7 ms·

Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a

Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a full-time job. It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience. It's not the same job as doing taxes or writing code. But being a manager or a consultant in a software company is also different from classical hands-on jobs, and nobody has a problem with that. But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak.

curveaway 6y ago
It's a form of demographic debt. By increasing the workforce #, you decrease the amount of kids people have (because they can't afford the time to have many kids) but increase total GDP until you pay the piper later with decrease reproduction rates and more seniors that the economically productive. I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester. It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.
- bumby 6y ago
  >it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. I don’t want to speak for them but I think part of the OP’s point is that this isn’t the takeaway we should have, but rather recognize and value the transferable skills one acquires in the role of a stay-at-home parent. It’s not unlike the trouble many military members had decades ago before there were as many resources to help employees and employers understand what skills transfer across domains
evrydayhustling 6y ago
Family skills can be valued by many people, but they are visible and impactful mainly within the family. As a result, a partner with a public career has more personal options. They can find new jobs, negotiate their schedule, and invest in themselves to have a secure source of income in case of disaster. Thus can work wonderfully for equal partners who share the opportunity together, but it can create a power imbalance when things - any of a wide variety of things - go wrong.
bradleyjg 6y ago
But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it? And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak. I don’t understand what you are saying here. At the bottom end, sure it makes sense, but not when you are talking to a bunch of people in the tech industry. If you have a household income of $200k/year you can live a “regular” $200k/year household lifestyle in a $200k/year house in a $200k/year neighborhood. That’s true whether that $200k/year comes from one earner or two. In fact, if it comes from one earner you are a little better off tax-wise (because of the social security cap.) It’s true that you can’t live a $400k/year lifestyle if your household is only making $200k/year, but so what?
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  It is not just about the absolute income number but also about job security. If I make 200K today but am not guaranteed to make the same number 10-15 years down the line, it is better if my spouse works as well so that there is more chances of at least one of us having a job if other one gets fired or laid off or offshored. In 50's and 60's, one could reliably count on their job and pension for the lifetime, thus allowing psychological security needed for planning a family. > I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it? Companies decided to outsource manufacturing jobs to third world countries and politicians accepted free trade in the name of some stupid theories about "greater wealth" creation, without pausing to think about a fairer distribution of that extra wealth. That led to stagnation of lower- and middle- middle class in the West while yielding vast gains to the rich Westerners and the newly middle-class people in developing countries.
  - necovek 6y ago
    Many commenters seem to ignore the fact that lots of quality products produced in the USA at higher cost (higher wages) were exported at those high prices to countries who had a hard job paying for them. Because of their high prices, competition naturally occurred in those international markets, which led to a downward pressure on USA product prices, and ultimately wages, and job offshoring. Basically, the global economy is a cycle: the USA was, for the large part, first to benefit by selling "overpriced" (to other countries' standards) products, but markets have pushed those products out, before readmitting them at somewhat reduced prices. It is to the benefit of the US production for wages and spending power to grow throughout the world, since that leads to increased exports at — now — affordable prices for the world! Heck, it's a tactic employed in both recent crises to get US products to sell (2008 and 2020, USD was at the lowest level compared to eg. EUR for a while): basically, by decreasing the international value of USD, you are increasing the spending power of other countries willing to buy US products. The only thing uncertain is if we ever get to wage parity throughout the world (unlikely at 100%, but I think effects would be felt even at 50%), will we prosper or fall?
lettergram 6y ago
I think most of the people HN haven’t spent much time with people out of the “bubble”. “Trigger warning” This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight. 90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage growth (since 1970-ish) was created by offshoring jobs and illegal immigration that drive down wages to the point both members of the household have to work. Further exasperating the issue is the prison times and the push for “independence”, which leaves many single women. Everyone my wife and I grew up with had both (or one) parent working - none seemed happy. The happiest and smartest people I know have / are stay at home moms.
- paledot 6y ago
  Wage stagnation has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with the obscenely rich being permitted to get obscenely richer. It's disappointing that your friends have fallen for that lie.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Nothing to do with it is a strong claim. Do you believe that labor is a market that does not generally behave like other markets in terms of supply and demand for price discovery? Do you believe that immigration did not increase supply by more than it increased demand? I’m trying to tease apart and understand your certainty that there is no downward pressure on wages from immigration.
    - readams 6y ago
      Immigrants also grow the economy and so create jobs. They participate in the economy as consumers and as entrepreneurs. Maybe a way to think about it that might help is to imagine a country containing only you. Would your job be safe?
      - Samuel10889 6y ago
lhorie 6y ago
> raising kids [...] is a full-time job Here's a contrary (and possibly even more unpopular) thought: some say spending inordinate amounts of time on child rearing is "doing it wrong". Some groups (orthodox jewish, for example) will argue that many parents helicopter too much to compensate for a lack of educational focus due to not having a well-established ethics framework to guide them. Part of that narrative is obviously to promote certain religious frameworks, but it has a grain of truth: religious communities will generally agree among themselves on what's "right" and "wrong", and collectively impart that as part of social life, through religious stories and metaphors, etc painting the "ruleset" in broad brushstrokes, and then relying on things like natural consequences for granular learning, such that one specific individual does not need to micromanage every single aspect of their children's behaviors. Older european descent folks might find an interesting correlation between being able to stay out as kids and family religious history. Obviously, it doesn't need to be based on religion. Japan is an interesting example where it's fairly common for both parents to work while relying on a strong collaborative social fabric nurtured from early school years.
- kseifried 6y ago
  And that's great until you have a kid with special needs like autism. Some kids need parenting that involves a lot of direct hours being put in. Raising kids is not a "one size fits all" kind of deal.
  - codyb 6y ago
    Should we plan for the special needs children though? I mean, certainly, reprioritizing when you have one makes a lot of sense, and we should as a society invest to make sure these children lead fulfilling lives. But... bringing up special needs kids seems a bit disingenuous as a point when they're, I believe, a small minority of all children no?
    - Benjamin_Dobell 6y ago
      There are a lot more people with "special needs" than people think. In Australia, the (reported) rate of Autism in the general population is 0.7%. That's pretty huge, over 170,000 people. That's Autism alone. My daughter for example has Type 1 Diabetes. It's much rarer than Autism. However, when you start adding all these up, it's significant.
rayiner 6y ago
It's a demanding and important job, no doubt, but it's not a full time job over the entire working life of a parent. The norm throughout history--and even today in traditional societies practicing subsistence agriculture--has been for both spouses to "work."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dazaidesu 6y ago
Maybe it is a full time job. And maybe this is where the atomic family unit breaks apart. Maybe we need communal child rearing efforts.
closeparen 6y ago
Why would 24x7 contact with the mother and no one else be "the best care" for the kid? Who says it's not a part time job for two people? Who says our ability to cooperate in groups, the key to our success in practically every area, would skip this one?
azundo 6y ago
The data don't support this story. Time spent with kids is going up, not down, especially for parents with higher education: https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-time-with-their-kids-than-moms-and-dads-did-50-years-ago/ https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...
hycaria 6y ago
It is a full time job but it doesn't really have to be done by the genitors themselves, hence why we generalized childcare.
- tharne 6y ago
  True, but a rather depressing thought, nonetheless. Let's take out loans so we can go to school so we can get a good job so we can pay strangers to raise our children.
jvvw 6y ago
I think that depending on age of the children, it's actually about a half-time job. This puts you in an awkward position - it is really hard to get a half-time job, or at least a good half-time job - even if you can find one, you have almost certainly killed long-term career prospects because employers generally prefer full-term employees. And there is no point screwing up both of your careers by both going slightly part-time, so you easily end up in a rather awkward situation of either outsourcing a lot of parenting work that isn't ideally outsourced, or one of you giving up their career. It is usually the person earning less who makes that sacrifice, so even a fairly small income disparity turns into a huge one.
theoka 6y ago
In my household, we sort of accidentally fell into what I feel is a healthy middle ground (for us). Fairly traditional gender roles where I bring home the income and she has ended up focusing on childcare while finishing school. That said, we could definitely stand to optimize some things in regard to workload balancing; my time outside of work consists of us taking turns letting each other rest from or responsibilities e.g. spend time doing absolutely nothing. In a few years, both of our kids will be in school (1 currently is), and she will likely bring home just as much if not more than half of the income when she re-enters the workforce unless I receive a large pay increase between now and then for whatever reason. Of course it hasn't been a breeze and we've both atrophied in some personal areas of skill due to this specialization. I tend to talk to people like each future action is a step in a project to be completed, then relieve myself of the details of any task I don't play a direct role in. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. She gets a list of things done in the time it takes for me to make a plan of action but is overwhelmed more when considering the large and/or complex tasks and the time management involved, though is otherwise equally proficient. There's some synergy in there that we're still figuring out.

curveaway 6y ago

It's a form of demographic debt. By increasing the workforce #, you decrease the amount of kids people have (because they can't afford the time to have many kids) but increase total GDP until you pay the piper later with decrease reproduction rates and more seniors that the economically productive. I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester. It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.

bumby 6y ago
>it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. I don’t want to speak for them but I think part of the OP’s point is that this isn’t the takeaway we should have, but rather recognize and value the transferable skills one acquires in the role of a stay-at-home parent. It’s not unlike the trouble many military members had decades ago before there were as many resources to help employees and employers understand what skills transfer across domains

evrydayhustling 6y ago

Family skills can be valued by many people, but they are visible and impactful mainly within the family. As a result, a partner with a public career has more personal options. They can find new jobs, negotiate their schedule, and invest in themselves to have a secure source of income in case of disaster. Thus can work wonderfully for equal partners who share the opportunity together, but it can create a power imbalance when things - any of a wide variety of things - go wrong.

bradleyjg 6y ago

But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it? And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak. I don’t understand what you are saying here. At the bottom end, sure it makes sense, but not when you are talking to a bunch of people in the tech industry. If you have a household income of $200k/year you can live a “regular” $200k/year household lifestyle in a $200k/year house in a $200k/year neighborhood. That’s true whether that $200k/year comes from one earner or two. In fact, if it comes from one earner you are a little better off tax-wise (because of the social security cap.) It’s true that you can’t live a $400k/year lifestyle if your household is only making $200k/year, but so what?

RestlessMind 6y ago
It is not just about the absolute income number but also about job security. If I make 200K today but am not guaranteed to make the same number 10-15 years down the line, it is better if my spouse works as well so that there is more chances of at least one of us having a job if other one gets fired or laid off or offshored. In 50's and 60's, one could reliably count on their job and pension for the lifetime, thus allowing psychological security needed for planning a family. > I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it? Companies decided to outsource manufacturing jobs to third world countries and politicians accepted free trade in the name of some stupid theories about "greater wealth" creation, without pausing to think about a fairer distribution of that extra wealth. That led to stagnation of lower- and middle- middle class in the West while yielding vast gains to the rich Westerners and the newly middle-class people in developing countries.
- necovek 6y ago
  Many commenters seem to ignore the fact that lots of quality products produced in the USA at higher cost (higher wages) were exported at those high prices to countries who had a hard job paying for them. Because of their high prices, competition naturally occurred in those international markets, which led to a downward pressure on USA product prices, and ultimately wages, and job offshoring. Basically, the global economy is a cycle: the USA was, for the large part, first to benefit by selling "overpriced" (to other countries' standards) products, but markets have pushed those products out, before readmitting them at somewhat reduced prices. It is to the benefit of the US production for wages and spending power to grow throughout the world, since that leads to increased exports at — now — affordable prices for the world! Heck, it's a tactic employed in both recent crises to get US products to sell (2008 and 2020, USD was at the lowest level compared to eg. EUR for a while): basically, by decreasing the international value of USD, you are increasing the spending power of other countries willing to buy US products. The only thing uncertain is if we ever get to wage parity throughout the world (unlikely at 100%, but I think effects would be felt even at 50%), will we prosper or fall?

lettergram 6y ago

I think most of the people HN haven’t spent much time with people out of the “bubble”. “Trigger warning” This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight. 90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage growth (since 1970-ish) was created by offshoring jobs and illegal immigration that drive down wages to the point both members of the household have to work. Further exasperating the issue is the prison times and the push for “independence”, which leaves many single women. Everyone my wife and I grew up with had both (or one) parent working - none seemed happy. The happiest and smartest people I know have / are stay at home moms.

paledot 6y ago
Wage stagnation has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with the obscenely rich being permitted to get obscenely richer. It's disappointing that your friends have fallen for that lie.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Nothing to do with it is a strong claim. Do you believe that labor is a market that does not generally behave like other markets in terms of supply and demand for price discovery? Do you believe that immigration did not increase supply by more than it increased demand? I’m trying to tease apart and understand your certainty that there is no downward pressure on wages from immigration.
  - readams 6y ago
    Immigrants also grow the economy and so create jobs. They participate in the economy as consumers and as entrepreneurs. Maybe a way to think about it that might help is to imagine a country containing only you. Would your job be safe?
    - Samuel10889 6y ago

lhorie 6y ago

> raising kids [...] is a full-time job Here's a contrary (and possibly even more unpopular) thought: some say spending inordinate amounts of time on child rearing is "doing it wrong". Some groups (orthodox jewish, for example) will argue that many parents helicopter too much to compensate for a lack of educational focus due to not having a well-established ethics framework to guide them. Part of that narrative is obviously to promote certain religious frameworks, but it has a grain of truth: religious communities will generally agree among themselves on what's "right" and "wrong", and collectively impart that as part of social life, through religious stories and metaphors, etc painting the "ruleset" in broad brushstrokes, and then relying on things like natural consequences for granular learning, such that one specific individual does not need to micromanage every single aspect of their children's behaviors. Older european descent folks might find an interesting correlation between being able to stay out as kids and family religious history. Obviously, it doesn't need to be based on religion. Japan is an interesting example where it's fairly common for both parents to work while relying on a strong collaborative social fabric nurtured from early school years.

kseifried 6y ago
And that's great until you have a kid with special needs like autism. Some kids need parenting that involves a lot of direct hours being put in. Raising kids is not a "one size fits all" kind of deal.
- codyb 6y ago
  Should we plan for the special needs children though? I mean, certainly, reprioritizing when you have one makes a lot of sense, and we should as a society invest to make sure these children lead fulfilling lives. But... bringing up special needs kids seems a bit disingenuous as a point when they're, I believe, a small minority of all children no?
  - Benjamin_Dobell 6y ago
    There are a lot more people with "special needs" than people think. In Australia, the (reported) rate of Autism in the general population is 0.7%. That's pretty huge, over 170,000 people. That's Autism alone. My daughter for example has Type 1 Diabetes. It's much rarer than Autism. However, when you start adding all these up, it's significant.

rayiner 6y ago

It's a demanding and important job, no doubt, but it's not a full time job over the entire working life of a parent. The norm throughout history--and even today in traditional societies practicing subsistence agriculture--has been for both spouses to "work."

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dazaidesu 6y ago

Maybe it is a full time job. And maybe this is where the atomic family unit breaks apart. Maybe we need communal child rearing efforts.

closeparen 6y ago

Why would 24x7 contact with the mother and no one else be "the best care" for the kid? Who says it's not a part time job for two people? Who says our ability to cooperate in groups, the key to our success in practically every area, would skip this one?

azundo 6y ago

The data don't support this story. Time spent with kids is going up, not down, especially for parents with higher education: https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-time-with-their-kids-than-moms-and-dads-did-50-years-ago/ https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...

hycaria 6y ago

It is a full time job but it doesn't really have to be done by the genitors themselves, hence why we generalized childcare.

tharne 6y ago
True, but a rather depressing thought, nonetheless. Let's take out loans so we can go to school so we can get a good job so we can pay strangers to raise our children.

jvvw 6y ago

I think that depending on age of the children, it's actually about a half-time job. This puts you in an awkward position - it is really hard to get a half-time job, or at least a good half-time job - even if you can find one, you have almost certainly killed long-term career prospects because employers generally prefer full-term employees. And there is no point screwing up both of your careers by both going slightly part-time, so you easily end up in a rather awkward situation of either outsourcing a lot of parenting work that isn't ideally outsourced, or one of you giving up their career. It is usually the person earning less who makes that sacrifice, so even a fairly small income disparity turns into a huge one.

theoka 6y ago

In my household, we sort of accidentally fell into what I feel is a healthy middle ground (for us). Fairly traditional gender roles where I bring home the income and she has ended up focusing on childcare while finishing school. That said, we could definitely stand to optimize some things in regard to workload balancing; my time outside of work consists of us taking turns letting each other rest from or responsibilities e.g. spend time doing absolutely nothing. In a few years, both of our kids will be in school (1 currently is), and she will likely bring home just as much if not more than half of the income when she re-enters the workforce unless I receive a large pay increase between now and then for whatever reason. Of course it hasn't been a breeze and we've both atrophied in some personal areas of skill due to this specialization. I tend to talk to people like each future action is a step in a project to be completed, then relieve myself of the details of any task I don't play a direct role in. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. She gets a list of things done in the time it takes for me to make a plan of action but is overwhelmed more when considering the large and/or complex tasks and the time management involved, though is otherwise equally proficient. There's some synergy in there that we're still figuring out.