The Curse of the Successful Woman?

Like Wolf Blitzer, I am going to interrupt my election coverage to talk about the other news story of the week: Britney and K-Fed. Honestly, I am not big on celebrity gossip person and am usually oblivious to Hollywood happenings even though I used live down the street from Tinseltown. However, there was an CNN article about how Britney's divorce follows the trend of marital problems when there is the more successful wife. It caught my eye because this trend is unsettling to me.

When Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe announced their divorce (and I was very upset because I love Reese and thought her marriage would work out), all the media outlets were fixated on this theme of a husband and more successful wife divorcing. Statistics were thrown out, "In the past 10 years, six of the nine Academy Award winners for best actress ended up splitting from the husbands or boyfriends they thanked on Oscar night: Witherspoon, Swank, Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow and Helen Hunt. (The exceptions are Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, who was unattached when she won, and Frances McDormand.)"

Curious about this trend, I started Wikipedia'ing some other prominent women. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, divorced. Newly elected Senator Claire MacKaskill, divorced. Re-elected Senator Dianne Feinstein, divorced but now remarried. Barbara Walters, divorced. Martha Stewart, divorced. Hillary Clinton, we won't go there.

Is it true? While women are trying to break through the glass ceiling, are they now confronted with a choice between a successful career or a successful marriage?

Maybe I just really want to believe that this isn't true, but I think that a more successful woman (at least by fame and fortune) is not an automatic marriage breaker. While a lot of news stories simply focus on the many divorces, they often don't look at other potential causes like the CNN article I linked above did. A lot of people seem to forget that famous divorces (whether the male is more successful or they're equal) aren't all that unusual because the travel-heavy, ego-driven professions don't lend themselves well to marriages. Nor does all the attention and pressure when you're trying to fix things. Need we count how many male actors or politicians are divorced?

I do feel like there are adjustments to be made in this new era where women can be making as much or more than their husbands. But all marriages are about making adjustments. And to focus on a group of high profile celebrities is a very inaccurate sampling of successful women. 1) Because like I said famous people do not represent the general population and 2) Famous marriages that last don't make the news. Some examples:

Cindy Crawford, married 8 years. Oprah, committed for 20 years. Ebay CEO (I searched the first female CEO I saw on Forbes list) Meg Whitman, married 20+ years. Speaker Elect Nancy Pelosi, married 43 years. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, married 52 years. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, married 54 years.

Yes there are probably some marriages where it is an issue, but I do not think it is insurmountable. My short list shows that. And along with my short list, I feel like there are probably thousands of other relationships where it doesn't matter who makes more money. But Wolf Blitzer does not interrupt the election coverage to tell us that.