Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society. Women are the only humans that can produce children and they have to do it during a relatively short time window - especially if we want to reproduce at replacement level. Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it.
I’m not sure how western society will continue if we view raising a child instead of having a career as “stepping up”. It’s certainly disrespectful to all the mothers of our future.
This seems pretty reductionist to me. Men can absolutely raise children. Husbands in heterosexual couples should absolutely be raising their children and not leaving the entire task of raising them to their wives. Gay men can also raise children. I don't think you meant to be disrespectful, but when you essentialize like this you end up putting women in a box where their role in society is defined by their biology, and you put men in a box where they feel like they can't and shouldn't participate in certain kinds of labor, leading to women shouldering an unfair proportion.
An anecdote that helped this hit home for me was a story this father told about a neighbor of his. He'd be running errands at the grocery store or whatever, with his kids in tow, and he'd run into his neighbor (also a father) who'd say something like, "Oh, you're stuck babysitting again?" And he didn't have the words to tell him, "I'm not babysitting, I'm raising my kids." The neighbor viewed it as his wife's responsibility to be looking after the kids, and if he was participating in this, it was some sort of exception; and furthermore, a chore.
Personally, that's not the sort of father or husband I intend to be.
Beyond that, most women strongly want to be with their babies. There was a NYT article a few years back about the boom of internet baby monitors, and it was kind of heartbreaking -- a bunch of women sitting at their desks glued to their baby monitors wishing they could be with their babies.
I think we've really fucked up as a society when "women can have kids and be with them" is considered strange or a luxury -- it should be the most natural thing in the world.
No profit in it, though.
Beyond that, yes, men are perfectly capable of performing child rearing tasks. Note, of course, this does not negate the argument against a two income family. Having a society where one income can support a family means fathers can devote themselves to raising their children, and so can mothers. Or alternate roles. Or one full time career and one part time career.
Just look at the amount of suspicion that men draw in elementary teaching roles.
This may seem reasonable but it also often ends marriages, which is arguably a worse outcome for the child(ren).
You know what says "This country values parents who choose to have children?" Actual replacement of lost income potential and career progression.
Yes, in the US there are tax credits, SNAP, etc. None of these even come close to replacing the life income changes.
If we were serious about it, we'd have something approaching equivalent income replacement, GI Bill-style college funding, and child care cost support in every state*.
Having children should be an income neutral choice, not a burden.
* Side note: On all of these programs, I'd be in favor of supply-side support, rather than demand side reimbursement, given how inflationary reimbursement has been in the education market.
Our three kids are gonna cost us at least half a million dollars by the time they're all 18, between lost income, daycare costs, higher housing costs (not just a bigger house to maintain a similar comfort level, but also one in a much more expensive area than we might otherwise live in, since we have to care about school quality—an uncomfortably small house in a good school district still costs more than a huge house in a merely so-so district, let alone an actually-bad district, in our city), healthcare costs, transportation costs, plus all the smaller stuff like clothes, food, et c. And e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g optional is also far more expensive, like vacations.
And that's if we don't chip in for their post-secondary education or, like, give them a few grand to get their feet under them when they leave. Or buy them cars or any of that (we're not there yet, thank god). It could easily end up being closer to a million than a half-million, without even going nuts.
The tax credits don't even come close to covering it. Worse, because many of those expenses are front-loaded and so hit in our relatively-young years, the opportunity cost of that money ends up being enormous. The shadow cast on our future savings is way bigger than what we spend on them directly. We'd be retiring by 50, 55 at the latest if not for having kids, and also be able to spend more freely. As it is IDK if we're gonna be able to retire until we just can't work anymore.
Kids are basically financial suicide unless you're crazy-rich. Like they're great and all but god damn do I understand why people choose not to have them, even if they like the idea of having kids.
I always thought a low birth rate was a net-good: Something all countries are striving for. Like when your country drops below 2 births per woman, it has "made it" into the ranks of Developed Countries. Lower birth rate means fewer bodies to feed and a smaller environmental footprint. Sure, I guess it also means you have less "cannon fodder" both economically and militarily, but net net low birth rate countries are better off than high birth rate countries.
A lot of developed countries have done a lot of things about it. A long time ago. It's mostly just the US that doesn't really seem to care about families, as far as I can tell. It's one of only 3 countries in the world that doesn't even guarantee paid maternity leave.
Another great book that covers more of the science in depth is The Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel [2].
Sounds extreme? Read the books (and others) yourself and see what conclusions you reach.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Mind-Third-Relationships-I...
People want to have their cake and eat it too, and I suspect by the animosity a lot of younger people have for the older generation that it isn't working out as well as they'd hoped.
Shouldn't women be allowed to take the first year of their child's life to provide for their long-term emotional development without jeopardizing their careers?
1. in the evolutionary sense of what human psychology has been selected for, including the increase of maternal prolactin and oxytocin during breastfeeding
I can’t tell if it’s concern trolling, poor english comprehension, or tradwife enthusiasts tipping their figurative trilbys to one another. It’s funny nonetheless!
In such societies kindergartens are affordable and in the course of little over a year both parents have had a break from work, with full salary compensation, to get to know the new human.
Almost makes one think that they're not quite civilized, they just put economics above all and rely on exploiting other nations to prop the whole thing up.
This is massively insulting to men. I'm personally massively insulted by it, having shared custody 50/50 with my ex and certainly done as much to raise my son as she has.
> I’m not sure how western society will continue
Birth rates are below replacement everywhere in the world except sub-Saharan Africa, and declining in sub-Saharan Africa too. Any notion that the low birth rate is a phenomenon that can be ascribed to cultural factors in the west is not supported by data.
>Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society
Who is doing the forcing here? Many women wanted to enter the workforce. Some didn't want to enter the workforce. Some were forced by their situation or by economic changes, but it isn't like someone on HN was holding a gun to their head telling them to get a job, so I'm a little unclear on your lamentation here.
>Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do
Um, say what? Yeah, biology is amazing stuff. I'm in awe of women on every level. But your comment here is a bit dogwistling - are you intending for this to sound as misogynistic as many of us are reading it? Women who choose to not have children are just as amazing when they choose whatever path they choose.
>I’m not sure how western society will continue if we view raising a child instead of having a career as “stepping up”. It’s certainly disrespectful to all the mothers of our future.
Dude, what? Read back what I wrote - my point, which is well documented in many places - is the way women in our modern era are not only the predominant child-care givers, but also most likely to attend to household duties (cooking, cleaning, etc), and more and more are also the primary breadwinners. If that isn't stepping up in a big way, I don't know what else to call it. Is being a stay-at-home-mom not also commendable and deserving of respect? Absolutely. But your message seems to be one of dog whistling for the bad-old days of the past.
> Who is doing the forcing here?
It's called the two income trap[1]. Back when it was traditional that one person worked, the market recognized this reality and prices of everything made it possible to live off of one income. Then, slowly we started seeing more and more two-income families. Two-income families could bear to spend more on everything, so the market responded by adjusting costs higher. Soon, it became difficult, then impossible for a family to survive on one income, so then everyone had to go two-income. Now, the same standard of living we once could achieve on one income, requires two incomes. We've doubled the workforce but gained nothing in terms of standard of living.
So you answered your own question.
> Read back what I wrote - my point, which is well documented in many places - is the way women in our modern era are not only the predominant child-care givers, but also most likely to attend to household duties (cooking, cleaning, etc), and more and more are also the primary breadwinners.
That contradicts the data I've seen cited, which found that men perform more paid work and women perform more work in the home, but the total number of hours they work is basically the same.
This is as backwards as saying that women should not work and care for the house. If a woman wants to work and build a career let her, and if a couple wants to DINK, let them. Replacement level is a myth and a danger in a world choking up with our waste.
> Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it.
Yeah, you think of them as walking uteruses.
And if a woman wants to be a homemaker and focus on molding the next generation?
Yeah, it would be nice of society valued child raising more. But, it actually did not and instead the caregivers were often in bad or impossible situations.
Oh shove off. My dad by himself for years absolutely raised us without my biological mother in the picture at all. Men can and should be raising children too.
Basic human biology is not taught in schools.
My favorite question to ask is: "why you want a career?" to pretty much anyone who speaks in this manner.
Serious question to people, I don't get it. I love learning, I'm highly qualified in the academic space and enjoy picking at problems. I've written papers, patents, well paid, etc. Highly successful by most metrics.
That said, I don't work for a "career", I work to afford me opportunity.
A family is an investment in the future, it provides you happiness, but more importantly purpose. Sure, there's a lot of stress, and you have to invest a lot of time. That said, it pays off an order of magnitude in terms of life satisfaction and having future opportunities. Who's going to take you on vacation when you're 65 and have a bad hip -- if not your children? My proudest achievement are things my children have done, not the accolades, promotions, bonuses, etc I've received in my career.
If I work hard, slave at night to get my presentation(s) done, will our product be better? Maybe, but in all likelihood that just makes me look good enough to get promoted, but 5 years later I wont have anything but a pay check to show for it. Wealth without purpose is worthless.
Right - so imagine that you didn't have that opportunity to do that academic work because you have an elderly parent at home who needs care. You've got two little kids at home who aren't yet school age and thus needs care. You wouldn't be content with your work situation in that case, right? Sure, it might just be for a few years - but what if those few years block you from key promotions or research opportunities? Do you get it? I'm certainly not saying that everyone should be focused on their careers, I'm just observing that sometimes people are making tradeoffs between their careers and their personal life, and more often than not it is the female in the heterosexual relationship that is making more of those tradeoffs.
> Right - so imagine that you didn't have that opportunity to do that academic work because you have an elderly parent at home who needs care. You've got two little kids at home who aren't yet school age and thus needs care.
Many people will choose the elderly parents and little kids over academic work and promotions, given they have enough money to support themselves.
The academic work and promotions are just a means to an end, which for many is the ability to support and raise a family.
Financial independence.
Anyone who thinks SAH parents can free themselves of this worry is naive. You never get the time back, you never get the experience back, you never get the training or the raises or the bonuses. You never get the retirement savings. If you are unfortunate enough to live in the US you are entirely dependent on your spouse for healthcare.
It's an unfathomably vulnerable situation to be in but it gets brushed off. There is still an attitude that SAH is a 'gift' given to a parent, see how often a working spouse will say they 'let' their partner stay at home, that the working partner 'supports' the family. A SAH spouse is not an equal partner with a 50% contribution. More of an oldest child with extra responsibilities and a higher allowance.
Pre-nups are often advocated as a way to ensure fairness if the relationship falls apart. I'd rather see pre-SAH legal documents. The SAH spouse gets half the earnings, gets half the purchases, gets half the retirement savings. A working spouse who isn't willing to sign it is a working spouse who doesn't believe that being home and watching children is a 'real' job.
This is a really depressing way of looking at things.
And a disposable one at that!
It’s important to remember that most people have “jobs,” not “careers.”
Weird, I never hear this. I never see discussions of about women wanting to be homemakers, especially as much as the opposite(women wanting to enter the workforce). I wonder if people with these opinions just find it more easily.
<cough> there are also some men out here with (how can I put this nicely?) less-than-stellar-careers precisely because of this factor, too.
[We live in a perhaps-somewhat-less-than-entirely-enlightened part of Europe] and our local "Mum and Baby" group finally got round to renaming itself to "Parent and Baby" group after I started attending the third time around... :)
Really? She traded one job for another or does corporate life really matter that much to her?
Why, some women have even found working to be more enjoyable to being at home with kids.
All joking aside, my wife is extremely worried about the impact her career will take from having children and her life goals include executive level leadership as part of her career. So you could, in fact say that corporate life really does matter that much to her.
What's missing to link those women to matching jobs? There must also be many new mothers who would like to work but who haven't found a WFH job.
There's been this impression out there that Millenials (who are at child-bearing age now) are less likely to have children. It would be interesting to research if they are just sort of "late bloomers" who perhaps by virtue of WFH or maybe other TBD factors have decided it's now time to start a family.
The free market cannot sustain the day-care market and only government intervention is feasible in the long run. As they did during WWII and was axed by President Nixon. This single act drove the labor market during the war.
I love it, and I feel truly lucky that my life has given me the opportunity to focus on my kids.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/14/some-gender...
If you are a mother making near minimum wage (which, these days, is around $15 in most major metros, regardless of what the actual law is), and you need to be on the job site for 8 hours/day, you're barely if even covering the cost of child care plus commuting and other job related costs. And as a tradeoff you get to have the stress of the job plus the joy of having someone else raise your kids. It just doesn't make sense.
Also, importantly, your Earned Income Tax Credit will be reduced if you make more money (not 1-1, but just another reason why working in a low paying job doesn't really make sense if you have children and a spouse/partner that can support your family).
Sorry to go off topic, but I cannot believe my state is still $7.25 an hour. There hasn't been a single increase in minimum wage since 2008.
This also means that there is concerningly high variance in the quality of individual care providers, since it's a difficult job and pays awful you get the usual mix of "passionate about kids" and "I can't find any other work". Even the best facilities you have to be very observant to make sure your kid doesn't end up in a bad situation. I recall one care provider fondly telling me how much she loves riding her bike to work only to later find out she had her license taken away by repeated DUIs and another that fled the country after too many parents complained about situations that looked a lot like abuse.
Ultimately they're very much like nursing homes for small children. Very frustrating to pay so much only to have to remain vigilant that you don't pick up your kid only to find they've been sitting in some other kid's pee for an hour.
Shit I have to do this too? I’ve already started saving for the unreasonable cost of college, and the cost of childbirth, and the unreasonable cost of a large (enough) house in my metro. But now this?!
But yes, above the table daycare is ungodly expensive.
> What accounts for the larger labor force withdrawals among less-educated women than men during the pandemic? It is complex but there seems to be a consensus that it partly reflects how women are overrepresented in certain health care, food preparation and personal service occupations that were sharply curtailed at the start of the pandemic. Although women overall are more likely than men to be able to work remotely, they are disproportionately employed in occupations that require them to work on-site and in close proximity to others.
> It is less clear whether women’s parental roles and limited child care and schooling options have played a large role in forcing them to exit the labor market. The number of mothers and fathers in the labor force has declined in similar fashion over the past two years.
I'll bet most of the workers went and found other jobs and won't be coming back.
I was pretty jealous of stay at home dads (I know two) and the things they were able to for their kids. My kids are older now and that ship has sailed for me.
Fewer workers + fast economic growth = labor shortage.
Might work for first 6 months when all they do is sleep, eat, and lay around, but as soon as they are moving or aware that they can get things they want, predictability goes out the window. Although, I would not even bet on the first 6 months being easy due to sleep deprivation.
It's especially manageable if both parents are WFH.
Once they can crawl it's off to the races. Basically anything can hold their attention for half an hour while you take a short meeting.
I've worked from home with two infants, then toddlers, and now kids. Infants were the hardest.
Definitely not an upgrade in my experience
Baby booms have previously been positively correlated with blackouts, snowstorms, hurricanes and power outages. Now, remote work is a covariate as well. We're heading into a prolonged 2023 recession, coupled with job cuts, energy shortage, remote work as cost-cutting recipe and climate-related catastrophes inducing major downtime => huge baby boom in 2024.
or at least the process of making babies :)
My boss works long hours and now has 2 kids under the age of 4. Pre-Covid he would have been out of the house from about 7-7 and only able to have moments of interaction at the edges of the day. Now, he works about the same hours, but when he takes a break, when he gets lunch or coffee, when his wife is busy, he can spend time with the kids. Play a little peek-a-boo, read some Dr Seuss, watch them grow. Our company is pushing back-to-work policies and he's pulling every string to get exceptions for our group. I think if push comes to shove then he's gone.
My brood is older but boy I like being there to help with the math homework. Even 10 minute to go though the process of "Here's the strategy, here's an example, here's why it works this way" makes a huge difference. I let them work out the problem by themselves, and 10 minutes later they come back with "I got it!". My partner, the scientist, is in his element. If we're not careful the kids are going to be going back to class and correcting their teachers.
It's redefined what it means to be a working parent. I hope it sticks. I'm old enough that I'm seeing the regrets from parents who quit their jobs to stay home and are in a unenviable situation post-divorce.
I will say, as a former teacher, I loved being corrected.
"Much of that cohort was able to work from home, which gave parents more time and flexibility to deal with the life changes and demands that pregnancy and a new baby bring."
I guess it's indelicate to say that when a man and woman are both stuck at home, more babies will be conceived. People who were unattached during the lockdown were probably less likely to find a mate, though.
It would be inaccurate to assume an increase in frequency of sex will lead to more babies, in the age of access to very effective birth control.
Many (most I assume?) choose when to have or try to have children.
Might sound a bit too cynical for this site, but plenty of people decided to get a dog in 2020. Why shouldn't they choose to have a baby for the same reasons?
For a little more cynicism, that fits with their finding that the "boom" was most pronounced for first-time parents, aka the ones that weren't stuck home with their kids...
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/contraception/uninten...
> In 2008, women reported that more than half of all pregnancies (51%) were unintended. By 2011, the percentage of unintended pregnancies declined to 45%. That is an improvement, but some groups still tend to have higher rates of unintended pregnancy. For example, 75% of pregnancies were unintended among teens aged 15 to 19 years.
I imagine this has continued to trend downwards since 2011, especially amongst women who had the option of remote work (more educated, more lucrative careers, higher degree of financial freedom, less religious, etc).
Not being combative but as someone who isn't up to snuff on this subject can you provide some examples? I haven't seen examples of this so I'd like to read more.
Pardon the slightly off-topic comment but statements like these are misleading. It's economic growth in the true sense of having X and growing it into X+Y. At best, it's more like economic expansion.
The truth is, it's population growth. Instead of the abstraction why not simply report the population growth knowing that eventually the economy will expand to that population?
There's a difference between "the economy grew" and "more births." Maybe it's because politicians can't really take credit for the latter?
I went looking for this line in the article, and sure enough... "The increase in birth rates was more pronounced for first-time mothers..."
Take that for what you want.
Economists don't have sex, that's why they are economists.
Most babies spend a lot of time sleeping so you can probably get some work done, but if your child needs you you are going to have to drop what you're doing.
There is no problem if you are honest about this and your employer accepts it, but just as somebody can hold multiple jobs and not come clean about it, it seems like a parent could also dissemble about it.
Also, Zoom has gotten surprisingly good - the "high" setting on background noise for "barking dogs" actually works frighteningly well - people on calls have apologized for their exploding dogs because the UPS guy assaulted the doorbell and we've heard absolutely nothing.
Oh, and that weekly "all company" meeting where everyone is there but only the presenter camera is on?... you have no idea what is happening during the boring round of every team manager promoting the this or that which their team was up to.
Someone please explain to me why the downvotes so I can understand.
Is it some puritanical thing? I'm baffled.
Or is HN leaning toward the incel concept? If so, I would argue that nerds are especially well suited for pleasing mates. We live to understand systems and provide optimal solutions. So all we need do is find a partner and serve them. If that's your issue, be not dismayed.
My partner liked to do her work, boring documentation crap, while I did my work on her. It was fun for both of us, and it was certainly a new kind of thing which could not exist in the office space. No doubt, she did high quality work with some pauses. And I made the best of the opportunity.
Those of you downvoting, be real and explain your reasoning. Or fuck off.
Edited: too many typos :(... am I slipping?
