Comment by pmarreck
1 year ago
Maybe expecting every single person to work and no one to homestead and care for the kids, within a system that explicitly does not support families, was a mistake. (Please note that I did not gender the roles. My best friend is a stay-at-home dad and he is amazing. They can afford to do this, though, because his wife's compensation is extremely high.)
Expectations are part of it, but regardless of compensation or lack thereof it turns out that a lot of adults simply prefer to work outside the home instead of caring for children. Child rearing is essential, and rewarding in many ways. But it's also exhausting, repetitive, and frustrating. It's not surprising that given the choice many adults would rather spend time around other adults instead of children. In the past most societies kind of "solved" this inherent problem by artificially restricting women's but obviously that's not acceptable or even feasible now.
> a lot of adults simply prefer to work outside the home instead of caring for children
Or they think that they do, due to what the zeitgeist urges. We can never really know.
What's the difference? People want what they want, it's always been this way. No one makes life choices in a cultural vacuum.
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No matter the gender of the one staying at home, it creates a problematic power imbalance between the two parts of the couple, where one depends on the other and may be left in trouble if ever the couple should find an end.
True, which was solved like 8,000 years ago by religion/culture, saying you have to marry and support the mother of your children.
It wasn’t perfect of course. Abuse has always been a problem.
Yes, everyone has greater absolute freedom now that we have divorce, and abuse victims are better off, but we have not developed a functioning cultural replacement for the previous cultural arrangement. So, now we have a smaller abuse problem and 2 new problems: both spouses having to maintain excellent careers just in case they get divorced (at the expense of their children and their relationship with their children), AND for those relationship relationships that do end, one or both are still in trouble, as now two households have to be supported with the same amount of income.
I’m not proposing a solution. It’s hard. But I’m just pointing out how we specifically ruined this by completely throwing away the idea of marriage for life and replacing it with “marriage until you’re tired of the person”
PS: I’m divorced (though no kids with that marriage) and remarried, so I’m not pretending to be a moral authority.
No one removed the idea of marriage until you’re tired of the person. Women simply gained civil rights and the ability to earn money and support themselves.
It was commonly accepted for men to have affairs and mistresses, or otherwise neglect wives. Now that they have negotiating power, fewer deals are made, which is to be expected.