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Comment by Yujf | Hacker News Reader

How is it not liberating to not be dependant on another human being for everything?

It's liberating to give yourself entirely to another person, to make a supreme act of trust and faith and love, to say to that person that he is everything in your life now, and you forsake all others, because he is worthy of your trust and faith and love. It is liberating to be protected, to be cherished, to be placed on a pedestal. It is liberating to have someone who will lay down his life for you and your children. It is liberating to promise to each other that you will stay together, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer; that is liberation from worry, from doubt, from fear. It is liberation from want or need or desolation, because no matter what happens in the family's life, you will have each other. It is liberating to come together in complementarity, to each take half of the duties and rights and responsibilities of a marriage, and to be able to complete one another in terms of household responsibilities, child rearing, earning income, social activities.

I've seen some rather un-liberated comments above, such as "oh no! we could never make it as a family on a single income! both spouses need to work... or else!" "who can afford children in this economy? we're DINKs for life; we barely get by!" so it's rather apparent to me who is enslaved.

Better than being dependent on a soulless employer, while still having to take care of the family.

Actually, being able to depend on someone you trust is the real liberation.

In premodern times, it wasn't so much trust as societal mandate. You have to imagine that domestic abuse and neglect ran rife and was just accepted as par for the course.

What’s so different in modern times? Exploitative employers have taken their place via social mandate.

As pointed out elsewhere, far more flexibility in changing employees over changing domestic partners, even if that has gotten easier as well.

And as terrible as bad employers might be, they usually cannot inflict the levels of physical and emotional abuse that bad spouses can. Business, not personal.

Like a wage? I think we are all dependent on others either way.

It's not quite the same thing though, is it? You can walk away from one employer and go to another as long as you have employ-able skills. It's much harder to walk away from a marriage that is not working out for one and if some financial independence makes it easier to, then so be it!

I'm not arguing against choice, I'm arguing that despite downsides there are merits to having a homemaker and viewing the household as a team rather than a collection of individuals.

Perhaps the more equitable route is a household where both work fewer hours so both can be breadwinner and homemaker.

There’s the concept of ensuring a family wage, rather than an individual’s own living wage.

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