Goodbye to the era of the professional spouse

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Melania Trump appears to be sitting out Donald Trump’s bid for presidential re-election this year. In fact, since leaving the White House the former first lady has largely retreated from public view. It feels, writes the Washington Post, as if she’s hiding. 

Who wouldn’t want to hide? The role of professional spouse is a deeply unappealing one. It seems to have been beamed in from another era — judged on interior decoration, charitable lunches and photo opportunities. If Melania did not enjoy life as first lady, and to all appearances she did not, why would she relish the chance to repeat it?

There are not many jobs left in which spouses are expected to play an important yet ill-defined and uncompensated role in their partner’s career. Royalty and politics are the most visible. But in business too, the demands of some executive positions can blur the boundaries between personal and professional life. That can leave partners working as quasi-entertainment directors and hosts for a company that does not employ them. 

Some relish the spotlight. See Lauren Sánchez promoting fiancé Jeff Bezos’s rocket company while being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue. Others carry out their duties under significantly more duress. Barbara Amiel’s memoir of her life with disgraced financier Conrad Black describes the job of throwing parties for his illustrious contacts as both unpleasant and unasked for. The events were “harrowing occasions [that] involved several hundred people trooping through our house to meet, greet and pass judgment on our taste or lack thereof”. 

There is no formal training for this sort of life or the scrutiny that comes with it. A US consulting firm, RHR International, once suggested that anyone married to a CEO might like to take the Meyers-Briggs personality test as preparation. But it’s not clear how knowing…