4 ms·

What is wrong with having other options is that there is a cost associated with maintaining those other options, and the children will be paying it one way or a

What is wrong with having other options is that there is a cost associated with maintaining those other options, and the children will be paying it one way or another. Raising children well is enormously time consuming and difficult. Parents who want to do a good job don't have the luxury of abundant time and energy. Any effort spent maintaining these other options is done at the expense of the children.

brnt 7y ago
Please demonstrate this cost and how children would be paying for it. Please use sources.
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  If you want both parents to be independent, then (for the vast majority of people who are not very wealthy) of course both need to be employed or able to quickly become employed. Do you need a source for that? Both of those take time, and that's time taken away from the children, which parents do not have in abundance. Do you need a source for that?
  - brnt 7y ago
    You did not answer my questions nor support your claims.
    - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
      Not all costs are monetary. Do you need a source for that?
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    > both need to be employed or able to quickly become employed Not particularly 'quickly', really. Keeping it so both parents are able to be employed only requires corporate culture changes, and minor ones at that. The cost is very small and does not hurt children.
    - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
      Most people don't have enough in savings to last more than half of a year without a job. I'd call that "quickly". You could try to stop corporations from preferentially hiring people who have recent relevant experience, but I am not going to hold my breath on that.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        A preference is fine, if it's in proportion to how much experience from the last couple years is actually worth over experience from 7 years ago. So maybe $5k less in initial salary. The preference for someone having zero gaps in employment is extremely overrated, and giving many more people gaps in employment to disrupt that idea is great.
krastanov 7y ago
This is a generic defeatist premise. Yes, if we do not try to make the world a more pleasant place to live in, the world indeed will not be a more pleasant place. And yes, poor people (and right now even middle class people) do not have the luxury to have the choice I depicted, or many other choices. But it is worthwhile to have our institutions try to change work culture for the better, exactly so that these options become feasible, both for the middle class and for the even less lucky. Or to rephrase it in your way: there are costs to maintaining these other options, and I am happy to see that there are governments trying (and occasionally succeeding) to pay these costs.
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  The government can't pay those costs unless you are suggesting some kind of communal child raising situation rather than having children raised by their parents. Raising children well requires a lot of time and effort. I don't think it's defeatist to acknowledge that. If you want to try to improve that, find some way to raise children without needing so much of their parents' time and energy and without sacrificing quality.
  - krastanov 7y ago
    A number of issues with what you said: - daycare (including fancy stuff like daycare on your work's campus where you can join your kid in between work activitie)s is a great idea that has already been tested - it is perfectly reasonable for the extended family to help with child-rearing, especially in location where there is a history of that - It seems crazy to me to suggest we change the ways we raise children, without suggesting changes to the ways careers progress. Even without my hippy suggestions about idealistic version of childcare, a comparatively trivial thing to do is to realign employee and employer incentives. And there are governments that do that successfully. This is why I am calling your comments "defeatist". Stop projecting your view of the world on everyone: yes, your view is consistent and reasonable, if the homemaker is happy with the arangement, but it is not the only possible way to have a healthy family.
    - 7y ago

brnt 7y ago

Please demonstrate this cost and how children would be paying for it. Please use sources.

HBKXNCUO 7y ago
If you want both parents to be independent, then (for the vast majority of people who are not very wealthy) of course both need to be employed or able to quickly become employed. Do you need a source for that? Both of those take time, and that's time taken away from the children, which parents do not have in abundance. Do you need a source for that?
- brnt 7y ago
  You did not answer my questions nor support your claims.
  - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
    Not all costs are monetary. Do you need a source for that?
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  > both need to be employed or able to quickly become employed Not particularly 'quickly', really. Keeping it so both parents are able to be employed only requires corporate culture changes, and minor ones at that. The cost is very small and does not hurt children.
  - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
    Most people don't have enough in savings to last more than half of a year without a job. I'd call that "quickly". You could try to stop corporations from preferentially hiring people who have recent relevant experience, but I am not going to hold my breath on that.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      A preference is fine, if it's in proportion to how much experience from the last couple years is actually worth over experience from 7 years ago. So maybe $5k less in initial salary. The preference for someone having zero gaps in employment is extremely overrated, and giving many more people gaps in employment to disrupt that idea is great.

krastanov 7y ago

This is a generic defeatist premise. Yes, if we do not try to make the world a more pleasant place to live in, the world indeed will not be a more pleasant place. And yes, poor people (and right now even middle class people) do not have the luxury to have the choice I depicted, or many other choices. But it is worthwhile to have our institutions try to change work culture for the better, exactly so that these options become feasible, both for the middle class and for the even less lucky. Or to rephrase it in your way: there are costs to maintaining these other options, and I am happy to see that there are governments trying (and occasionally succeeding) to pay these costs.

HBKXNCUO 7y ago
The government can't pay those costs unless you are suggesting some kind of communal child raising situation rather than having children raised by their parents. Raising children well requires a lot of time and effort. I don't think it's defeatist to acknowledge that. If you want to try to improve that, find some way to raise children without needing so much of their parents' time and energy and without sacrificing quality.
- krastanov 7y ago
  A number of issues with what you said: - daycare (including fancy stuff like daycare on your work's campus where you can join your kid in between work activitie)s is a great idea that has already been tested - it is perfectly reasonable for the extended family to help with child-rearing, especially in location where there is a history of that - It seems crazy to me to suggest we change the ways we raise children, without suggesting changes to the ways careers progress. Even without my hippy suggestions about idealistic version of childcare, a comparatively trivial thing to do is to realign employee and employer incentives. And there are governments that do that successfully. This is why I am calling your comments "defeatist". Stop projecting your view of the world on everyone: yes, your view is consistent and reasonable, if the homemaker is happy with the arangement, but it is not the only possible way to have a healthy family.
  - 7y ago