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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Income inequality->Two earner family->less parental involvement->vicious cycle

While that is a gross oversimplification, it would do wonders to increase the quality of life for families who elect to have one earner only, with the other (gender regardless) providing more time and resources towards child development.

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This makes intuitive sense to me but doesn't match up with what I've seen anecdotally. I lived in some very wealthy suburbs of NYC, and nearly every family was a two-earner family. My wife and I also homeschool, and have met a bunch of other homeschoolers both in CT and now in CO. By your logic, you'd expect the primary earners in the homeschooling families to earn more than in the average family, but in my experience the reverse is true.

You're right that there's a level of income at which one parent staying home is just not a plausible choice. But it's a lot lower than I'd expected -- I've met some homeschooling families that are doing extremely well by their children at a substantially lower income level than I'd thought feasible. I think the issue here in most cases is less a problem of economics than of cultural values. (Before anyone reads anything pernicious into that, all I mean is that I think American culture overvalues possessions and professional accomplishments and undervalues family in specific and relationships in general.)

Hmm most middle class and higher families in the states are two earners families with the lower middle class and downwards having one or both parents unemployed or intermediately employed.

The days of the American nuclear family with the dad having a career and the mom becoming a world class housewife are pretty much over.

And considering that low income / low skill jobs are more available to men and that low income jobs will not be able to fund childcare that pushes lower class families to become single earner families even more.

When you consider that a full time homemaker does about $60k/yr worth of work during the weekdays , a single income household with a honemaker doesn't look so bad compared to a meduam dual income household.

Where was that number pulled off? That's 10K over the median household income in the US. Any how I wasn't saying that having a homemaker ins't economically sound under certain economic conditions i was saying that it's less common in middle class and higher families than in lower class families. When both parents are educated and have a career they don't want to give that up, when both of them make enough to allow them selves to continue to work especially after thee infancy period they are more likely to do so. Upper classes also have higher chances of having grandparents who've retired earlier and are also actually being able to live on their retirement and are able to help with childcare. They are also more likely to work in companies that provide childcare assistance or services to their employees.

Combine all those factors and many more and you get to a point where income inequality actually forces people to become stay at home mom/dad's while the more financially stable classes can afford to continue with their careers.

> Where was that number pulled off?

It's closer to $96-100K/year actually. In a lot of cases, its economically rational for one spouse to stay home and take care of the house when that much value is provided versus a traditional job.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/blogs/on-parenting/post/a-h...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/02/06/mint_estimat...

Lol Slate, and the post's sources for their numbers is this http://blog.mint.com/consumer-iq/how-much-is-a-homemaker-wor... which i really don't know how to react to this the onion has better sources...

If a stay at home mom is worth 100k then a full time housekeeper/nanny should earn 100k? The highest figures I've seen in NYC with an educated nanny/housekeepr/superperson (nursing, child development really wierd stuff) is on average 700 a week for a 10.5 hours work day and that's in very very upscale areas while usually taking care of 2-3 children. So yeah they'll be earning about 50K a year while taking care of the 1% of the 1%, while in Austin or Chicago for example that figures drops to 23-24000 for the same service.

Sorry but a click bait blog http://blog.mint.com/ for a budge management application https://www.mint.com/ isn't really a reliable source in my books, if those numbers were even close to being a reality on average or under any case you would see pretty much every other family in the states where the dad is a stay at home dad and the mom goes to become a super(rich)nany or vise versa...

Most of the parents I knew at my son's (private, not inexpensive) schools had two parents working. It was sometimes the case that one worked less (as a substitute teacher part time, maybe). But the one-earner families tended to be outliers.

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