alt Hacker NewsIt is also kind of forced. Modern industrial society wants to extract as much productivity out of workforce as possible. What that means is in 1965 one income was able to sustain a household but now we need two incomes. There is no dedicated support for kids now so fathers have to give up time and mothers have to exchange child-mother bonding time from kids to the company.
The real benefiter of this is the capitalist who can now have twice the workforce at the price of one.
How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.
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I help with my kid a lot, and I'm remote so I do it around the clock. I take contact naps, change every diaper, watch her for periods of time so my wife is free.
my wife doesn't work. and she didn't work before we had a baby. because one of our salaries was enough, so instead we work less. and again due to remote work, work has barely been top 5 in my life focus areas for the last decade.
Kind of forced economically but also culturally.
In the 1950s, fathers worked and paid for everything. Mothers raised the kids. This was taught in schools, girls were steered into marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping and men into vocations or college.
Let's not pretend that many women didn't go to work so they could have more, and feel like they were a more complete person. Many people just don't want to be pigeonholed into roles defined by tradition, and the 1960s were a huge rebellion against this. This wasn't some grand capitalist scheme.
It's still possible to raise a family on one professional income, if you live like most people did in the 1960s. Can you do it on minimum wage? No, but you couldn't do it then either.
> 1965
You may not like it, but women benefited a lot. And fought a lot to get those benefits.
Not just in terms of money. They are beaten less. When they are beaten or constantly insulted, they can leave and feed themselves.
Have to disagree as a father. The real benefit is the father and child who are now bonding. That doesn't mean the mother can't also bond, it just means it's not one sided.
> The real benefiter of this is the capitalist ...
Tired old socialist rhetoric.
The real benefiter of this is the state which can now have many times the tax base at the price of none. Where women used to take care of the children and do the housekeeping those tasks are now often done by paid day care, taxed by the state and paid help, again taxed by the state. From a single tax payer a family - father, mother, two children - now supplies two tax payers and several 'downstream' tax payers.
My spouse and I are single-income and I still try. It's not about economic output, but rather there are things I want my son to know that I can only teach him by being present in his life.
> How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.
Considering that the current political majority in the US wants people to have more kids, this would be a really reasonable thing to do if they were serious about that.