7 ms·

In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

• amy_petrik 11mo ago
  It's a simple catch-22 - women don't want to leave the workforce because one salary cannot support a family - yet women remaining in the workforce, since single-salary is infeasible, thusly doubling supply of workers, lowering salaries, which itself makes it infeasible to single-income a family Not to pick on women, as a feminist if you ask me, all modern men should have to be houseboys to serve their feminine masters. It does suck but it is necessary to benefit the modern women who did not suffer, in so by causing modern men to suffer -- to make amends for the suffering of all women in the perpetuity of history at the hands of all historical men, neither of which are alive today.
  • kamaal 11mo ago
    Well that's the point, men are refusing to suffer. There is little incentive to walking in a contract, where you are working all the time, no appreciation, love, gratitude or even a thank you. All the time being made to feel like you are not measuring up. And they'd rather be with somebody else apart from you. That done, you also come back from work and do all the chores you would if you remained single. And if a few years later the other party decided to break the contract, now they take your home, get monthly pensions(with raises), and get to start the process all over again with somebody else at your expense. Plus these days kids don't stay back with aging parents to care for them, so having kids appears pointless as well. By and large, let alone an incentive, marriage and children seem to a massive negative for men. Hence I wouldn't be surprised low marriage and birth rates all over the world. Why would you want to do all this? When you can work, keep the money, and spend it for your pleasure by staying single?
    • watwut 11mo ago
      Except that it is men who complain constantly about wanting to marry and have kids while women are much more content being single and have friends. You dont have to pay alimony of the wife worked thw whole time. That complain is funny in the comtext of men demanding to return back to time where alimony arrangement was necessary protection. Even in marriage, it is more of women who initiate divorce are report higher hapiness after the divorce. Men report lower hapiness and are more likely yo want to marry again.
      • kamaal 11mo ago
        Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. But if you dial up the pain in the process men will bail. This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps the most primal biological set up of all, the very basis of evolution is response to stimulus.
        • 4ggr0 11mo ago
          > Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. i'm sorry, what? it's ingrained in men to be worker-drones and every man sees this as his fulfillment? yikes. as the kids say, 'touch grass'. translated for older people, "maybe expand your world-view and don't extrapolate your idea of a man to all of men."
          • ThunderSizzle 11mo ago
            Men are workers. Not all work needs to be a "worker-drone", but yes, all men are built towards some form of work, and that work typically is around an item of sorts. Men can work all sorts of ways, and that can include raising kids. Women tend to be a lot less happier leaving their kids to go toil with the dirt.
            • 4ggr0 11mo ago
              > Men are workers What are women, then? Baby-machines, cooks and cleaners, which I guess you don't see as work? I mean it's not the first time I encounter a dude with the same opinion as you have, but every time I'm surprised by the casual reductionism of our societies. Men make work, Women make baby. Men hard, Women soft. Men strong and powerful. Women weak and emotional.
    • MSFT_Edging 11mo ago
      You can spot a guy who 100% contributed to his divorce a mile away. Basically a glowing LED billboard.
  • ThunderSizzle 11mo ago
    A woman who intentionally went corporate and avoided having kids, and wasted her maternal instincts on someone else's profits, will suffer when their body clock catches up to them, and the company leaves them behind. You can't go back and get pregnant. And your marriage probably ended in divorce already anyway by now, which is a whole more amount of suffering.
    • mittensc 11mo ago
      Why do you feel the need to tell others how to live their lives?, frustration with your own?
      • ThunderSizzle 11mo ago
        I'm not telling them how to live their lives. I'm just predicting the path that is made based on the choices made. Everyone is on a journey, and the path their journey takes is partially the choices made. People are allowed to think hard about their choices, and the choices of others. If they want their path to go their, so be it, and but it's cruel to not discuss the ramifications of choices made.
        • mittensc 11mo ago
          what if you are wrong in your conlusions and thinking?
• jaredklewis 11mo ago
  I mean that I know of first hand, just the US and Japan. "Possible" being a low bar that just means that I've seen it at least once. I don't think data with all of those factors (household income, number of earners per household, gender of the earners, home ownership, and number of children) exists for any country. Do you have data like that for 1960s America or is your argument based on extrapolations from watching Leave it to Beaver? But if we abstract your hypothesis slightly to: fertility is lower now than in 1960 because people are less financially secure now than they were in 1960, I don't think the data we have supports this.
  • f1shy 11mo ago
    I have seen it all across the EU. Is pretty doable (granted, you have a University title). But you can absolutely buy a home and have a couple of children which will have absolute all they need.
    • zwnow 11mo ago
      Yea because the average Joe totally has a university title. However in Germany a lot of poor people have many children while a lot of academics have less [0]. It's "doable" also doesn't mean its pleasant. I have checked the rural housing market recently and for a somewhat acceptable house you will have to pay easily ~3k per month given you have a somewhat big start capital. Not sustainable if one person loses their job for a while. Not to say it was that much easier back in the day, the housing market is just beyond fucked for most ordinary people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
      • f1shy 11mo ago
        A decent Flat in Germany, for example near Stuttgart, with good connections with train is about 300k. There are credit lines for 25 years with relative low interest rates. For that you are way lower than 3k per month (assuming 0 downpayment). With 2 people working in a household, you can afford that. Granted, you will not be the "typical" german doing 3 times a year nice vacations. But doing a "real" 1 or 2 week vacation once every 2 years is pretty much standard outside Germany, I think.
• watwut 11mo ago
  Ordinary men have wifes and two children in all those countries. You are also projecting American lifestyle "buying house without family help is necessary" on countries "hungary" where this was not an expectation for a really really long time. Like, generations.
• zdragnar 11mo ago
  Two of my friends with relatively ordinary jobs have stay at home spouses. The cost of daycare is so high that it would basically eat up one of their salaries, and this way they get to actually spend time with their children, which they find to be more filling than a BS career. It is definitely doable in the US, and I would imagine most Western countries as well. My knowledge outside of them isn't current enough to speak for the rest.
  • ThunderSizzle 11mo ago
    It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. People will never own a house if they didn't have skin in the game by 2021. Salaries are not rising to match housing price inflation. Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down. More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
    • formerly_proven 11mo ago
      > It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value. > Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down. People are more willing to spend an ever-growing share of their dual-incomes on housing, which drives housing prices modulo interest. So interest has no actual effect on housing affordability, since it doesn't influence how much people are willing to spend. If you lower interest, prices are simply going to rise such that people spend the same % of their income on housing. If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match. > More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet. New builds will never be cheaper than existing housing stock. Low-cost new housing is a mirage; new housing is premium by construction.
      • 11mo ago
• roenxi 11mo ago
  If they're happy to do it to 1970s standards, probably most of them. The standard of what an ordinary life looks like has gone up a lot. Plus when only the man worked looking after a home was a full time job - much less in the way of microwaves and washing machines and whatnot. It is worth remembering that in the early 1900s there were a lot of houses that didn't even have electricity. The trends [0] are clear. As society offers people more comfort they have less children. Often radically so, having a GDP per capita of above $30k basically means that people stop having enough babies to hit the replacement rate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
  • ako 11mo ago
    According to Hans Rosling correlation was more between education level of women and the number of children: the higher women are educated, the less children they decide to have.
    • Planktonne 11mo ago
      Another potential framing is that the higher women are educated, the more they get to decide.
      • lazide 11mo ago
        Also - the more education men have, and the higher income they have, the less they want to join the military. It’s a similar type of issue - of course individuals don’t want to submit to a painful process with high risk and sometimes dubious value to them individually if they have other choices. Most places in the developed world aren’t currently drafting large portions of their population for military service - and a large portion of the population says they’d fight it if they did. Maybe at some point, they wouldn’t have a choice - or the choice would be made very expensive for them to make the other way. I suspect it will be similar for birth rates too.
  • engeljohnb 11mo ago
    This ridiculous lie needs to end. I can get a microwave for ~$60. I can get a decent used cell phone for ~$100. Appliances are a little more expensive, but I can get a washing machine for ~$300, less if I go to facebook marketplace. But in my area, a victorian house that's litterally crumbling with no central cooling and not up-to-code wiring where you can't run a hair dryer and coffee machine at the same time? $180,000 Cost of rent at a similar quality house half the size? $1600/month Modern comforts are not the reason people can't afford to live.
• 4er_transform 11mo ago
  In which periods in human history has that been possible? In the parts of the world with the highest birth rates is that possible?
• TuringNYC 11mo ago
  >> In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children? It seems impossible to do this in 2025 with white collar work because so much of it is tied to HCOL cities (except for hedge funders, FAANG workers who got lucky on timing, bankers, some lawyers.) From what I can see amongst friends and family -- it is possible with blue collar trades jobs where you can be selective on where in the country you can live and where you have some level of ownership of your practice. There are numerous affordable locations in the country. I can confirm -- based on how difficult it is to get an appointment -- that my tree guy, electrician, and plumber all make more than me as an executive. Some of these workers further force payments in cash, so they are probably not even paying tax on all their income.
• dennis_jeeves2 11mo ago
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