17 ms·

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laun

• atemerev 9y ago
  Unfortunately, things were no better in Soviet-block countries. Perhaps, working women were a little more common, but it was (and probably still is) a far cry from true equality.
  • int_19h 9y ago
    Soviet-block countries, especially USSR itself, were actually rather socially conservative, at least from Stalin on. Traditional gender roles in general, and as they pertain to nuclear family, were part of their internal propaganda.
• lacampbell 9y ago
  An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. Just ask your mom. Are you insinuating that in a traditional nuclear family, where a father provides all the money for housing, food, clothing and sundry - the mothers house work constitutes "uncompensated labour"? And that this is the basis of capitalism? What's your humane socialist alternative? Collectivising the children and raising them in a commune?
  • achou 9y ago
    My point is that the systems we've built optimize for things we choose to measure. We're very much measuring and optimizing for money and the kinds of goods and services money can be exchanged for. But to a startling degree we're not choosing to measure all the other hard work that has to get done if we expect humanity to exist beyond one generation. This article just puts it in stark relief for me. All of the work that Lola had to do for so many decades, working herself to exhaustion... all of that work still needs to get done for every other family too.
    • Consultant32452 9y ago
      >We're very much measuring and optimizing for money and the kinds of goods and services money can be exchanged for. "Money" is just a metric of economic value, and basically everything has an economic value, including leisure. The emotional and educational value of raising your own children instead of putting them in a daycare has a real economic value that can be measured in dollars. Just like housework has an economic value. Every family I know has weighed these values when they have children.
      • diN0bot 9y ago
        we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly. we could choose to economically value teachers and nurses instead of economically devaluing "feminine" roles -- and creating economic value specifically for masculine-branded roles. (those moments when piloting and programming became branded and $$ as male professions) in order to end professional segregation, we need not end capitalism so much as the patriarchy. we could redefine "masculinity" as cooking for one"s family, providing emotional support, and other domestic labor -- and stop assuming women need to do it or that a "masculine" worker's time is too important for doing their own laundry or their own dishes. it's complicated, and testosterone may even be a disability in a sense, but many of the differences between genders are not biological so much as social constructs that re-enforce constructed economic inequality. we can stop accepting and propagating a narrow status quo.
        • 9y ago
  • 77pt77 9y ago
    > What's your humane socialist alternative? Collectivising the children and raising them in a commune? This was tried in the kibbutz and is almost unanimous that it failed completely.
    • lacampbell 9y ago
      I'm aware of that. People often make indirect little attacks against capitalism here as some kind of socialist dog whistle. I want to call them out, and asking what concrete things they propose. Anything they can put to words has likely already been tried and ended in disaster - people advocating for misery need to be exposed for what they are.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Is there argument here that literally nothing whatsoever could be better than the system we currently live under? The one where we're hurtling toward ecological catastrophe and essentially no mitigation is being done?
        • lacampbell 9y ago
          Is there argument here that literally nothing whatsoever could be better than the system we currently live under? Potentially, I suppose. The only alternatives I hear being peddled are socialist though. So I associate any petty wry remark about "in capitalism, so and so" as a socialist agenda pushing. In 2017, I don't think it should be considered at all acceptable to advocate socialism in polite company. We've failed that experiment every time we've tried it, we're witnessing two horrific failures in Venezuela and North Korea right now. Socialism is an extremist view, that ruins peoples lives, and should be marginalised at every turn - the same way Nazism is.
          • bittercynic 9y ago
            Don't take a criticism of capitalism as socialist agenda pushing. Acknowledging that some services are best provided by the public sector does not mean that one wants the private sector to disappear. Extreme socialism has been a disaster every time, extreme capitalism seems like it also brings some horrific injustice and poverty for many of its subjects. In one case there are no groceries on the shelves, in the other the shelves are fully stocked, but you can't afford anything anyway. Either way, a few are very powerful and many have their basic needs go unmet.
  • zem 9y ago
    well, who has more economic freedom in the traditional nuclear family? the humane alternative would be to figure out some way to let housewives have their own money, based on the labour they do, not have to depend on their husbands' whims for it. the problem isn't staying at home to take care of the kids, it's that that role gives you less societal advantage and autonomy than the "going out and getting a job" role.
• Mz 9y ago
  I have seen career women kind of jokingly say "I need a wife." I was struck by the fact that Alex's mother, whom some people here are vilifying, managed to have a serious career like a man because she had Lola at home to do all the "women's work." This is mostly being overlooked in discussion and I didn't know how to bring it up myself. I appreciate you remarking upon it.
  • prawn 9y ago
    You might find the following book interesting - my wife recommends it to many people. It's by Australian political writer Annabel Crabb. The Wife Drought - Why women need wives, and men need lives https://penguin.com.au/books/the-wife-drought-9780857984289 https://penguin.com.au/books/the-wife-drought-9780857984289 "'I need a wife' -- It’s a common joke among women juggling work and family. But it’s not actually a joke. Having a spouse who takes care of things at home is a Godsend on the domestic front. It’s a potent economic asset on the work front. And it’s an advantage enjoyed – even in our modern society – by vastly more men than women."
    • atourgates 9y ago
      In the US - the number of stay at home dads is definitely growing (doubling between 1989 and 2012), but even in 2012, only 21% of those are voluntarily staying at home to take care of kids, while the majority are either disabled, or can't find work for another reason. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-dads-home-with-the-kids/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-...
      • prawn 9y ago
        Can't remember where, but I saw a stat recently implying that (on average) even when the unemployed father was the primary carer of children, the working mother still put in more time doing domestic chores, etc.
  • sillysaurus3 9y ago
    As a male, I'd personally prefer to live a life filled with traditional housewife work. Kids are fun, and I'd like raising them. I like cooking. Cleaning is pretty fun. More than that, though, employment sucks. If you keep me fed, clothed, and with an internet connection, I'd be happy as a clam, even spending eight hours a day doing nothing but housework. I sometimes wonder if there are others who feel this way, especially women who are mostly forced to work nowadays. There's a strange sort of situation: In the past, women were forced to be housewives, which was awful. Nobody should be forced to be something they don't want to be. But now that women have the ability to do mostly whatever a man can do, neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work. I wonder if it would be better if, as a family unit, one person decides to do the housewife-type stuff, and the other decides to pursue a career? You could even switch off after a few years. That'd be a pretty ideal life for me, I think. But again, in most marriages, both people have to work.
• colechristensen 9y ago
  It's like ... slavery-lite. Fundamentally what's the difference between Lola's role and a common role of a wife a hundred years ago?* And second – a dangerous question – is it necessarily wrong? I ask not to lead one to believe to think that it isn't, certainly there are aspects which are unquestionable immoral, but is there room for such a social construct? More importantly, answering why not in a robust way could make the societal goal of maximizing each individual's personal freedom a little closer. * not that every wife was treated like a slave or that there aren't still women who are
  • vacri 9y ago
    The Fine Article mentions a number of times where Lola was not allowed freedom of movement. She had no freedom of movement, no pay (or ability to direct money), no personal life, no say in what she did, and was kept in place by fear. It certainly wasn't the common role of a wife a hundred years ago to be kept from a dying parent, for example. The nature of her labour is not what made Lola a slave; it was the circumstances around that labour.
    • colechristensen 9y ago
      It might not have been the nominal role of a wife, but shared characteristics of that life were not uncommon.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        It also shared characteristics with the life of an animal that were not uncommon. I think the comparison risks trivializing what is described.
        • colechristensen 9y ago
          I'm not trying to trivialize slavery but force a recognition that's there's a hair's breadth difference between many instances of being a domestic slave and very many instances of being a housewife. One is demonized and the other is celebrated. The way you hear a minority of Bible-enthusiasts talk about the role of a wife is in _no way_ different than the slavery described in the article.
• ajross 9y ago
  > An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. In isolation, I think I can agree with that. But in context you seem to be making a moral point using "slavery" as a jumping-off point to an economic argument. Needless to say, slavery isn't well-defined by "compensation". That whole "freedom" angle tends to be more important to most people.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    Certainly one could question to what extent wage earners are truly "free" given the need to continue to perform wage labor to survive.
    • mirimir 9y ago
      Thereby the term "wage slavery".
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Yeah, but that one's been repeated so often people just tune it out.
        • cmdrfred 9y ago
          Because if you think critically about that concept for a moment it falls apart. If people didn't have to work to earn wages in order to survive and simply had their needs provided by society there would be little incentive to work, thus few would work, and thus workers would have to be compelled to work by the state. Thus slavery. It solves no problem.
          • emodendroket 9y ago
            It seems strange that for the vast majority of human history most people were not wage workers and yet now we're positing that there is absolutely no other way to organize a society.
• pfooti 9y ago
  So, her name wasn't actually Lola. It was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. Lola was literally her slave name. There's a lot to talk about in the article, and I'm not super-excited about digging deep into that here on hn, but I think it's worthwhile to point out her real name.
  • theparanoid 9y ago
    Lola means grandmother in Tagalog.
    • lawless123 9y ago
      In US history some black slave women working in the house were called "Mammy"
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • wyclif 9y ago
    "Lola" was not her "slave name." "Lola" is an affectionate nickname that means "grandma" in Filipino.
    • pfooti 9y ago
      "Lola" was the name her owners called her. Affectionate is a complicated word here, considering that affection didn't change the fact that a woman was held in servitude to the Tizon family. The least we can do in this situation is try to stop erasing her real name.
      • wyclif 9y ago
        I think you're reading far too much into my comment — of course it's deeply disturbing and troubling that this woman was a slave. I was not suggesting at all that calling her "Lola" in any way mitigates the horror of that. I'm only stating that in standard usage, that is what the word means in Filipino.
  • 9y ago
• pje 9y ago
  > the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated [domestic] labor Absolutely. This observation was/is the catalyst of many leftist movements, for example Wages For Housework: > The Campaign was formed to raise awareness of how housework and childcare are the base of all industrial work and to stake the claim that these unavoidable tasks should be compensated as paid wage labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework
  • lr4444lr 9y ago
    Who's supposed to pay these wages? To take a completely economic lens to it - not passing judgment - weren't these wages already priced in to a degree when middle class families were largely single-income by the male breadwinner, since those labor sectors largely excluded females, keeping worker supply low and allowing a higher prevailing wage?
  • bagels 9y ago
    Childcare is avoidable if you avoid making children.
    • snowwrestler 9y ago
      Cool, then who's going to pay the bills when you're retired?
      • mirimir 9y ago
        Others children, of course. Unless there aren't enough, and then there's a problem.
      • bagels 9y ago
        I understand your implication. There are a lot of grown up adult children that are being supported by their elderly parents. It doesn't always work out as you are implying.
    • Broken_Hippo 9y ago
      Alrighty. Celibacy for the nation? Greatly better sex eduction? Greater access to birth control? Free sterilization for those who desire it? What about the times these things fail? And so on. Most folks aren't cut out for celibacy, honestly. And every other option costs money. Besides, we actually need some folks to have kids, so we still have to deal with this sort of issue.
• Camillo 9y ago
  Women actually control the majority of discretionary spending, and not because they make more money. The fact that there is no contract does not mean the work is not compensated.
  • eropple 9y ago
    Cite? I'd be very interested to read your sources.
    • Baeocystin 9y ago
      Google for 'women control majority spending'. I'm not being snide- it is important to see how widely covered this is. You will find dozens of legitimate articles and papers discussing it. It isn't a controversial fact at all.
  • chrischen 9y ago
    Marriage is a conteact, and usually entitles you to 50% equity.
    • Mtinie 9y ago
      Did you forget the /sarcasm tag, because history shows otherwise. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you forgot that intent doesn't convey well through forum posts.
  • wyclif 9y ago
    Yes, women control most of the discretionary spending in the Philippines as well.
  • achou 9y ago
    Needless to say, spending and income are two different things. This is very easy to see if, for example, one spouse loses their job and the other continues to do exactly the same housework and child rearing -- but now can spend much less.
• shitgoose 9y ago
  "An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor" right. time to move to venezuela.
• carapace 9y ago
  > "An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor." What? Non-capitalist societies don't have housewives?
  • rayiner 9y ago
    Pre-Industrial agrarian societies have quite a different structure. A "housewife" is defined by a wife performing domestic labor supporting a husband who in turn participates in the market economy. That's not how it works on a farm, where the husband and wife both work on the farm.
    • snowwrestler 9y ago
      And who owned the farm? In many such societies, only the husband--meaning the wife's work was still uncompensated. The problem of uncompensated labor by women does not break down neatly on the borders of economic concepts like captitalism, agrarian, industrial, etc.
      • int_19h 9y ago
        For more on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture
      • efaref 9y ago
        I thought mostly the farm was owned by landlords, with the people who worked there (male or female) being tenant farmers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenant_farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenant_farmer
  • Spooky23 9y ago
    Ever know a farm family? I worked on a farm in high school. The wife drove a school bus and was like your grandmother. But... she ran the books, ran the pipeline of hard working students for summer labor, could throw 50lb hay bales when necessary and change a tractor clutch in a field with an just a wrench and a hammer.
• wyclif 9y ago
  The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income This is the primary reason these domestic labourers are so common in the Philippines and in pinoy culture. Also, many men's involvement in their children's lives is non-existent or minimal. A lot of men get their girlfriends or wives pregnant and dump them quickly. So there's also a huge number of single moms in the Philippines. It's a matriarchal culture, and women (including servants, nannies, and housekeepers) are the glue that hold the culture together.
  • nyolfen 9y ago
    do you have any suggested reading about this topic? it sounds interesting
• pervycreeper 9y ago
  >it's usually uncompensated too In Western society, the act of marriage confers (often vastly) increased wealth and status to the lower status partner, and it is usually women who prefer to "marry up". Furthermore, it is also vastly more fulfilling and satisfying to care for one's own children than one's mistress's children. No two roles could be more different, frankly.
  • Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    * Furthermore, it is also vastly more fulfilling and satisfying to care for one's own children than one's mistress's children. No two roles could be more different, frankly." Speak for yourself. I'd much rather take care of other people's children. I can go home to a nice, child-free house, as I have no desire for children of my own.
  • cbr 9y ago
    it is usually women who prefer to "marry up" Regardless of preferences, what I'd expect to happen is that this would end up pretty balanced. Are a substantial fraction of high status women deciding not to get married? Much more than the fraction of high status men?
    • BearGoesChirp 9y ago
      I've seen a number of articles about college educated women having trouble finding enough college educated men to meet the demand. Also consider the factor age can play in this, given that people tend to gain wealth throughout most of their life. If women married men who were a bit older than them, you would see a marry up effect and you would also have more widows at older age since their older husband has passed.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• Banthum 9y ago
  Money is just a medium of exchange. An exchange without money is not 'uncompensated'. That makes it sound like she's living in a slave shed and has to come into the house every day to cook and clean. The housewife and the traditional father consume the same products. They go on the same trips, eat the same meals together, live under the same roof, drive the same car(s), watch the same TV, sleep in the same bed, etc. Her work is just as compensated as his.
• snowwrestler 9y ago
  > An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. Just ask your mom. My mom grew up during the Cold War. I haven't asked her specifically but I'm pretty sure she would just be confused by your comment. Women in the Soviet Union didn't get compensated either for domestic duties, like spending an hour standing in line to buy food staples.
  • golergka 9y ago
    Welcome to HN, where all ills of modern society are labelled 'capitalism'.
  • achou 9y ago
    I probably should have said "all economic systems since the dawn of time" but I took a shortcut that covers most of the modern world's economy instead. I certainly didn't say that communism was somehow different or better in this regard.
• tathougies 9y ago
  > All of the work in a traditional mother's role, well it's usually uncompensated too. Sure it's a "labor of love" but it's also just a huge amount of work, for decades. An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. Just ask your mom. I mean the key difference here is the obvious one, which is that spouses have complete access to the other's money. period. If Lola had been the equivalent of the mother and the mother the father, Lola wouldn't need to ask the mother for money -- she could just go to the bank with her marriage certificate and take it herself. My wife and I live in California, a community property state. At the moment we married, everything that is mine became hers and vice versa. Right now, for various reasons, she's not working and she does a lot of the housework. She's hardly a slave though. Firstly, if I didn't give her enough money to live on, she could just go to the bank. Secondly, if I hid my accounts from her, she could sue me for neglect. Thirdly, if I were to take on a mistress, she could sue me again for spousal neglect. Of course, the same would apply if the situation was reversed. Let's not compare marriage to slavery. The entire institution of marriage is meant to prevent one spouse from controlling the other by simply making ownership joint. Show me a system of slavery where the slaves own the entirety of their master's estate, and I'll show you justice.
  • achou 9y ago
    Consider what happens if one spouse loses a job and is forced to take one with half the pay. The spouse doing the work at home suddenly has to make do with less, even though their work has not really changed. My point is not really about slavery, it is about how this example shows how much work there is and how difficult it is, and how we don't seem to account for it even in normal life.
  • vanderZwan 9y ago
    I understand your defensiveness over feeling that what I'm sure is a loving and nurturing union between you and your partner is being compared to forms of slavery, and you raise good points why a direct comparison would be overblown. However, I would be more careful with your choice of words here: > The entire institution of marriage is meant to prevent one spouse from controlling the other by simply making ownership joint. The way this particular point is phrased makes it sound like this was always the case. However, it is a very recent change in how the laws work, as a direct result of mainly women fighting for their rights. It used to be the case in many countries that only the men can decide to end a marriage, and I'm sure that is still the case in many places. Maybe the legal framework of modern marriage in California is decent at guaranteeing equality, but that is not something to be assumed to be the general way marriage works, let alone something to be taken for granted. And I'm sure you'll agree that the institution of marriage is important enough that it deserves critical examination.
• canoebuilder 9y ago
  An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. This is kind of an odd damning of capitalism, because no matter how we organize society, there is going to continue to be mothering so long as our species is to survive. And whatever societal system we may have, that society is going to be built in large part by mothering.
  • Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    Yes, be we can do different solutions. I'd also like to point out that the statement would not only include mothers, but children and slaves of different sorts. The current equivalent is likely things like community service, prison labor, homeless working in stores to stay in shelters, and charities - at least in the US.
• Jabanga 9y ago
  The traditional mother's role is compensated. They have their expenses, like heating, electricity, shelter and groceries, paid for by the breadwinner. They are of course not compensated for what they provide their children, but the same applies to the breadwinner, whose expenditures on the children are not compensated. That's what child-rearing is: an expense in money and/or time. This is not exclusive to the "capitalist system", and it does not just apply to the traditional mother's role.
• erikb 9y ago
  Well, even the boss you have a lawful signed contract with would take your free work without much complaint.