yes, more income has long been recognized as the death knell to the family.  Girly money doesn’t buy food, pay a mortgage, put children through college or invest for retirement the way that manly money does.  Manly money is good and clean and noble.  Girly money is evil and dirty and subversive.  And science has proven that girly money drastically reduces penis size in the manly population.

Who are these people and where do they come from?   We are still living in dire economic times.  Why are these people who do not believe in any kind of social safety net not cheering any and every kind of financial success?  Women have gone into the labor force and made their way.  They aren’t on the public dole.  No unemployment.  No welfare.  They are the models of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps that the conservatives are always extolling.  Now it’s wrong because their boots are a little smaller and might have a two-inch heel?

To be fair, Fox’s Megyn Kelly did rake these guys for being misogynistic morons.  And she did a fine job of it, too.  I don’t give thumbs up to anyone on Fox very often, but I’m giving two to Megyn.  Maybe she can teach the guys a few things.

As I watched the clip from the Dobbs show – because you know my head would explode if I watched more than that, I was reminded of an old movie I saw a few years ago.  Yes, nearly everything reminds me of an old movie and usually the comparison is dead on, as it is here.  The movie was Week-end Marriage, a 1932 vehicle for Loretta Young.  Take note of the year, because it’s very important to this discussion.

In Week-end Marriage, Loretta plays housewife Lola Hayes.  At the outset Lola and her hubby Ken are a happy young couple.  Then Ken loses his job and can’t find another.  Things start to look bad until Lola goes out and finds a job, a job she’s really good at.  As time goes on Ken can’t manage to find work while Lola excels and keeps moving up the corporate ladder.

Yay!  It may be the depths of the Great Depression with 25% of Americans unemployed, but Ken and Lola are doing OK.  Lola’s got a job – a really good job – that provides for all of their needs.

Oh, sorry.  I was wrong.  This is terrible.  All the bills are being paid with girly money, and you know what that means.  It means the whole social order of the Hayeses is being up-ended.  Lola is undermining Ken with the food and clothing and shelter that she buys with her girly-gotten wages.

So Ken does what any red-blooded, unemployed American man would do:  He has an affair and leaves Lola.  And who can blame him?  He’s supposed to be the master of the house, the bringer home of the bread.  Never mind that he’s incapable of doing so.  The Hayeses should rise and fall on his talent and his talent alone.  If he can’t find work, they should starve with dignity, not survive on pink dollars.  Lola doesn’t understand this at first, not until Ken falls gravely ill – at his girlfriend’s house.  When Lola goes to see him, a sage old doctor explains to her that the only way Ken will ever recover is if he knows he’s the man of the family.  And the only way for that to happen is if Lola quits her job.

Of course it’s 1932 and old-school men run the studios, so Lola quits her job and reunites her family.  God knows what happens to them after that.  The important thing is Lola is back in her rightful place and the Hayeses are no longer being torn asunder by that awful, bill-paying girly money.

Back when I ran across this little gem on Turner Classic Movies, I chuckled at the storyline.  As the son and grandson of women who worked through the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.  I mean Lola quit her job in the middle of the frickin’ Depression!  The capital “D” Depression.  The big one, when a quarter of America was out of work.  Seems to me she’d have been better off if Ken had croaked and left her to have a great career and maybe even find a grown-up man if she wanted one.

But even in 2013, Week-end Marriage is a cautionary tale the boys at Fox can really buy into.