11 ms·

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 pre

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.

throwaway9980 9y ago
It often feels like two income households are counter productive. Sure, we make more money, but it feels like 2x the dollars chasing 1.5x the pie out in the world. And then you have to pay for childcare. As for the household work, I was just telling someone today how much I miss being able to work all the time. I love my kids and they come first, but it's a sacrifice to for me not to work 12+ hour days.
- yakult 9y ago
  As with almost all optimization problems, applying twice the resources (in this case, work hours) won't bring you back twice the (net) bacon, due to diminishing returns. However, I think on net it is still more economically productive, at least in a large portion of cases. It's unlikely that housework and childcare would optimally take up a full 50% of our entire reservoir of workable-hours, especially in the age of household appliances and childcare centres.
  - throwaway9980 9y ago
    Great point and I agree with most of your sentiment, but I'm not sure you got all of my point. What I'm saying, and a big component of what I'm thinking about is housing costs, is that we're chasing the same things with more dollars. If household incomes double, expect the price of houses to follow suit. Assuming supply doesn't change, it doesn't help to earn 2x the money when all the bidders in the marketplace also have 2x the money.
    - yakult 9y ago
      >we're chasing the same things with more dollars. you're missing the part where more demand creates more supply. Sure, sometimes the market is distorted due to zoning, like in SF, and also land is finite, but generally speaking the market responds to the added demand by creating more housing, possibly denser housing. Same with other goods. Those are not empty dollars that got added into the system by fiat - they represent additional productive work done, and the goods / services they create is added to the economy.
      - throwaway9980 9y ago
        Agreed. And that's why I said "assuming supply stays the same" when talking about the housing market. I don't think I was clear with what I meant by 2x and 1.5x. I'm assuming those dollars represent productive labor and that means that there's more supply. My point is that I think the supply side isn't keeping up. The economy itself isn't bringing home 2x the bacon, but rather 1.5x the bacon when you're feeding all this extra labor into it. And yes, this is due to market distortions and diminishing returns.
        yakult 9y ago
        This is the crux: my point is that 1.5x the bacon is often still worth 2x the labour. Seriously, despite all the moaning about materialism and consumerism, the economy as a whole has suffered from a severe lack of bacon ever since the first monkey exchanged some bacon for a back rub, and this is definitely part of the solution.
- mangodrunk 9y ago
  I think you're right about two income households being counter productive. Why do we work so much? It's crazy to me that both parents will go to work, missing out on spending time and raising children (if they have them). Is the comfort really worth the time we could be spending with our children or just ourselves? I don't think so.
MockObject 9y ago
It's because women's lib effectively doubled the labor force, halving wages. Now only the top 3% can afford a house-spouse.
- Mz 9y ago
  You might look into the insane stuff that has happened to housing. That is possibly a better explanation for why it now takes two incomes to try to keep a roof over our heads.
  - MockObject 9y ago
    I hear repeatedly that "real wages have been constant since 1970". What started happening around then? Labor follows the same supply demand curves as any other commodity.
    - rsync 9y ago
      "Labor follows the same supply demand curves as any other commodity." Yes, it does. The demand dropped. What you hear about real wages is in reference to the US and other parts of the global north. Those manufacturing jobs moved to the global south and now there is less demand for them here.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        Yes. I'd add collapse of labor unions, but that's rather a consequence. The perception of women taking jobs from men also follows from loss of male-dominated manufacturing jobs. Women did that work during WWII, but they were enticed back home afterward.
    - ecnal 9y ago
      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
  - jackhack 9y ago
    Econ 101. More income is chasing the scarce resource that is housing. Thus prices increase (supply/demand curve). It is the same with the cost of education increasing horrifically due to the open firehose of student loans making price no-longer-an-object-of-consideration. Both are enormously overinflated bubbles.
toadi 9y ago
Actually, my girlfriend is the same. She tried working as an employee and even self-employed. But finally, she's happy being a housewife. My mother and even friends frown upon me. Like I push her to be a housewife. Actually, I supported her working and even helped her to be self-employed. But she's most happy being a housewife. I think people just want to have a big home, 2 cars annually 2 holidays and that costs a lot of money. Which means both have to work to support this life style. Luckily I make sufficient money to support us both.
- weberc2 9y ago
  My wife has always had traditionally-feminine work preferences, but she's felt a lot of shame from her more left-leaning friends and coworkers (we're both moderate liberals). Similarly, my office is very liberal, and I often feel a bit judged if I mention that my wife cooked my lunch or otherwise mention that my wife's hobbies are traditionally feminine. Ironically, our conservative friends and family have never said a word about whether she works or tends home; they're very laissez-faire about the matter. I don't mean to make a political point here; just an observation I found interesting in light of popular political stereotypes.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    The Left is not the epitome of tolerance it pretends to be any more than the Right is the epitome of morality it pretends to be. I remember very clearly who it was that made my mother miserable for daring to enjoy being a housewife and mother, and it wasn't our conservative friends. I also remember who made our family miserable for loving and caring for my gay brother as he died of AIDS, and it wasn't our liberal friends. ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... for an excellent essay on the topic. )
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      > for loving and caring for my gay brother Is this the right, or the religious right?
creepydata 9y ago
>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with two incomes, it is avoidable.(1) http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-running-a-household-how-working-parents-share-the-load/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-r... >The median household income for families with two full-time working parents and at least one child under 18 at home is $102,400, compared with $84,000 for households where the father works full time and the mother works part time and $55,000 for households where the father works full time and the mother is not employed. $55,000 a year provides a good life in 99% of the United States. BTW, the share of two-parent households in which both parents work full time is only at 46%. My way of handling two incomes is saving and investing the vast majority of the second income, not spending it. That leaves us in a much better financial position and also a lot of leeway for one or both of us to go without employment for an extended time. The ultimate goal being to retire early. Or at least semi-retire.
- anovikov 9y ago
  I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it is almost a crime against children, because they will grow dirt poor and view this crap as normal. Background: i earned just $45K a year after tax one year in my life, 10 years ago. I had no children back then. I still spent $60K eating out some of my savings, having to cut on anything including some food, and it felt so crappy i don't advise anyone to repeat my experience. Sure, $102K isn't too much either. But it puts you into a totally different league anyway. I can imagine how to survive on $102K with a kid in a cheap place, if your house is fully paid and you are an introvert, but not $55K.
sudhakarrayav 9y ago
Me too. My wife (housewife) and I was discussing about swapping jobs as we both envied the other's
stevekemp 9y ago
I was looking forward to that myself, too. My wife earns more money than I - and so we'd considered having me give up work to do childcare, instead of her. As it happens though I think neither of us is going to need to. Maternity/Paternity leave here is almost a year, and by the time that is ended I think we'll be in a good place where neither of us needs to quit entirely, although there may be some part-time working now and again.
watwut 9y ago
Being housewife in the past was not like today - washing, cooking, shopping and all that took much more work then today. You also fixed cloth by yourself and had to sew. Even embroidery was more then just a hobby it is today, it had more practical function. On farm or withing peasants, there was a lot of garden and animals related work to do too. Which is one of challenges of staying with children now, you feel useless and underused a lot of time. In here, you are expected to take a lot of time away of work while the child is small. Colleges were honestly horrified when I told I consider staying shorter. You are "just a housewife" during that time. It is love or their life for some women, but definitely not for most. That time is actually considered risk time for depression and alcoholism - people drink out of isolation and boredom and depression. Good think through is that you can talk openly about all those negative feelings with other women, you don't get shut up with "that was your choice be happy". If you feel like trying it, I would say try it even if you are a man. Maybe it will work for you. It is more practical in some ways, but you became dependent on partner on a lot - not just money but also social stuff. There is a reason why women were supposed to be so much more talkative and on the phone constantly by 1950 stereotypes - because alone in the house most of the day. I don't think switching would work for most people, you have to make a lot of changes. It is major lifestyle switch and adjustment period is tiring (both into it and out of it after). You will basically need new hobbies (old ones will be frustrating or cease to be satisfying or are impossible), need new ways of finding people to socialize with (when I work, the society is sort of around you without effort - the challenge is to be alone once in a while. At home you have to work on not being isolated.). You have to get used to slow speed of doing things and deadly routine suddenly and basically having to wait for partner while he is out and it is depressing until you do. One issue is, your partner will not understand your challenges, they are not real challenges from his point of view as an employed person with deadlines and crappy boss nor what it is like - while you will slowly forget what it was like to be at work. That is where nagging wife stereotype comes from - she is supposed to exist for the sake of family which includes partner, but from partners point of view nothing of interest is at home (neither much duty or really fun). Which basically means, it can work but both needs to be aware of this risk and communicate well.
surge 9y ago
Same, in our marriage its a practical decision of who makes more. I work in tech and make 6 figures, my wife, has a 4 year degree in the sciences and thanks to defunding of the sciences, etc, would be lucky to make 45k as a lab tech. We did the math when we first had kids, and what she brought home after taxes, etc would be just slightly more than day care for one child, and simply wasn't worth the effort of working 40 hours a week just make a few hundred more. If my wife could make more than I do and she might one day (we're working on business she's starting), I would quit my job in an instant and switch places if she wanted. I miss my kids, work late/nights frequently and feel like I often don't get enough time with them some days. Part of that is my own fault. In either case, we're incredibly lucky that only one of us has to work to maintain a good lifestyle and at least one of us has the option staying home to raise our kids, give them more individual attention and education, etc. Many households are in situations where both parents have to work one or more jobs to maintain just an average lifestyle.

throwaway9980 9y ago

It often feels like two income households are counter productive. Sure, we make more money, but it feels like 2x the dollars chasing 1.5x the pie out in the world. And then you have to pay for childcare. As for the household work, I was just telling someone today how much I miss being able to work all the time. I love my kids and they come first, but it's a sacrifice to for me not to work 12+ hour days.

yakult 9y ago
As with almost all optimization problems, applying twice the resources (in this case, work hours) won't bring you back twice the (net) bacon, due to diminishing returns. However, I think on net it is still more economically productive, at least in a large portion of cases. It's unlikely that housework and childcare would optimally take up a full 50% of our entire reservoir of workable-hours, especially in the age of household appliances and childcare centres.
- throwaway9980 9y ago
  Great point and I agree with most of your sentiment, but I'm not sure you got all of my point. What I'm saying, and a big component of what I'm thinking about is housing costs, is that we're chasing the same things with more dollars. If household incomes double, expect the price of houses to follow suit. Assuming supply doesn't change, it doesn't help to earn 2x the money when all the bidders in the marketplace also have 2x the money.
  - yakult 9y ago
    >we're chasing the same things with more dollars. you're missing the part where more demand creates more supply. Sure, sometimes the market is distorted due to zoning, like in SF, and also land is finite, but generally speaking the market responds to the added demand by creating more housing, possibly denser housing. Same with other goods. Those are not empty dollars that got added into the system by fiat - they represent additional productive work done, and the goods / services they create is added to the economy.
    - throwaway9980 9y ago
      Agreed. And that's why I said "assuming supply stays the same" when talking about the housing market. I don't think I was clear with what I meant by 2x and 1.5x. I'm assuming those dollars represent productive labor and that means that there's more supply. My point is that I think the supply side isn't keeping up. The economy itself isn't bringing home 2x the bacon, but rather 1.5x the bacon when you're feeding all this extra labor into it. And yes, this is due to market distortions and diminishing returns.
      - yakult 9y ago
        This is the crux: my point is that 1.5x the bacon is often still worth 2x the labour. Seriously, despite all the moaning about materialism and consumerism, the economy as a whole has suffered from a severe lack of bacon ever since the first monkey exchanged some bacon for a back rub, and this is definitely part of the solution.
mangodrunk 9y ago
I think you're right about two income households being counter productive. Why do we work so much? It's crazy to me that both parents will go to work, missing out on spending time and raising children (if they have them). Is the comfort really worth the time we could be spending with our children or just ourselves? I don't think so.

MockObject 9y ago

It's because women's lib effectively doubled the labor force, halving wages. Now only the top 3% can afford a house-spouse.

Mz 9y ago
You might look into the insane stuff that has happened to housing. That is possibly a better explanation for why it now takes two incomes to try to keep a roof over our heads.
- MockObject 9y ago
  I hear repeatedly that "real wages have been constant since 1970". What started happening around then? Labor follows the same supply demand curves as any other commodity.
  - rsync 9y ago
    "Labor follows the same supply demand curves as any other commodity." Yes, it does. The demand dropped. What you hear about real wages is in reference to the US and other parts of the global north. Those manufacturing jobs moved to the global south and now there is less demand for them here.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Yes. I'd add collapse of labor unions, but that's rather a consequence. The perception of women taking jobs from men also follows from loss of male-dominated manufacturing jobs. Women did that work during WWII, but they were enticed back home afterward.
  - ecnal 9y ago
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
- jackhack 9y ago
  Econ 101. More income is chasing the scarce resource that is housing. Thus prices increase (supply/demand curve). It is the same with the cost of education increasing horrifically due to the open firehose of student loans making price no-longer-an-object-of-consideration. Both are enormously overinflated bubbles.

toadi 9y ago

Actually, my girlfriend is the same. She tried working as an employee and even self-employed. But finally, she's happy being a housewife. My mother and even friends frown upon me. Like I push her to be a housewife. Actually, I supported her working and even helped her to be self-employed. But she's most happy being a housewife. I think people just want to have a big home, 2 cars annually 2 holidays and that costs a lot of money. Which means both have to work to support this life style. Luckily I make sufficient money to support us both.

weberc2 9y ago
My wife has always had traditionally-feminine work preferences, but she's felt a lot of shame from her more left-leaning friends and coworkers (we're both moderate liberals). Similarly, my office is very liberal, and I often feel a bit judged if I mention that my wife cooked my lunch or otherwise mention that my wife's hobbies are traditionally feminine. Ironically, our conservative friends and family have never said a word about whether she works or tends home; they're very laissez-faire about the matter. I don't mean to make a political point here; just an observation I found interesting in light of popular political stereotypes.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  The Left is not the epitome of tolerance it pretends to be any more than the Right is the epitome of morality it pretends to be. I remember very clearly who it was that made my mother miserable for daring to enjoy being a housewife and mother, and it wasn't our conservative friends. I also remember who made our family miserable for loving and caring for my gay brother as he died of AIDS, and it wasn't our liberal friends. ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... for an excellent essay on the topic. )
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    > for loving and caring for my gay brother Is this the right, or the religious right?

creepydata 9y ago

>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with two incomes, it is avoidable.(1) http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-running-a-household-how-working-parents-share-the-load/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-r... >The median household income for families with two full-time working parents and at least one child under 18 at home is $102,400, compared with $84,000 for households where the father works full time and the mother works part time and $55,000 for households where the father works full time and the mother is not employed. $55,000 a year provides a good life in 99% of the United States. BTW, the share of two-parent households in which both parents work full time is only at 46%. My way of handling two incomes is saving and investing the vast majority of the second income, not spending it. That leaves us in a much better financial position and also a lot of leeway for one or both of us to go without employment for an extended time. The ultimate goal being to retire early. Or at least semi-retire.

anovikov 9y ago
I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it is almost a crime against children, because they will grow dirt poor and view this crap as normal. Background: i earned just $45K a year after tax one year in my life, 10 years ago. I had no children back then. I still spent $60K eating out some of my savings, having to cut on anything including some food, and it felt so crappy i don't advise anyone to repeat my experience. Sure, $102K isn't too much either. But it puts you into a totally different league anyway. I can imagine how to survive on $102K with a kid in a cheap place, if your house is fully paid and you are an introvert, but not $55K.

sudhakarrayav 9y ago

Me too. My wife (housewife) and I was discussing about swapping jobs as we both envied the other's

stevekemp 9y ago

I was looking forward to that myself, too. My wife earns more money than I - and so we'd considered having me give up work to do childcare, instead of her. As it happens though I think neither of us is going to need to. Maternity/Paternity leave here is almost a year, and by the time that is ended I think we'll be in a good place where neither of us needs to quit entirely, although there may be some part-time working now and again.

watwut 9y ago

Being housewife in the past was not like today - washing, cooking, shopping and all that took much more work then today. You also fixed cloth by yourself and had to sew. Even embroidery was more then just a hobby it is today, it had more practical function. On farm or withing peasants, there was a lot of garden and animals related work to do too. Which is one of challenges of staying with children now, you feel useless and underused a lot of time. In here, you are expected to take a lot of time away of work while the child is small. Colleges were honestly horrified when I told I consider staying shorter. You are "just a housewife" during that time. It is love or their life for some women, but definitely not for most. That time is actually considered risk time for depression and alcoholism - people drink out of isolation and boredom and depression. Good think through is that you can talk openly about all those negative feelings with other women, you don't get shut up with "that was your choice be happy". If you feel like trying it, I would say try it even if you are a man. Maybe it will work for you. It is more practical in some ways, but you became dependent on partner on a lot - not just money but also social stuff. There is a reason why women were supposed to be so much more talkative and on the phone constantly by 1950 stereotypes - because alone in the house most of the day. I don't think switching would work for most people, you have to make a lot of changes. It is major lifestyle switch and adjustment period is tiring (both into it and out of it after). You will basically need new hobbies (old ones will be frustrating or cease to be satisfying or are impossible), need new ways of finding people to socialize with (when I work, the society is sort of around you without effort - the challenge is to be alone once in a while. At home you have to work on not being isolated.). You have to get used to slow speed of doing things and deadly routine suddenly and basically having to wait for partner while he is out and it is depressing until you do. One issue is, your partner will not understand your challenges, they are not real challenges from his point of view as an employed person with deadlines and crappy boss nor what it is like - while you will slowly forget what it was like to be at work. That is where nagging wife stereotype comes from - she is supposed to exist for the sake of family which includes partner, but from partners point of view nothing of interest is at home (neither much duty or really fun). Which basically means, it can work but both needs to be aware of this risk and communicate well.

surge 9y ago

Same, in our marriage its a practical decision of who makes more. I work in tech and make 6 figures, my wife, has a 4 year degree in the sciences and thanks to defunding of the sciences, etc, would be lucky to make 45k as a lab tech. We did the math when we first had kids, and what she brought home after taxes, etc would be just slightly more than day care for one child, and simply wasn't worth the effort of working 40 hours a week just make a few hundred more. If my wife could make more than I do and she might one day (we're working on business she's starting), I would quit my job in an instant and switch places if she wanted. I miss my kids, work late/nights frequently and feel like I often don't get enough time with them some days. Part of that is my own fault. In either case, we're incredibly lucky that only one of us has to work to maintain a good lifestyle and at least one of us has the option staying home to raise our kids, give them more individual attention and education, etc. Many households are in situations where both parents have to work one or more jobs to maintain just an average lifestyle.