‘If I wanted to finance a human being, I’d have a kid’: Gen Z women say they’re financially supporting — and parenting — their boyfriends

Naomi helped him fix his résumé, pushed him to apply for jobs and, while he figured out his next move, picked up the tab for nearly everything. But the money was only part of what bothered her. Naomi told The Cut that his lack of income seemed to double as an excuse to put little effort into the relationship, too. Romance, after all, does not require a six-figure salary.

“If you can’t afford something, write me a love letter,” she told The Cut. “He could have literally made me Kraft mac and cheese.”

The couple eventually discussed moving in together, but Naomi decided she could not justify adding another person to her monthly expenses.

“If I wanted to finance a human being,” she says, “I’d have a kid.”

Changing dynamics

Naomi’s experience comes as the financial dynamics inside many relationships are shifting.

Women now earn as much as or more than their husbands in nearly half of opposite-sex marriages in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. And when wives are the primary breadwinners, they out-earn their husbands by an average of about $53,000.

Men still earn more in most marriages, but the share of women bringing home the same amount or more has nearly tripled over the past 50 years.

As relationship dynamics change, the way couples divide responsibilities may change with them. If one partner is contributing more financially, for example, the other might take on more at home to help balance things out.

But that trade-off does not always happen.

Pew Research Center found that even when wives are the primary breadwinners, they still spend more time on housework than their husbands — about 4.8 hours a week compared with 2.8 hours. They also spend more time caregiving, at 6.4 hours versus five hours for their husbands.

More than a money problem

For Naomi, the frustration went beyond her boyfriend being unemployed. She felt his attitude toward work had become part of the problem.

He identified as a communist, spent his free time reading Marx and surrounded himself with other unemployed men who viewed caring too much about a career as embarrassing.

“They hate the finance bro,” Naomi told The Cut. “But in their push to reject that, they’re now doing nothing.”

No one was asking him to become a Wall Street finance bro in a Patagonia vest. But there is plenty of room between climbing the corporate ladder and not having a job at all.

A balanced relationship

There is no single formula for what a balanced relationship should look like. Money is only one part of that equation. What matters more is whether both people are on the same page about what each person is contributing, what they expect from one another and what they are building toward together — conversations that can become especially important in your 20s, when careers and finances are still taking shape.