Nope that is still going on today — not just in the 80s. And, maybe you come from a unique family, but I've never heard of one where a man handed over his pay and the woman spent it all on herself. I suppose it has happened from time to time, but it's hardly a normal dynamic. A much more common one is that the man gives her "an allowance" for groceries and such and the rest of the money is considered "his" rather than theirs. Lots of women I know had to turn over their own paychecks as well, because he was "the head of the household" and in charge of the funds. The Prohibition movement largely began because too many men would drink most of their paycheck on Fridays, leaving their wives and kids with nothing to eat.
It's a bit delusional to imagine that most women are just sitting home, picking out fabric swatches and new clothing with "his" money rather than keeping the kids fed, clothed, healthy, and going to activities, putting gas in the mini-van, etc. If he’s turning over his check, it’s for that, and because he can’t be bothered to buy groceries, or teacher gifts, or a card for his mother and she needs to be able to do that. I know of more than one divorce that happened because he thought the money he earned was his - and not theirs. You've got a story in your head that doesn't actually align with much reality.
I’ve always kept our checkbook, because I was the one who paid the bills. More than one man has commented about that to my husband as if it were a strange thing to do.
As for why so many white women voted for Trump, that's a complex thing. Conservatives tend to vote for the conservative nominee, no matter his warts, because that is a part of their identity. White women tend to vote for their men's interests over their own, but college graduates are only about 37% of the voters, so "deciding" that rich white women who don't need to work (the percentage of those is much, much smaller than you imagine) is hardly likely the real story. In truth, all sorts of people voted for Trump for all sorts of reasons - some of them racist and nationalist, and some of them entirely different from that. Trying to give glib reasons for social dynamics might be fun, but it's not very accurate or compelling.
More than 54% of Americans still think today that the man should be considered "the head of the household" so it's not exactly a universal that any given woman is seen as "the boss" at home. In fact, the trend these days is that most women who have been married before (either divorced or widowed) do not wish to marry again because they want more autonomy and freedom (kind of the opposite of a history of being the boss).
In a recent story that I published about how much more home-keeping and childcare work women do, even if they also work outside the home, and even if they are the primary breadwinners for their family, I got a lot of frustrated comments from women.
- “This is why I will never get married again. Marriage is a raw deal for women. Marriage is how you get trapped in a life of domestic servitude to a man. Don’t give up your own hopes and dreams for some guy who’s just looking for somebody to clean up after him & make his life comfortable. It’s not worth it.”
- “(My husband) used to appear quite domesticated prior to “putting a ring on it”. We actually shared a house, so I assumed that I knew what living with him would be like. But apparently saying “I do” removed his ability to operate the washing machine… and that is just the tip of the iceberg!”
- “Definition of marriage for women — slavery. If you can’t behave like an adult you don’t deserve to be in a relationship. Women have allowed this shit to happen.”
You honestly need to educate yourself on this stuff because your assumptions are pretty much all really off base and I don't have a lot of tolerance for people who opine about things they don't actually know much about.
