[Disclaimer: this is a heated opinion. It's not "unpopular" but it's one of those discussion topics that seems to make people get real defensive real quick.]
This is one of the biggest tenants of second-wave feminism. The work that has been (and still is) shouldered on women: homemaking, homesteading, cooking, cleaning, laundry, family logistics (sometimes called mental labor), child rearing, is criminally undervalued. This is an everyone problem. Women undervalue the work just as much as men. This becomes really evident when you have "double income" households with kids and start having to pay out of pocket for that work and realize that it's hard to bring in enough income to pay for just the babysitter and you don't get any of the other stuff with it.
The problem is that being a housewife/househusband is career suicide despite the fruits of all that labor being huge and realized directly by the family without uncle sam or the babysitting service taking a cut. Your household in a very literal sense is richer for having a homemaker but it doesn't show up on your paystub. People look down on the work since it's "unskilled" and is saturated in stigma. Plus the value is hard to quantify accurately since it materializes as a lack of expenses and feels like a cost center -- shoutout to my fellow IT and ops friends who can relate.
And it also puts the homemaker in a very vulnerable position because you need dollars to survive which puts far too much power in the hands of the “breadwinner.” The institutions we have don’t do enough to address this imbalance and it’s not an easily solved problem. Right now the answer is that everyone in a household works but as we’re seeing this has actually made households poorer because a day-job’s take home pay wouldn’t pay a housewife’s salary unless you’re quite wealthy.
That’s a very astute observation. I honestly never quite looked at it that way. I love my kids and am so grateful to be able to provide for them. I can’t imagine trying to do it on my own, or if my wife had a full time job. It would be impossible, or nearly.
all I can say is that we have a 2 yr old and a 4.5 month old. I have no idea what we are going to do when my wife returns from mat leave to work. all options currently have high impact on both of our workable time. (we are > 13 hrs flight from any family)
[+] [-] HenryKissinger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spivak|5 years ago|reply
This is one of the biggest tenants of second-wave feminism. The work that has been (and still is) shouldered on women: homemaking, homesteading, cooking, cleaning, laundry, family logistics (sometimes called mental labor), child rearing, is criminally undervalued. This is an everyone problem. Women undervalue the work just as much as men. This becomes really evident when you have "double income" households with kids and start having to pay out of pocket for that work and realize that it's hard to bring in enough income to pay for just the babysitter and you don't get any of the other stuff with it.
The problem is that being a housewife/househusband is career suicide despite the fruits of all that labor being huge and realized directly by the family without uncle sam or the babysitting service taking a cut. Your household in a very literal sense is richer for having a homemaker but it doesn't show up on your paystub. People look down on the work since it's "unskilled" and is saturated in stigma. Plus the value is hard to quantify accurately since it materializes as a lack of expenses and feels like a cost center -- shoutout to my fellow IT and ops friends who can relate.
And it also puts the homemaker in a very vulnerable position because you need dollars to survive which puts far too much power in the hands of the “breadwinner.” The institutions we have don’t do enough to address this imbalance and it’s not an easily solved problem. Right now the answer is that everyone in a household works but as we’re seeing this has actually made households poorer because a day-job’s take home pay wouldn’t pay a housewife’s salary unless you’re quite wealthy.
[+] [-] dundercoder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArkVark|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] shock|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] BookPage|5 years ago|reply