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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.

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I think you misspelled changing diapers, doing laundry three times a day, spoon-feeding broccoli puree, scraping dried broccoli off the floor, shopping while trying to contain a squealing octopus, etc.

Or watching and helping form your own child into him/herself, meeting your friends for casual lunches in the park while your kids play, playing goofy games, having time to make nutritious meals instead of heating frozen foods, etc.

Grandparent was responding to the ridiculous notion that being a homemaker is like being on vacation with kids. No one is disputing there can be benefits to being a homemaker or having one in the family.

Being on vacation with kids is far harder than being at home with kids!

Interestingly, you're both right. Turns out you have to take the bad with the good, or more accurately TANSTAAFL

It's... really not that bad? Actually, it's pretty fun.

I work from home, wife doesn't, that makes me the defacto stay-at-home dad. It's definitely playing the startup game in "hard mode" but I love not missing a thing.

Also work from home and 100% disagree. Can hardly get anything done with a 4 month old.

Oh no! Well, it gets easier as the kid gets older. But they say every kid is different so YMMV. I only have the one, he's 4, and he's pretty easy.

Suerte.

The statistics for what it is worth is 56% (kids) vs. 39% (no kids) women chosen "homemaker" option i.e., perhaps diapers are not as important.

All of these are orders of magnitude more pleasant than daily standups etc.

As a man, I had the fortune to stay at home for several years with my child and it was the most wonderful time ever. Sure it's a lot of work, but also a lot of joy.

>> Among women with children under 18, 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Contrast with just 26% of men. 39% of women without kids would also prefer to stay home if they had the choice.

> Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.

"Homemaker" does not mean "staying at home, doing whatever you want."

Homemaker role doesn't mean spending your days travelling, hiking or going to the beach.

Depends on how many children you have.

Metaverse Homemaker Addition allows you to do what every you want between wash cycles.

Can confirm had to do homemaker job on top of paid job I’d prefer to be at my normal job

Yes, me too.

But, would you still feel the same if you had to stay home to take care of kids and a working spouse ?

And having very few adults to talk to, no status, no career advancement (in fact, the opposite), and little recognition.

Eh? There are plenty of other parents and nannies at the park taking their kids out, if you want to talk to someone.

Nannies are of a different social class. Most middle class people are much less likely to have real relationships with people who can’t relate to their problems. Same as rich people tend to have rich friends.

“Talking to someone” isn’t community. Colleagues provide an ersatz community for people who don’t have a real one in their life. You need a steady cast of characters and ideally repeated, purposeful interaction.

> Nannies are of a different social class.

I don't think that is true in Europe. They are probably a fair bit younger than middle class mothers which could be a barrier to being friends.

If the people employing nannies didn’t have more money than their employees the relationship wouldn’t exist at all. The only way I’m familiar with middle class young women nannying is as au pairs, in other countries. But there are people who nanny for decades. They are not the same social class as their employers.

My own experience of living in Europe is confined to Germany but middle class German girls mostly don’t even work part time jobs in university, never mind taking a year off before university to work as an au pair, in a foreign country. They do not nanny. Spanish friends made it sound like the same was true in Spain too. Students do not have jobs at university.

If you keep to a routine of going to the park daily and spending a couple hours there playing, you’ll almost certainly start seeing the same people over and over.

As a former homemaker this comes across as tone deaf. From my experience, you might as well have just said, "You can always hang out at a PTA meeting."

Being a homemaker can be incredibly isolating. Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships that are not centered around their children or exclusive to their spouses.

> Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships

So go out and make them? My 2 year old goes where we are, if that activity isn't kid centered that's too fucking bad and kid is gonna have to deal; I have a life too. It's not like having all conversations centered around work at the office is especially meaningful either.

> if that activity isn't kid centered that's too fucking bad and kid is gonna have to deal

Hilarious, and maybe it works with a 2yo, but when the kid is 5 it's "everybody else is gonna have to deal" as well.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, though.

Depends on the kid. I did plenty of quiet waiting on my single mother when I was five, and portable entertainment has gotten a lot more engaging since the mid-90's.

This effect is definitely amplified by suburban lifestyle. Suburbia is not a very good place to be a homemaker.

It's not a very good place for anything other than having a few hundred square feet of yard that you can choose to work on.

I’m not talking out of my ass here, it’s based on my experience being a stay at home dad for the past few years, we started seeing the same people over and over as we kept to a routine. I guess your mileage has varied from mine, though.

And yeah, it’s not supposed to be your only social outlet. Catch up with people who you’ve known from other parts of your life.

I apologize if my tone was inappropriate. My mileage definitely varied. I also found myself living without a car in the suburb of a new city with an absentee wife that didn't appreciate any of my sacrifices or my hard work (and I also consulted part time). She couldn't be relied upon for anything other than a paycheck. Obviously these things also played a role.

No worries, and yeah, most of US suburbia seems almost intentionally designed to stifle community formation, it’s pretty bad. We’re lucky that ours seems better than the average in that regard.

Sorry that experience was rough for you, I hope you've gotten to a better place.

> most of US suburbia seems almost intentionally designed to stifle community formation

Intentional how?

Most people do not care about their jobs. And they have jobs, not careers. They work because they get paid. Occasionally they get a brief flicker of satisfaction. More often they enjoy the company of their co-workers. Occasionally they hate their jobs so much that they engage in unhealthy behaviors s as a coping mechanism, like alcoholism, or they quit.

Basically everyone who doesn’t stay heavily involved in their professional field after retirement was doing it almost solely for money. There are better and worse jobs, more and less enjoyable ones. But a huge majority of people have jobs, not careers.

Well, sure, but take a few years off of your "job" and you'll find that your prospects for another job are far fewer and for less pay. I think that's generally what people mean by a career even if they aren't particularly chasing advancement.

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, but those are pretty extreme and sweeping claims. Where do they come from? Here's some data from Gallup, which seems to strongly disagree with at least some aspects of the parent. It shows that every year, going back to 1993, over 80% report being completely or somewhat satisfied with their jobs.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1720/Work-Work-Place.aspx

On the Internet these days I often see contructed claims of extreme despair - about finding a partner, jobs, war, democracy, crime, etc. etc. In a way it matches an older rhetoric of making brazen, extreme, baseless statements that frame the conversation (around the baseless claims rather than the issue at hand), inflame it, and disrupt people who disagree. It's time to think about whose interests the despair serves.

If you have low standards for what you want out of your job being completely or somewhat satisfied with your job is easy. I enjoy the company of my colleagues, have long holidays that allow me to spend a lot of time with my family and occasionally have engaged and diligent students. I’m somewhat satisfied. Would I do this for free? No. But most people have much worse jobs than I do. They get less respect, have less autonomy, less money and work longer hours than I do. They have less intellectual stimulation. Jobs that lots of people find very satisfying are badly paid, incredibly competitive or both. Actors, artists, professors, many people spend a decade or more of their life chasing that dream and never get it.

If you think this is despair I suggest talking to some depressed people. Most people work for money.

I don't understand the reasoning there. It describes your view of your job, but what does that tell us about other people? It states several claims and theories about other people's jobs, but where is any basis? It also says little about their job satisfaction, only what you think of their jobs. Finally, it conflates 'willing to work for free' with job satisfaction, which I don't understand.

I think I do understand your personal view of working, which you are entitled to, but I see no basis for why you think (or I would think) others agree. Also, I have evidence (in the GP) that they overwhelmingly don't and my experience of people also disagrees.

If you get joy from your job that’s great. Good for you. Most people work for money. We can tell because most people stop working when they don’t have to. Their job is not where they get joy in their life. You believe a survey showing people are (somewhat) satisfied with their job shows they get joy from their jobs. I believe it shows they mostly don’t hate their jobs.

I think that’s where disagreement lies.

> Most people work for money. We can tell because most people stop working when they don’t have to. Their job is not where they get joy in their life.

Again, just statements with no evidence. Don't attack mine - provide some!

Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive. Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with. For them, there is no loss.

Also a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society; in my family one generation ago almost everyone was in that situation and I can tell that social interactions were much stronger and more frequent than my generation.

Recognition? That stuff people look for in Facebook likes, Twitter shares and LinkedIn "achievements"? That is attention seeking, not recognition.

Again, broad claims, but based on what?

> Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive.

I have never heard anyone express or imply that. I don't doubt you feel that way, but is there any evidence that it's widespread?

> Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with.

That is almost certainly not true. I believe the evidence says that the great majority switch jobs many times and switch careers several times.

> a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society

I've heard otherwise from homemakers of prior generations - the isolation was one of their primary complaints. And I'm pretty sure I've read about research showing the same. What makes your narrative true?

"Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling"

It's not travelling... If you're staying at home...

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