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There is a lot wrong with this article, but I don't have the patience to go through all of the unstated assumptions; so I will just use one point as an example:

There is a lot wrong with this article, but I don't have the patience to go through all of the unstated assumptions; so I will just use one point as an example: "And everywhere, it is changing traditional family life by enabling women to work and children to be educated." How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? There is an unstated assumption that working outside is better; an assertion unsupported by any data. Concerning children's education, one need only point to US literacy rates from 1850 to the present to see that the two (women working, children educated) are not connected. As a secondary point I will point out that demographics are not mentioned in this article, apparently the author has never viewed the movie "Idiocracy" ...

bh23ha 17y ago
How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? Depends on your definition of better. Ignoring difficult to measure benefits and focusing on easy to measure ones like economic output, it is easy to see how outside the home there's more opportunity to produce a lot more toasters, cars, etc, then inside the home. Unless you happen to live in a factory! Concerning children's education, one need only point to US literacy rates from 1850 to the present to see that the two (women working, children educated) are not connected. Really? And isn't comparing "work" before 1925 (arbitrarily picked) and after kind of like comparing apples and oranges?
- patrickgzill 17y ago
  The reason I chose 1850 to the present is that it was well past the chaos of the American Revolution and yet far enough away in time to show a trend. Further this time period covers the change from nearly all women working inside the home (or working on the family farm), to many working outside the home. Many posters seem to have missed my point; perhaps I could have stated it clearer. To restate it, there is little causation between women working outside the home and whether or not children are educated; and if there is, the Economist article quotes no sources to establish that.
kungfooey 17y ago
Obviously, the movie "Idiocracy" is a source of scholarly learning.
- Freebytes 17y ago
  That movie is fantastic. The entertainment value is beneficial, but the predictive warning is certainly as influential as the book The Time Machine which contained similar analogies.
  - unalone 17y ago
    I'm gonna have to disagree. It was entertaining, but the movie was entirely farcical. Its assumption re:how the world might potentially degenerate was silly, but I'm baffled at how people think that could possibly happen. It's like watching Office Space by the same director and thinking that taking a guy's stapler will definitely lead to him burning down a building. Comparing the influence of a cheesy movie to one of the stapleholds of science fiction is ridiculous. The fact that Idiocracy owes its existence to the concepts of The Time Machine suggests that it's a derivative work, meaning it's not as influential at all. I'm not saying The Time Machine was a good warning, either, not as much as 1984 and certainly not as much as Brave New World, which is arguably the best prediction we've seen from a book, so saying Idiocracy is as right as The Time Machine isn't saying much to begin with.
    - mechanical_fish 17y ago
      I haven't actually seen Idiocracy, but I know enough about it to recognize that (a) like most SF, Idiocracy is a commentary on the present disguised as a commentary on the future; (b) The folk theory of demographics embodied in Idiocracy (together with the time machine, of course) is a framing device, designed to give us an excuse to adopt a ridiculous perspective. It's a deliberately silly theory, just as Beavis and Butthead were a deliberately silly representation of the average fan of MTV in the 1990s.
    - Freebytes 17y ago
      I never said it was true, and it is certainly for entertainment purposes as its primary focus. If you were to summarize its predictive nature, it would result in a one sentence statement. Brave New World and 1984 are better in their predictive aspects, but I was not comparing Idiocracy to them. I was primarily comparing it to The Time Machine and well... to itself in a way. The intent of the movie was not as a documentary on the condition of humanity, but as a plot device, it can serve the purpose of warning us of the danger of thinking we can predict everything when we cannot predict much of anything at all.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? Perhaps you could ask some women. You'll also find that there's not exactly a shortage of literature on this topic. I'll offer just one feature: If you have a job outside the home, you are free to quit your job and take a better job when conditions change. Not so easy to "quit" the "job" of raising your kids, or of living in your home when you have no other home to live in and no work experience that you can use to find a job somewhere else. US literacy rates from 1850 to the present These have little to say about the question. Literacy rate in the USA is a poor proxy for "education" because it's just too basic (you can be considered literate in American English and still have only a fourth-grade education) and is covered by the universal primary education system that we've had for years. The US population has grown largely through immigration since 1850, which makes it misleading to attribute changes in literacy rate directly to trends in childhood education. And, even apart from that, the major factor in the US literacy rate from 1850 to the present is likely to be the difference in education available to different subsets of the population, and the relative sizes of these subsets: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp In 1870 80% of the black population was illiterate, presumably because it was composed of former slaves who had generally been forbidden to learn to read. And this illiteracy rate among the black population declined fairly slowly and remains higher than among the white population, a fact which has a lot to do with the hundred-year period of Jim Crow segregation that started soon after the Civil War was over and continued through the civil rights movement, with legacy effects lasting to this day.
- mcd 17y ago
  > Perhaps you could ask some women. Quite a few women I know would rather be at home with their children than work. I hear that same complaining line from a family member often. It is not torture for someone to stay at home and raise kids. I personally would like to be a house-dad when I eventually have kids (while my wife works). I think the importance of raising children is quite underrated. And the modern trend of outsourcing the raising of your kids (to day-care centers and after school programs, etc…) is wrong. > I'll offer just one feature: If you have a job outside the home, you are free to quit your job and take a better job when conditions change. Not so easy to "quit" the "job" of raising your kids, or of living in your home when you have no other home to live in and no work experience that you can use to find a job somewhere else. You can’t really quit raising kids – whether you like it or not. I would also offer a flipside: In my parents’ generation it was common for women to work half-day (half-day secretarial work, etc…). Yet today it isn’t so – the majority of jobs require you to work from 8 to 17h00.
dgabriel 17y ago
> How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? In an industrialized, modern society, you can nearly double your workforce. Educated women increase the number of knowledge workers. This, in turn, increases productivity, etc. Some women may briefly opt to stay home with their children, but the majority of women in industrialized nations return to work at some point. This is considered good. Can you think of an industrialized nation experiencing significant growth (either recently or currently) where women are discouraged from working?

bh23ha 17y ago

How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? Depends on your definition of better. Ignoring difficult to measure benefits and focusing on easy to measure ones like economic output, it is easy to see how outside the home there's more opportunity to produce a lot more toasters, cars, etc, then inside the home. Unless you happen to live in a factory! Concerning children's education, one need only point to US literacy rates from 1850 to the present to see that the two (women working, children educated) are not connected. Really? And isn't comparing "work" before 1925 (arbitrarily picked) and after kind of like comparing apples and oranges?

patrickgzill 17y ago
The reason I chose 1850 to the present is that it was well past the chaos of the American Revolution and yet far enough away in time to show a trend. Further this time period covers the change from nearly all women working inside the home (or working on the family farm), to many working outside the home. Many posters seem to have missed my point; perhaps I could have stated it clearer. To restate it, there is little causation between women working outside the home and whether or not children are educated; and if there is, the Economist article quotes no sources to establish that.

kungfooey 17y ago

Obviously, the movie "Idiocracy" is a source of scholarly learning.

Freebytes 17y ago
That movie is fantastic. The entertainment value is beneficial, but the predictive warning is certainly as influential as the book The Time Machine which contained similar analogies.
- unalone 17y ago
  I'm gonna have to disagree. It was entertaining, but the movie was entirely farcical. Its assumption re:how the world might potentially degenerate was silly, but I'm baffled at how people think that could possibly happen. It's like watching Office Space by the same director and thinking that taking a guy's stapler will definitely lead to him burning down a building. Comparing the influence of a cheesy movie to one of the stapleholds of science fiction is ridiculous. The fact that Idiocracy owes its existence to the concepts of The Time Machine suggests that it's a derivative work, meaning it's not as influential at all. I'm not saying The Time Machine was a good warning, either, not as much as 1984 and certainly not as much as Brave New World, which is arguably the best prediction we've seen from a book, so saying Idiocracy is as right as The Time Machine isn't saying much to begin with.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    I haven't actually seen Idiocracy, but I know enough about it to recognize that (a) like most SF, Idiocracy is a commentary on the present disguised as a commentary on the future; (b) The folk theory of demographics embodied in Idiocracy (together with the time machine, of course) is a framing device, designed to give us an excuse to adopt a ridiculous perspective. It's a deliberately silly theory, just as Beavis and Butthead were a deliberately silly representation of the average fan of MTV in the 1990s.
  - Freebytes 17y ago
    I never said it was true, and it is certainly for entertainment purposes as its primary focus. If you were to summarize its predictive nature, it would result in a one sentence statement. Brave New World and 1984 are better in their predictive aspects, but I was not comparing Idiocracy to them. I was primarily comparing it to The Time Machine and well... to itself in a way. The intent of the movie was not as a documentary on the condition of humanity, but as a plot device, it can serve the purpose of warning us of the danger of thinking we can predict everything when we cannot predict much of anything at all.

mechanical_fish 17y ago

How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? Perhaps you could ask some women. You'll also find that there's not exactly a shortage of literature on this topic. I'll offer just one feature: If you have a job outside the home, you are free to quit your job and take a better job when conditions change. Not so easy to "quit" the "job" of raising your kids, or of living in your home when you have no other home to live in and no work experience that you can use to find a job somewhere else. US literacy rates from 1850 to the present These have little to say about the question. Literacy rate in the USA is a poor proxy for "education" because it's just too basic (you can be considered literate in American English and still have only a fourth-grade education) and is covered by the universal primary education system that we've had for years. The US population has grown largely through immigration since 1850, which makes it misleading to attribute changes in literacy rate directly to trends in childhood education. And, even apart from that, the major factor in the US literacy rate from 1850 to the present is likely to be the difference in education available to different subsets of the population, and the relative sizes of these subsets: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp In 1870 80% of the black population was illiterate, presumably because it was composed of former slaves who had generally been forbidden to learn to read. And this illiteracy rate among the black population declined fairly slowly and remains higher than among the white population, a fact which has a lot to do with the hundred-year period of Jim Crow segregation that started soon after the Civil War was over and continued through the civil rights movement, with legacy effects lasting to this day.

mcd 17y ago
> Perhaps you could ask some women. Quite a few women I know would rather be at home with their children than work. I hear that same complaining line from a family member often. It is not torture for someone to stay at home and raise kids. I personally would like to be a house-dad when I eventually have kids (while my wife works). I think the importance of raising children is quite underrated. And the modern trend of outsourcing the raising of your kids (to day-care centers and after school programs, etc…) is wrong. > I'll offer just one feature: If you have a job outside the home, you are free to quit your job and take a better job when conditions change. Not so easy to "quit" the "job" of raising your kids, or of living in your home when you have no other home to live in and no work experience that you can use to find a job somewhere else. You can’t really quit raising kids – whether you like it or not. I would also offer a flipside: In my parents’ generation it was common for women to work half-day (half-day secretarial work, etc…). Yet today it isn’t so – the majority of jobs require you to work from 8 to 17h00.

dgabriel 17y ago

> How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? In an industrialized, modern society, you can nearly double your workforce. Educated women increase the number of knowledge workers. This, in turn, increases productivity, etc. Some women may briefly opt to stay home with their children, but the majority of women in industrialized nations return to work at some point. This is considered good. Can you think of an industrialized nation experiencing significant growth (either recently or currently) where women are discouraged from working?