3 ms·

> 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

> 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!
- bradlys 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. You don't need childcare for /20/ years. If you're a stay at home parent for 20 years, that is most definitely a choice. > 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! I don't know why you think two people are surviving on $22k? It's one person and they can still get a job and keep the income. The $75k becomes $54,000 after tax. Which then becomes $32,000. So, bye bye 40% of your net income. In many cases - having a spouse living with you doesn't require spending 40% of your net income every month.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    You don't need childcare for /20/ years. That very much depends on circumstances. If you have two children born one right after another, probably not. If, however, your spacing is more spread, say, you have two children first, and then another child 8 years later, you'll easily need childcare for 15 consecutive years. My youngest sister is 11 years younger than me, and I'm not even the oldest of my siblings.
    - bradlys 6y ago
      > That very much depends on circumstances. If you have two children born one right after another, probably not. If, however, your spacing is more spread, say, you have two children first, and then another child 8 years later, you'll easily need childcare for 15 consecutive years. My youngest sister is 11 years younger than me, and I'm not even the oldest of my siblings. Are you going to argue that in a society that has relatively wide spread access to contraception that when you have children 11 years apart - it's not a choice? Come on. It's a choice to have kids 10 years apart, it's a choice as to how many, and how far apart you have children (assuming no biological limitations). Thus, you don't need childcare for 20 years if you have your 2-3 kids over a span of 4-5 years.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    You're completely ignoring that it's just as equally the man's choice to bring the children into the world, and therefore he needs to support them. It's exactly the same situation as if the dad were the stay-at-home parent raising the kids who was then divorced by the wife; both parents must support the children, regardless of the ongoing status of their marriage and regardless of their gender. Also, I don't think you can blame income tax on the woman. The guy's salary is gonna get taxed regardless. So we need to either use pre-tax or post-tax salaries throughout all figures, not mix them and then blame the entire net difference, including tax, on the child support.
    - epicureanideal 6y ago
      I think he was trying to do exactly what you're saying, normalize to net income. When we say "22k of 75k" it sounds like 1/3, but the 22k is net and the 75k is pre-tax. Once we normalize the 75k, we realize that 22k is almost half the person's net income.
- shock 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. I don't think the quotes around 'choosing' are valid. Having children is a choice, especially in today's age when contraceptive measures abound, and trying to paint it like it's not really a choice is disingenuous. Next, we're gonna have people argue that getting a loan to buy a house is not in fact a personal choice, because, in the aggregate, the majority of people need to have a place to live in in order for society to survive.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    At an individual level, it's a choice. At the societal level, it's not. You need 2.1 kids per person for society to continue existing. That's true more or less however you slice it--even if you take lots of immigrants, those immigrants are going to have to have kids (or you're externalizing the cost of child raising onto other societies). This is a hard scientific limit that you're not going to get around. From the perspective of analyzing society, therefore, treating having children as a choice is unworkable. If your societal design doesn't accommodate 2.1 kids per person, its useless. It's like designing an electric car that can't be recharged. Nobody cares what other characteristics it has.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      I just want to say, thanks for your posts in here. You're making excellent points. I don't even need to respond to this guy's comment personally because you've handled it so well here.
    - shock 6y ago
      > You need 2.1 kids per person for society to continue existing. I don't understand this statement. Is it 2.1 kids per person or per family/couple? Has society collapsed in countries where the average is below the 2.1 figure you are quoting? If you are talking about the extinction of the human race and not societal collapse, then I don't buy for a second the argument that someone choosing whether to have children or not is making the choice based on the "human race extinction" factor. When making choices, most humans could care less for their 2-days-in-the-future-self, nevermind caring for the human race.
rayiner 6y ago
> But - isn't giving up work for 20 years her choice? It’s invariably to allow the woman to raise the couple’s kids. (Either a decision made by the couple after marriage to do that, as was the case with my MIL, or a man marries someone who wants to be a stay at home mom. Either way, it’s not a surprise or an accident.) It’s also enormously beneficial for the man’s career, which is why many high earning men seek out women who want to stay at home to raise kids. My wife is similarly educated and earns as much money as I do. It’s hard and exhausting for both of us to juggle both things while raising kids. I have had the kids the last week and a half while my wife puts out fires at work, and it sucked. I had to whisper into a conference call today because I was putting my two year old down for a nap. When the kids were babies I’d take nights because I don’t need as much sleep, and I just dealt with the constant sleep deprivation while trying to do intellectually demanding work. (Luckily, my boss is similarly situated and negotiating over our banked-up “spouse capital” is accepted practice.) Even during normal circumstances, what suffers is home life—the plan for dinner this week is turkey sandwiches. If we made the decision for her to stay home, it would be as much for me and our kids as her. It would be to allow me to focus more on work. It would allow her to focus on the house and kids. We have a fridge where the delivery has been put off for months because neither of us have the bandwidth to wait on hold for two hours to schedule it. One kid is getting a bit chunky and needs a curated diet of vegetables (which she refuses to eat). The other kid is advanced but nobody has time to read to him. All that could be improved if we chose to do it. (We chose not to do it because she loves her job and her earning potential is so high it would be a huge hit long term. But it still is a slog.) > 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. The rules are designed for the common case. Very few men earn enough where they can pay enough in alimony to offset the earning loss to a stay at home spouse from being out of the workforce.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  Not always a decision to raise the kids. Up until a month before I married ex-wife she had worked in a good career. She went on leave a month before the wedding, never returned to that job or any meaningful career. We were childfree and she was choosing to work part-time because she had decided she didn't want to work much anymore. This was not my decision and it was a huge stress to the early part of our marriage. I had the whole financial burden of the couple, and I didn't even have a house wife since she wanted 50/50 chores. Luckily my country doesn't have alimony. I do pay a significant amount of child support despite having the children more than her but it doesn't bother me too much.
andrewprock 6y ago
It's definitely not her choice. That kind of decision is typically not made unilaterally. The expectation that the cost of that decision be borne unilaterally is incongruous with actual family dynamics.
- epicureanideal 6y ago
  Maybe in the ideal world this decision wouldn't be made unilaterally. In the real world, usually a husband's deference to his wife's choices makes it her choice. If he doesn't defer, there will be arguments until he does. That's not the ideal view of the world, but it's what I've observed in many friends' relationships.

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!

bradlys 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. You don't need childcare for /20/ years. If you're a stay at home parent for 20 years, that is most definitely a choice. > 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! I don't know why you think two people are surviving on $22k? It's one person and they can still get a job and keep the income. The $75k becomes $54,000 after tax. Which then becomes $32,000. So, bye bye 40% of your net income. In many cases - having a spouse living with you doesn't require spending 40% of your net income every month.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  You don't need childcare for /20/ years. That very much depends on circumstances. If you have two children born one right after another, probably not. If, however, your spacing is more spread, say, you have two children first, and then another child 8 years later, you'll easily need childcare for 15 consecutive years. My youngest sister is 11 years younger than me, and I'm not even the oldest of my siblings.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > That very much depends on circumstances. If you have two children born one right after another, probably not. If, however, your spacing is more spread, say, you have two children first, and then another child 8 years later, you'll easily need childcare for 15 consecutive years. My youngest sister is 11 years younger than me, and I'm not even the oldest of my siblings. Are you going to argue that in a society that has relatively wide spread access to contraception that when you have children 11 years apart - it's not a choice? Come on. It's a choice to have kids 10 years apart, it's a choice as to how many, and how far apart you have children (assuming no biological limitations). Thus, you don't need childcare for 20 years if you have your 2-3 kids over a span of 4-5 years.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  You're completely ignoring that it's just as equally the man's choice to bring the children into the world, and therefore he needs to support them. It's exactly the same situation as if the dad were the stay-at-home parent raising the kids who was then divorced by the wife; both parents must support the children, regardless of the ongoing status of their marriage and regardless of their gender. Also, I don't think you can blame income tax on the woman. The guy's salary is gonna get taxed regardless. So we need to either use pre-tax or post-tax salaries throughout all figures, not mix them and then blame the entire net difference, including tax, on the child support.
  - epicureanideal 6y ago
    I think he was trying to do exactly what you're saying, normalize to net income. When we say "22k of 75k" it sounds like 1/3, but the 22k is net and the 75k is pre-tax. Once we normalize the 75k, we realize that 22k is almost half the person's net income.
shock 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. I don't think the quotes around 'choosing' are valid. Having children is a choice, especially in today's age when contraceptive measures abound, and trying to paint it like it's not really a choice is disingenuous. Next, we're gonna have people argue that getting a loan to buy a house is not in fact a personal choice, because, in the aggregate, the majority of people need to have a place to live in in order for society to survive.
- rayiner 6y ago
  At an individual level, it's a choice. At the societal level, it's not. You need 2.1 kids per person for society to continue existing. That's true more or less however you slice it--even if you take lots of immigrants, those immigrants are going to have to have kids (or you're externalizing the cost of child raising onto other societies). This is a hard scientific limit that you're not going to get around. From the perspective of analyzing society, therefore, treating having children as a choice is unworkable. If your societal design doesn't accommodate 2.1 kids per person, its useless. It's like designing an electric car that can't be recharged. Nobody cares what other characteristics it has.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    I just want to say, thanks for your posts in here. You're making excellent points. I don't even need to respond to this guy's comment personally because you've handled it so well here.
  - shock 6y ago
    > You need 2.1 kids per person for society to continue existing. I don't understand this statement. Is it 2.1 kids per person or per family/couple? Has society collapsed in countries where the average is below the 2.1 figure you are quoting? If you are talking about the extinction of the human race and not societal collapse, then I don't buy for a second the argument that someone choosing whether to have children or not is making the choice based on the "human race extinction" factor. When making choices, most humans could care less for their 2-days-in-the-future-self, nevermind caring for the human race.

rayiner 6y ago

> But - isn't giving up work for 20 years her choice? It’s invariably to allow the woman to raise the couple’s kids. (Either a decision made by the couple after marriage to do that, as was the case with my MIL, or a man marries someone who wants to be a stay at home mom. Either way, it’s not a surprise or an accident.) It’s also enormously beneficial for the man’s career, which is why many high earning men seek out women who want to stay at home to raise kids. My wife is similarly educated and earns as much money as I do. It’s hard and exhausting for both of us to juggle both things while raising kids. I have had the kids the last week and a half while my wife puts out fires at work, and it sucked. I had to whisper into a conference call today because I was putting my two year old down for a nap. When the kids were babies I’d take nights because I don’t need as much sleep, and I just dealt with the constant sleep deprivation while trying to do intellectually demanding work. (Luckily, my boss is similarly situated and negotiating over our banked-up “spouse capital” is accepted practice.) Even during normal circumstances, what suffers is home life—the plan for dinner this week is turkey sandwiches. If we made the decision for her to stay home, it would be as much for me and our kids as her. It would be to allow me to focus more on work. It would allow her to focus on the house and kids. We have a fridge where the delivery has been put off for months because neither of us have the bandwidth to wait on hold for two hours to schedule it. One kid is getting a bit chunky and needs a curated diet of vegetables (which she refuses to eat). The other kid is advanced but nobody has time to read to him. All that could be improved if we chose to do it. (We chose not to do it because she loves her job and her earning potential is so high it would be a huge hit long term. But it still is a slog.) > 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. The rules are designed for the common case. Very few men earn enough where they can pay enough in alimony to offset the earning loss to a stay at home spouse from being out of the workforce.

MaximumYComb 6y ago
Not always a decision to raise the kids. Up until a month before I married ex-wife she had worked in a good career. She went on leave a month before the wedding, never returned to that job or any meaningful career. We were childfree and she was choosing to work part-time because she had decided she didn't want to work much anymore. This was not my decision and it was a huge stress to the early part of our marriage. I had the whole financial burden of the couple, and I didn't even have a house wife since she wanted 50/50 chores. Luckily my country doesn't have alimony. I do pay a significant amount of child support despite having the children more than her but it doesn't bother me too much.

andrewprock 6y ago

It's definitely not her choice. That kind of decision is typically not made unilaterally. The expectation that the cost of that decision be borne unilaterally is incongruous with actual family dynamics.

epicureanideal 6y ago
Maybe in the ideal world this decision wouldn't be made unilaterally. In the real world, usually a husband's deference to his wife's choices makes it her choice. If he doesn't defer, there will be arguments until he does. That's not the ideal view of the world, but it's what I've observed in many friends' relationships.