Finn Boulding, stay-at-home dude
There’s an essay from a few days ago at Slate, by a guy named “Finn Boulding.” Finn calls himself a “stay-at-home dude” because he’s not a dad, but since he moved to new city because his wife got an allegedly great job offer after completing her Ph.D., he now stays home.
In much of the essay, Finn explains the benefits of a marriage where one spouse stays home and keeps house. The house is always clean, there’s good food to eat, the working spouse can relax when she gets home from work because she doesn’t have to do any housework, and they also get to spend more time together. It would be considered chauvinistic or something if a man explained the benefit of having housewife, but people view this information from a completely different perspective when a man describes the benefits to the marriage of being a “stay-at-home dude.”
But I should point out, once again, that the upper classes look down upon someone of either sex doing nothing. The upper middle class believes that people should do something for self-actualization purposes. Merely keeping a clean house isn’t very self-actualizing, that’s what poor immigrant housekeepers are for. In the more normal case where the man has a very large salary, the wife, even if she doesn’t need any income, should be outside the house from 9 to 5 doing something useful for society such as working at a non-profit or at an art gallery.
I can’t find anything about Finn on the internet. He seems to have pulled down all of his social media profiles. I think he’s an immigrant from Europe. He may have worked as an intern at U+B architecture & design in Minneapolis. This may be his wife, who looks pretty cute, but based on her Ph.D. in Communication and Science Studies, I have a hard time figuring out how she could be making so much money that it doesn’t pay for Finn to work.
UPDATE: A sleuthy reader found a woman more likely to be Finn Boulding’s wife, because she recently graduated from a PhD program in Minnesota and now is an Assistant Professor in San Antonio, Texas. Also, people wonder if he is related to the famous Elsie and Kenneth Boulding. I have no idea. But Boulding is a pretty rare name, and the obituary says they had 16 grandchildren.
Lion, the link is incorrect…Mrs. Finn Boulding is here:
http://web.trinity.edu/x19129.xml
An asst econ professor at a tony college like Trinity could make $90-100K which would be fine for San Antonio.
But there’s probably more money floating around…if you check, you can see that Finn got his B.A. in Studio Art, 1998, from Carleton College, which now costs $56k/yr. Hardly something an average bro would ever consider.
I can’t tell if he’s the grandson of “peace studies” pioneers Kenneth Boulding and Elsie Boulding, but his ties to art and academia, his lefty activism (while masquerading as an average bro), and his ability to get a piece published in Slate out of the blue make one wonder.
Another tell that this article is about activism is his blase attitude. He doesn’t really know how a regular guy in this situation would act. He never talks about who manages finances, no mention of student debt, no mention of discussing his plans and goals with his now-wife.
A lot of the SWPLs in the comments ask him why he doesn’t “volunteer.” Funny how cluelessly oblivious they are to substitute teaching, even though that would allow him to DIRECTLY help diverse, vibrant children, while giving him complete schedule flexibility and helping out with the bills.
Fiddlesticks
February 8, 2013 at 12:53 pm
I’ll give it to the guy; he knows how to game Slate readers…the comments are an amazing example of the power of Roosh’s strategy of painting an incomplete picture that maintains at least basic congruence while allowing your targets, who in this case are eager to show off how tolerant they can be, to fill in the canvas with their sweetest illusions and imaginings.
Fiddlesticks
February 8, 2013 at 1:17 pm
the working spouse can relax when she gets home from work because she doesn’t have to do any housework
Note that this is not the case when the man works and the woman stays home. Oh my word, no. When he gets home, he is supposed to do “his share” of the housework, and furthermore he is supposed to take charge of the kids so that SHE can have some time to relax. (When he gets to relax is not important…)
Tarl
February 8, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Is he related to Kenneth Boulding and Elsie Boulding – husband and wife team of leftist economist (ken) and Peace Studies pioneer (elsie)
dhoorendhar
February 8, 2013 at 1:51 pm
I met Ken and Elise Boulding several times when they lectured in Minnesota in the 70s (where I lived at the time). I was never a fan of their touchy-feely Rodney King approach to world conflict, but Ken made a compelling case in his classic essay “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”–enough for me to assign to my environmental policy class I was teaching (even if I didn’t agree with his conclusions).
sestamibi
February 8, 2013 at 2:12 pm
Off topic:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/tech/social-media/flu-tracking-twitter
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130124163238.htm
Is Sillicon Valley or Wall Street higher class? For example, is an investment banking analyst job at Goldman Sachs or a software engineering job at Facebook (or a funded start-up) more prestigious?
Alex
February 8, 2013 at 4:37 pm
Wall St. Outside of a few start-ups that take off, Sillicon Valley just can’t match Wall Street in terms of compensation. I get the feeling that Wall Street folks are smarter too. This from a person who went to a top undergraduate school.
AsianDude
February 8, 2013 at 5:38 pm
As a native of the Bay Area, I can’t help but think that Wall Street is still the more prestigious place to be. The West Coast suffers with respect to the East Coast in the same way that America suffers with respect to Europe. It will always be the young upstart.
Hoover
February 8, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Asians have never made any significant inroads in Wall St. or NYC for that matter like they have with SV. I’m surprised this guy I’m responding to, doesn’t realize this. The Northeast corridor is pretty much Eurocentric with the old school boys’ club exclusivity.
Just Speculating
February 9, 2013 at 10:18 pm
So, at the moment, the starting comp at Google / Facebook / etc. is comparable to the bulge bracket banks, but I think that the banks ramp up their salaries at a much faster rate.
Alex
February 8, 2013 at 7:17 pm
Being an owner in SV seems to be pretty high status. Not some grunt programmer making low six figures and wondering why he can’t afford a house in the valley.
asdf
February 8, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Me sees divorce down the road.
I bet Heartiste would agree with me.
AsianDude
February 8, 2013 at 6:50 pm
“a sleuthy reader found a woman more likely to be Finn Boulding’s wife”
So the solution to the beta male’s problem isn’t Sam the Sham and the Pharos’ solution, it’s find the hot smart girls?
My Dad had graduated Harvard, was attending law school at the time, and his family was way over my Mom’s, but she said, “He’s the first man I dated who wasn’t stupid.” Maybe?
Nicolai Yezhov
February 8, 2013 at 6:55 pm
And she’s a Boer. Oh my God. I’ve found my dream woman. I’m in love.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 8, 2013 at 7:03 pm
Man or woman, if your long term plan is to have no kids and no job, you’re lazy. Raising kids is a full time job. Keeping house is not. Stay-at-home dude has a good thing going. Let’s see how long she puts up with it.
John
February 8, 2013 at 7:43 pm
Rich Americans can think what they like, but at the end of the day, belief in the superiority of work to non-employment is fundamentally a bourgeois view– “bourgeois” in the pejorative way Nietzsche or Allan Bloom would use the word. And does not the fear of violent death (what Bloom defines as the leading trait of the bourgeoisie) strike you as the predominant passion of a Bloomberg, a Gates?
I myself have long since come around to using “bourgeois” in the positive, John Lukacs way, Lukacs, like Harold Bloom, foretelling the coming death of the liberal bourgeoisie and the onslaught of an Age of Iron.
All the same, there is something intractably philistine and tacky in the belief in “work” as “self-actualization”. If the wealthy want to play at being Mme. de Chatelet and Voltaire, indulging all the arts and sciences they can afford, great. If they have no such capacities or inclinations, let them play at being Marie Antoinette.
The very idea of “non-employment” as a category makes me shudder. As if “employment” were some sort of default setting in life! For the hoi polloi, perhaps. The demotic stench of “work” makes me wretch. Idleness, aristoi, idleness!
Lucius Somesuch
February 8, 2013 at 9:40 pm
This article could be a ruse to see if he could get it published in Slate.
D.H.
February 8, 2013 at 10:15 pm
Two things are weird about this article. If they’re so loaded why only one car? That will get old quick.
Second, the phrase, “if I manage my time well.” How much cooking, cleaning, and errands can two childless people produce that can’t be accomplished over the course of 5 weekdays, that could prevent them from weekend downtime?
Lion why no entries about the exLAPD cop gone rogue?
islandmommy
February 8, 2013 at 10:58 pm
Lion why no entries about the exLAPD cop gone rogue?
Because talking about race is “prole” or something like that.
ntk
February 9, 2013 at 3:10 am
There is plenty of fodder in that story minus the unmentionable topic.
islandmommy
February 9, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Aka SINK (as opposed to DINK)or Single Income No Kids.
http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com/2013/02/single-income-no-kids-supernormal.html
bobo
February 9, 2013 at 7:14 am
[...] stay-at-home dude. I say go for [...]
Linkdump « Rhymes With Cars & Girls
February 9, 2013 at 8:52 am
Is his wife a US Citizen ? (probably not, if she’s South African born).
I have seen this kind of pairing in academia: driven foreign female student getting married to an easygoing American male from a privileged background. She has often met him during her initial years in the US – where being American and having “society” connection was enormous DHV for him. Male American then following her to her academic position in middle-of-nowhere, doing a spot of “consulting” or in a university support staff position (BTW, a large number of the non-academic “whatever do they do” positions that have cropped up in recent years at universities are occupied by spouses of faculty)
dhoorendhar
February 9, 2013 at 9:30 am
Doesn’t he realize that when future employers google his name after an interview, they will find his article about the joys of quitting your job? Either he’s well ensconced via family, or a real dumb dumb.
islandmommy
February 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
“But I should point out, once again, that the upper classes look down upon someone of either sex doing nothing. The upper middle class believes that people should do something for self-actualization purposes. Merely keeping a clean house isn’t very self-actualizing, that’s what poor immigrant housekeepers are for.”
I think you are behind the curve here. The new trend is to play house. I see lots of upwardly mobile couples that choose to cook their own meals, clean their own houses, raise their own kids, and do their own shopping. They want to re-create the 1950s homemaker life but this time with more relaxed gender roles and more gay people.
Jimmy
February 9, 2013 at 11:41 pm
If they are raising kids, then they are doing something. There’s an exception for kids.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 10, 2013 at 12:11 am