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I've re-read your comment a few times now, and I don't see anywhere you've written something that implies you think women ought to become mothers due to some mo
by gfodor 7y ago
I've re-read your comment a few times now, and I don't see anywhere you've written something that implies you think women ought to become mothers due to some moral standard you have. So I don't think the downvotes are warranted.
It sounds like you are highlighting the contradiction between the fact that women are now increasingly expected and needed to do the job of full-time motherhood while also somehow, miraculously, contributing financially to the family through their careers. I agree that this places increased burden on women, and is due for a correction, both via new programs/regulation and a cultural awareness that this is being asked of them. Your point about raising children as 'unmonetized value' is something I think culturally we need to grapple with, much like we need to grapple with things like the externalities leading to climate change. We need to be able to price the value of child rearing into our capitalist society in a much better way, so women have clearer incentives and more freedom in choosing the path they take as they become parents, regardless of what path that is.
edit: I should state that while this article is about women and hence what I wrote above focused there, the same problems apply to men who want to allocate their time between parenting and their career. Society needs good parents, because we need good adults, and this value exchange is woefully un-accounted for in our current system. In practice, both parents suffer from having to make this trade-off, including those who have someone other than the mother take on a large part of childcare.
- ByzantineO6 7y agoChildren, well-reared and thriving, were once an (imperfect) investment in prepaid,loving elder care. Bismarck's Social Security and its successors replaced this intergenerational dynamic. Like so much else Progressive, the net is that value once added inside a family is now done by taxpaying strangers. And increases GDP, yay! It's a big win for the State! Not so much for people.
- adjkant 7y agoWhile implication versus what was literally written is quite muddy with this comment, what is missing from the entire comment is why it has to be a mother and not a father. The ending part also shows a lack of understanding of how childcare actually works today as well.
- gfodor 7y agoI give people the benefit of the doubt. To do so otherwise is both uncharitable and also can seem to be mind reading.
- adjkant 7y agoImplication, grammatical choices (such as capitalizing mother consistently), and topic focus are of course not the full picture, but they are not mind reading either. The internet can lose a lot in translation, and I think I was quite charitable with it, and only addressed the explicit parts.