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In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children

In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income. So you can't have the expectation that one of the parents give up a large chunk of their salary just to have kids. If you do structure society in this way then you get rapidly declining birth rates and very bad long-term population demographic problems (which many countries are already dealing with). Personally I think the best solution would be to have universal child care going down to age 0 (rather than just age 5 as it is now), which is common in many other countries. Because of efficiencies of scale, that's cheaper than subsidizing all the foregone salary required by parents all individually giving up one of their two household jobs to devote to child-rearing.

rayiner 6y ago
It’s not just the cost of childcare. Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently give up earning power to raise children. I’ve seen this first hand in my family and it’s really difficult.
- bradlys 6y ago
  > Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently give up earning power to raise children. Where are these anecdotes from? Of the divorced men I know in California - they're on the hook for a lot of money. Their wives chose to not work (first few years to do childcare - remaining years because they didn't want to). The women didn't want to be in the relationship anymore and got a divorce. The men end up owing their spouses alimony for decades plus child support (regardless of where the kids spend the most time). As a straight man, I've decided to not marry based on their horror stories alone. I see marrying someone who wants to be a SAHM as a huge financial liability not in just temporary loss of earning potential but in near permanent levels of loss due to potential divorce.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    My mother in law gave up a job as an executive (where she was earning more than her surgeon husband) to be a stay at home mom. Coming back into the workforce 20 years later when the marriage deteriorated was nearly impossible. I don’t know what horror stories you’ve seen. But for most ordinary men, alimony and child support add up to very little. If you make $75,000, maintenance for a 15 year marriage in which the other spouse earned nothing adds up to $22,000 a year. And it ends in about 11 years. A significant hit, no doubt, but if the other spouse had similar earning potential (which is typical these days—people tend to match up with people of similar education) it won’t come close to covering the lifetime loss in post-divorce earnings. It can be different if a high earning person marries someone who has limited earning power, but that’s the exception these days.
    - bradlys 6y ago
      > Coming back into the workforce 20 years later when the marriage deteriorated was nearly impossible. But - isn't giving up work for 20 years her choice? For the men I know - the payments turn into about 1/3 of their net income. For the ultra rich and even the higher up FAANG, it's not really the end of the world. For the startup software engineer, it's devastating because they can't even exercise their options anymore. The payments AFAIK aren't for 11 years - it's longer. Some of them weren't with their partner for 15 years. I think it falls all on what judge you get. $22000/yr is a lot for someone only making $75000. Especially when you don't actually get $75000/yr and you still have to pay $22,000 net. > It can be different if a high earning person marries someone who has limited earning power, but that’s the exception these days. Maybe more people would marry between incomes if the high earning partner wouldn't be out at least 1/3 of their income for over a decade. I'm currently in a relationship with someone who has no hopes of making any money close to what I do - marriage ain't happening and they know why.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        It's not fair to blame people for "choosing" to have children because, in the aggregate, the majority of people need to have children in order for society to survive. So it's not really a choice if a majority of people have to do it or everything goes to shit; it's more like volunteering to take on a necessary burden (that admittedly has its rewards too). A better outcome here would've been if she hadn't needed to give up her job to have kids, like if there had been universal childcare and her work was more accommodating of mothers. > $22000/yr is a lot for someone only making $75000. If you think $53k is rough for one person to survive on, wait till you see how hard it is for two people to survive on $22k!
- xnyan 6y ago
  >Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently You're mixing up cause and effect. A married women trying to resume her career (which also happens for many other reasons in addition to divorce)is going to have the same problems as a women who is trying to resume her career due to a divorce. Or historical/current practices and attitudes to relationships and child rearing is what created the liability, specifically the societal pressure for women to leave/not pursue a career and thus lose highly valuable work experience relative to men. Divorce just highlights this.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    But a woman who risks divorce has a greater need to return to the workforce than a similarly situated woman who stays married. The normalization of divorce exacerbated the risks from exiting the workforce.
    - xnyan 6y ago
      You’re still doing it. Anyone of any gender who ends their professional career to start a family is put at greater risk by more prevalent divorce, right? Shitty sexist traditional societal practices exacerbated the risk of exiting the workforce for women. The fact that women are more vulnerable to all kinds of life conditions such as divorce is a simply a consequence of that.
eanzenberg 6y ago
This outlook is widely in-the-coastal-city-bubble.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Expand on this please? What percentage of the country do you think is easily surviving on a single household salary?
  - mindv0rtex 6y ago
    Just my anecdata. We live in Maryland, in a middle-class suburb. I have 3 kids and a SAH wife. We're doing OK, saving for 401k, driving two cars, paying cash for house maintenance and renovations. Yeah, we don't travel much, but that's luxury. I earn the Google L4 level base, if one can trust levels.fyi. I am not sure how unique my situation is, but I have never felt the need for my wife to start working...
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      What is your total compensation and what is the median single earner income where you are? I suspect that you are easily in the 95th percentile for income for your location, if not higher. So living on a single income is doable for you, but not for the vast majority of your neighbors.
      - mindv0rtex 6y ago
        Hmm, then I must indeed be living in a bubble...
        CydeWeys 6y ago
        Yeah I think you are. I spent the first 27 years of my life in Maryland and my salary out of college was $58k which was very good for the area. I was making the median area household income on a single wage at the start of my career. You are currently doing much better than I was, and I was already doing great.
GuB-42 6y ago
Ok, it is not the 50s but why could people do it in the 50s and why can't we do it now? We are hearing "automation will destroy jobs" left and right and for some reason, we can't afford stay at home moms. The "universal child care" argument makes me feel uncomfortable. It one step short of a dystopia. One where women would surrender their child to a state sponsored center where child care specialists make them productive members of society. Freed from their child rearing duty, "mothers" can continue working efficiently. Why not just let mothers be mothers? What's the point of progress if we can't even do that. And also turn gender equality the right way, by letting fathers be fathers instead of requiring both parents to work full time.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  The nature of society was quite different in the 1950s than it is now. For those who were served by the government it was a golden era. For those who supported the government, it was much more expensive. For those who were persecuted by the government, it was a living nightmare.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Real pay has been stagnant for at least the past 4 decades, while expenses (particularly housing, healthcare, childcare, and education) have skyrocketed. That's the reason the average family can't survive on one income now like it could in the 50s. Some possible solutions to these problems would include: Universal healthcare, universal childcare, and elimination of restrictions on building more housing (i.e. kill low density residential zoning entirely). Make those changes and it should again become possible to support a household on a single income.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  > Ok, it is not the 50s but why could people do it in the 50s and why can't we do it now? Because on the job market you compete against your neighbors. You can't do it now, because you can't get the neighbors from the 50s. When most of your reference class have one income per family, the labor market will adapt so that you can feed the family from one income, because your neighbors will refuse to work for less. Then also you can get an income sufficient to feed your family. When most of your reference class have two incomes per family, the labor market adapts so that now you need two incomes to feed your family. Your neighbors are willing to work for half the cost, and to remain competitive so do you. (Here, "feed your family" is an euphemism for... basically the total cost of living on the same standard as your neighbors. That includes literally food, but also the cost of housing, schools for kids, health care, etc. A part of it you can save by living more cheaply than your neighbors, for example always cooking at home and never going to restaurants. But you can't do much with the housing costs, and that is a large part of the family budget.) > Why not just let mothers be mothers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma -- if all mothers stay at home, they can. If half of them chooses career, the other half has to.
outworlder 6y ago
> In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income Interesting. That's exactly what's expected from H1 holders.
will4274 6y ago
This article is about tech firms. The companies named in the article are Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Dell, Twitter, and Yelp. Salaries for new employees at these companies are often above $100,000. Do you really believe that both parents working is a function of society requiring in excess of a quarter million dollars per year to live? Or, perhaps, does this have something to do with idealizing a certain area that refuses to zone for its population density, resulting in a cost of living that is absolutely ridiculous? It's sad when both parents have to work minimum wage jobs just to make enough to get by. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a particularly bubble of tech where people make more than enough to get by and choose expensive lifestyles to match their expensive salaries.
astura 6y ago
>In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income. What an absurd claim, only 21.1% of (Americans) two parent households with children under six have both parents working full time. https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/indicators-child-family-and-community-connections/parental-employment-family-structure https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/indicators-child-family-and-comm...

rayiner 6y ago

It’s not just the cost of childcare. Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently give up earning power to raise children. I’ve seen this first hand in my family and it’s really difficult.

bradlys 6y ago
> Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently give up earning power to raise children. Where are these anecdotes from? Of the divorced men I know in California - they're on the hook for a lot of money. Their wives chose to not work (first few years to do childcare - remaining years because they didn't want to). The women didn't want to be in the relationship anymore and got a divorce. The men end up owing their spouses alimony for decades plus child support (regardless of where the kids spend the most time). As a straight man, I've decided to not marry based on their horror stories alone. I see marrying someone who wants to be a SAHM as a huge financial liability not in just temporary loss of earning potential but in near permanent levels of loss due to potential divorce.
- rayiner 6y ago
  My mother in law gave up a job as an executive (where she was earning more than her surgeon husband) to be a stay at home mom. Coming back into the workforce 20 years later when the marriage deteriorated was nearly impossible. I don’t know what horror stories you’ve seen. But for most ordinary men, alimony and child support add up to very little. If you make $75,000, maintenance for a 15 year marriage in which the other spouse earned nothing adds up to $22,000 a year. And it ends in about 11 years. A significant hit, no doubt, but if the other spouse had similar earning potential (which is typical these days—people tend to match up with people of similar education) it won’t come close to covering the lifetime loss in post-divorce earnings. It can be different if a high earning person marries someone who has limited earning power, but that’s the exception these days.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > Coming back into the workforce 20 years later when the marriage deteriorated was nearly impossible. But - isn't giving up work for 20 years her choice? For the men I know - the payments turn into about 1/3 of their net income. For the ultra rich and even the higher up FAANG, it's not really the end of the world. For the startup software engineer, it's devastating because they can't even exercise their options anymore. The payments AFAIK aren't for 11 years - it's longer. Some of them weren't with their partner for 15 years. I think it falls all on what judge you get. $22000/yr is a lot for someone only making $75000. Especially when you don't actually get $75000/yr and you still have to pay $22,000 net. > It can be different if a high earning person marries someone who has limited earning power, but that’s the exception these days. Maybe more people would marry between incomes if the high earning partner wouldn't be out at least 1/3 of their income for over a decade. I'm currently in a relationship with someone who has no hopes of making any money close to what I do - marriage ain't happening and they know why.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      It's not fair to blame people for "choosing" to have children because, in the aggregate, the majority of people need to have children in order for society to survive. So it's not really a choice if a majority of people have to do it or everything goes to shit; it's more like volunteering to take on a necessary burden (that admittedly has its rewards too). A better outcome here would've been if she hadn't needed to give up her job to have kids, like if there had been universal childcare and her work was more accommodating of mothers. > $22000/yr is a lot for someone only making $75000. If you think $53k is rough for one person to survive on, wait till you see how hard it is for two people to survive on $22k!
xnyan 6y ago
>Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently You're mixing up cause and effect. A married women trying to resume her career (which also happens for many other reasons in addition to divorce)is going to have the same problems as a women who is trying to resume her career due to a divorce. Or historical/current practices and attitudes to relationships and child rearing is what created the liability, specifically the societal pressure for women to leave/not pursue a career and thus lose highly valuable work experience relative to men. Divorce just highlights this.
- rayiner 6y ago
  But a woman who risks divorce has a greater need to return to the workforce than a similarly situated woman who stays married. The normalization of divorce exacerbated the risks from exiting the workforce.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    You’re still doing it. Anyone of any gender who ends their professional career to start a family is put at greater risk by more prevalent divorce, right? Shitty sexist traditional societal practices exacerbated the risk of exiting the workforce for women. The fact that women are more vulnerable to all kinds of life conditions such as divorce is a simply a consequence of that.

eanzenberg 6y ago

This outlook is widely in-the-coastal-city-bubble.

CydeWeys 6y ago
Expand on this please? What percentage of the country do you think is easily surviving on a single household salary?
- mindv0rtex 6y ago
  Just my anecdata. We live in Maryland, in a middle-class suburb. I have 3 kids and a SAH wife. We're doing OK, saving for 401k, driving two cars, paying cash for house maintenance and renovations. Yeah, we don't travel much, but that's luxury. I earn the Google L4 level base, if one can trust levels.fyi. I am not sure how unique my situation is, but I have never felt the need for my wife to start working...
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    What is your total compensation and what is the median single earner income where you are? I suspect that you are easily in the 95th percentile for income for your location, if not higher. So living on a single income is doable for you, but not for the vast majority of your neighbors.
    - mindv0rtex 6y ago
      Hmm, then I must indeed be living in a bubble...
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        Yeah I think you are. I spent the first 27 years of my life in Maryland and my salary out of college was $58k which was very good for the area. I was making the median area household income on a single wage at the start of my career. You are currently doing much better than I was, and I was already doing great.

GuB-42 6y ago

Ok, it is not the 50s but why could people do it in the 50s and why can't we do it now? We are hearing "automation will destroy jobs" left and right and for some reason, we can't afford stay at home moms. The "universal child care" argument makes me feel uncomfortable. It one step short of a dystopia. One where women would surrender their child to a state sponsored center where child care specialists make them productive members of society. Freed from their child rearing duty, "mothers" can continue working efficiently. Why not just let mothers be mothers? What's the point of progress if we can't even do that. And also turn gender equality the right way, by letting fathers be fathers instead of requiring both parents to work full time.

andrewprock 6y ago
The nature of society was quite different in the 1950s than it is now. For those who were served by the government it was a golden era. For those who supported the government, it was much more expensive. For those who were persecuted by the government, it was a living nightmare.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Real pay has been stagnant for at least the past 4 decades, while expenses (particularly housing, healthcare, childcare, and education) have skyrocketed. That's the reason the average family can't survive on one income now like it could in the 50s. Some possible solutions to these problems would include: Universal healthcare, universal childcare, and elimination of restrictions on building more housing (i.e. kill low density residential zoning entirely). Make those changes and it should again become possible to support a household on a single income.
Viliam1234 6y ago
> Ok, it is not the 50s but why could people do it in the 50s and why can't we do it now? Because on the job market you compete against your neighbors. You can't do it now, because you can't get the neighbors from the 50s. When most of your reference class have one income per family, the labor market will adapt so that you can feed the family from one income, because your neighbors will refuse to work for less. Then also you can get an income sufficient to feed your family. When most of your reference class have two incomes per family, the labor market adapts so that now you need two incomes to feed your family. Your neighbors are willing to work for half the cost, and to remain competitive so do you. (Here, "feed your family" is an euphemism for... basically the total cost of living on the same standard as your neighbors. That includes literally food, but also the cost of housing, schools for kids, health care, etc. A part of it you can save by living more cheaply than your neighbors, for example always cooking at home and never going to restaurants. But you can't do much with the housing costs, and that is a large part of the family budget.) > Why not just let mothers be mothers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma -- if all mothers stay at home, they can. If half of them chooses career, the other half has to.

outworlder 6y ago

> In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income Interesting. That's exactly what's expected from H1 holders.

will4274 6y ago

This article is about tech firms. The companies named in the article are Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Dell, Twitter, and Yelp. Salaries for new employees at these companies are often above $100,000. Do you really believe that both parents working is a function of society requiring in excess of a quarter million dollars per year to live? Or, perhaps, does this have something to do with idealizing a certain area that refuses to zone for its population density, resulting in a cost of living that is absolutely ridiculous? It's sad when both parents have to work minimum wage jobs just to make enough to get by. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a particularly bubble of tech where people make more than enough to get by and choose expensive lifestyles to match their expensive salaries.

astura 6y ago

>In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income. What an absurd claim, only 21.1% of (Americans) two parent households with children under six have both parents working full time. https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/indicators-child-family-and-community-connections/parental-employment-family-structure https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/indicators-child-family-and-comm...