The few housewives I met later in life were quite infantilized compared to working women I know.
It certainly avoids that situation in the article where the husband is resentful about an amount spent from joint finances.
I think maybe that's the disconnect. I don't feel the money I earn "belongs to me". Same for my wife. I don't set my own priorities and budgets. We discuss them.
We're definitely not perfect, and I've definitely bought things that irked her and vice versa. But the joint account means just that. Unless it comes in a birthday card or something, money goes in to a pool. I don't keep a running balance, negative or positive in my head for my contribution.
I think it's not an accident that every person I know that is not making their own money is frustrated because of it. Again it might be just my cultural conditioning, or my personality, not sure.
You could say that the scenario where the husband holds tight to the purse strings and the woman only goes along with it because of fear or anxiety that the woman is forced to be infantilized. But I would guess this is sub 10% of marriages in the US.
On a separate note, I think a useful framework for looking at this is to think of the couple as one entity with two parts, rather than as two separate entities. If the entity is split, it's definitely true that the one that can't provide for itself is at a disadvantage, so it takes a lot of trust. But that's also why there are divorce settlements that favor women that gave up working at some point.