6 ms·

To be honest, I think this just completely avoids the elephant in the room: culturally speaking, with the ascendancy of women's rights, men have gained responsi

by EPWN3D 3y ago

To be honest, I think this just completely avoids the elephant in the room: culturally speaking, with the ascendancy of women's rights, men have gained responsibility, whereas women have gained options. Rising equality between the sexes has not translated to men transferring some breadwinning responsibility to women, but it has resulted in women transferring some childrearing responsibility to men. A stay-at-home mom is culturally well within her rights to ask a working dad to put in a shift watching the kid(s) after he gets home from work so she can get some downtime. But if the working dad goes out for a drink after work instead of immediately relieving his partner of childcare duties, he's a bum (or worse, a drunk). These are things each couple has to work out for themselves, but culturally, this is the framework we've got. It's a reaction to decades of media portraying dads as complete nincompoops, incapable of changing diapers and barely qualified to keep a toddler alive for more than 3 hours at a time. So men feel like they need to do it all: they have to be comfortable being primary or sole breadwinners because of a persistent income gap between the sexes, and they have to put in equal time in childrearing. I think the solution here is pretty simple: pay stay-at-home parents a salary until the kid enters the school system, and don't fucking means test it. They're performing an unquestionably necessary service for society, and they should be compensated for their labor and lost career opportunity. This relieves the pressure on the primary breadwinner and frees them up to contribute more to childrearing without going insane because they have to also climb a career ladder. It also recognizes the labor that mothers have been performing for centuries as legitimate work that deserves compensation.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
I disagree with your premise that women have not gained responsibility. Dual incomes are basically needed if you want to afford a home in decent neighborhoods, so both parents have a responsibility of earning money. Also, parenting babies and toddlers is a different kind of stress than working, especially an office desk job. No man goes through what a woman has to for the 2 years of pregnancy/breastfeeding, including multiple significant changes to their body with risk of complications. I was happy to skip my socializing so that my wife could get rest. If you have 2 kids with a 2 to 3 year gap, that means about 5 years of exiting the social scene. Unless, and this is the big difference, you have grandparents or aunts/uncles around to help out. The biggest difference I have noticed in parents’ quality of life is if they have familial support (or if they are rich enough to afford help, but that is a minority).
- em-bee 3y ago
  i am a stay-at-home dad, but we do have family support, so it is more like work from home. completely skipping any socializing for years sounds insane. unless you can socialize at work which not everyone has the opportunity to.
- EPWN3D 3y ago
  Dual incomes are not required to afford housing; one partner with a good job can do it. You may not be able to live in a major metro, but you can definitely afford a decent house in a good neighborhood on one salary, especially if you're not shelling out the mini-mortgage that is childcare. The sad reality is that when both partners work, one of them is probably just working to pay the cost of childcare... so they can work. This is just fine if it's what both parents want, but it really deflating from a budgetary perspective. And of course parenting toddlers is a different kind of stress from working. The point is than both things are stressful. If you're a sole income provider, it doesn't matter whether you're a desk jockey or a construction worker. You live with the stress that if you lose your job, your family is fucked. And while your wife can ask you to take a shift watching the kids, you cannot ask her to take a shift at your job. One thing is fungible, and the other is not. That type of stress is barely recognized in contemporary culture, and if it is recognized, it's treated as some sort of privilege (i.e. "Oh you get to pursue your career? How nice for you, your wife is at home doing more work than you could ever imagine"). And yeah, family support is huge. But it's getting less and less common. Kids move away from home more often, and they have their own children later in life. A 75 year-old grandparent just isn't going to be able to keep up with a toddler a lot of the time. The government really has to step in to help make childcare more affordable. Family connections aren't going to cut it on a societal level, and private-sector childcare is enormously expensive. Something's gotta give, and the way things are going, it'll just mean fewer children being born and an aging society.

by EPWN3D 3y ago

lotsofpulp 3y ago

I disagree with your premise that women have not gained responsibility. Dual incomes are basically needed if you want to afford a home in decent neighborhoods, so both parents have a responsibility of earning money. Also, parenting babies and toddlers is a different kind of stress than working, especially an office desk job. No man goes through what a woman has to for the 2 years of pregnancy/breastfeeding, including multiple significant changes to their body with risk of complications. I was happy to skip my socializing so that my wife could get rest. If you have 2 kids with a 2 to 3 year gap, that means about 5 years of exiting the social scene. Unless, and this is the big difference, you have grandparents or aunts/uncles around to help out. The biggest difference I have noticed in parents’ quality of life is if they have familial support (or if they are rich enough to afford help, but that is a minority).

em-bee 3y ago
i am a stay-at-home dad, but we do have family support, so it is more like work from home. completely skipping any socializing for years sounds insane. unless you can socialize at work which not everyone has the opportunity to.
EPWN3D 3y ago
Dual incomes are not required to afford housing; one partner with a good job can do it. You may not be able to live in a major metro, but you can definitely afford a decent house in a good neighborhood on one salary, especially if you're not shelling out the mini-mortgage that is childcare. The sad reality is that when both partners work, one of them is probably just working to pay the cost of childcare... so they can work. This is just fine if it's what both parents want, but it really deflating from a budgetary perspective. And of course parenting toddlers is a different kind of stress from working. The point is than both things are stressful. If you're a sole income provider, it doesn't matter whether you're a desk jockey or a construction worker. You live with the stress that if you lose your job, your family is fucked. And while your wife can ask you to take a shift watching the kids, you cannot ask her to take a shift at your job. One thing is fungible, and the other is not. That type of stress is barely recognized in contemporary culture, and if it is recognized, it's treated as some sort of privilege (i.e. "Oh you get to pursue your career? How nice for you, your wife is at home doing more work than you could ever imagine"). And yeah, family support is huge. But it's getting less and less common. Kids move away from home more often, and they have their own children later in life. A 75 year-old grandparent just isn't going to be able to keep up with a toddler a lot of the time. The government really has to step in to help make childcare more affordable. Family connections aren't going to cut it on a societal level, and private-sector childcare is enormously expensive. Something's gotta give, and the way things are going, it'll just mean fewer children being born and an aging society.