Behind Many Powerful Women on Wall Street: A Doting ‘Househusband’
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    HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $1,648,550 (+0.28%)       Melbourne $988,822 (+0.03%)       Brisbane $1,020,726 (-0.64%)       Adelaide $914,186 (-0.77%)       Perth $918,322 (+0.55%)       Hobart $752,338 (+0.20%)       Darwin $724,985 (+2.76%)       Canberra $965,873 (+0.63%)       National $1,063,922 (+0.19%)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $766,681 (+0.20%)       Melbourne $495,492 (-0.36%)       Brisbane $620,253 (+2.69%)       Adelaide $482,095 (+5.14%)       Perth $492,667 (+1.01%)       Hobart $529,295 (+1.99%)       Darwin $353,302 (-9.42%)       Canberra $490,687 (-2.02%)       National $552,872 (+0.71%)                HOUSES FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 13,190 (+173)       Melbourne 16,949 (+88)       Brisbane 8,992 (+72)       Adelaide 2,736 (+53)       Perth 7,238 (+115)       Hobart 1,218 (+2)       Darwin 275 (-10)       Canberra 1,291 (+3)       National 51,889 (+496)                UNITS FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 10,084 (-13)       Melbourne 9,104 (+25)       Brisbane 1,808 (+31)       Adelaide 467 (+3)       Perth 1,643 (+8)       Hobart 214 (+6)       Darwin 322 (-9)       Canberra 1,139 (+4)       National 24,781 (+55)                HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $800 ($0)       Melbourne $600 ($0)       Brisbane $640 ($0)       Adelaide $610 (+$10)       Perth $670 (-$5)       Hobart $550 ($0)       Darwin $745 (-$5)       Canberra $670 (-$10)       National $669 (-$2)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $730 (-$10)       Melbourne $560 ($0)       Brisbane $620 ($0)       Adelaide $500 (+$10)       Perth $610 (-$10)       Hobart $450 ($0)       Darwin $570 ($0)       Canberra $550 ($0)       National $585 (-$2)                HOUSES FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 5,921 (-4)       Melbourne 7,041 (-47)       Brisbane 4,285 (+37)       Adelaide 1,327 (-13)       Perth 2,180 (-15)       Hobart 220 (-7)       Darwin 128 (+12)       Canberra 521 (+14)       National 21,623 (-23)                UNITS FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 9,472 (-41)       Melbourne 6,888 (+150)       Brisbane 2,291 (-19)       Adelaide 383 (+8)       Perth 616 (+7)       Hobart 102 (0)       Darwin 258 (-2)       Canberra 703 (+4)       National 20,713 (+107)                HOUSE ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 2.52% (↓)       Melbourne 3.16% (↓)     Brisbane 3.26% (↑)      Adelaide 3.47% (↑)        Perth 3.79% (↓)       Hobart 3.80% (↓)       Darwin 5.34% (↓)       Canberra 3.61% (↓)       National 3.27% (↓)            UNIT ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 4.95% (↓)     Melbourne 5.88% (↑)        Brisbane 5.20% (↓)       Adelaide 5.39% (↓)       Perth 6.44% (↓)       Hobart 4.42% (↓)     Darwin 8.39% (↑)      Canberra 5.83% (↑)        National 5.50% (↓)            HOUSE RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND         Sydney 1.3% (↓)     Melbourne 1.3% (↑)        Brisbane 1.1% (↓)       Adelaide 1.0% (↓)       Perth 0.9% (↓)       Hobart 0.9% (↓)       Darwin 0.6% (↓)       Canberra 1.8% (↓)       National 1.1% (↓)            UNIT RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND         Sydney 1.7% (↓)     Melbourne 2.6% (↑)        Brisbane 1.5% (↓)     Adelaide 1.0% (↑)        Perth 0.7% (↓)       Hobart 1.7% (↓)     Darwin 1.2% (↑)        Canberra 3.2% (↓)       National 1.7% (↓)            AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL HOUSES AND TREND       Sydney 29.8 (↑)        Melbourne 31.1 (↓)       Brisbane 31.2 (↓)     Adelaide 25.5 (↑)      Perth 36.2 (↑)      Hobart 31.3 (↑)        Darwin 31.1 (↓)     Canberra 29.1 (↑)        National 30.7 (↓)            AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL UNITS AND TREND         Sydney 29.7 (↓)     Melbourne 32.5 (↑)        Brisbane 30.0 (↓)       Adelaide 23.2 (↓)     Perth 36.8 (↑)        Hobart 32.0 (↓)     Darwin 46.2 (↑)      Canberra 36.6 (↑)      National 33.4 (↑)            
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Behind Many Powerful Women on Wall Street: A Doting ‘Househusband’

More men are staying home to facilitate the complex juggle of family life and their wives’ high-powered careers

By MIRIAM GOTTFRIED
Tue, Oct 22, 2024 8:59amGrey Clock 6 min

Suzanne Donohoe , a top executive at the private-equity firm EQT , started the month of September with a 10-day business trip through Asia and Europe. Back in New York, her husband, Matt Donohoe , was helping their three teenagers begin a new school year.

That was no simple task. Though the Donohoe children are close in age, each goes to a different school and has different extracurricular activities. Matt drove their 13-year-old to hockey practices in New Jersey and took all three children to Boston for a tournament. In between, there were groceries to buy, meals to prepare and homework to assist with.

It was all in a day’s work for Matt, who quit his job in 2007 to help out at home. A former emerging-markets trader with degrees from Georgetown and Columbia, he is part of a quiet but growing force of men who hold down the fort at home while their wives climb to the upper echelons of finance.

Wall Street has long struggled to elevate and retain women. A hotly competitive industry that demands long hours, frequent travel and the need to be on call constantly, it has been an unwelcoming environment for women, particularly those with children.

Women who have leadership roles in finance say that having a spouse who stays home—a househusband, if you will—can relieve that burden and allow them to rise. Even these privileged women, who have a spouse at home and often extra help beyond that, say maintaining the arrangements is a complex feat.

Chip Kelly has so far decided against going back to work because his family relies on his presence at home. Photo: Emli Bendixen for WSJ

For the men, being a househusband can come with a stigma: Society often still assumes men will be the bigger earners and women the primary caregivers. But that is starting to change.

In 45% of U.S. opposite-sex marriages, the wife earns as much as or more than her husband, a share that has roughly tripled over the past 50 years, according to a 2023 report from Pew Research Center. Dads represented 18% of stay-at-home parents in 2021, up from 11% in 1989, another Pew study found.

There are now househusbands at the highest levels of power. Doug Emhoff , married to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, gave up his career—as an entertainment lawyer—to facilitate her political rise after she was elected vice president. On Wall Street, the list of women with husbands at home includes the chief executives of Citigroup and TIAA, the chief financial officer of the private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners, and the global co-head of Blackstone’s real-estate business, among others.

Senior female executives whose partners also work say they have to manage an intense balancing act and admit to being envious at times of their peers whose husbands don’t work.

“The prototype of the person you are competing with, the people in nearly all of the successful positions, have a stay-at-home partner,” says Suzanne Donohoe, who was a partner at Goldman Sachs and KKR before joining EQT in 2022. “The disheartening part of the message is somehow you can’t achieve if one parent isn’t at home.”

She says she doesn’t think that is the case and knows and admires people in demanding jobs who make it work with neither spouse at home.

‘Safety net for a trapeze artist’

Many couples say they started out with parallel professions but reached a point at which the woman’s career accelerated. When one person needed to devote more time to parenting, it made more sense for it to be the man.

Chip Kelly was working in tech sales at an international startup in 2009 when his wife, Natalie Hyche Kelly, who is a Visa executive, gave birth to their first child. After the couple didn’t move quickly enough to get a spot at the daycare they wanted, Chip volunteered to care for the baby and work while she slept.

He took calls while pushing their daughter in the stroller. When she went to sleep, he worked through dozens of emails. The couple had twins a few years later. Around that time, Natalie was promoted and started commuting to San Francisco four days a week from Charlotte, N.C., where the Kellys lived. Chip tried to work while caring for the twins and their older daughter when she wasn’t in preschool.

After the family moved to San Francisco, Chip realised that he was neither doing his job nor parenting as well as he wanted to. He decided to devote himself full time to the latter.

“It was kind of becoming a no-brainer because my wife’s career was going so well,” he says.

The Kellys are now starting their third year in London, where Natalie serves as the payments company’s chief risk officer for Europe. Chip considered going back to work a few years ago, but so far has decided against that because his family relies on his being at home.

Chip Kelly at his family’s London home. Photo: Emli Bendixen for wsj (2)

“I’m like the safety net for a trapeze artist,” he says. “You don’t think about it unless they take it away.”

Kathleen McCarthy Baldwin, Blackstone’s global co-head of real estate, was nursing her second child in 2015 when her husband, Matt Baldwin, left his job as the CFO of a research firm and decided to take some time off.

“The idea of him not working made me very anxious, mostly because of my fears about what it would do to our marriage,” she says. “Would I be envious that he had more time with the children? Would he resent that I had this really exciting and demanding job?”

Matt told her he wasn’t worried. After spending a summer with their daughters at the Jersey Shore while Kathleen mostly worked in the city, Matt decided to make the change permanent.

These days, he rises at 5:30 a.m., before the rest of the house is awake. He makes oatmeal for the family four mornings a week, giving himself one morning off. On most days, Kathleen takes the girls to school while Matt goes indoor rock climbing.

After school, he and their nanny divide the responsibilities, with one taking the older daughter to sports practice, drama and guitar lessons and the other transporting the younger one to swimming lessons, violin and dance. Matt, who has become a skilled cook, usually makes dinner. Specialties include salmon, soft-cooked eggs and spicy pasta.

Kathleen says her husband’s decision to stay home created the flexibility for her to pursue other interests outside work, such as serving on the board of an anti-hunger nonprofit.

“When I talk with other women in this position, we all say our husbands are a very special breed,” she says. “They don’t define themselves by their jobs.”

Awkward moments

Not all men are as comfortable in the position.

One stay-at-home dad whose wife works in private wealth at an investment bank says he sometimes tells other men that he manages real estate—technically true because the family owns a few buildings. He says he can identify other men in his position at private-school functions when they say they “manage investments” or “run a boutique hedge fund.”

“We’re all out there, but we can’t say anything about it,” he says.

Paul Sullivan has been trying to change that. He founded a group called the Company of Dads after leaving his job as a columnist for the New York Times in 2021. Sullivan’s wife runs an asset-management firm and became very busy with work after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sullivan already defined himself as what he dubs a “lead dad,” the go-to parent for everything from playdates and doctors’ appointments. But he found no support groups for men in his position. He reached out to senior female executives and asked them about the idea of creating one. They approved. Some said their husbands didn’t help enough. Others said their husband’s friends made fun of them, calling them names like “Mr. Mom.”

“Two things can be true at once,” Sullivan says. “Moms can be discriminated against in the workplace, and dads can be afraid to take a lead role at home.”

Sullivan now organises events for lead dads such as a Father’s Day beer fest and a March Madness get-together. He gives talks at workplaces and hosts a podcast on which he interviews therapists, parenting coaches and fatherhood advocates. He counts the husbands of Goldman Sachs partners, JPMorgan Chase managing directors and top law partners among his members.

For the Donohoes, having Matt at home has meant that he has developed a close bond with his children. Suzanne says it has given her credibility with her colleagues when she needs to attend one of their doctor’s appointments or sporting events.

There are still mix-ups. Schools often call Suzanne first if one of the children is sick or needs permission to do something even though Matt is listed first on contact forms. Once it happened when she was in London on business. She gently asked the school administrator to call her husband. He was at their apartment five minutes away.



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How to Pick the Perfect Souvenir When Travelling

It’s easy to buy clunkers when you’re caught up in the moment. But regrettable purchases aren’t inevitable.

By KATHLEEN HUGHES
Sat, Nov 9, 2024 4 min

Trying to buy just the right souvenir on a trip is a risky business. You can wind up with a lifetime treasure—or an albatross you feel stuck with forever.

Consider the giant painting of a chicken flying out of Cuba that has been hanging over our couch in Palos Verdes, Calif., for the past 15 years. Buying it cheaply seemed to make sense when we were in Havana, since my husband’s family had fled the country after the revolution.

But the flying chicken just didn’t seem as, well, poignant by the time we returned home and hung the 4-by-7-foot painting. No guest has ever said a word about it. “I can’t help you with the chicken,” an art dealer told me long ago when I asked for help in selling it.

So, how do you find the right souvenir? Or is there even any such thing?

An everyday reminder

For many people, the answer to the second question is an unqualified “No,” and they have stopped trying. “Souvenirs never look as enticing or beautiful as they did at the time of purchase once you get them home,” warns Patricia Schultz, the author of “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.”

After collecting rugs on her trips, then Christmas ornaments, before running out of room at home for both, Schultz says, “I have gone cold turkey. I collect memories.”

But for others, surrendering just won’t do. “It’s intrinsic when people travel that they wind up bringing a keepsake of the journey,” says Rolf Potts, the author of “Souvenir,” a book that traces the history of travel souvenirs back to the earliest recorded journeys.

“It can be a way to show off,” he says. “Much like the envy-inducing travel posts on Instagram.” But for many people, he says, “It’s proof you were there, not only to show other people but also for yourself.”

For those who lean in this direction, there are ways to help avoid regrets. Tara Button , founder of the Buy Me Once website, and the author of “A Life Less Throwaway: The Lost Art of Buying for Life,” suggests focusing on practical items that fit your lifestyle and double as mementos.

As an example, she once bought a “very affordable” baby blanket made from alpaca fiber on a trip to Peru and now uses it every day. The blanket not only reminds her of “the time pre-children when I was traveling,” she says. “It goes over my 2-year-old son every night. It’s always soft and always gorgeous.”

She has a friend who collects one cup from each destination. “Those are perfect memory keepers,” she says. “A small item that is used every day.”

Finding the right scale

One obstacle to finding the right souvenir is that it can be hard to think practically when you are swept up in the excitement of a new culture. Consider the Burmese puppet, 15 inches tall, that has spent about two decades in the closet of Liz Einbinder , head of public relations for Backroads, an adventure-tour company.

“We saw a lot of puppets everywhere and just got caught up in all of the Burmese art and culture,” she says. Now she wonders, “Why did I bring this back? It sits in the back of my closet and I can’t seem to get rid of it. It creeps me out when I see it.”

When that buying urge sweeps over you, Button and other travel experts suggest pausing to consider your lifestyle, taste, needs, and the scale of your home—you’re going back to the reality of your everyday life, after all.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean being entirely practical. Einbinder collects miniatures, mostly miniature houses, from every country, and has more than a hundred. Most are in storage, but she keeps a little London bus and a little Egyptian pyramid on her desk. For her, souvenirs aren’t just about memories, they’re also about the hunt. “It gives me something to search for” on each trip, she says. “That’s half the fun.”

Ignore the hard sell

Another way travelers often go wrong is by giving in to pressure, or at least persistence, from salespeople.

When Kimba Hills, an interior designer, went to Morocco, she hired a guide who took her to a rug store in Fez, where the dealers delivered a whirlwind sales pitch while serving tea. She wound up buying a $4,000 flat-weave Turkish rug, measuring about 13 feet by 9 feet.

“No one in my group could believe I got seduced,” she says.

When the rug finally arrived at her home in Santa Monica, “It smelled like cow dung,” she says. Washing the rug was going to change the color.

When she called the dealer in Fez and demanded her money back, he refused, offering to send her a different rug instead. “We got into a yelling match,” says Hills. “All my skills went out the window.”

Looking back, she says, “You are in a buying mode because you are there and feel like you should buy something.” On a recent trip to Mexico, she bought nothing, explaining, “I’m wiser.”

Sometimes, magic

Spontaneity can cut both ways. There’s the chicken painting. But waiting for inspiration to strike, rather than planning to go home with a souvenir, can still help.

Henry Zankov, a sweater designer, says that when he travels, he explores his destinations with the idea that he won’t buy anything unless he comes across something he loves. He still buys plenty, but says “I don’t have regrets.” At his home in Brooklyn, he has ceramics, vases and glassware from shops he found randomly in Spain, Greece, and Italy. “I buy what I have to have,” he says.

There are times he doesn’t find anything. “So I just give up,” he says. “It’s OK.”

Some souvenirs do become the treasure of a lifetime.

Annie Lucas , the co-owner of MIR, which offers tours to less-traveled destinations, became captivated by a mirror on a trip to Morocco. It was made with hand-pounded silver and pieces of camel bones.

She went back to the store three or four times, debating the cost and whether she would regret it once she got home. It was heavy and measured 24 inches by 40 inches.

“That was 15 years ago, and I still treasure it,” she says. “If I had to get out of my house and had only five minutes to pack, I would grab that off the wall.”

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