4 ms·

I'm fairly certain I can tell you exactly what is happening. In societies where the women were staying home, they weren't doing nothing. They were providing c

I'm fairly certain I can tell you exactly what is happening. In societies where the women were staying home, they weren't doing nothing. They were providing child care, maintaining the social networks that bind society together, doing all the at home work that makes it possible for the other partner to work a full time job. 40+ hours a week really requires a second person to do all the other stuff to be sustainable. It was never supposed to be the case that you have two people both working full time and then trying to do all the other stuff on weekends and evenings. That's insane! Especially since men seem to not be doing their fair share of that other work- why would any woman want to take on a full time job and do all the rest? If you want to have gender equality- and you absolutely should want that- then as a society, you need to reduce work weeks to 20 hours. Otherwise you are just running the whole thing into the ground. I see a lot of people pointing towards religious beliefs as the proximate cause here- but have you considered that the places that are the most religious are also the places where there is a single breadwinner? Are you sure it's the religion and not the extra social slack that is responsible? Because there is a clear and plausible mechanism for the extra slack of a single breadwinner being relevant, but for religion by itself, it's a much more tenuous connection. You could probably make things work with a somewhat longer work week- say, 30 hours- if you also supplied families of young children with 100% free child care and subsidized housing. Otherwise, your civilization is eating its young.

sho_hn 4y ago
You got downvoted - maybe people read you as arguing for a return to the old ways and days - but I find your basic argument that two people working 40+ hours can have a very hard time fitting the infant years of child-rearing into their time table quite compelling. Doing a good job as a parent requires time. If you don't have any it can be hard to reconcile it with your conscience. Korean work culture is particularly demanding (I've lived there) and unforgiving when it comes to private matters interfering with work performance. I'll grant you it's a factor. Few couples manage to pull this off without one partner stopping to work (and it's usually the woman). Increasingly few people want to do so. If we want this to be different, I think we do have to change the time equation society-wide. Korean society today places virtually no importance on giving adults the time they need to have and raise kids. Koreans themselves will more often cite economic reasons, but this is basically by proxy - the economics don't work out if you don't put the hours into work, etc. The success machine is feeding itself.
- fallingfrog 4y ago
  Thank you! I was actually assuming I was downvoted because I asserted that each partner should really be working 50% of the hours, or 20 hours only, which conflicts with the ingrained calvinist belief system that says that activities you don't get paid for have little or no value. So in that mindset, if you're working less, you're wasting time, and all downtime or personal time or social time or unpaid time caring for others is just sloth and therefore sinful, or at best, "womens work". Now I don't think that's true at all, but I think many people believe that on such a deep level that it's never occurred to them to question whether it's true. But, maybe you're right and people were just skimming what I wrote without really paying attention and assuming I was advocating a return to strictly segregated gender roles. Which I am not.

sho_hn 4y ago

You got downvoted - maybe people read you as arguing for a return to the old ways and days - but I find your basic argument that two people working 40+ hours can have a very hard time fitting the infant years of child-rearing into their time table quite compelling. Doing a good job as a parent requires time. If you don't have any it can be hard to reconcile it with your conscience. Korean work culture is particularly demanding (I've lived there) and unforgiving when it comes to private matters interfering with work performance. I'll grant you it's a factor. Few couples manage to pull this off without one partner stopping to work (and it's usually the woman). Increasingly few people want to do so. If we want this to be different, I think we do have to change the time equation society-wide. Korean society today places virtually no importance on giving adults the time they need to have and raise kids. Koreans themselves will more often cite economic reasons, but this is basically by proxy - the economics don't work out if you don't put the hours into work, etc. The success machine is feeding itself.

fallingfrog 4y ago
Thank you! I was actually assuming I was downvoted because I asserted that each partner should really be working 50% of the hours, or 20 hours only, which conflicts with the ingrained calvinist belief system that says that activities you don't get paid for have little or no value. So in that mindset, if you're working less, you're wasting time, and all downtime or personal time or social time or unpaid time caring for others is just sloth and therefore sinful, or at best, "womens work". Now I don't think that's true at all, but I think many people believe that on such a deep level that it's never occurred to them to question whether it's true. But, maybe you're right and people were just skimming what I wrote without really paying attention and assuming I was advocating a return to strictly segregated gender roles. Which I am not.