It is honestly nuts that we were tricked into thinking equality meant our families had to work twice as hard. Single-worker households should be the standard, just, without the gender imbalance.
I'll see you and raise you "single women are happier"'
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-bad-looks-good/2...
Does that really count as coming from a right wing think tank?
The article there just cites a paper, "Gender Asymmetry in Educational and Assortative Marriage", that was in the Journal of Marriage and Family, and has a short interview with one of the paper's authors.
That journal is from the National Council on Family Relations. I can't find anything that suggests they are conservative. If anything what I'm finding in Google tends to have them more on the liberal side of things. E.g., their board's statement against anti-trans legislation [1].
> I'll see you and raise you "single women are happier"'
I don't think you are using "I'll see you and raise you" correctly. It's suppose to be followed by something that contradicts what you are replying to. What your link and his talk about are orthogonal.
https://www.ncfr.org/news/ncfr-board-directors-statement-res...
Additionally, it's easy for better educated women to do that same. Find qualified women in various industries and review the educational qualifications of their male peers who are making more than them and... same outcome.
So yes, I find the source to be problematic. I have not read the cited study itself but I did see that fun Q&A.
Here's a few excerpts from the article you linked:
> On one hand, women’s advantage in education may enable them to be more economically independent and thus put less emphasis on economic traits when evaluating potential spouses (Press, 2004). On the other hand, evidence suggests that men may still feel uncomfortable forming relationships in which they have lower status than their female partners (Bertrand, Kamenica, & Pan, 2015; Fisman, Iyengar, Kamenica, & Simonson, 2006).
> From men’s perspective, although men have placed more importance on the financial prospects of a potential spouse over time (Buss et al., 2001), they may value women’s high status only up to the point when women’s status exceeds their own status (Bertrand et al., 2015; England, 2011; Graf & Schwartz, 2011). For example, a speed dating study found that men did not value women’s intelligence or ambition when it exceeded their own (Fisman et al., 2006). Psychology experiments showed that men’s self-esteem was lower when their partners succeeded than when their partners failed, whereas women’s self-esteem was not affected by their partners’ performance (Ratliff & Oishi, 2013). Although these studies did not directly test men’s reaction to their partners’ education or income, they suggest that men may avoid a potential spouse who has both higher education and higher income than themselves.
> Given a shortage of more-educated men, women may seek to maximize gains from marriage by evaluating potential spouses more on the basis of income. Because mate selection is a two-sided process, it is equally possible that men hesitate to form marital relationships with women who have both more education and higher incomes than they do.
{{citation needed}}
Yes, this is ideal for children.
>...just, without the gender imbalance.
But why take this detour? Why does there need to be a balance? How does enforcing a gender balance help children?
I'm more curious about the motivation behind wanting to force a gender balance.
Assuming you want a more peaceful existence, and for women to have a choice in the matter, society needs to get hands-on to force a gender balance.
I don't think anyone suggested forcing a gender balance.
In the past in the US single-worker households were the standard. The expectation was that except for a few jobs, for example school teacher or nurse, women only worked until they got married.
There was no law that said women doing other kinds of jobs had to leave the workforce when they got married, but many employers strongly favored hiring men. Similar when they wanted to promote someone they would favor men. They didn't particularly have anything against women per say, but felt that a man with a stay at home wife needed the work more than a married woman with a working husband.
When someone wrote:
>> Single-worker households should be the standard, just, without the gender imbalance
I think they had in mind how the single-worker household norm used to work, and by "without the gender imbalance" meant dropping the assumption that in single-worker male/female households the worker should be the man.
I also very much think there would not tend to be an imbalance in a modern advanced economy; we’ll tend to be equal, and that most gender imbalances are just transient effects from history. This is just a prediction, though, I have no data to back it up.
I don’t think there can be data on this, we do not have a statistically robust number of globalized information economies, we have just the one.
I have no particular desire to return to old fashion gender roles, and lots of people who want single income households might, so I want to be very explicit about the fact that I don’t care to defend that position. Which I think is a losing position.
It's tragedy of the commons, race to the bottom, etc.
If everyone else has one income and I have 2, I am suddenly way ahead in the social dominance hierarchy. I liiike.
Before you know it, everyone has followed suit and now nobody's happy.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
There are only a few years of their lives where they need constant care but the costs of all their education will be enormous later in their lives and so a couple that has two earners will be able to out compete a single earner household for all the expensive late-childhood/early-adulthood expenses that will come up.
Education—there’s the cost of providing it, and then there’s the zero-sum competitive component. As far as I can tell we seem to be re-investing all that extra money into deans, administrative staff, and fancy facilities, so I think we should just not play that game.
I don't think there's any way out of that particular game other than not having children; they're going to need to go onto careers, and as much as the education system might suck, it's less grim than the careers they'd face without a degree. My cousin's (I don't have a lot of cousins but we've actually been close our whole lives; we've lived in the same city and I actually consider them my college friends because we also went to the same school) daughter's 3rd birthday is coming up. His ask - no presents, just college contributions please.
I myself opted out of the game early on, and upon a lot of reflection of late, I think this is a significant reason I did although I would have had a hard time articulating it when I was younger.
I feel that I've voted my entire life for more collective solutions to problems (what else is government for?) though imperfect the purveyors of such solutions may be (let's be real, as fashionable as it is to say that both sides are bad, the Democratic party are the only ones trying to actually improve things). But it seems that enough voters go the other direction that we have decided against such solutions. I am truly sorry for the state of things and that children today will inherit these problems.
Seriously though I don't know anyone who has kids as status symbols. That seems quite weird.
Also I suppose living in a desirable neighborhood indicates status to outsiders maybe? I'm not sure what, if any, benefits that perception confers on me.
I may be a little broken in that I don't see the value of status signalling. If I'm nice to people, they're nice to me. That system has suited me increasingly well for decades. I dress for practical comfort, don't have high-ranking frequent flyer membership tier, and routinely get upgrades at the airport because I am sympathetic to the agents' pressures. People recommend me for jobs because I didn't make them feel shitty at work and make a point of boosting other people's contributions.
Between that, and trying to signal something with expensive sneakers or a sports car, I much prefer the approach that makes me feel happy inside, and builds people up rather than trying to make them jealous.