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> I think we've really fucked up as a society when "women can have kids and be with them" is considered strange or a luxury It has always been a luxury. Unles

by danans 4y ago

> I think we've really fucked up as a society when "women can have kids and be with them" is considered strange or a luxury It has always been a luxury. Unless they were wealthy enough to hire domestic servants or happened to participate in the postwar economic boom in the West that reduced the intensity of household domestic labor via household appliances, women of the past also got limited time with their children. They were doing intense labor at home, in the fields, and as domestic servants for wealthier people. The same scenario happens today, as anyone who has hired in-home childcare knows. Historically, precious few women could afford not to work, whether that work was compensated or not. I agree that we should strive for an economic system that gives more parents more options to spend time raising their children, but we shouldn't couch that in faux-naturalistic ideals of what the situation was in the past.

dilap 4y ago
"Do no work and be with your kid" is probably a rarity, but the impression I have is that in traditional indigenous cultures you could do work around your home or village, in a rich social environment of other women and mothers, while being with your baby. People living this way of life are not working themeslves to the bone; they spend lots of time just hanging out and socializing. I think the gruling overwork that most of us experience is more a feature of fuedal and then industrial culture, than a natural state of existence. But still we are in real terms actually super rich, so it should be possible to somehow rearrange things to get back to that ideal, I think. (Of course there are deeper issues here too -- just having a mom sit at home all alone with her baby is actually not very good either. Really, you want mom and baby to be integrated into a meaningful, rich cultural environment. And I think it would be nice if kids were more integrated into normal life, in general.)
- danans 4y ago
  > I think the gruling overwork that most of us experience is more a feature of fuedal and then industrial culture, than a natural state of existence. Sure, but so are a lot of other features like modern medicine, communications, transportation, that come with industrial culture. Assuming that you are talking about making the privilege of being a stay-at-home parent universal (independent of one's financial means), then I agree with the goal, but that is only realizable via industrial culture coupled with an income and wealth distribution that makes it possible for only 1 parent in the house to work. It would also probably require people to live with less. When mothers were staying at home in the 1950s, the median home size was 983 square feet. Today it's about 2700 square feet. All that extra space and the stuff it is filled with costs a lot, which is another reason that both parents need to work.
  - dilap 4y ago
    I've been looking at real-estate in Austin recently -- all those tiny 1950s houses are still around, and they are not cheap! So I don't think the main causal factor is everyone living in 3000 square foot McMansions. Plus, technology has made us way more capable -- productivity has increased a lot since the '50s, but wages have not kept up. Which makes me think it's more of an organizational / incentives kind of thing, rather than a pure amount of wealth kind of thing. (Something similar going on to the way in an purely competitive market, profits tend to get driven to 0, but with wages and quality of life, perhaps?)

by danans 4y ago

dilap 4y ago

"Do no work and be with your kid" is probably a rarity, but the impression I have is that in traditional indigenous cultures you could do work around your home or village, in a rich social environment of other women and mothers, while being with your baby. People living this way of life are not working themeslves to the bone; they spend lots of time just hanging out and socializing. I think the gruling overwork that most of us experience is more a feature of fuedal and then industrial culture, than a natural state of existence. But still we are in real terms actually super rich, so it should be possible to somehow rearrange things to get back to that ideal, I think. (Of course there are deeper issues here too -- just having a mom sit at home all alone with her baby is actually not very good either. Really, you want mom and baby to be integrated into a meaningful, rich cultural environment. And I think it would be nice if kids were more integrated into normal life, in general.)

danans 4y ago
> I think the gruling overwork that most of us experience is more a feature of fuedal and then industrial culture, than a natural state of existence. Sure, but so are a lot of other features like modern medicine, communications, transportation, that come with industrial culture. Assuming that you are talking about making the privilege of being a stay-at-home parent universal (independent of one's financial means), then I agree with the goal, but that is only realizable via industrial culture coupled with an income and wealth distribution that makes it possible for only 1 parent in the house to work. It would also probably require people to live with less. When mothers were staying at home in the 1950s, the median home size was 983 square feet. Today it's about 2700 square feet. All that extra space and the stuff it is filled with costs a lot, which is another reason that both parents need to work.
- dilap 4y ago
  I've been looking at real-estate in Austin recently -- all those tiny 1950s houses are still around, and they are not cheap! So I don't think the main causal factor is everyone living in 3000 square foot McMansions. Plus, technology has made us way more capable -- productivity has increased a lot since the '50s, but wages have not kept up. Which makes me think it's more of an organizational / incentives kind of thing, rather than a pure amount of wealth kind of thing. (Something similar going on to the way in an purely competitive market, profits tend to get driven to 0, but with wages and quality of life, perhaps?)