Part of the 'great resignation' is mothers forced to leave their jobs
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Now it's a year and a half after the first big panic, half of the daycares are shut down, and the rest of them are overcrowded. Those who were left without jobs at daycares either took unemployment or were able to find better paying jobs (because literally nothing pays worse than a daycare teacher's salary... even in a Dallas suburb the starting pay was $8.35 - $10 an hour at most daycares). Raising prices would force a lot of kids out of daycare, so most daycare owners would rather run understaffed facilities than pay their people a fair wage.
The entire childcare system is convoluted and broken from top to bottom, and it's usually the mothers who are expected to put their careers on hold when there's an issue. In our case, it made sense because I make about 4x what my gf does and she's pursuing a degree. For many others, it's probably a serious drag on the entire family.
So, I question why having a parent stay at home is seen as such a bad thing. Does going from a two-income household to a single-income household require change? Certainly. But I don't look down on those who live in two-income households, and I get a little frustrated at all the negativity against living in a single-income household.
However, that means women don't get as much advancement in their career, which means women tend to be underpaid with respect to men, building in a gender bias against women in more senior position.
As the Guardian piece says:
> American disinvestment in the care economy has waged a war of attrition on women’s employment, with women forced to chose between jobs where they are paid too little and childcare solutions that cost too much. The result has been a massive loss of talent, creativity and human potential from the paid economy. When care is not invested in, women are not prioritized – and that means that half of the nation’s minds risk being exiled to the domestic sphere.
The income disparity can also leads to family strife, along the lines of one person arguing "I bring home the bacon, I decide where it get spent." In some cases of domestic abuse, the non-wage-earner has no money nor job of (typically) her own, so can't easily escape the situation.
The deeper issue is that unpaid labor like raising children is often regarded as less important than paid labor. See for example the "Wages for Housework" movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework) demanding the state page wages for unwaged caring work. In Italy, where this movement started in the 1970s, one observation was "and all this work that the woman does, an average of 99.6 hours weekly, without the possibility of strikes, nor absenteeism, nor to make any demands, is done for free" (quoting https://libcom.org/history/italian-feminism-workerism-autono... ).
You can even see this negative attitude towards unpaid labor in the Guardian quote, where it said "exiled to the domestic sphere."
Another option is the Nordic model, where both parents get extensive paid parental leave by the state (totaling over a year), with highly subsidized preschool starting at age one, with highly-qualified teachers, and with a monthly payment by the state to help pay for the kid. This still gives the option for one parent to work from home, but also allows both parents to have a full-time career as well, should they choose.
Which leads to your comment. This article is about families where both parents want to work but no longer have that option. You had the option. While you may face social negativity as a result, consider those who now a) may face the same social negativity, AND b) don't want to be an unpaid care giver.
It works for you? That's great. It's hell for me.