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It is, and parenting is in and of itself a job. Imagine a society where its an actual career - parenting, as a job, apart from teaching. Professional parents p

by zanny 6y ago

It is, and parenting is in and of itself a job. Imagine a society where its an actual career - parenting, as a job, apart from teaching. Professional parents paid to raise children. That is basically what nannies among the rich are now anyway. It is totally just a culturally normalized incongruence that is just assumed for the sake of assumption. In the same way until a hundred years ago educating everyone was considered infeasible. The farm laborer of the 1850s would have looked at sending their kids to a public school as unbelievable and fantastical as someone today might look at having children raised professionally. Its also worth considering that, in the age of two income households reproducing as regularly as they do, school does do that already. The raising of the kids thing. It just does it really badly, because its not structured or designed for that. The prevalence and use of after school activities in many cultures as a way to keep kids busy until their parents get off work or during the summer is indicative of an ill-fitting bandage that nobody wants to consider pulling off and reconciling culturally because that means "admitting" millions of people are not time wizards that can manage to do 80 hours of work a week in 60.

downerending 6y ago
Parenting is a job, yes. For better or worse, though, there are huge numbers of people willing to do it for free. This is a serious problem if we expect market forces to just sort things out. My parents were lower middle class and both worked, and my mom took a year off for each kid. They just seemed to accept the idea that kids cost money, not unlike pets. Is this wrong? I don't really have an opinion. I don't run a business, though.
- zanny 6y ago
  I'd imagine if you offered people hardhats and heavy machinery to fix the roads they complain about quite a few would line up to do it "for free". Before wrecking the equipment and destroying property. And like I said, people are willing to do it for free because they have normalized a cultural expectation to do so. But it was the same normalization parents had that if their kids were going to learn to read in the 18th century they would have to teach it themselves because private tutors were well outside the reach of a majority of the working poor. People were willing to farm for themselves for centuries but the tools and lack of expertise and specialization made it incredibly inefficient. People built their own houses, but they were rarely more than rough cut lumber piled together with thatch for a roof. Human history is the realization of the value of expertise and specialization to make general problems everyone faces inefficiently focused managed problems by experts that can be radically more productive at it than the uninformed. I'm just trying to say just because its culturally normalized now does not mean its predestined to always be the way of social organization. And that economics is a really strong motivator to change behaviors - its why reproduction rates drop so radically in industrialized countries in the first place.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - downerending 6y ago
    > I'd imagine if you offered people hardhats and heavy machinery to fix the roads they complain about quite a few would line up to do it "for free". Before wrecking the equipment and destroying property. You're saying that people who reproduce "for free" are half-assed incompetents? I disagree. As for "culturally normalized", that's a blade that cuts deeply and in many directions. Without cultural norms, civilization as we know it would not exist. To reiterate my main point, I don't really have a preference on paid maternity. Maybe it would be better, though, to simply award each citizen two or three years "general leave" to be used as they wish. Those that wish to reproduce could spend it that way. Those that don't could do something else. There are too many births now--we hardly need to incentivize more of them.

by zanny 6y ago

downerending 6y ago

Parenting is a job, yes. For better or worse, though, there are huge numbers of people willing to do it for free. This is a serious problem if we expect market forces to just sort things out. My parents were lower middle class and both worked, and my mom took a year off for each kid. They just seemed to accept the idea that kids cost money, not unlike pets. Is this wrong? I don't really have an opinion. I don't run a business, though.

zanny 6y ago
I'd imagine if you offered people hardhats and heavy machinery to fix the roads they complain about quite a few would line up to do it "for free". Before wrecking the equipment and destroying property. And like I said, people are willing to do it for free because they have normalized a cultural expectation to do so. But it was the same normalization parents had that if their kids were going to learn to read in the 18th century they would have to teach it themselves because private tutors were well outside the reach of a majority of the working poor. People were willing to farm for themselves for centuries but the tools and lack of expertise and specialization made it incredibly inefficient. People built their own houses, but they were rarely more than rough cut lumber piled together with thatch for a roof. Human history is the realization of the value of expertise and specialization to make general problems everyone faces inefficiently focused managed problems by experts that can be radically more productive at it than the uninformed. I'm just trying to say just because its culturally normalized now does not mean its predestined to always be the way of social organization. And that economics is a really strong motivator to change behaviors - its why reproduction rates drop so radically in industrialized countries in the first place.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- downerending 6y ago
  > I'd imagine if you offered people hardhats and heavy machinery to fix the roads they complain about quite a few would line up to do it "for free". Before wrecking the equipment and destroying property. You're saying that people who reproduce "for free" are half-assed incompetents? I disagree. As for "culturally normalized", that's a blade that cuts deeply and in many directions. Without cultural norms, civilization as we know it would not exist. To reiterate my main point, I don't really have a preference on paid maternity. Maybe it would be better, though, to simply award each citizen two or three years "general leave" to be used as they wish. Those that wish to reproduce could spend it that way. Those that don't could do something else. There are too many births now--we hardly need to incentivize more of them.