Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight.
Rinse. Repeat.
Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than their fathers etc. I'm sure we'll make plenty of our own mistakes that our children will try to avoid when their turn comes.
Guess why birth rates are crashing - and why they crash hardest in Asia, especially Japan.
Throughout human history, it was rare for only two people to raise a child, let alone one. Or for women to not bring money into the home.
Like many "trad" trends, it's based more on advertising and television than history.
"It takes a village to raise a child" was meant literally. However, the glory of capitalism required people to move to where the jobs were, turning that millennia-old principle upside down ever since industrialization. And car culture was the ultimate fatal blow, when children can't even walk their own neighborhood any more.
And when BLM made it part of their charter to encourage community support for children beyond the typical nuclear unit they were accused of a radical Marxist agenda to "destroy families."
For some reason the very concept of extended families and community engenders deep anger and hostility from some Americans, and that's odd for a nation of immigrants considering how common the "whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins" is in the rest of the world.
It's not like leftists are known for their traditional family values now or then, so why should it be taken that way?
Also given how many people espousing "traditional family values" among the right turn out to be abusers, pedophiles, rapists, deadbeats, etc, what you might consider "traditional" values don't actually mapped to the left-right political axis at all.
And I assume you didn't bother reading my comment or this thread very hard and just wanted to dunk on the left, but the American nuclear family isn't "traditional family values" to begin with.
I think because excessive individualism plays into the hands of large companies. There is an individualist culture that has naturally grown over time in the US, but it has also been pushed by big corporations because if you can't depend on your neighbors and extended family, you need to spend money to fill the gaps.
I would like to see good statistics on this.
And your wife’s opinion on her choices.
My wife self-reports as very happy and talks a lot about how proud she is of the decision. I'll acknowledge that we are privileged in terms of support -- 3 relative families within 30 minutes and most people in a 100 meter radius attend the same church. Even in our setup, however, we really wish we could swing a multi-generational setup and have grandparents around all the time.
Maybe the Amish are on to something!
The aforementioned “trad households” do not have a financially independent wife, which is what nradov is referring to when they write
> force the wife into becoming an unpaid caregiver for her in-laws
Typically, the in laws or the husband would control the assets, and hence be able to exert more influence.
> For my family, if we had more options -- ie, more money -- then both of us would be stay-at-home parents.
In the absence of a trust fund, most women (and men) will choose to be able to fend for themselves.
Why would you need or even want to be independent? Why would you plan to form a family while keeping your options open/having one foot out the door?
What you are describing is pretty much ideal for a lot of people, but it's not what everybody gets.
Assuming you want a family, your very top priority when evaluating someone for dating from the very beginning should be whether that person would make a good spouse and help you to form that family. Otherwise what are you even doing? Someone who can't commit is its own red flag for that purpose. If you have kids, that's it. You're in it. You need to be committed.
And having a job doesn't mean you're independent of your spouse anyway. If one of us died or we split, it'd be absolutely devastating to our family regardless of the money (e.g. if life insurance/social security covered everything). I would be hugely screwed trying to raise the kids without her, job notwithstanding.
I mean people do not naturally grow up wanting to stare at a desk/PC all day deciding to become a scientist or a doctor and study a bunch of shit that his almost no relation to what humans were adapted for for millions of years. Our evolutionary programming was to bang, have kids, and roam the jungle and grab the resources and satisfy our short brutish lives.
Now the fact that something is evolutionarily natural or historically normal doesn't mean it is good or right. But just letting loose on that particular natural instinct tends to be more accepted in conservative societies while in the city or liberal areas teenage (past age of consent) pregnancy is seen maybe more of something they will shame you for. You're supposed to do a pretty unnatural thing of staring at books until you're 22 or 26 and then stare at a computer screen so you can get a good job to pay a gazillion dollars for childcare delivered by minimum wage workers. You're supposed to take your time and maybe about the time your biological clock has run out, you pay $20,000 for IVF and you do a speedrun.
So which is a greater imposition of societal pressure? I won't claim conservative societies don't exhibit more social pressure than liberal ones. But on this point, it's not clear to me the conservative one is doing the greater of the pressuring.
Because I would want my kids to be able to get out of an abusive partnership if they needed to. See the history of domestic abuse.
> Why would you plan to form a family while keeping your options open/having one foot out the door?
Everyone should have options open for basic sustenance. Death, abuse, job b loss, etc. As they say in engineering, two is one and one is none.
My wife currently stays home with the kids, although that might change down the road. She doesn't have any trust fund or inheritance either, of course.
However, although I'm earning the money, it's 100% a shared resource. It goes into a shared account. I'm pretty sure that's a legal necessity since we're married, but it's how we'd choose to do it anyway. There's no division between my finances and hers.
We married each other to be a team together forever, but even if we separated, our finances would be divided in half between us. If we'd wanted to fend for ourselves, we wouldn't have gotten married, and certainly wouldn't have had kids.
She feels sorry for me having to go to work every day, but it's a logical division of labor because I have much higher earning prospects.
I say this because I want to understand your definition; are we a traditional household in your view?
In the context of the original comment by pkaler, and subsequent replies from basswood, mschuster91, purplerabbit, and nradov, I understood "trad household structures" to be one where the man in a husband/wife relationship sells his labor to someone else and the woman does not.
So yes, but, I would note that there is probably a difference (for the purposes of this conversation) between the following:
A couple that earns median income per year and still chooses to have only one income earning spouse specifically so the other spouse can spend more time with the kids, whilst making significant sacrifices in other aspects of life such as school district, kids' activities, vacations, material goods, etc.
And a couple where one earns significantly above median income and can afford to have only one income earning spouse without making significant sacrifices.
In the context of the entire chain of comments, I would assume purplerabbit was referring to the first type of couple, who choose to forego many of life's luxuries in favor of child rearing, and that is the type of "household structure" that nradov was saying is not popular, except "when women have no other options" (i.e. women's rights allowing them to be financially independent).
>However, although I'm earning the money, it's 100% a shared resource. It goes into a shared account. I'm pretty sure that's a legal necessity since we're married, but it's how we'd choose to do it anyway. There's no division between my finances and hers.
There isn't in my marriage either, but I would still advise my wife to maintain her ability to earn income in case I were to go crazy, lose my job, or some other risk. And I would advise my daughter of the same.
But the point is, we both would prefer to be home with the children, and it's only for want of money that either (or both) of us would work. The privilege is being able to stay home; the sad reality is having to work at the office to earn a living.
It just strikes me (and her too) that the conversation around this issue is framed so backwards, as though everyone deeply wants to spend their waking days at an office desk / driving an Uber / etc, whereas spending time with your children is a miserable burden that people only do if forced it with no other options. I get that might be the case for some people, especially if they hate their family or have an abusive partner, but to me it's an alien mindset. Work is the abusive partner that we can't escape from, but tolerate for the kids.
I don't think this is it, which is why I brought up a trust fund in one of my previous comments.
This comes down to personal risk tolerances, but it seems evident that many people feel that volatility in job markets and shrinking economic opportunities mean that there is a sufficient gain in security of housing/food/energy/healthcare/future economic opportunities such that it can be worth a sacrifice in spending time with children.
My parents moved to the US, along with their extended families from a developing country, and they almost all spent 24/7 working to develop businesses or whatever to ensure the kids had more opportunity than them. And they succeeded, most of my cousins do very well for themselves, and they can have a spouse that stays at home without decreasing their kids' future chances, but some don't (perhaps because their parents ended up in a stagnant metro rather than a growing one, that one factor is the single biggest difference in trajectories in my family).
It is easier than ever to be outcompeted by someone else around the world, so there is kind of an up or out situation for those that aim for maintaining a certain quality of life. It's also fine to opt out of that rat race, but from my perspective, the biggest cost is less access to healthcare.
I would note that the whole one spouse spending time with kids thing is probably a post world war 2 American/British phenomenon. Even in village life in developing countries, both the husband and wife are out working in factories or fields while grandparents who can't work anymore or older siblings and cousins are taking care of the kids. It's a grind for most people, most of the time.
In this framing, being able to have a stay-at-home parent is a privilege to be treasured. Not everyone can manage it, which is a tragedy.
Of course, for those who don't want to be a parent and prefer their job, that's fine too. Some people, whether men or women, just yearn for the mines. I wouldn't say that any such people should be pressured to be a stay at home parent. Hopefully they can be happily childless, or else partner with someone who enjoys raising children, or else get support from grandparents or the community.
What I simply object to is a framing that views being a "traditional" stay at home parent as an intrinsically miserable or undesirable role, when it's what so many of us factory workers wish we could do ourselves but can't afford to. When a (loving, non-abusive) couple can afford to have one parent stay at home, my wife and I both view that stay-at-home parent as the lucky one.
> Those household structures aren't popular, they're just common when women have no other options.
I agree with what yours, and point out that it applies equally to men. I was 25 when we decided to have our first child and while I would make the same decision knowing what I know now, I didn't have anything near an accurate idea of what the impact would be on my life as a whole.
Basically, I wasn't taking exception to the idea of an irrevocable decision made with incomplete context; I was taking exception to the idea that it's somehow unique to women - because it's not.
I would add though that while making bad choices is not unique to women, when it comes to mariage, lots of society used to make it so much easier on men. Men could/can escape home in work, hobbies, etc with much less judgement than women. It’s gotten better in some parts of the world, definitely not all, and last years the trend is rather backward I feel.
Your comment seems to imply that they’re stupid.
Of course the spouse has the risk the other ex-spouse will sabotage themselves and end their incomes to avoid paying the order, at which point they may be thrown into prison if they are found. But are they worse off than the employee who can be fired at a moment's notice and go broke by a boss who isn't sabotaging himself at all and bound by no such judicial order? Maybe so, but it's not by some gigantic long shot.
Here's my routine.
5am: wake up/coffee
5:30ish: gym
6:30ish: back, clean kitchen, take out trash, make lunch for 2 kids
7:30: nanny arrives, and I sit down at desk, and kids are now awake
8:30: walk older kid to school
9-5:30: work or whatever else. I run my own business so some days feel very busy, some the opposite. I just try to be intentional with my time.
5:30 p: start dinner
6:30 p: dinner (or earlier depending on demands)
7:30 p: kid bed time
8:15-8:30: done w/kids. time for a bit of TV or wind-down, catch up with my wife about her day for as long as I can manage to stay awake
9:30-10: bed time (ideal day)
I stopped working at night unless it is critical for a next-morning thing. That leaves me absent from some opportunities that I might otherwise get spending more time on work, but I also have more time to focus on me/marriage/non-work-life
My point in sharing is that I make space on purpose for me. Your schedule sounds (and I am presuming) like you don't have much time for you. Is that right?