Which ‘08 is this?

Time check: 10:19 a.m. July 22, 2008.

2008.

That's 88 years after women earned the right to vote. 40 years after the first bra burning. 48 years after Father Knows Best went off the air. A month after the first really, truly viable female Presidential candidate conceded.

Why, in 2008, would there be any need for a blog for women who don’t have a Plan B? I don’t mean the abortion pill. I mean an escape route, a parachute, an emergency exit, a safety net. We’re smart. We know better. Right? Right? But I keep hearing these stories.

• The husband who makes an expensive purchase—a sports car, a motorcycle, expensive electronic equipment—finances and family needs be damned.
• The guy who makes a major career decision—one that affects the whole family—without talking to his wife.
• The working mom whose husband tells her that, if they ever split up, the court will give him the kids because she’s never around anyway.
• The guy who withholds grocery money and hides the children’s passports so his wife can’t visit her family in Canada.

Okay, only one of these is potentially an actual crime. (The Canadian wife was found in a puddle of rainwater last week. Dead.) But all of these stories say something about the balance of power in these relationships. It points to the fact that a lot of us—I’m including myself here—are in situations where, if a partner decided to subtly or overtly pull rank, we wouldn’t really have much leverage or recourse.

I’m the last woman in the world who thought she’d be thinking about it this kind of thing. But here I am, an at-home mother of a toddler, whose nest egg disappeared into the down payment on the house, whose job disappeared when we moved away from Manhattan, who depends on a husband for health insurance. (All of this was done voluntarily on my part, I must emphasize.) Thankfully, Said Husband goes to work, comes home with his check and isn't hiding any grocery money.

But if he did? What’s my plan? What’s yours?