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The “Protestant Work Ethic” was built around the notion of a two-parent household with the parents specialized such that one works outside the home while one wo

The “Protestant Work Ethic” was built around the notion of a two-parent household with the parents specialized such that one works outside the home while one works inside the home. It also assumes a significant social safety net in the form of family and close community support via churches, schools, etc. I understand the gist of what you mean, but I think you’re really pointing at the idea of the “nuclear family,” and the “two-income household,” both of which are post-war ideas. Specifically, Elizabeth Warren wrote an entire book about this “Two Income Trap,” how much more fragile it makes families, and why we should be working to get back to one-income being a reasonable option so that more people could choose it when their circumstances demanded it.

throwaway45349 6y ago
The problem with going back to one income is cultural. Men want to be the breadwinner, so it's going to end up forcing women out of the workforce and back into the home. There's no way to have one income viable again without halving the supply of people in the workforce.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  > Men want to be the breadwinner And there's the problem. I'd be totally comfortable if my future wife ended up being the financial supporter of the family. There's technical things I'd like to invest time and mental resources in that wouldn't necessarily make money, but would be fulfilling, and housework is already something I do a lot of and wouldn't mind being more responsible for if I wasn't spending 40+ at the office. I can't imagine dumping my career whilst I'm the higher earner, but if she ends up making more than me (kinda likely actually, given some time), it might be the most sensible solution. Marriage should be a team activity where either partner is willing to take on whatever role is best for the family.
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    Both men and women usually prefer men to be the breadwinner though - this isn't just cultural - it has biological roots. Breaking away from that on a mass societal-wide scale will not be easy. Thankfully humans are one of the few animals who override their instincts so it's not impossible.
    - baq 6y ago
      maybe raising children should be breadwinning?
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        In agriculture-heavy eras, it was, in the sense that children would contribute labor value as they got older (and with relative quickness; you can trust an 8-year-old with tasks like feeding the chickens).
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      I tend to agree, but women don't want to be home alone with kids. Historically, women would share duties with other women in the village so there was a lot more socializing and mentorship. It must have been fulfilling to start out a young inexperienced women in your village and eventually become an influential matriarch, with knowledge in herbal medicine, nursing, textiles, pottery, basketry, child development, leadership, storytelling, etc.
      - iateanapple 6y ago
        > I tend to agree, but women don't want to be home alone with kids. Historically, women would share duties with other women in the village so there was a lot more socializing and mentorship. Stay at home moms are always having get togethers, play dates, catching up for coffee, etc. The more of your friends who are stay at home moms the easier it becomes to be a stay at home mom.
    - nashalo_nighly 6y ago
      Honestly can we stop saying these type of claims that men are « biologically » made to be breadwinners and woman « biologically » made to do house work? Not only the claims are dubious, but even if they were true doesn’t mean everyone is the same. For a lot of people including women housework is actually boring and they would rather have a fulfilling career. Perpetuating the idea that men should work outside and women should work inside really makes life really hard for men and women that don’t think that way.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  > The problem with going back to one income is cultural I think the problem is cultural and genetic. After all, we have thousands of generations where men were molded for the breadwinner role. Lots of scholarly articles on that topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=genetic+influence+on+breadwinner+role https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=genetic+influence+on+br...
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    Both indeed, but what separates us from animals is not being slave to our instincts.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > Men want to be the breadwinner, so it's going to end up forcing women out of the workforce and back into the home. I’d love to send my wife out to work for the family. In fact I’d love to get multiple wives and send them all out to work.
foobarian 6y ago
I'm puzzled by how America ended up with this "lone-wolf" nuclear family mentality where families move away from parents and insist on going it alone. Maybe it goes hand-in-hand with the American individualistic culture. Maybe it just happens in urban centers and I'm blind to places where it does not hold. But it is such a sad state; my best childhood memories are from being in a small town where everybody knew everybody, kids played together, and grandma took you on walks from house to house almost daily to sync up with neighbors. Oh and did I mention this is where our two working parents would drop us off for weeks at a time?
- sethhochberg 6y ago
  I almost feel as though suburban living forces this in the modern era... the area my parents moved to when they left the small town where I was born to for the sake of raising children with cul-de-sac and good school district had almost nothing to offer for me as a young adult, so I left and moved across the country to a place which was more in line with what I was looking for. There were few jobs nearby in my chosen field (or really any field for an educated young professional, service industries dominated) so my peers all left, too. We've chosen hyper-specialization of our living areas. The places which are good for raising children are mostly horrible for careers and social life. The places where young people can get ahead and be social aren't as traditionally convenient for raising children (unless you have lots of money). You pretty much have to pick where you live based on what phase of your life you're in, and I think for most people the expectation is still that once you get married you'll just move out to the 'burbs. Personally, I hate the idea, but I'm both not in a place in life where I'm too worried about children and also fortunate to work in an industry where its at least theoretically viable to afford to raise city kids and maintain a career. My parents are getting ready to retire and thinking of moving to the mountains somewhere because being retired is no fun in a place where everything is optimized around children and everything is developed family-size. They won't be a support system where they are for my hypothetical kids anyways, and are eager to escape the suburb I grew up in as it has declined over the decades, so I wouldn't want to be there either. Wrapping up that rant... quite simply, I insisted on moving away from where I grew up because there was nothing for me there and I wouldn't want my kids to grow up in that place. The fact that my parents still live there for now is mostly incidental. (But I also generally think suburbs are a worst-of-both-worlds kind of thing, none of the cohesive culture or community of a small town but also none of the variety, walk/bikeability, or cultural diversity of big cities, so my bias might be showing).
BTCOG 6y ago
I consider my family very fortunate that my wife's part to full-time chef gig did not call her back for spring/summer events for this very reasoning. We were previously both working, but fortunately we are able to change focus and she can do activities and learning with the kids while I work 9-10 hour days remotely from my home office. A lot of our friends/acquaintances are both struggling to work gig jobs or local retail of some sort and I feel for all of them while we're in the perfect position to save, teach our children, and then still plan our downtime together. We've not had any real fighting either, it's been better than having to work from the office this entire time, but I do still miss that environment. Oh right, that and our parents and the living grandparents also live nearby.
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
Or you could have affordable public daycare / public pre-school that starts when the kids are born. Why does everyone expect the government to take care of their kids from 6 to 18 but not from 0 to 6 in the US ? It's pretty ridiculous.
- sukilot 6y ago
  There's patchwork public daycare from age 3+, but mainly only for poverty cases. Daycare costs less than a job though, so you don't really need free day care as long as minimum wage is high enough.

throwaway45349 6y ago

The problem with going back to one income is cultural. Men want to be the breadwinner, so it's going to end up forcing women out of the workforce and back into the home. There's no way to have one income viable again without halving the supply of people in the workforce.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
> Men want to be the breadwinner And there's the problem. I'd be totally comfortable if my future wife ended up being the financial supporter of the family. There's technical things I'd like to invest time and mental resources in that wouldn't necessarily make money, but would be fulfilling, and housework is already something I do a lot of and wouldn't mind being more responsible for if I wasn't spending 40+ at the office. I can't imagine dumping my career whilst I'm the higher earner, but if she ends up making more than me (kinda likely actually, given some time), it might be the most sensible solution. Marriage should be a team activity where either partner is willing to take on whatever role is best for the family.
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  Both men and women usually prefer men to be the breadwinner though - this isn't just cultural - it has biological roots. Breaking away from that on a mass societal-wide scale will not be easy. Thankfully humans are one of the few animals who override their instincts so it's not impossible.
  - baq 6y ago
    maybe raising children should be breadwinning?
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      In agriculture-heavy eras, it was, in the sense that children would contribute labor value as they got older (and with relative quickness; you can trust an 8-year-old with tasks like feeding the chickens).
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    I tend to agree, but women don't want to be home alone with kids. Historically, women would share duties with other women in the village so there was a lot more socializing and mentorship. It must have been fulfilling to start out a young inexperienced women in your village and eventually become an influential matriarch, with knowledge in herbal medicine, nursing, textiles, pottery, basketry, child development, leadership, storytelling, etc.
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > I tend to agree, but women don't want to be home alone with kids. Historically, women would share duties with other women in the village so there was a lot more socializing and mentorship. Stay at home moms are always having get togethers, play dates, catching up for coffee, etc. The more of your friends who are stay at home moms the easier it becomes to be a stay at home mom.
  - nashalo_nighly 6y ago
    Honestly can we stop saying these type of claims that men are « biologically » made to be breadwinners and woman « biologically » made to do house work? Not only the claims are dubious, but even if they were true doesn’t mean everyone is the same. For a lot of people including women housework is actually boring and they would rather have a fulfilling career. Perpetuating the idea that men should work outside and women should work inside really makes life really hard for men and women that don’t think that way.
RestlessMind 6y ago
> The problem with going back to one income is cultural I think the problem is cultural and genetic. After all, we have thousands of generations where men were molded for the breadwinner role. Lots of scholarly articles on that topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=genetic+influence+on+breadwinner+role https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=genetic+influence+on+br...
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  Both indeed, but what separates us from animals is not being slave to our instincts.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
iateanapple 6y ago
> Men want to be the breadwinner, so it's going to end up forcing women out of the workforce and back into the home. I’d love to send my wife out to work for the family. In fact I’d love to get multiple wives and send them all out to work.

foobarian 6y ago

I'm puzzled by how America ended up with this "lone-wolf" nuclear family mentality where families move away from parents and insist on going it alone. Maybe it goes hand-in-hand with the American individualistic culture. Maybe it just happens in urban centers and I'm blind to places where it does not hold. But it is such a sad state; my best childhood memories are from being in a small town where everybody knew everybody, kids played together, and grandma took you on walks from house to house almost daily to sync up with neighbors. Oh and did I mention this is where our two working parents would drop us off for weeks at a time?

sethhochberg 6y ago
I almost feel as though suburban living forces this in the modern era... the area my parents moved to when they left the small town where I was born to for the sake of raising children with cul-de-sac and good school district had almost nothing to offer for me as a young adult, so I left and moved across the country to a place which was more in line with what I was looking for. There were few jobs nearby in my chosen field (or really any field for an educated young professional, service industries dominated) so my peers all left, too. We've chosen hyper-specialization of our living areas. The places which are good for raising children are mostly horrible for careers and social life. The places where young people can get ahead and be social aren't as traditionally convenient for raising children (unless you have lots of money). You pretty much have to pick where you live based on what phase of your life you're in, and I think for most people the expectation is still that once you get married you'll just move out to the 'burbs. Personally, I hate the idea, but I'm both not in a place in life where I'm too worried about children and also fortunate to work in an industry where its at least theoretically viable to afford to raise city kids and maintain a career. My parents are getting ready to retire and thinking of moving to the mountains somewhere because being retired is no fun in a place where everything is optimized around children and everything is developed family-size. They won't be a support system where they are for my hypothetical kids anyways, and are eager to escape the suburb I grew up in as it has declined over the decades, so I wouldn't want to be there either. Wrapping up that rant... quite simply, I insisted on moving away from where I grew up because there was nothing for me there and I wouldn't want my kids to grow up in that place. The fact that my parents still live there for now is mostly incidental. (But I also generally think suburbs are a worst-of-both-worlds kind of thing, none of the cohesive culture or community of a small town but also none of the variety, walk/bikeability, or cultural diversity of big cities, so my bias might be showing).

BTCOG 6y ago

I consider my family very fortunate that my wife's part to full-time chef gig did not call her back for spring/summer events for this very reasoning. We were previously both working, but fortunately we are able to change focus and she can do activities and learning with the kids while I work 9-10 hour days remotely from my home office. A lot of our friends/acquaintances are both struggling to work gig jobs or local retail of some sort and I feel for all of them while we're in the perfect position to save, teach our children, and then still plan our downtime together. We've not had any real fighting either, it's been better than having to work from the office this entire time, but I do still miss that environment. Oh right, that and our parents and the living grandparents also live nearby.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

Or you could have affordable public daycare / public pre-school that starts when the kids are born. Why does everyone expect the government to take care of their kids from 6 to 18 but not from 0 to 6 in the US ? It's pretty ridiculous.

sukilot 6y ago
There's patchwork public daycare from age 3+, but mainly only for poverty cases. Daycare costs less than a job though, so you don't really need free day care as long as minimum wage is high enough.