I don't think there have been many societies in human history that don't have some kind of communal child care for that exact reason. It is actually pretty deranged that we have each parent raise their own kids in relative isolation (until school).
If we barter it the economy doesn’t notice.
If we do the wood/fence ourselves the economy diesnt notice
If we charge $1000 each the economy booms more than charging $100 each.
In the first example there are various taxes that you will pay. Income tax. VAT or sales tax. Maybe license fees.
These taxes go to the government, who in turn uses that money in some way.
In the latter two examples tax revenue does not go up.
I don’t have the stats handy, but I am fairly confident that a large portion of the barter income is not reported.
It does. Of course it might not be properly reflected in the statistics but it still creates additional value in the economy.
Now you're thinking with Line Go Up!
The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."
"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
It's more efficient but also better for everyone if kids to grow up socializing and interacting with others in a communal setting than alone at home with one single adult.
Also one could argue insofar this is actually "better for everyone". It will result in kids that are "more socialized" in some way maybe, but not necessarily socialized better. And it also doesn't take into account other developmental aspects.
If I look at young adults here (Europe) that have been more or less raised in daycare vs young adults that have been raised at home, I certainly don't see an advantage for the former (which might have many confounding factors of course).
To put it clearer: The law makes no distinction between a housewife and a unemployed woman, both get half even if the actions that resulted in the divorce were her fault and she engaged in them continously. Keep that in mind if you are unmarried.
They do not. 90% of US households have a total household net worth of less than $300,000. Even if you got all of that, it's not enough to make up for the lack of marketable skills. Similarly, a judge can award all the alimony and childcare in the world, but that does not help you if it does not get paid.
These insane expectations are part of the reason why marriage is a bad deal for the provider.
As with any legal process you can find examples where justice has failed, but overall a world with alimony and child support is way better than the world we had before, where women were condemned to destitution after divorce.
Great deal for women. Horrible deal for men.
Just look at the statistics: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/population-profiles/marital-...
In broad strokes: married people tend to be way wealthier than never married people, and divorced women do much worse than divorced men do. (Women are much poorer across the board also, of course). If your claim was true then the poverty gap between divorced men and divorced women would be much smaller, and we see that's not the case. If alimony/child support is such a raw deal for men it should be visible in the statistics.
Note the poverty rate for men who never got married vs men who got divorced. Marriage is not the raw deal for men you think it is.
And still, in USA, women do file for divorce more, because simply that financial control is not enough to keep someone in. Funny enough, it tends to be be organizations dominated by men who push against no fault divorces and toward even bigger financial dependence of their female partners.
Even if it goes to plan with her getting alimony and partial retirement, she's still dependent on her ex-husband which is a frustrating and often vulnerable position. It means he is still in her life. He can harass and badger her about how she spends money. He may pay, but he might often be late, or sporadic, which causes her bills to be overdue and have late fees. Maybe he starts hiding money, he could even tank his income for a year or two to have the courts change the agreement. None of this stuff is transparent and can be very adversarial.
You are a victim of a common cognitive bias: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
Maybe we could start with making the minimum wage a living wage again so this doesn't happen.
And I'm very ambivalent about this. The problem with "justice" here is that the govt. has no incentive to cut off alimony because it means the govt. foots the bill. That's why even some outrageous outliers like someone's sperm being stolen from a bank has resulted in that man paying alimony. Judges exist to cover edge cases like that and its just not being done.
Also, alimony and child support are two different things.
What you call accountability for partner at home is not accountability. It is just complete helplessness and dependence.
Go to family court as a woman, make up a sob story about abuse and provide no evidence and you'll have the power to prevent a father from seeing his children. That father is experiencing helplessness. Having to get a job isn't, that's accountability.
Otherwise said, being at home makes you very vulnerable and puts you at risk of poverty. The longer you stay, the worst off you are. I am not the one pushing for the system where one parent has to sacrifice his or her independence when kids are born. I am just saying that if economy requires one of them at home, that person is being put at risk.
> Go to family court as a woman, make up a sob story about abuse and provide no evidence and you'll have the power to prevent a father from seeing his children. That father is experiencing helplessness.
In these situations, when father contests, courts tend to side with father. It takes a lot for father to not be allowed around the children in reality. It is simply not true that a single sob story would made course side with mother.
Also, currently alimony even as those are rare and requires years of being without income. At that point, you can defend yourself by divorcing partner that does nothing long before alimony kicks in.
It’s not about how we measure it, it’s about actual productivity. Having some sort of communal childcare which allows the majority of parents to work full time will always be more productive.
> work inside the home should have a value higher than zero.
And it does. You don’t spend money on childcare and other services and can spend it on something else (assuming you have it).
What's measured is the amount paid. Hiring exclusively 1-on-1 tutors is "more productive" than communal childcare. Paying more money for the same services is also "more productive."
That’s not obvious, those tutors might be doing something else which is more productive instead.
Just spending money does not do much on it’s own. e.g. paying $100 for a good/service when you can get an equivalent for $50 doesn’t “increase” productivity it just means your money is worth less.
If children educated by private tutors are not significantly more productive than those from a normal school longterm that would only lead to lower productivity/higher inflation.
But you lose, at least in the UK, from tax. If a married couple works, they each get tax allowances; first 10k is tax free, each, and then the next 30k is taxed at 20%, and the rest (up to 100k) is taxed at 40%.
If one person works and the other doesn't, they exist in a world where most couples work and bid up house prices, and they're taxed more for it. It's massively disincentivised to have a parent who raises your own kids and does other community activities (e.g. be on PTAs/school boards), unless you earn so much you can push through it.
Add up extra food costs (vs cooking at home) and extra cleaning costs ($140 every two weeks so about $4k and the value prop of having one SAH parent doesn't look as bad (which is what several college-educated friends have done, sp the ones with 2+ kids)
I suppose what I meant more would distinguish between valid services that you buy because it makes your life easier, e.g. cleaning help, and government-mandated disincentives to stay at home, e.g. tax brackets.
because it's becoming less and less viable to not give it up. That's why many simply don't have kids, or are having the later.
Yea its called multigenerational housing.
Some families can make multigenerational housing work well, but it's not a realistic general solution for affordable child care.
Personally, it worked out for me. raise in my grandparents house until I was 12, but also grew up to see my parent go to military for ~6 years and my uncles getting kicked out later on as well. It's far from perfect but increasing divorce rates don't exactly show that being separated is better.
This is our life now…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
As far as housing affordability, there are plenty of affordable homes in the US. You just have to be willing to live there.
yeah, other countries just call that "taking care of family" instead of treating it like a free handout. Beware that the US "kick the kids out the nest" mentality isn't a shared one worldwide, and even in the US is a fairly recent phenomenon.
>there are plenty of affordable homes in the US. You just have to be willing to live there.
maybe now, very recently with workplaces in tech specifically opening up to remote work. That wasn't the case when I graduated college as recent as 5 years ago. You don't get much negotiation for remote work and move wherever the job you choose takes you.
What you describe as a digital nomad lifestyle for you and your spouse speaks to your experience and value. Young 18-23 year olds don't get that flexibility in their new careers, nor have the savings lying around to start cosidering that.
You're not. You're full on Gen X. Your parenty (probably) were boomers.
I'm also pretty certain than in, say, more ancient societes, even if there was communal child care, it wasn't a 1:10+ ratio.
And even if. The decision is basically, would you rather be working for your children, or for "the man"?
It's a good thing those daycare's aren't just one person renting out a large building, in that case. Real shame the people getting the most money out of it aren't doing any caregiving, though.
>And even if. The decision is basically, would you rather be working for your children, or for "the man"?
Sure, if most people could help it, they would never work a day in their life if they got 10m dollars (post tax). Not everyone, but I wager 80+%.
But that's not the fantasy we live in. While it was great to encourage women into the work force, the government took nasty advantadge of the 2-income households and made it the standard, all while spending power atrophied for decades. Now childcare is rising so much that it's more financially viable to NOT work for some parent's cases. It's all a mess.
Not all of it, but enough to kind of not make it worthwhile anymore (even from a purely financial perspective, not considering factors that parents might actually want to be with their kids ;)
The quality of communal childcare varies widely; and having seen some examples of under-stimulating and inattentive care settings, I’d say the choice to raise one’s own children can be more rational than deranged, particularly if you have a caring and empathic relationship with your own children. In my own n=1 experiment, the decision to leave behind an income in the mid six figures to stay home with my child during her early formative years was anything but deranged.
Not quite. The rule is generally 6-8 kids depending on what state you are in, and the younger they get the lower the number is. 3-4 under 5 years old and only 2 under 2 years old.
1:10 is only valid for preschool age. It gets more expensive for kids under 30 months.
But the other benefit is that your kid has other kids to play with, and learns out how to interact with kids and adults outside of their own home (e.g. they learn how to stand in line and such). It is also a huge boon for the kids if their parents are less engaged (i.e. avoid excessive screen time).
The commercial daycare center is hardly the ideal model, but it is at least something besides total individualism.
The great part about this arrangement is that the adults get to plan all kinds of community events for families and kids. Parties, get togethers, camping trips, etc. Our lives are richer because of it and more communal because we're not all sitting in cubicles each day.
It's amazing and way less isolating than my own childhood of daycare. My kids get solid friends who they see almost everyday. We know the families well so they see their friends in more than one context.
Being a stay at home parent doesn't literally mean staying at home.
And to address the last point, my in laws live two blocks away, so my kids get a lot of time with them. And my parents live a short drive so we see them multiple times a week.
And it's an actually community. Not some "I care for your kids because I get paid for it".
in my experience, this is a feature of city dwelling. when people live in villages there’s a tendency to have the same neighbors for a lifetime, and so to form more lasting bonds, which allows the full expression of our humanity. i have lived in some french villages and the community i experienced there isn’t different from how anthropologists described community among primitive cultures.
My parents did the “right thing” and delayed having children until they could feed us. I delayed getting married until I felt stable. In previous generations, I’d imagine my parents would look after my children while I was out tending goats or tilling a farm but it would be incredibly unfair for me to expect my aging parents to look after a child.
I can’t make the math work no matter how I slice it. I had a very fortunate childhood considering the childhood my parents had. If I have children, I want to give them at least the same level of comfort and security which right now I can’t. I think people who are having multiple children without thinking it through are being extremely selfish.