There's a strange sort of situation: In the past, women were forced to be housewives, which was awful. Nobody should be forced to be something they don't want to be. But now that women have the ability to do mostly whatever a man can do, neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work. I wonder if it would be better if, as a family unit, one person decides to do the housewife-type stuff, and the other decides to pursue a career? You could even switch off after a few years. That'd be a pretty ideal life for me, I think. But again, in most marriages, both people have to work.
As for the household work, I was just telling someone today how much I miss being able to work all the time. I love my kids and they come first, but it's a sacrifice to for me not to work 12+ hour days.
However, I think on net it is still more economically productive, at least in a large portion of cases.
It's unlikely that housework and childcare would optimally take up a full 50% of our entire reservoir of workable-hours, especially in the age of household appliances and childcare centres.
What I'm saying, and a big component of what I'm thinking about is housing costs, is that we're chasing the same things with more dollars. If household incomes double, expect the price of houses to follow suit. Assuming supply doesn't change, it doesn't help to earn 2x the money when all the bidders in the marketplace also have 2x the money.
you're missing the part where more demand creates more supply.
Sure, sometimes the market is distorted due to zoning, like in SF, and also land is finite, but generally speaking the market responds to the added demand by creating more housing, possibly denser housing. Same with other goods. Those are not empty dollars that got added into the system by fiat - they represent additional productive work done, and the goods / services they create is added to the economy.
My point is that I think the supply side isn't keeping up. The economy itself isn't bringing home 2x the bacon, but rather 1.5x the bacon when you're feeding all this extra labor into it. And yes, this is due to market distortions and diminishing returns.
The choice to sacrifice wages for more time with your kids is a luxury good, even if people choose to spend some of that time doing housework.
- We don't spend our weekends shopping.
- my wife can volunteer at my sons school and church, which opens up more social opportunities and keeps us tight with school.
- We spend less in clothes, groceries and eating out. The value of this is much greater than anticipated.
Overall, life is better. We're not driving new cars anymore. Other than that, the sacrifice is minimal. Her skill set is such that she can basically become employed again at any time.
This is the difference. If you were making, say, a quarter what you're currently making, perhaps the sacrifice would be huge.
"Economically productive" in what way? If you want to adopt a short term perspective of a particular nuclear family making X dollars over Y years, maybe.
But that's a rather shallow and irresponsible way of looking at things without accounting for what's better for the future society of our descendants, economically and otherwise.
What in most cases will produce a better quality of individual, a child raised at home by a loving mother, or a child shuffled off to some "childcare" to be looked after by a minimum wage worker absorbed in a smartphone half the time? (Not that all non-motherly childcare is like that, but you get the point)
1. the economy is bigger and produces more goods. 2. much of those goods are distributed to the two-worker families. 3. a few bored minimum wage workers can look after a very large number of kids.
The quality of childcare is on average a function of how much you pay. The boutique ones have professionally trained staff that get more than minimal wage.
But what about the families that can't afford any but the most rundown centers, I hear you ask? Won't they be better off under the old system? You know, the one where the economy was 30% smaller due to halving the labour supply?
Perhaps they would be living poor but honest lives, perfectly happy in their squalid conditions and lack of medical care.
Yes, it does. The demand dropped.
What you hear about real wages is in reference to the US and other parts of the global north. Those manufacturing jobs moved to the global south and now there is less demand for them here.
More income is chasing the scarce resource that is housing. Thus prices increase (supply/demand curve).
It is the same with the cost of education increasing horrifically due to the open firehose of student loans making price no-longer-an-object-of-consideration.
Both are enormously overinflated bubbles.
Excerpt from my own writing:
http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/2015/09/affordable-...
Wages may play a role, but "housing inflation" in terms of houses getting bigger and more luxurious and thus forcing costs up absolutely is a huge problem in this country. Plus, we razed something like 80% of SROs in the 60s and 70s.
There is a huge and growing shortage of actually affordable housing in this country. This has been true for decades. It is one of the reasons I am not crazy about the idea of basic income. If we don't do something about this trend, it won't matter if you cut a check to all the poor people. Many of them will still be either homeless or crowded together horribly in situations they find objectionable.
We basically assume these days that single people in their twenties with entry level jobs should get into housing really designed for a family and share it with roommates. This is basically a post 1980 expectation. Historically, people rented a room in the form of an SRO or a room at a boarding house when they were just starting out. Now, we view those as something provided for chronic losers who can't find another way off the street rather than just cheap housing for single people who don't need much space.
Until about the 70s or 80s, salaries of CEOs and workers grew at a similar pace. After that, the salaries of workers stagnated, while that of CEOs rose dramatically. Looks like that's where the profit of the increased labor force went.
My mother and even friends frown upon me. Like I push her to be a housewife. Actually, I supported her working and even helped her to be self-employed. But she's most happy being a housewife.
I think people just want to have a big home, 2 cars annually 2 holidays and that costs a lot of money. Which means both have to work to support this life style. Luckily I make sufficient money to support us both.
I remember very clearly who it was that made my mother miserable for daring to enjoy being a housewife and mother, and it wasn't our conservative friends.
I also remember who made our family miserable for loving and caring for my gay brother as he died of AIDS, and it wasn't our liberal friends.
( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... for an excellent essay on the topic. )
Is this the right, or the religious right?
For example, being liberal usually implies greater freedoms, such as being pro-choice. However, it can also be pro-gun ownership, or anti-war, pro-research, etc. To me that's the dichotomy the U.S. is facing is really about the progressives and religeous conservatives duking it out, but (I'd argue) most people are much more moderate.
It's interesting to me that a third party (libertarians, or someone else) can't capture that group. As many liberals differ pretty substantially from the progressives, and concervative minded people just lump liberals and them together because they all identify as Democrats
In fact, I prefer to classify political views differently, by splitting them into two buckets: those who have figured out that every issue needs an actually effective solution, and those who follow their ideologies blindly.
Fortunately in the UK there's another voice at the table in between the extremes. People tend not to vote for them because of fear, and a misunderstanding of the soft power available in politics.
The fundamental problem with the Libertarian ideology is that the emergent outcome is of a fully economically captured state.
If I started a political party and wanted to capture myself. I'd just steal all the good ideas from all the parties.
Personally, I would prioritize extensive political reform and reconstruction, but I fear the level of financial capture and constitution worship in the United States makes thus impossible.
For the most part, my politics are similar to progressives - higher taxes, public healthcare, more expansive welfare (I support UBI), and social justice in general.
The reason why I don't consider myself a progressive is that I feel that the progressive ideology in US has largely abandoned the traditional concept of natural individual rights in pursuit of all these goals. You have people openly claiming that freedom of speech is not worth it if it gets in the way of criminalizing offensive speech, for example. Or how due process is an outdated notion that makes it hard to prosecute sexual harassment properly. Basically, the further left you go with progressives, the more individual rights are sacrificed to collective ones.
That, to me, is the line past which you can no longer meaningfully call yourself a liberal, since liberalism is all about individual rights, ultimately. Where left-wing and right-wing liberals differ is on the matter on how to best maximize those rights, and to what extent government regulation is advantageous or detrimental to that, especially on economic matters.
And, to some extent, on what those rights are, precisely - for example, I don't consider property rights to be fundamental natural rights (but then again, neither did Thomas Jefferson, and he sure wasn't left-wing!). Note, it doesn't mean that property is a bad idea - I think it's a social construct that is broadly useful, it's just not an absolute right (and hence taxation and wealth redistribution is not inherently an infringement on such).
The fair comparison would be to see how they reacted if your roles were reversed: if she worked and you made her lunch.
Conservatives are supposed to be the ones that pressure people into gender roles, and liberals are supposed to be tolerant of all lifestyles. What point would be made if liberals were tolerant of a very, very non-traditional relationship, and our conservative friends were uncomfortable? That both groups have gender roles which they use social pressure to enforce? That the left isn't actually more tolerant than the right? That liberals have enjoyed an undeserved positive stereotype?
That said:
> if my conservative acquaintances are more tolerant of a "left-of-center" arrangement than my liberal acquaintances, why would it be more fair to push the comparison further left?
That isn't a left-of-center arrangement. It's a hundred+ year old conservatives dream (see: traditional family values), of course they're accepting of it.
The point of the opposite scenario is that it's non-traditional, and I GUARANTEE you that the acceptance would be reversed on both counts.
Obviously preferably the acceptance would be there regardless, when both you and your wife's roles are self-chosen, but you must see that it's easy from the outside to suspect that it's formed by traditional gender roles, even if it happens to be unrelated?
In the same way people generalize about a white man with a pacific looking younger wife, or just a younger wife in general, which isn't the same thing people think when they see an older woman with a younger man.
These things could be great, loving relationships, but the generalizations about them are at some point rooted in truth, because of a traditionally asymmetric power dynamic.
So why not just do it, at least for a period of time? Partly because having a job can give a sense of purpose, partly to not lose her options for later, but most importantly because staying at home all day with nothing but kids to talk to is kind of hard on your psyche. After all, almost everyone else is at work.
Contrast that with her grandmother who was a housewife in the 1950s. According to her, there was plenty of manual work involved, and it could be stressful in its own ways. On the upside, the neighborhood was full of housewives. They would drop in for coffee, they'd look after each other's toddlers when necessary, and when the older kids came home from school they would pretty much roam freely with the other neighborhood kids. For better or worse, this kind of "infrastructure" is missing today.
Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with two incomes, it is avoidable.(1)
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-r...
>The median household income for families with two full-time working parents and at least one child under 18 at home is $102,400, compared with $84,000 for households where the father works full time and the mother works part time and $55,000 for households where the father works full time and the mother is not employed.
$55,000 a year provides a good life in 99% of the United States.
BTW, the share of two-parent households in which both parents work full time is only at 46%.
My way of handling two incomes is saving and investing the vast majority of the second income, not spending it. That leaves us in a much better financial position and also a lot of leeway for one or both of us to go without employment for an extended time. The ultimate goal being to retire early. Or at least semi-retire.
Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it is almost a crime against children, because they will grow dirt poor and view this crap as normal.
Background: i earned just $45K a year after tax one year in my life, 10 years ago. I had no children back then. I still spent $60K eating out some of my savings, having to cut on anything including some food, and it felt so crappy i don't advise anyone to repeat my experience.
Sure, $102K isn't too much either. But it puts you into a totally different league anyway. I can imagine how to survive on $102K with a kid in a cheap place, if your house is fully paid and you are an introvert, but not $55K.
Median household income in the U.S. is $56k a year, meaning half of all families get less than that.
Where are you living, and how much does housing cost there?
Even in Seattle, I know of married couples who spend under $2k a month total, inclusive of rent, utilities, eating out, buying random stuff, etc while earning north of $120k each. Sure, its a meek lifestyle, but it can be quite fulfilling to know you aren't a consumerist whore.
If money = happiness, you are apt to lead a really sad life!
I know that I'm very privileged in that I could afford to live at a higher level than what we do, but I don't want that. I've got my American dream. I've got a wonderful wife who dotes on me (it's mutual), a small house in a quiet town, and a cat. That's all I really need in life. All the other shit (gadgets, new cars, etc.) is cool, but I realized about 5 years ago that none of it made me happy.
If we have kids, of course those expenses will go up, and we'll probably have to find a bigger house, but for now, we live cheaply not because we have to, but because expensive stuff won't make us happy.
(Just to be clear, I know what it's like to be poor, I grew up in a very poor family. I very much realize that I'm lucky and more fortunate than a lot of other people in that I have the luxury of living below my means, a luxury that not everyone has, even in the US).
Even in UK, I make ~$35k before tax and I'm living a very comfortable life.
The fact that you say your kid is going to the best private school and yet you can't afford other luxuries (while clearly holidaying regularly) makes me think you may be disconnected from the average person's idea of what a luxury is.
It's been a long time since I've made less than $20k and I do well, but I have a 25 year mortgage on a flat, much less a house.
Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk - 6250/month lets you live extremely comfortably.
> Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'.
Are you defining 'good life' in relative terms or absolute? Because 55k a year would put you in the top 1% of earners in many parts of the world.
My brother lives in Saint Joseph, MO and is married and their combined income was close to the 50k mark. So this is doable.
We have one car even though we could afford two, we both share our commute to work, I drop off my husband on my way to work and pick him up again on the way back. Most couples would buy too cars but we feel that our money is much better used on fun stuff than a second vehicle. A second vehicle is a large money sink for a small amount of convenience.
I made $30k a decade ago when I lived in the Midwest ($36,000 in today's dollars) and lived very, very comfortably on that. Making more than double that now along with two incomes allows us to have the sorts of comforts and luxuries I couldn't have at $30k (homeownership, guest rooms, expensive travel, booze/restaurant money, coffee at DDs every day) while still saving.
We are happy and we are very blessed. We could buy more but we are happy with less. Part of why we save so much is to avoid being wage slaves as I don't feel that to be an ideal lifestyle.
I mean, my SO and I are looking at the fact that we need two incomes simply to buy any house. We recently saw a 650 sqft shack go for ~$500k, an we don't even live in California.
There simply aren't 'cheaper houses' in places where we think we could get work.
As it happens though I think neither of us is going to need to. Maternity/Paternity leave here is almost a year, and by the time that is ended I think we'll be in a good place where neither of us needs to quit entirely, although there may be some part-time working now and again.
In here, you are expected to take a lot of time away of work while the child is small. Colleges were honestly horrified when I told I consider staying shorter. You are "just a housewife" during that time. It is love or their life for some women, but definitely not for most. That time is actually considered risk time for depression and alcoholism - people drink out of isolation and boredom and depression. Good think through is that you can talk openly about all those negative feelings with other women, you don't get shut up with "that was your choice be happy".
If you feel like trying it, I would say try it even if you are a man. Maybe it will work for you. It is more practical in some ways, but you became dependent on partner on a lot - not just money but also social stuff. There is a reason why women were supposed to be so much more talkative and on the phone constantly by 1950 stereotypes - because alone in the house most of the day.
I don't think switching would work for most people, you have to make a lot of changes. It is major lifestyle switch and adjustment period is tiring (both into it and out of it after). You will basically need new hobbies (old ones will be frustrating or cease to be satisfying or are impossible), need new ways of finding people to socialize with (when I work, the society is sort of around you without effort - the challenge is to be alone once in a while. At home you have to work on not being isolated.). You have to get used to slow speed of doing things and deadly routine suddenly and basically having to wait for partner while he is out and it is depressing until you do.
One issue is, your partner will not understand your challenges, they are not real challenges from his point of view as an employed person with deadlines and crappy boss nor what it is like - while you will slowly forget what it was like to be at work. That is where nagging wife stereotype comes from - she is supposed to exist for the sake of family which includes partner, but from partners point of view nothing of interest is at home (neither much duty or really fun). Which basically means, it can work but both needs to be aware of this risk and communicate well.
If my wife could make more than I do and she might one day (we're working on business she's starting), I would quit my job in an instant and switch places if she wanted. I miss my kids, work late/nights frequently and feel like I often don't get enough time with them some days. Part of that is my own fault.
In either case, we're incredibly lucky that only one of us has to work to maintain a good lifestyle and at least one of us has the option staying home to raise our kids, give them more individual attention and education, etc. Many households are in situations where both parents have to work one or more jobs to maintain just an average lifestyle.
The Wife Drought - Why women need wives, and men need lives https://penguin.com.au/books/the-wife-drought-9780857984289
"'I need a wife' -- It’s a common joke among women juggling work and family. But it’s not actually a joke. Having a spouse who takes care of things at home is a Godsend on the domestic front. It’s a potent economic asset on the work front. And it’s an advantage enjoyed – even in our modern society – by vastly more men than women."
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-...
There are people who are talking about the terrible thing the mother did when her own father wanted to punish her for lying and she said "Lola will take my punishment." Why vilify her and not her father, who made Lola a slave to begin with, who decided lashing was an appropriate punishment for lying and who went along with his daughter's suggestion that Lola could take the punishment? What teenager wouldn't want some means to get out of abusive treatment from their parent of that sort? Why is this so damning of her instead of her father?
I'm talking about what's in the article we're discussing. If you were talking about one specific incident only, you should have said that.
If the mother isn't responsible because her father was abusive, why assume that her father was responsible either? Maybe his parents were also abusive.
The cycle of abuse is an awful thing, but adults must take responsibility for their own actions.