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Comment by datashow | Hacker News Reader

> Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife.

You really need some data to back it up here. "I worked, my mother worked, my grandmothers worked, and my great grandmothers worked." is not good evidence. For one, there is a representative issue. For another, there is a huge difference between part-time work and full-time work. We don't know how many hours your mother, grandmothers, and great grandmothers worked, or worked for how many years.

Check data presented on this webpage: https://ourworldindata.org/female-labor-force-participation-... . Female labor participation rate has being increasing since 1900.

Apparently the data contradicted with your own personal experience. This is why we should try to avoid general argument based on our on personal experience.

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Labor force does count the actual workforce. They only count "wage slaves". One grandmother was a farmer. She took over from my grandfather when he got sick and he became the house husband. So she would not have been counted. I am not clear if it would have counted my other grandmother since she was a business owner. She owned a beauty salon. She also opened the first health food store in Berkeley with her sister to put my mother and her cousins through college. I doubt either would have been counted as labor force participation. My mother was counted.

> She took over from my grandfather when he got sick and he became the house husband.

Neither would have her husband been counted in the non-farm labour force survey. Thus swapping husband for wife would not have shown up as a change in the first place.

This is an interesting discussion. I remember my economists professor talking about how in Alberta during the 2006 boom labour force participation dropped as wages increased. In that case it was an example of the in-elasticity of labour demand.

From the social aspect it was an example of how for many families 2 working parents is not optional. A situation was fully true earlier in the industrial revolution. As the revolution progressed and labour had more negotiation power over capital real wages rose and duel working parents decreased.

Thus my pet theory is that the reduction in real wages is a non-trivial driving force for the current historic high labour force participation stats.

>One grandmother was a farmer. She took over from my grandfather when he got sick and he became the house husband.

I'm not sure what you think this proves. When the choice is "do something or starve" people do all sorts of things they would rather not do, from farming to prostitution to selling their children:

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/4-children-sale-1948/

There but for the grace of god went your mother.

Most people for most of history were peasants. Peasant women don't just raise children - they usually contribute to almost everything else that the farming economy requires, as well. Think of old photos of peasants/poor farmers. Do the women look like they have been spending their time just raising children?

My family on both my mother and father's sides were farmers, including my parents for most of my early childhood. On the farm, women would work mainly during harvest season and a few other moments, but I remember quite vividly a conversation where my aunt got pregnant and other adults in the room we're angry that the birth might fall too close to harvest season so she wouldn't be able to help out. She said what was she supposed to do? To which her mother replied that you get pregnant at so and so season and that this is how it had been done for generations. At that moment I realized that most of their birthdays did fall out of harvest season (including mine!).

Your comment brought back those memories. I know an anecdote is not data but in my case (we're not American however) most women were expected to help out with the harvest and sowing. Children also helped out during harvest (some of my worst and best memories!). I also would say that at least in my region, some would help only seasonally in the farm. The rest of the year they're expected to be "managing the home" and any women that wanted to study would be met with very sexist attitudes and responses. Also worth mentioning that raising children does take a toll on you. If you think peasant women look bad because of hard work on a farm, it's probably not. Think hard work off the farm, combined with poverty, stress, anxiety, etc.

Non-working wife can mean work in the sense of employed, or it can mean worked as in did unpaid work in the house.

This varied from what we'd now call "housework" to "productive" labor on farms etc.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-hours-dedicated-to... shows how females use to work full time in the home (and as Hans Roslings' famous talk about the impact of the washing machine shows - this was hard, physical labor).

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