Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women
axios.comIt's election season and I've been out talking to voters, who share their life stories... what I would say is that there are many women who are choosing WFH because they either can't afford or can't find day care, which may lead to deciding that hey, they might as well have another baby if they are now committed to this employment model. I've spoken to several women who were over-qualified for the jobs they had taken to WFH, but felt it was the best job situation for their families - spouse could then take on new career opportunities when both weren't struggling with commutes, day care, etc. So this article feels like it is overlooking the way women have stepped up for their families often to the detriment of their own careers.
> women have stepped up for their families often to the detriment of their own careers
Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society. Women are the only humans that can produce children and they have to do it during a relatively short time window - especially if we want to reproduce at replacement level. Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it.
I’m not sure how western society will continue if we view raising a child instead of having a career as “stepping up”. It’s certainly disrespectful to all the mothers of our future.
> Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it.
This seems pretty reductionist to me. Men can absolutely raise children. Husbands in heterosexual couples should absolutely be raising their children and not leaving the entire task of raising them to their wives. Gay men can also raise children. I don't think you meant to be disrespectful, but when you essentialize like this you end up putting women in a box where their role in society is defined by their biology, and you put men in a box where they feel like they can't and shouldn't participate in certain kinds of labor, leading to women shouldering an unfair proportion.
An anecdote that helped this hit home for me was a story this father told about a neighbor of his. He'd be running errands at the grocery store or whatever, with his kids in tow, and he'd run into his neighbor (also a father) who'd say something like, "Oh, you're stuck babysitting again?" And he didn't have the words to tell him, "I'm not babysitting, I'm raising my kids." The neighbor viewed it as his wife's responsibility to be looking after the kids, and if he was participating in this, it was some sort of exception; and furthermore, a chore.
Personally, that's not the sort of father or husband I intend to be.
If you're breastfeeding, it's gotta be the woman. And ideally, you are breastfeeding.
Beyond that, most women strongly want to be with their babies. There was a NYT article a few years back about the boom of internet baby monitors, and it was kind of heartbreaking -- a bunch of women sitting at their desks glued to their baby monitors wishing they could be with their babies.
I think we've really fucked up as a society when "women can have kids and be with them" is considered strange or a luxury -- it should be the most natural thing in the world.
No profit in it, though.
We breastfed our daughter. Her mother pumped to cover times when she was working, and I fed our daughter. The only time this was an issue was when her mother left for a week-long conference. Accumulating supply for that period (and her dealing with the unused supply while away) was mildly challenging but we managed just fine.
I then went on to quit work and stayed home to raise our daughter (she's now nearing 28 year old).
I'm a strong believer in having a stay-at-home parent, but this "women raise children" thing needs to stop.
We could go even further: You don't need the mother at all; you can always just raise the baby on formula.
But that doesn't change that the mother-child bond is a unique and special thing, and that there are real benefits to breast-feeding, straight from the breast.
And beyond, the simple fact is that many women really want to be with their babies.
It's misguided to pretend that there aren't biological realities underlying these preferences. We should try to tailor our policies to meet the desires of the most people possible.
(Not, of course, in a coercive way! If a mother would like to continue working and pump, then of course she should be supported in that. In past societies maybe this was the fight that needed to be fought, but now I think it's the opposite.)
The evidence for the benefits of breast milk is overwhelming at this point, and vastly outweighs the evidence for specifically breastfeeding-induced bonding as a factor in a child's early life. So no, there is no reason to advocate for formula and several reasons not to.
We should be adovcating for more parent-child bonding, however that happens; for more opportunities for parents to make whatever choices they wish to regarding the work/parenting issues during their child's early (entire?) life; for the normalization of public breastfeeding; for better parental leave policies; and more.
None of these things require pushing some point that raising children is naturally women's work (even if breastfeeding itself is).
Yes we absolutely should encourage bonding and normalize public breastfeeding. But cut out the other breastfeeding nonsense.
The evidence is not at all overwhelming, and flies in the face of a couple of generations of formula fed people who turned out fine.
All anyone does by repeating that line is make people feel bad when they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Especially women.
The generations who were raised in the fumes of leaded gasoline also seemed "fine" but the long term statistics after we switched to unleaded gasoline show that we're way better off now.
An equivalence that does not bear out for baby formula.
Whoever wants to feed their baby breast milk or formula, do what you want. There’s enough anxiety in raising a child, we should be aware of when we might be increasing it in others for no good reason. GP could’ve supplemented their baby’s diet with formula while his wife was gone and everyone would’ve been fine.
Well said. I'm aware of one large-scale randomized control trial of breastfeeding. It found a slight reduction in ear infections and other infections early in life, and no change in IQ in the teenage years. So yes, breastfeeding has benefits, but the amount of pressure people feel to breastfeed is disproportionately high.
No disagreement about any of those things. I would just add:
It should be easy for women who wish to be with their babies and breast-feed them to do so.
It should also be easy for dads!
BTW, I'm about two weeks out from becoming a father. I only get 2 months paternity leave, but if I were the mother, I'd get 4! This seems unfair to me, but it's certainly better than if the policy were reversed.
It seems like there's just some built-in conflict between an intensely competitive capitalist society and the human needs of a family. I might do something like mandatory 4 years leave (in 1 year chunks) for all people, spread out from 20 to 40. You can spend that being with your kid, doing some sort of civic-project, or serving in the military.
Just spitballing'. Always fun to try to design a utopia. :-)
Congrats!
I have 2-month old and before he was born lot of people said to me that "dads can't do much in the first 6 months". I was like ok, we'll see how it goes.
After he was born, I quickly realize dads can absolutely do everything except feed the baby directly from the breast. Breastfeeding itself, depends on the baby and mom, is fairly quick, maybe like takes 15mins every few hours. That leaves about ~22 hours each dad can be part of the activities, like changing diapers, bathing, soothing, having the baby sleep on you, putting the baby to sleep, reading, changing clothes, singing etc.
This "dads can't do much", "there is just this bond with the mom" and "it's biology" seems like bullshit or an easy out from taking responsibility. The bond happens if you just spend time with the baby.
Absolutely! There's a lot that dads can do, and what's more, I think dads are absolutely essential during the first two weeks, when mom is still recovering from having just pooped an entire baby out of their system.
Society is making way too many excuses for men to avoid raising their children, and it really needs to stop.
Thanks! What you say makes a lot of sense to me. (And for my part, I already feel a ridiculous amount of bond/attachment/love, just feeling the little guy/girl squirming around in there!)
Congratulations to you as well! I have a two year old and I had the same realization when I was on paternity leave. You just said it better than I've been able to.
As a dad, breastfeeding was a great moment to snuggle with my wife and child and have a few minutes of rest.
Congratulations! As someone on the other end of them, those 2 months will go by very fast.
Thanks!
The benefits of both breast milk and breast feeding are nonzero but are often overstated. Many of the studies are not very good.
The book “Lactivism” provides an entertaining account of recent history: https://www.amazon.com/Lactivism-Fundamentalists-Physicians-...
Came to post this ^
Only 30 years ago, the pendulum was fully swung in the direction of formula.
Having gone through the pregnancy gauntlet recently I've found
- There are many studies posited but no one ever talks about the 'n' or the replicability. The studies are almost always asking you to do something uncomfortable or be scared (amnio may cause a miscarriage; the best brain developing breastmilk is the feed btwn midnight and 6am; blah blah blah)
- There are so many people happy to tell women they should just stay home or if they dont they'll miss crucial moments or not develop their children's potential or even ability to love correctly. Oddly this is crucial for society and yet the US society provides near 0 support to make this happen
> ...so many people happy to tell women they should...
People happy to sit on their fat fannies and "supervise" the folks busting their asses to do all the work...yeah. That was old before the first pyramid was put built.
I think in general, it's best to breastfeed if you have the opportunity to do so, but it's not that big a deal if it doesn't work for you and you rely on formula instead. Both work. It's great that both options exist, so you can pick which one works best for you. People get way too uptight about this sort of thing.
Not to mention that society is really hypocritical about it; demanding that women breastfeed, but also criticising them when they actually do so. Can't we give each other a bit more freedom to make our own decisions and trust that most people will be doing a pretty good job at it? Provide info, not judgement.
>But that doesn't change that the mother-child bond is a unique and special thing, and that there are real benefits to breast-feeding, straight from the breast.
Dad, when he actually spends time with kid is exactly the same bond. Really. I have seen that. There is nothing magical about mother-child bond. It is something that was unique in social setting where men are penalized for spending too much time with their kids. Or where men are expected to be disciplinarian after spending all the day outside of house. Or where dads were killed in a war.
Typically the parents conducting this experiment can't tell the difference, but people can who know them but not well enough to be emotionally invested in that family succeeding.
There are absolutely benefits to breast milk over formula, but that doesn't mean that it's the only option or that women need to do all of the child-raising on their own.
Ideally, mothers would receive ample maternity leave to cover the breastfeeding period, fathers would receive ample paternity leave to cover the weeks immediately after birth and the period after the breastfeeding period ends, and both parents would be working part-time most of their careers.
Ultimately, dual-income has turned out to be an ugly bait-and-switch. The point was that women were more free, more independent, more able to develop themselves professionally, and families would be able to live more comfortably with the added income. Instead, it has often lead to families requiring two incomes to even be able to afford a house, mothers having to mix raising children while working while fathers still didn't do their part.
We should all be working a maximum of 24 hours a week by now. We were screwed out of these benefits and all the benefits of this increased productivity has gone to the rich instead of to working families.
> I think we've really fucked up as a society when "women can have kids and be with them" is considered strange or a luxury
It has always been a luxury.
Unless they were wealthy enough to hire domestic servants or happened to participate in the postwar economic boom in the West that reduced the intensity of household domestic labor via household appliances, women of the past also got limited time with their children.
They were doing intense labor at home, in the fields, and as domestic servants for wealthier people. The same scenario happens today, as anyone who has hired in-home childcare knows.
Historically, precious few women could afford not to work, whether that work was compensated or not.
I agree that we should strive for an economic system that gives more parents more options to spend time raising their children, but we shouldn't couch that in faux-naturalistic ideals of what the situation was in the past.
"Do no work and be with your kid" is probably a rarity, but the impression I have is that in traditional indigenous cultures you could do work around your home or village, in a rich social environment of other women and mothers, while being with your baby.
People living this way of life are not working themeslves to the bone; they spend lots of time just hanging out and socializing.
I think the gruling overwork that most of us experience is more a feature of fuedal and then industrial culture, than a natural state of existence.
But still we are in real terms actually super rich, so it should be possible to somehow rearrange things to get back to that ideal, I think.
(Of course there are deeper issues here too -- just having a mom sit at home all alone with her baby is actually not very good either. Really, you want mom and baby to be integrated into a meaningful, rich cultural environment. And I think it would be nice if kids were more integrated into normal life, in general.)
> I think the gruling overwork that most of us experience is more a feature of fuedal and then industrial culture, than a natural state of existence.
Sure, but so are a lot of other features like modern medicine, communications, transportation, that come with industrial culture.
Assuming that you are talking about making the privilege of being a stay-at-home parent universal (independent of one's financial means), then I agree with the goal, but that is only realizable via industrial culture coupled with an income and wealth distribution that makes it possible for only 1 parent in the house to work.
It would also probably require people to live with less. When mothers were staying at home in the 1950s, the median home size was 983 square feet. Today it's about 2700 square feet.
All that extra space and the stuff it is filled with costs a lot, which is another reason that both parents need to work.
I've been looking at real-estate in Austin recently -- all those tiny 1950s houses are still around, and they are not cheap! So I don't think the main causal factor is everyone living in 3000 square foot McMansions.
Plus, technology has made us way more capable -- productivity has increased a lot since the '50s, but wages have not kept up.
Which makes me think it's more of an organizational / incentives kind of thing, rather than a pure amount of wealth kind of thing.
(Something similar going on to the way in an purely competitive market, profits tend to get driven to 0, but with wages and quality of life, perhaps?)
Not only that. We are all ready to go to war to protect the right to abort a pregnancy. But where is the passion wrt rights for mothers to not have to feel like they are abandoning their children after shortly after birthing them because they ran out of (or never had) parental leave?
Our priorities as a society have been inverted in this area.
> Our priorities as a society have been inverted in this area.
No, they have not. The states that protected abortion rights are also the states that offer paid parental leave and paid disability leave to new moms. And the states that restricted abortion rights are the states that offer zero parental leave.
A significant portion of US society supports helping new parents, and especially mothers. It does not have enough votes in the Senate though.
I think you'll find that the cross section of people who support the right to abortion and people who support requiring companies to offer generous parental leave to be quite large.
Pumping and storing breast milk is extremely common. You can absolutely give your child breast milk and work, and I know many professionals who do.
This is really overlooking the complications that MANY women have with pumping: supply drops, increased mastitis (the pumps are not nearly as effective as the real thing), and most of all, lack of real time response to the babies needs.
Just handwaving "but pumps!" really undermines how much effort this takes for women.
This is an excellent point to bring up, and something that cannot (or rather, should not) be ignored.
Still, the approach presumably should be more, not less, support for women who want (need?) to try this?
Pumping isn't a full replacement for breast-feeding, though -- there's bonding that takes place during breast-feeding, there's antibody and bacterial exchange, and the milk produced actually changes throughout the day.
Of course none of this stuff is critical, but I think for most people, the ideal scenario really is breastfeeding, straight from the breast -- and it's a shame that's so hard for so many to do in our society.
Breastfeeding is overhyped.
Both my sibling and I, along with my wife and her siblings were formula fed. My kids were 100% formula-fed as well, because my wife decided she didn't want to waste her time pumping. Both generations are perfectly normal and healthy. We all caught COVID with only minimal symptoms.
Not having to breastfeed took an enormous amount of stress off my wife, and allowed us to split the work of raising our kids more efficiently
In Canada, I've heard that breastfeeding has been taken to a religious morality war, where some parents had to sneak in formula into the hospital because the mother couldn't either breastfeed properly or weren't producing enough, or simply didn't want to.
There are some advantages to breastfeeding and some disadvantages. I think the narrative of companies in the 3rd world trying to hook low-income families on formula should be considered a crime. But there's nothing inherently wrong with formula and it raises perfectly healthy children.
I have friends in North Carolina who had a daughter a couple of years ago. While they were in the hospital, a woman came by their room wearing scrubs and with the usual lanyard of cards around her neck. She told them that she was a lactation consultant and impressed on them that it was vitally important that the mother breastfeed.
Unfortunately, they had a hard time getting their daughter to cooperate.
At their first post-natal checkup with their doctor, their daughter had not gained any weight since leaving the hospital. He told them to just feed her formula and don't worry about it. Apparently, the "lactation consultant" was not affiliated with the hospital in any way and this sort of thing was very common.
I'm sure others with more experience could chime in, but when my wife gave birth there absolutely was a lactation consultant who did much the same as yours, but was affiliated with the hospital and could be asked to come to the postpartum room or NICU and provide assistance.
I find it hard to swallow the idea that rogue agents pretending to be 'lactation consultants' are infiltrating U.S. hospitals (with no affiliation in any way) and tricking new mothers into underfeeding their babies.
Without a doubt, a baby can be formula-fed and thrive.
It also seems certain that there are advantages to being breast-fed. Exactly how strong these are is hard to stay -- as far as I know, all the research is observational, and so it becomes hard to tease out what is the effect of breast-feeding and what is just coming along for the ride (correlated w/ the type of person that prioritizes breast-feeding).
It's still a worthy goal to have a society that makes it easy for women who want to breast-feed to do so.
(And I hear you on the moralizing, which is obnoxious. Let the parents decide what is best for their baby and life situation; it is not anyone else's business.)
There absolutely are RCTs out there for breast milk vs formula- here’s one example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939272/
Very interesting; thx!
> We all caught COVID with only minimal symptoms.
I find this to be a bizarre metric to use.
Exclusive breastfeeding is for 6 months maximum. That is all there is to it. Any older then that, baby eats solids. Also, the stay at home moms are at risk demographic for alcoholism and mental heath issues like depression - cause the situation causes it.
> stay at home moms are at risk demographic for alcoholism and mental heath issues like depression - cause the situation causes it.
Is this true in all societies, or just societies like USA where most people live in car-centric suburbs isolated from any sense of community?
In Africa there are women who go back to work selling things in the town market shortly after their babies are born - with the baby strapped to their back and breast fed on demand. No need for daycare but mom can still work!
I dont think it is just car centric thing. The society I am from is not car centric and you actually do have public parks etc. It is super normal to use them. And also, American families tend to own 2 cars, so being car centric does not leave them locked at home.
> In Africa there are women who go back to work selling things in the town market shortly after their babies are born - with the baby strapped to their back and breast fed on demand. No need for daycare but mom can still work!
I genuinely know much less about social structure in Africa. But I do know that 1 month old being strapped to back in the town market is more likely to get seriously sick - their immune systems are not strong yet. Meaning, this situation happens in places that have much bigger and serious social and health problems. And also, one other question is whether this mom would not picked daycare if she had that option. Moreover, while you can strap baby, you wont strap 4-5 years old and that means they spend a lot of time without supervision too.
Which is by the way origin of kindergarten - many 4 years old being unsupervised in German streets as both parents worked 12 hours a day in a factory. Which is default state whenever place is not rich, moms having a lot to do while kids do what they do (and it gets them into problems).
Men can raise children, but cannot get pregnant or breast feed. Going through that cycle with potentially multiple children is a big time investment that cannot be delegated to men.
Beyond that, yes, men are perfectly capable of performing child rearing tasks. Note, of course, this does not negate the argument against a two income family. Having a society where one income can support a family means fathers can devote themselves to raising their children, and so can mothers. Or alternate roles. Or one full time career and one part time career.
Out of a 40-year career, how much time do you think a woman needs to physically be absent from her job due to pregnancy and breastfeeding?
That last anecdote is a generational change, regardless, I think. I’m probably close to your age, have a family and a traditional income-producer/homemaker marriage, and I bristle at terms like “babysitting” and “watching the kids.” I’m their dad!
Thank you for this comment. I have a two year old daughter and a less demanding job than my wife. That might switch in the future. I love to be able to spend so much time with my little girl. The idea that my wife should somehow be doing more than me is insulting to us both.
People's role in society shouldn't be determined by their biology, but the manner in which their biology manifests in their life outcomes is determined by their biology.
> People's role in society shouldn't be determined by their biology,
Why not (even if only partially)? Biology at the individual level has physical consequences, which necessarily affects the available roles and roles chosen. It makes no sense to expect that this relationship is different in aggregate.
Because your biology doesn't determine your destiny within society and the interests of liberty is not in tying you to it. For instance; a woman is entitled to choose not to have children, for any reason or for no reason at all. While it is a biological fact that only women can have children (or indeed can breastfeed), it does not follow, as a fact about how we conduct our society, that women are uniquely capable of raising children, or that it is their role within our society to birth & raise children. When we structure our society in an essentialising way, we create injustices for both men and women (to say nothing of trans and nonbinary people, who are erased by these essentialized framings, which for instance can lead to them being discriminated against in the adoption process), though women bare the vast majority of them.
You're seriously saying that in a forum dedicated to software engineering and technology?
I'm not sure what you're implying or maybe what you are thinking I implied. Maybe you think I have veered off topic for the forum, despite the topical article under discussion?
I think the suggestion is, humans aren't biologically disposed to fly either, but that's hasn't stopped them (that being the relationship to technology); so why should it dictate our role in society, where we collectively have even more freedom to structure things as we see fit?
That's just an odd statement since there are intrinsic differences in biology between the sexes. You can't ignore them. Heavy manual labor is typically a job for men because males have more body strength.
And until you can find a way for biological males to have a baby, biology is going to determine the role of childbearing.
Men can but society certainly does not respect them in that role.
Just look at the amount of suspicion that men draw in elementary teaching roles.
This may seem reasonable but it also often ends marriages, which is arguably a worse outcome for the child(ren).
That doesn't change the parent poster stance. If men were to raise kids, this will come at a cost of their careers. Someone is going to suffer because of it (or both if they choose to handle the load equally).
It's been amazing to me that developed countries have bemoaned birth rates... and then done nothing effective about it.
You know what says "This country values parents who choose to have children?" Actual replacement of lost income potential and career progression.
Yes, in the US there are tax credits, SNAP, etc. None of these even come close to replacing the life income changes.
If we were serious about it, we'd have something approaching equivalent income replacement, GI Bill-style college funding, and child care cost support in every state*.
Having children should be an income neutral choice, not a burden.
* Side note: On all of these programs, I'd be in favor of supply-side support, rather than demand side reimbursement, given how inflationary reimbursement has been in the education market.
> Yes, in the US there are tax credits, SNAP, etc. None of these even come close to replacing the life income changes.
Our three kids are gonna cost us at least half a million dollars by the time they're all 18, between lost income, daycare costs, higher housing costs (not just a bigger house to maintain a similar comfort level, but also one in a much more expensive area than we might otherwise live in, since we have to care about school quality—an uncomfortably small house in a good school district still costs more than a huge house in a merely so-so district, let alone an actually-bad district, in our city), healthcare costs, transportation costs, plus all the smaller stuff like clothes, food, et c. And e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g optional is also far more expensive, like vacations.
And that's if we don't chip in for their post-secondary education or, like, give them a few grand to get their feet under them when they leave. Or buy them cars or any of that (we're not there yet, thank god). It could easily end up being closer to a million than a half-million, without even going nuts.
The tax credits don't even come close to covering it. Worse, because many of those expenses are front-loaded and so hit in our relatively-young years, the opportunity cost of that money ends up being enormous. The shadow cast on our future savings is way bigger than what we spend on them directly. We'd be retiring by 50, 55 at the latest if not for having kids, and also be able to spend more freely. As it is IDK if we're gonna be able to retire until we just can't work anymore.
Kids are basically financial suicide unless you're crazy-rich. Like they're great and all but god damn do I understand why people choose not to have them, even if they like the idea of having kids.
> Kids are basically financial suicide unless you're crazy-rich.
Or if you're very poor, then the more kids you have, the more you receive in benefits. Many poor people manage to have more kids than middle class people.
The middle class parent thinks "if I have another kid how will I pay for their college?" The poor parent just sends their kids to community college or if they're amazingly brilliant and get into Harvard, then they'll get a free full ride because they're poor.
Well, right. Some of that spending is technically not necessary (we could choose to live in a worse school district, of course—clearly many people do, or there wouldn't be schools there) but you're also probably gonna feel like (and, maybe, be) a terrible person if you don't spend more to get your kids into better schools if you can. Like, obviously couples whose income doesn't amount to at least a million dollars over 18 years aren't spending half a million on raising their kids, but many of them nevertheless do have kids.
But, the result of all this psychology and zero-sum competition (as housing/schools are) is that kids tend to eat all available income up to a point—and, indeed, if you cross a certain income threshold and can afford top-tier private school, there's another entire tier of potential and hard-to-convince-yourself-not-to-do spending above that.
Benefits aren't as high as you think they are. If you have a low wage job, losing the ability to jump at every opportunity to pick up a shift can be a huge hit to your bottom line. I have a white collar job. I know I can play with my daughter tonight without losing money.
Maybe more middle class parents should be sending kids to community college?
A few years back, my state made CC free for all people with high school educations excluding those with degrees and perhaps other minor variables as well.
The higher the financial class, the more resources in general are poured in to molding each child. It certainly helps to give them a better chance on average than their peers
> It's been amazing to me that developed countries have bemoaned birth rates... and then done nothing effective about it.
I always thought a low birth rate was a net-good: Something all countries are striving for. Like when your country drops below 2 births per woman, it has "made it" into the ranks of Developed Countries. Lower birth rate means fewer bodies to feed and a smaller environmental footprint. Sure, I guess it also means you have less "cannon fodder" both economically and militarily, but net net low birth rate countries are better off than high birth rate countries.
>Lower birth rate means fewer bodies to feed and a smaller environmental footprint.
without placing a value judgement on the outcomes, this assertion is only true if the population decreases overall, which doesn't happen in the countries with permissive immigration policies. other countries with low birth rates and strict immigration policies have different problems, like declining property values, difficulty paying for pension/retirement obligations, shrinking gdp (even if gdp per capita is increasing), etc.
No country that I'm aware of (except maybe Norway and the Saudi's, because they have resource wealth?) fully funds future social welfare policies from present day revenue.
Consequently, future generations will always be paying for present day late life social support.
Because of this, negative population growth requires higher and higher present day tax burdens to continue paying equivalent benefits.
And population economics are not something you can paper over, because they're by definition on the order of your entire country's economic output.
Sad to see this downvoted, because it's a good point. Not so long ago, all the talk was about preventing overpopulation and reducing birth rates. China had their one-child policy, which was very heavy handed and lead to a ton of problems, including gender-based abortion (or even child murder), but nobody disagreed that a reduction of population growth was necessary. It's just that everybody in western countries felt that education and access to birth control were the better option.
Now that some countries actually have shrinking populations, everybody switched from panicking about overpopulation to panicking about having not enough working population to support too many elderly people. Immigration is the popular way out, but somehow I'd expect this shouldn't have been such a big problem in the first place. A couple of decades ago, women barely worked (paid, that is; they were probably overrepresented in unpaid elderly care).
I don't think a shrinking population should be this big a problem for a country. Sure, it probably requires some economic choices, just like everything does. But especially for densely populated countries dealing with housing shortages, a lower birth rate shouldn't have to be a bad thing.
I would also love this except for the fact we live in an economic system where younger people must support older people via taxes and also where growth is necessary, not a nice-to-have.
>Lower birth rate means fewer bodies to feed and a smaller environmental footprint.
Only if you're willing to starve the elderly.
> It's been amazing to me that developed countries have bemoaned birth rates... and then done nothing effective about it.
A lot of developed countries have done a lot of things about it. A long time ago. It's mostly just the US that doesn't really seem to care about families, as far as I can tell. It's one of only 3 countries in the world that doesn't even guarantee paid maternity leave.
I believe France has implemented some policies that have been somewhat effective at increasing their birth rates, compared to other European countries?
Yes, France's birth rates have until recently been higher than their neighbors'. It's not clear whether policy, or culture, or differences in economic structure, or immigration differences were primary.
An example of policy would be explicit subsidy of child support. Culture might be preferring to live in villages rather than cities. Economic structure might be lower housing costs for child-bearing families. More of France's immigrants may have been female, whereas Germany got mainly male immigrants/Gastarbeiters, etc.
France's total fertility rate fell below replacement around 1980 and it is still below replacement.[1] So if policy makes a difference, France is not trying hard enough.
1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/...
On this topic, Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufeld wrote the book I wish I had read before our daughter was born: Hold Onto Your Kids [1]. Thesis: Strong attachment to a parent or caretaker is foundational for human development - neurological, physiological, and psychological - the whole body, mind, and spirit. The impacts of years 0-5 cannot be overstated. Based on the findings presented in the book, if both parents want to work my suggestion would be to either hire a full-time nanny who will replace you as the attachment figure for those years and beyond, or have a family member move in with you and care for the child full-time. Be comfortable that your child will be more attached to this person, and love them at least a little bit more, than they love you. Be happy that your child will have their best shot at healthy development because you prioritized it for them.
Another great book that covers more of the science in depth is The Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel [2].
Sounds extreme? Read the books (and others) yourself and see what conclusions you reach.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Mind-Third-Relationships-I...
>Be comfortable that your child will be more attached to this person, and love them at least a little bit more, than they love you.
People want to have their cake and eat it too, and I suspect by the animosity a lot of younger people have for the older generation that it isn't working out as well as they'd hoped.
There's a difference between having children (which only women can do) and raising them (which both parents can do).
Research has consistently shown the value of breastfeeding for development. Part of that is the biological quality of the milk, but part is also the skin-to-skin contact and emotional bonding. So, until weaning, women have a unique biological ability that men cannot quite replicate. Obviously, pumping can address some of the biology and men can cuddle their infants. However, normal emotional attachment[1] of the mother to the child also develops pre-weaning, which has its own long-term effects.
Shouldn't women be allowed to take the first year of their child's life to provide for their long-term emotional development without jeopardizing their careers?
1. in the evolutionary sense of what human psychology has been selected for, including the increase of maternal prolactin and oxytocin during breastfeeding
As a man, I'd love to have a year to bond with my children. California is pretty good for the US at 8 weeks, and I'm thankful for that. Even here though, I know many men that wouldn't take more than 2 weeks because they worried about losing promotion opportunities.
> Shouldn't women be allowed to take the first year of their child's life to provide for their long-term emotional development without jeopardizing their careers?
Yes. Men should be allowed the same right.
My argument for females to have a year off to take care of newborns (or so) was biologically based, focused on the interaction between natural selection and psychological developmental trajectories. I haven't seen any research on the history of natural selection across multiple people groups / genetic lineages that suggests the equivalent selection pressures have existed in the past for males.
One might insist on equivalent policies for the biological sexes on ideological grounds, e.g., men's rights, which is perfectly fine. However, from a logical perspective, arguing for males to have time off for the first year is jointly dependent on the biological argument (which applies to females) AND the ideological argument. Alternatively, from an empirical perspective, the research around males may exist and I am simply not aware of it.
There is an astonishing amount of posters that have jumped into the comments to explain that “raising a child” means the exact same thing as “breastfeeding a child”
I can’t tell if it’s concern trolling, poor english comprehension, or tradwife enthusiasts tipping their figurative trilbys to one another. It’s funny nonetheless!
In civilised societies, women still give birth, but after they are born both parents are given the possibility to stay at home with their child. This usually takes the form of the birth-giving woman staying at home for the first few months, while the child is dependent on frequent breastfeeding, after which the other parent stays at home with the child for a few months until they are ready to to start kindergarten around the age of twelve months.
In such societies kindergartens are affordable and in the course of little over a year both parents have had a break from work, with full salary compensation, to get to know the new human.
It's quite odd that these "civilized societies" then have to rely on importing the best and brightest young people from "uncivilized" societies to keep their "civilized society" from suffering a demographic collapse.
Almost makes one think that they're not quite civilized, they just put economics above all and rely on exploiting other nations to prop the whole thing up.
It seems to be universal throughout history, that the existence of "civilized" upper classes has always depended on large "uncivilized" underclasses who do most of the hard work.
That's Marxism in a nutshell - capitalism requires a slave labor class to prop it up.
We're supposed to be entering an age of automation. But now that the yoke of labor may be lifted from our shoulders finally, all anybody can talk about is "Full Employment".
> We're supposed to be entering an age of automation
I like your usage of "supposed." I feel like I have been seeing "Automation will replace <insert entity> in <made-up unit of time>" for the past 15 years or more.
I can't even get Siri to work 95% of the time let alone have her and her virtual brethren overtake society. I do not doubt it's possible one day, but assuming I am average, I have about 40 or so years left on this planet, and I doubt I will see it in that time.
I'm not trying to discredit the wonder innovations and milestones we have achieved so far, but it's the new "flying cars" to me.
This is one of those policies I believe is broadly popular with voters in both US political parties, but never gets implemented because capital has more say in our government than voters.
I do not see how it can be popular with Republican voters.
The proof is that every state with paid parental leave and extended parental leave is led by Democrats.
And federal Republicans voted against paid parental leave in 2021’s build back better bill.
Republican voters' views differ strongly from what the party pushes and does.
Exploiting this gap is how Trump got elected—remember that whole thing where the Republicans didn't even bother to generate an official party platform when he was running? That's because he threw theirs in the trash and just went with whatever ordinary Republicans chatting with other ordinary Republicans at a backyard BBQ say the government ought to do. Trying to come up with anything like their ordinary platform those years would have been pointless, or even harmful—explicitly adopt Trump's message, and you're in trouble if he ends up going down in flames and you have to backpedal, plus it'll piss off some donors; adopt your usual shit, and Trump's fans will be pissed off at you. So they just didn't make one, which was probably their best move under the circumstances.
Now, the follow-through may have been lacking and any lip-service toward that sort of thing by his hangers-on and imitators may be entirely disingenuous (as his probably was, too, at least most of it), but the gap between R voter and R official or de-facto official policy is real and it's big and Trump's messaging was laser-targeted at using that against his Republican opponents to get the initial nomination.
The "build a wall" stuff was lifted straight from that kind of actual-voter real-talk sort of thing. They literally want the government to just build a wall and assume they only haven't because of corruption and ill-intent among elected officials—it's obviously a good idea, from their perspective. On the campaign trail Trump even vaguely talked about "fixing healthcare" in ways that would surely have looked a lot like "socialized medicine"—because R voters support those policies when they're not being called "Socialist" or "Obamacare" or otherwise being demonized and mis-represented by their own media and politicians. Talk specifics, and they support them, talk about socialized medicine broadly and they tell you to fuck off to Venezuela with the other commies. That's another gap between R voter wishes and R party policy/actions.
Republican politicians also tend to support neo-liberal economic and trade policy, in deed if not in word, while their voters largely hate it (remember the tough-on-China talk and America-first trade policy and the trans-national trade regime skepticism and all that? That's Trump aiming at the party/voter gap, yet again)
"How can it possibly be that a major US political party can largely ignore the actual will of its own voters, for decades on end?" allow me to introduce you to our totally fucked-up electoral system and how it all but guarantees two viable parties at a time, both of which are also all but guaranteed to be disliked by a ton of their own voters. It's extremely bad. :-(
[EDIT] Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if you could get a very high percentage—maybe not 51%, but a lot—of Republican voters to say they support a federal abortion law that's identical to Roe v. Wade's (maybe even without PP v Casey's modifications) effects—legalizing early abortion, but leaving laws about later-term abortion mostly up to the states—as long as you described what it did instead of short-handing it as "codifying Roe v. Wade" (indeed, you'd have to avoid mentioning that it had anything to do with Roe v Wade at all).
> This is one of those policies I believe is broadly popular with voters in both US political parties, but never gets implemented because capital has more say in our government than voters.
To be fair, we put it right in the name. It's not market-ism, or productivity-ism, or competition-ism, or higher-standard-of-living-ism. It's CAPITAL-ism.
It's more like taxes would have to go up for the middle class to fund such support (see tax rates in Europe) and people don't want their taxes to go up.
You seem to confuse giving birth with raising children. Being a woman is not a prerequisite to rearing children.
> because they’re the only ones that can do it.
This is massively insulting to men. I'm personally massively insulted by it, having shared custody 50/50 with my ex and certainly done as much to raise my son as she has.
> I’m not sure how western society will continue
Birth rates are below replacement everywhere in the world except sub-Saharan Africa, and declining in sub-Saharan Africa too. Any notion that the low birth rate is a phenomenon that can be ascribed to cultural factors in the west is not supported by data.
I get the sense that you are trying to be needlessly provocative...
>Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society
Who is doing the forcing here? Many women wanted to enter the workforce. Some didn't want to enter the workforce. Some were forced by their situation or by economic changes, but it isn't like someone on HN was holding a gun to their head telling them to get a job, so I'm a little unclear on your lamentation here.
>Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do
Um, say what? Yeah, biology is amazing stuff. I'm in awe of women on every level. But your comment here is a bit dogwistling - are you intending for this to sound as misogynistic as many of us are reading it? Women who choose to not have children are just as amazing when they choose whatever path they choose.
>I’m not sure how western society will continue if we view raising a child instead of having a career as “stepping up”. It’s certainly disrespectful to all the mothers of our future.
Dude, what? Read back what I wrote - my point, which is well documented in many places - is the way women in our modern era are not only the predominant child-care givers, but also most likely to attend to household duties (cooking, cleaning, etc), and more and more are also the primary breadwinners. If that isn't stepping up in a big way, I don't know what else to call it. Is being a stay-at-home-mom not also commendable and deserving of respect? Absolutely. But your message seems to be one of dog whistling for the bad-old days of the past.
>> Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society
> Who is doing the forcing here?
It's called the two income trap[1]. Back when it was traditional that one person worked, the market recognized this reality and prices of everything made it possible to live off of one income. Then, slowly we started seeing more and more two-income families. Two-income families could bear to spend more on everything, so the market responded by adjusting costs higher. Soon, it became difficult, then impossible for a family to survive on one income, so then everyone had to go two-income. Now, the same standard of living we once could achieve on one income, requires two incomes. We've doubled the workforce but gained nothing in terms of standard of living.
Ryan - I'm well-acquainted with the two income trap. My point was intended to be two-fold:
-- That the idea that if they could be SAHMs, every woman would pick that route is utterly misguided. Some women would choose that, others would choose careers, some would do both.
-- That every family will make the choice of who is employed outside the home on their own. My ex-wife didn't work outside the home for many years (by her choice not mine). I know many couples with only a single breadwinner. So yes - the two-income trap is a real thing, but it isn't like it was suddenly law that every able-bodied adult had to enter the workforce.
>Back when it was traditional that one person worked, the market recognized this reality and prices of everything made it possible to live off of one income.
No. Back when there was class power sufficient for working families to withdraw one partner from the labor market, they did so. Then that power eroded, and they were forced to send the second partner into the workforce. This also involved a wave of inflation that was never reversed for housing, healthcare, education, or energy prices.
> Some were forced by their situation or by economic changes
So you answered your own question.
> Read back what I wrote - my point, which is well documented in many places - is the way women in our modern era are not only the predominant child-care givers, but also most likely to attend to household duties (cooking, cleaning, etc), and more and more are also the primary breadwinners.
That contradicts the data I've seen cited, which found that men perform more paid work and women perform more work in the home, but the total number of hours they work is basically the same.
Or we could just make sure women have careers by having good social support?
Where does the social support come from if everyone is working?
People who work in social support?
Look at east vs west Germany. West Germany struggled with demand for social and child services during the pandemic, but the East never dismantled theirs, and it showed.
Care and support are jobs.
Where do the people who work in social support send their kids?
To the same daycares? Do you not live somewhere where there are daycares?
They cost $2000/month and have a 3 year waiting list.
Does your country not have taxes?
> Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society.
This is as backwards as saying that women should not work and care for the house. If a woman wants to work and build a career let her, and if a couple wants to DINK, let them. Replacement level is a myth and a danger in a world choking up with our waste.
> Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it.
Yeah, you think of them as walking uteruses.
>This is as backwards as saying that women should not work and care for the house. If a woman wants to work and build a career let her, and if a couple wants to DINK, let them.
And if a woman wants to be a homemaker and focus on molding the next generation?
The contemporary need for dual earners is bad for child raising, but that's because the amount of work does not leave time for child care, not for any reason of gender or sex; The vast majority of time spent raising children can be done a person of any gender and/or sex. Also, child raising being done by a couple is itself sub-optimal; Communal child-raising is a better approach.
The poverty women used to be at when the man died or when they escaped from abusive one was pretty deep. The level of abuse the power imbalance facilitate was also staggering.
Yeah, it would be nice of society valued child raising more. But, it actually did not and instead the caregivers were often in bad or impossible situations.
> Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it.
Oh shove off. My dad by himself for years absolutely raised us without my biological mother in the picture at all. Men can and should be raising children too.
Immigration is a perfectly good way of "keeping a society going" in the face of declining birth rates. Of course, fetishism of "western" might be contraindicated
It's "perfectly good" so long as you have other societies with high birthrates. The people immigrating need to come from somewhere.
Women have always worked at home. It used to be farming though. Work has always been part of the woman's role. It was only a short period where it wasn't.
People are taking issue that you imply only women can raise children. I hope you can realize that is not remotely factual.
There is a lot of self delusion in tech. I’ve known women in their late 30s who were unmarried and “may have kids some day”.
Basic human biology is not taught in schools.
It's apparently not because it's entirely possible to have children well into your 30s. Sure risk factors can do things like "increase 10x" but it increases from like 0.02% to 0.2%.
Risks are much, much, much higher. Chromosome disorder in 40 year old mothers is 1 in 30. For 25 year olds it is 1 in 1250. So from .08% to 3.33%. Chance of miscarriage is 80% for a 40 year old mother. For a 35 year old, it is 20%.
The Earth is overpopulated, and also you're completely disregarding that women may not want to do the insanely hard work of growing, birthing, and raising a child in lieu of other work they find fulfilling and which could potentially have an overall greater impact on humanity. Speaking as someone who just had a baby 1 year ago - it's great and I love my little guy, but is it the most important thing I've ever done? Debatable.
> overlooking the way women have stepped up for their families often to the detriment of their own careers.
My favorite question to ask is: "why you want a career?" to pretty much anyone who speaks in this manner.
Serious question to people, I don't get it. I love learning, I'm highly qualified in the academic space and enjoy picking at problems. I've written papers, patents, well paid, etc. Highly successful by most metrics.
That said, I don't work for a "career", I work to afford me opportunity.
A family is an investment in the future, it provides you happiness, but more importantly purpose. Sure, there's a lot of stress, and you have to invest a lot of time. That said, it pays off an order of magnitude in terms of life satisfaction and having future opportunities. Who's going to take you on vacation when you're 65 and have a bad hip -- if not your children? My proudest achievement are things my children have done, not the accolades, promotions, bonuses, etc I've received in my career.
If I work hard, slave at night to get my presentation(s) done, will our product be better? Maybe, but in all likelihood that just makes me look good enough to get promoted, but 5 years later I wont have anything but a pay check to show for it. Wealth without purpose is worthless.
>I love learning, I'm highly qualified in the academic space and enjoy picking at problems. I've written papers, patents, well paid, etc. Highly successful by most metrics.
Right - so imagine that you didn't have that opportunity to do that academic work because you have an elderly parent at home who needs care. You've got two little kids at home who aren't yet school age and thus needs care. You wouldn't be content with your work situation in that case, right? Sure, it might just be for a few years - but what if those few years block you from key promotions or research opportunities? Do you get it? I'm certainly not saying that everyone should be focused on their careers, I'm just observing that sometimes people are making tradeoffs between their careers and their personal life, and more often than not it is the female in the heterosexual relationship that is making more of those tradeoffs.
Women can get pregnant and breast feed. Men can't. That is the primary reason women end up making more tradeoffs in terms of career vs. family. Sure, there are some cultural and political things that can be changed. But there are some fundamental biological realities that cannot.
> Right - so imagine that you didn't have that opportunity to do that academic work because you have an elderly parent at home who needs care. You've got two little kids at home who aren't yet school age and thus needs care.
Many people will choose the elderly parents and little kids over academic work and promotions, given they have enough money to support themselves.
The academic work and promotions are just a means to an end, which for many is the ability to support and raise a family.
>Women can get pregnant and breast feed. Men can't.
So that's 9 months + some amount of months breast feeding. What's the excuse after that? Couples of all types need to find the balance that is right for them, but the comments in this thread trying to use biology as an excuse to make 18 years (or life, as I see it) worth of child-rearing strictly a "women's issue" are living in the past.
>Many people will choose the elderly parents and little kids over academic work and promotions, given they have enough money to support themselves. The academic work and promotions are just a means to an end, which for many is the ability to support and raise a family.
Must be nice. Meanwhile, the people in my area have shitty low paying jobs and can't afford housing, and are still trying to support their kids and elderly parents, all while having eff-all in the way of access to quality, affordable health care.
Yeah I'm floored by these takes. God forbid society rewards child rearing with decent parental leave and accepting small resume gaps. Can't even consider things like government or job sponsored child-care or benefits to make things like breastfeeding easier while working. Changing to part-time for a period of time with a newborn, etc.
The possibilities are endless to make having a child easier for both mothers and fathers and people are stuck on "women have to breastfeed so they have to sacrifice their careers".
Why not something like a GI-bills structure to reward having children? Blows my damn mind people think sacrifice is a necessary part of having a child from society's point of view.
Except for surrogates and wet nurses, you cannot delegate pregnancy and breast feeding.
You can make things more equal between men and women. But some unescapable biological realities still exist.
> Why not something like a GI-bills structure to reward having children? Blows my damn mind people think sacrifice is a necessary part of having a child from society's point of view.
Sounds something that Mitt Romney and moderate Republicans (if there are any other ones left) would be all in favor of. Would be a popular bi-partisan policy proposal in a sane US political environment.
Exclusive breast feeding takes 6 months maximum. It is not that much time actually. The pregnancy can be difficult, but most of them are not and most contemporary job are not affected by pregnancy all that much. Even if all families had 3 kids (more then they have) the time spend by breastfeeding is 18 months total.
It is insignificant. What does matter waaay more are years and years after pregnancy and breastfeeding. How the care is split during those years, how much the parent going to pick up kids is penalized in the workplace.
>So that's 9 months + some amount of months breast feeding.
Times how ever many children they decide to have. Generally during prime years of career development. That is not a trivial commitment.
> but the comments in this thread trying to use biology as an excuse to make 18 years (or life, as I see it) worth of child-rearing strictly a "women's issue" are living in the past.
Yes, that is why I did not make that claim.
> Meanwhile, the people in my area have shitty low paying jobs and can't afford housing, and are still trying to support their kids and elderly parents, all while having eff-all in the way of access to quality, affordable health care.
Yes, that's the part about money being a means to an end. Being able to commit one parent to child raising is a privilege requiring having basic economic needs met on one income. That used to be the reality in the US, but no longer.
Making that choice doesn't mean that they have to be completely happy with the choice. If someone's partner became sick/disabled, many people would adjust their life to care for them rather than abandoning them, but many of those people would becomes resentful and ponder what their life would be without that situation - whether they voice that resentment or not.
>"why you want a career?"
Financial independence.
Anyone who thinks SAH parents can free themselves of this worry is naive. You never get the time back, you never get the experience back, you never get the training or the raises or the bonuses. You never get the retirement savings. If you are unfortunate enough to live in the US you are entirely dependent on your spouse for healthcare.
It's an unfathomably vulnerable situation to be in but it gets brushed off. There is still an attitude that SAH is a 'gift' given to a parent, see how often a working spouse will say they 'let' their partner stay at home, that the working partner 'supports' the family. A SAH spouse is not an equal partner with a 50% contribution. More of an oldest child with extra responsibilities and a higher allowance.
Pre-nups are often advocated as a way to ensure fairness if the relationship falls apart. I'd rather see pre-SAH legal documents. The SAH spouse gets half the earnings, gets half the purchases, gets half the retirement savings. A working spouse who isn't willing to sign it is a working spouse who doesn't believe that being home and watching children is a 'real' job.
> A SAH spouse is not an equal partner with a 50% contribution. More of an oldest child with extra responsibilities and a higher allowance.
This is a really depressing way of looking at things.
>> A SAH spouse is not an equal partner with a 50% contribution. More of an oldest child with extra responsibilities and a higher allowance.
> This is a really depressing way of looking at things.
No, it's not depressing, it's total BS. Anyone who's ever been in a remotely serious relationship knows keeping score like "percent contribution" leads to the end of that relationship.
It is not BS. Financial independence is real freedom. See any and all societies where women do not have financial freedom. People may not keep score, but the women will act differently based on the fact that at the end of the day, they are dependents. And men will act differently, because they know they are independent.
So given the fact that financially independent women do not have kids at similar rates as financially dependent women, perhaps it is an important part of a relationship.
But very very common and very very strong reason to not be SAH. Because a lot of partners will have exactly that attitude, no matter how nice they were previously. And it will rub on your self-esteem.
Spend any amount of time among ( let's be honest ) men and you see this attitude over and over again. They "let" their spouse stay at home. The SAH spouse spends all "their" money. The working spouse "supports" the family. There's a constant stream of posts on reddit about how how a working spouse should be able to come home and play video games for hours - they work so hard and deserve a break. Does the SAH spouse work hard deserve a break? What a ridiculous idea. See how often someone complains that they come home and the house is a mess and the laundry isn't done and dinner isn't ready. This isn't the attitude of an equal partner, this is the attitude of a boss. Does the SAH spouse get to review the working spouse's productivity each day? Give them access to the JIRA board and let them start asking why it's taking a week to support a minor version change.
The attitude some have of a SAH spouse does not make the definition of a SAH spouse.
Now spend time with career women and realize that a stay at home dad is not even considered a man worth talking. Women want their vake and eat it too but the one baking it should always be the man.
> More of an oldest child with extra responsibilities and a higher allowance.
And a disposable one at that!
The last 30 years women have had it drilled into their minds that if they don't have a powerful career then they're a failure. The reply to a woman saying they want to be a mother instead of a CEO starts with "oh you poor dear..."
Among women I know, I don't see this attitude. Women I know who want careers actually want it because they don't want to be dependent on other people. Every woman I know either has personal experience or knows another woman with personal experience of being in an abusive domestic household and being unable to leave because of no personal income. That's a huge motivator not to be SAH.
my point still stands that a woman saying they want to be a "mom" and not have a career is looked down on by their peers due to the last 30 years of career propaganda. Fear of being abused is something else entirely.
I repeat that I don't know what you're talking about and it doesn't reflect my experience with women. Do you have sources or something?
It's not about career, it's about independence. Anyone without the financial ability to leave has no power in a relationship and will be exploited or abused.
That's not an edge case, it's an inevitable consequence of being financially dependent. It happens 100% of the time.
"will be" and 100% of the time sounds, pardon me, very sad a point of view. What about those that don't abuse their position of power and responsibility? There's even a popular cultural saying, "with great power comes great responsibility". Is there really no one out there with, well, good in their hearts in your world?
Excepting the exceptions, only men care about legacy and purpose. Women care about a well socialized easy life. A family can provide that, but it does restrict you in significant ways. An air conditioned office where you're tippy typing on a keyboard, making calls, joking around the water cooler, and have a bunch of disposable income at the end of the month is a fantastic deal.
That’s part of the story. The other part is that many women don’t want to be in the workforce. Among women with children under 18, the majority (50-45) would prefer a “homemaker role.” https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer.... Among women without a college degree, whether or not they have kids, it’s 44%. The pandemic also coincides with a few years of strong wage growth among working class households. A lot of women left the workforce because they no longer had to work.
It’s important to remember that most people have “jobs,” not “careers.”
>Among women with children under 18, the majority (50-45) would prefer a “homemaker role.”
Weird, I never hear this. I never see discussions of about women wanting to be homemakers, especially as much as the opposite(women wanting to enter the workforce). I wonder if people with these opinions just find it more easily.
How many 30+ women do you know who don’t have a college degree?
We had two kids largely because my wife was resigned to her career already being destroyed, so why not?
> We had two kids largely because my wife was resigned to her career already being destroyed, so why not?
<cough> there are also some men out here with (how can I put this nicely?) less-than-stellar-careers precisely because of this factor, too.
[We live in a perhaps-somewhat-less-than-entirely-enlightened part of Europe] and our local "Mum and Baby" group finally got round to renaming itself to "Parent and Baby" group after I started attending the third time around... :)
> wife was resigned to her career already being destroyed
Really? She traded one job for another or does corporate life really matter that much to her?
A fairly significant amount of women have dedicated a decent amount of time, and money, academically, socially, etc. To their careers.
Why, some women have even found working to be more enjoyable to being at home with kids.
All joking aside, my wife is extremely worried about the impact her career will take from having children and her life goals include executive level leadership as part of her career. So you could, in fact say that corporate life really does matter that much to her.
She can always start her own business. Don't need anyone's approval for that.
Absolutely! We're currently looking at that idea :) She just needs to decide "what business"... she's a Clinical Engineer, and getting into Medical as an entrepreneur can be challenging.
Except in (unnecessarily-) boarded industries and ones with predatory non-competes. Pedantic pique, but both annoy the hell out of me.
Don't sign predatory non-competes. If one is executive material, negotiation is a necessary skill :-)
I was helping a friend buy a car the other day. The salesman kept coming back with a "final" offer and "we can't go lower than that", etc., etc. But I advised my friend to hold the line, and he did till the offer got into his price range.
Take it from a car salesman, this is often a tactic to slow down the negotiation and make you feel like your offer was a good deal for you. I have said those words many times when I could have gone lower than their offer, but if you just go back and accept it, a lot of "hard negotiators" get cold feet. Anyone that brings a friend to buy a car with them automatically broadcasts "I'm playing games and brought an extra player" so we turn on the games too.
Oh, I enjoy the game. I went along to make sure he wasn't rooked. He did notice that three times the numbers on the term sheet didn't add up, in the dealer's favor, and three times the salesman said he'd just made a mistake.
I knew about the term sheet ruse, it had been tried on me twice and on another friend of mine.
I also knew that I'd be up against a negotiator who does it all day every day, and so I expected game on.
I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price.
If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted to buy a car at "the best possible deal you've done in the last 90 days" dealerships would basically be out of business by definition. So someone has to hold the line or the entire system doesn't even work.
Im a very frugal person and don't even buy new cars, but why some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day.
> some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day
Deserve has nothing to do with it. It's about both parties negotiating for the best price.
That said, there may be very good reasons not to push too hard. You might want to do business with the other party in the future. You might want a good review on Google. You might not want to take advantage of an elderly person or an inexperienced wide-eyed kid.
But any party going on about what they "deserve" is not going to earn sympathy.
BTW, did you ever watch "King of Cars", a reality TV show at a car dealership? I found it both entertaining and instructive.
I haven't seen the show unfortunately.
My basic summary of the entire absurdity of the common tactic of "what's the best price you can do?" is as follows..
The best price is a vague concept depending on where we want to draw the line.
Best price I can do and keep my boss happy with my performance?
Best price I can do if I want to be below average at this company?
Best price I can do if I want to ask for a personal favor from my boss to allow me to heavily discount this car beyond established metrics we have and sell it this one time?
Best price I can do if I want to be yelled at tomorrow morning?
Best price I can do if I want both my boss and I to be yelled at tomorrow?
Best price I can do if I want my boss to negatively impact his career by the owner seeing him make deals like this too often?
Best price I can do if I want to get myself or my boss fired the next day? I could probably somehow secretly sell a car $10k under what I should... Once.
Where do we stop? Some nice people pay MSRP. Some people ask for a gesture of a discount. Some people ask for what discount is fair to market and we'd be ok with, and take it. Some people want below market, and we try to stop it if the car is in demand or we have enough volume. Some people want prices so low they'd fall into the "negatively impact the salesperson or teams career". Sometimes we even take those, but it's always a calculation between taking a below market average offer or waiting for one of the earlier described people to walk in.
I happened to know beforehand that the car had been on the lot a while, and the dealer probably wanted to be rid of it.
Unsold cars on the lot are burning cash, as they're there on borrowed money.
BTW, he had to get the manager's signoff on the final price, so I'm sure he wasn't getting fired for it. A savvy manager isn't going to let a salesman underprice a car to sell to his buddy.
You mention a lot of considerations, all perfectly valid. That's what makes the game interesting and fun :-) I'm sure the salesmen also size of the customer based on his clothes, the car he arrived in, his demeanor, etc. I remember shopping for a new car long ago, arriving at the dealer with my usual worn out jeans. None of the salesmen would talk to me. So I bought the car from the dealer's rival. These days, Seattle is full of millionaires wearing jeans, and the salesmen know that, and don't make that mistake.
Unless there's value in it to me, I generally dress down for anything where I'm paying money.
My thinking? If I'm polite and verbally confirm that I'm good for the amount and the salesperson treats me poorly? Not someone I'd want to do business with anyway.
Actions >> appearance
I'm from California where ignoring someone for the way they dress doesn't really happen often. And honestly, any car salesman that's been in it for more than a month has seen a blue collar worker come buy a $80k diesel pickup or escalade for their wife.
What we do screen for a bit is basically time wasters. It is possible to be accidentally picked up in this net, and then say "they sure missed out, I bought a car at the next place". That's unfortunate for the salesperson sure, but you're ignoring the countless hours saved by quickly dismissing the true time wasters.
I sold cars and was very good at it (better than top 1%) and would sometimes get in a mood when I would ignore intuition for a few weeks and just do an amazing job with everyone. Doing an amazing job works well, and you can get people to buy a car who swear they stopped with ZERO intention of actually buying a car that month even, very often. But you almost never even get CLOSE to selling a car to someone you have a bad vibe about, even if you go all in.
If you're good at car sales, you have more people to follow up with and do a good job with than you have time. I sold 34 cars a month average over years. National average is 11. Eventually you have to trust your judgement to save yourself 10+ hours a week, even if once a month it costs you a sale.
Fair enough. I have another anecdote about this. Another friend went into a Ford dealer to buy a truck with all cash. The salesmen just ignored him, chatting around the coffee machine. He came up to them, and pulled out the roll of cash, saying he came there to buy a truck and "I'm going to the other Ford dealer." The salesmen rushed him, but he said "too late".
He walked out, went to the other Ford dealer, and drove out with a new truck.
I can see not wasting time if there are many customers in the place, of course you triage them. But if you're chatting around the coffee machine because there are no customers in the showroom ... !
The term sheet ruse has taken the following forms in my experience:
1. the final paperwork has an interest rate a full percentage point higher than the agreed upon number
2. the "new" car turned out to have 5,000 miles on it in the final paperwork
3. an extra $1000 charge magically appeared on the final paperwork
4. the total on the final paperwork was quite a bit higher than the sum of the figures above it
1. Weird fraud I've never seen done, if the actual original interest rate was "agreed upon", and not just a "potentially if you qualify at our source bank".
2. I assume the car was looked at and maybe test driven. I find it hard to believe this was a 'ruse' left for the final moments. I can imagine people getting confused or not hearing or understanding I suppose.. someone wants a discount, salesperson says we have a demo over here we can do a large discount on.. and somehow the miles or reason for discount were not discussed. I wouldn't call this a ruse, and once again not something I've done or seen since it's just a waste of time. Obviously the person will discover the miles at some point, so why have the drama.
3. Illegal to pad a term sheet and then stuff a $1000 'charge'. You'd atleast have to have the customer sign the contract for what they were getting for their $1000. Dealers attempt to add things often, but they can't be secretly padded into the initial payment discussions. It's superficially easy for a customer to snap a photo of a preemptive term sheet and burn a dealership at the DMV dealers office or back out a whole deal months or even years after purchase if this was documented. Again, not something I saw in 10 years.
4. I saw countless people get confused by the "total" on the contract, usually when selling a used car to a less mathematically and logical buyer for some reason. You can sell a Porsche to an accountant and all goes great everytime, but sell a used Corvette to someone that personally requested a 72 month loan and watch drama unfold as he wonders why the total of payments on his $50k car is $70k. Luckily I was good and could always explain reality of sales tax, registration, and interest to these people. But not everyone is so lucky.
Maybe the dealerships I worked at were above average in integrity, because they were high performers and high performers don't have time to fraud induced drama, but honestly if you land on a dumb salesperson that can't explain your confusion to you, you can end up thinking your confusion was their attempt at a scam.
1. It was a handshake "come back tomorrow for the paperwork" deal with the manager. The underling who handed me the papers said they would never have agreed to the lower interest rate. I told her to go check with the manager. She did, and came back complaining that she'd have to redo the papers (!).
2. A "new" car doesn't have 5,000 miles on it. They told me it was new. There was no ambiguity there. They pushed the papers at me hoping I wouldn't notice it.
3. Illegal or not, that's what they did on the next day final paperwork. Of course, they said it was just a clerical error and they'd fix it. The original deal was not documented.
4. When you have a column of numbers and a total, the total should match the sum. There's no excuse for this.
These issues were from multiple dealerships, so I figure it is common practice. One was from a friend of mine, who I warned to check the numbers on the final next day paperwork. He laughed at me, saying nobody would do that. The next day he called and thanked me, as he discovered a $1,000 error in the dealer's favor. He said he'd have never checked it if I hadn't warned him.
1. I wouldn't call a miscommunication between a handshake deal with multiple people and departments involved and the next day the exact same as a "term sheet ruse" which implies there are games being played on the actual term sheet in front of you. I would say in many industries there are terms on the final documents that don't always exactly match what earlier communications, and yes it's important to make sure they match up.
2. A new car is new as long as it hasn't had a registered owner. You can even have a new car with an already started warranty sometimes. I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new', but if you landed on a very shady salesperson it could be covered up (simply leaving the dashboard display on a trip meter instead of odometer could do this I suppose)... But once again.. I STILL think it's more of an accidental miscommunication than deception since everyone knows it will eventually be discovered. Dealerships sell many "demos" year round, and I've also never seen this drama in person even though demo sales are common industry wide.
3. Clerical errors do happen when a salesperson gives management a summary, a salesmanager loads a deal into the system, and a "finance manager" (I hate them) finished loading things so that the DMV and banks are happy. It does happen. It isn't a tactic because once again, people rarely miss a $1000 line item, or the payment going up suddenly.. so why have the drama, potential deal blow up, yada yada.. the salesperson doesn't get paid on non vehicle adds ons or fees, and management gets such a small cut of gross profit I just don't believe it's done on purpose since it has a high threshold of drama.
4. I have never seen this, and I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this. Also, the banks would reject a contract later that doesn't add up and send the deal back. And finally, who is intentially commiting this kind of fraud on a document that will forever exist in your hands and the banks hands. Would there be an easier way to get caught for some crazy fraud than having numbers not add up on a final contract?
I understand that clerical errors and miscommunication happen. I make those mistakes myself.
But when they always err in favor of the dealer, I get suspicious.
> I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new'
I foolishly had not checked the odometer. I assumed that if the salesman said it was new, that it was new. Anyhow, on noticing the mileage on the final documents, I pointed it out, said I wanted a new car, and walked out. They watched me go, and when I was backing out of the parking lot, came running out and said they'd make buying it worth my while. And they did.
A car is designed for 200,000 miles. 5,000 is a significant chunk of that, and also the new car warranty is based on absolute mileage, not miles since buying it.
4. The various printed sheets that were not the final documents were printed separately and had no signature block. "I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this" You can probably do it with Excel. The idea is to focus the customer on the bottom line, and then he likely won't notice the column numbers were different on the final sheet because the total would be the same.
4. You said final paperwork previously.
I'm not going to bother responding to the rest as it's clear there's some misremembering or exaggeration going on here.
In my experience, the things you are describing are very rare, and even more rarely intentional. Why they keep happening to you, idk.
Good catch, you're right. It happened with both a non-final sheet and the final one. The final one added in another line item that had not been agreed on.
I've had a statistically unusual amount of clerical errors after a deal is struck at car dealerships going from salesperson to the finance guy. I've politely corrected them each time and only once did I walk away because I "must be mistaken"
BTW, my dad once was negotiating for a mortgage with the local bank branch manager. He said the manager gave him a long cock-and-bull story about how mortgages worked. Finally, the manager asked him what brought my dad to town. My dad replied that he'd been hired as head of the finance department at the local college.
My dad said the manager's expression was priceless.
No, I am not confused about things like compound interest, what the sum of all the payments would be, etc. I often tell kids who complain "who needs math" that failing to learn about compound interest is going to cost them plenty.
The terms sheet ruse as I've heard it and seen it, aka the triangle game, is pushing a sheet with down payment, monthly payment, and total price in front of a customer.
The salesperson then attempts to discern which of the 3 the customer is actually paying attention to and optimizes that one at the expense of the others.
Because the input vars (e.g. interest rate, term length, MSRP) and dealership profit are concealed behind the displayed numbers, the deal can be "adjusted" to please the customer but keep the same sale profit.
Jesus this alone is enough to make me want to buy a Tesla.
You can buy any car in America using the Tesla model. Just call them, tell them you'll pay asking price (just like Tesla requires) and tell them you want it delivered to your house with the paperwork. I have done this countless times, even for people negotiating a discount.
This might be why every single car I have ever bought has been from Craigslist (or a local equivalent), private-party, cash or cashier's check. Except for the one I bought from ebay which wasn't too different. But I've never had a new car.
Also, you can generally call any dealership and ask to speak to the internet sales / fleet department.
They're usually (at least at Ford) compensated on volume-moved-above-minimum, not profit-per-vehicle.
They are definitely compensated via a gross profit commission split just like others at the dealership. They do have volume bonuses to make up for the fact that most of their deals will be low or no profit, but if you inquire on the internet about buying a rare model, it's not like they're going to discount it drastically and get a low commission... It's a rare model after all.
YMMV, but I got it directly from a roommate who worked in internet sales at a Ford dealership. Volume >> profit.
I meant less so on the business owner side, although it is a lesser concern there too, and more so on employee side.
Hard to hire experienced employees if no one in your industry (i.e. nail care) can change employers.
And then there's the latest 'you owe the (arbitrary) cost of your training if you leave before X' restrictions.
Also, car buying is the worst. The only working formula I've found is to deal with internet sales, confirm the number, show up, and say you're walking if they add anything but taxes to it.
I don’t think you can be a executive and be a good mom/dad at the same time. At least not in most companies.
>who were over-qualified for the jobs they had taken to WFH
What's missing to link those women to matching jobs? There must also be many new mothers who would like to work but who haven't found a WFH job.
In one memorable account, I spoke to a scientist working in some kind of environmental management role - where her husband ended up taking the job she would have otherwise by rank and seniority and she took a lesser role on the team so that she could stay home, IE: he did the field work, she did the office stuff. They had two kids and couldn't find care any longer for the kids as it was a supply-side issue.
There's been this impression out there that Millenials (who are at child-bearing age now) are less likely to have children. It would be interesting to research if they are just sort of "late bloomers" who perhaps by virtue of WFH or maybe other TBD factors have decided it's now time to start a family.
NPR had a good radio episode about this. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/16/1064794349/child-care-costs-b...
The free market cannot sustain the day-care market and only government intervention is feasible in the long run. As they did during WWII and was axed by President Nixon. This single act drove the labor market during the war.
I've sacrificed my entire career so that I can take be the primary caregiver of the kids, and my wife can concentrate 100% on her career. During the pandemic, I quit my job and concentrated solely on the kids, and now that the pandemic is over, I'm at a much less demanding job so that I can do all the pick ups, drop offs, homework assignments, etc.
I love it, and I feel truly lucky that my life has given me the opportunity to focus on my kids.
I'm waiting for the day when an article like this doesn't result in someone turning it into a men vs women thing.
I wonder what percentage was fueled by a dual income household being forced to single income and realizing that they could handle it well enough - and the non-working spouse deciding to not bother returning to the workforce?
That's apparently one big driver in the labor shortage. Childcare costs were so high that when everyone was home people realized the second job wasn't actually that useful and now there's one stay-at-home parent (seems weighted towards mothers[0]).
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/14/some-gender...
Thanks for posting this - that's been my general theory regarding a big portion of the labor shortage, but I didn't have much info to back this up.
If you are a mother making near minimum wage (which, these days, is around $15 in most major metros, regardless of what the actual law is), and you need to be on the job site for 8 hours/day, you're barely if even covering the cost of child care plus commuting and other job related costs. And as a tradeoff you get to have the stress of the job plus the joy of having someone else raise your kids. It just doesn't make sense.
Also, importantly, your Earned Income Tax Credit will be reduced if you make more money (not 1-1, but just another reason why working in a low paying job doesn't really make sense if you have children and a spouse/partner that can support your family).
My wife stayed home for several years after we realized that nearly every dollar of post-tax, post-401K cashflow her job brought in went right out to childcare (and she had a well above US median household income, PhD-required job in science). She was happier; kids seemed happy; she's now back in the workforce at a similar role and happy with that transition back as well. (We did lose N years of 401K max contributions, but that seems totally worth it.)
The traditional role of grandparents is to care for the kids while the parents work.
This assumes that your optimal employer exists in the same location as your parents. Unfortunately that is not always the case, at least before WFH.
I didn't assume anything, just stated a historical fact.
It is possible for parents and grandparents to structure their lives around it being convenient for the traditional role. The fact that American society doesn't do this is a bit of a tragedy. I know families that engage the entire extended family, including grandparents, in raising the next generation.
(In fact, its an evolutionary thing. It answers the question of why does evolution keep grandparents around and healthy? Generally, when an organism no longer serves a useful purpose towards propagation of the species, it dies.)
Well, if we're in the business of stating "historical facts", I think it's more accurate to state that the traditional role of women was to care for the kids while the father worked.
That is, I wouldn't give too much credence to these kinds of "historical facts" on "traditional roles".
Why assume generations of people didn't know anything about being human?
True. They're 700 miles away in our case, though...
> (which, these days, is around $15 in most major metros, regardless of what the actual law is)
Sorry to go off topic, but I cannot believe my state is still $7.25 an hour. There hasn't been a single increase in minimum wage since 2008.
This story also fits with the first figure in the article, which says that the % drop in labor participation has been biggest for less educated women.
Not having kids I didn't realize how insane childcare costs had gotten. Someone posted an article to a local reddit that says people are pre-registering unborn children for childcare because there are so few slots available. Others responses indicated that it's running around $1500 to $2000/month for childcare. Add in housing costs and no wonder people are hesitant to have kids now.
Yeah its really insane. The child care space has been legislated into un-affordability. Between licensing requirements, staffing ratios, building codes, and a litany of other requirements its a service that can basically only be provided to upper middle class families if not HEAVILY subsidized.
Typically, infants are at 1:4 ratio and toddlers 1:7 and at 3 year olds, 1:10. (Massachusetts has a 2:7 infant ratio).
Having managed 1 infant myself, even 1:4 seems like a lot of responsibility. I would not want my infant or toddler to be watched over by more lenient ratios.
The ratio is part of the reason we pulled our son from daycare so early and kept him at home until he was the proper age for pre-k.
In his daycare class there was one adult looking after up to 9 children. One adult that didn’t earn a living wage and didn’t have any kind of benefits. There is no way a reasonable person could possibly trust that adult to be both content and provide a decent quality of care.
The adults in the room were always visibly angry and frustrated and a reasonable person could not blame them.
I've heard speculation that when caregivers are overloaded, there is a tendency for children to internalize that to get attention they must show elevated distress and act emotionally. Sometimes this manifests in temper tantrums, other times it manifests in breakdowns. I suspect the increasing trend of over-the-top emotional responses we see on social media and in our political discourse has roots in this. The younger generations certainly seem a lot more prone to being overwhelmed emotionally, and perhaps it is because they were inadvertently conditioned to respond this way. I have no way of proving this, however. But if there is some element of truth to this, having more parental attention could go a long way with how the future generations react to stress.
I don't have an opinion on that, but I do know that my child hated daycare and I only learned how much he hated it after he quit going.
We drove by his old daycare about a month after I pulled him out and he instantly starting having a breakdown in his car seat. I asked him what was wrong and he said "I don't want to go back to daycare." I told him we were simply driving by en route to the pool, but it took a while to calm him down.
I asked him why he didn't want to return and he said "because the teachers are angry."
And I believed him and it broke my heart. I myself have many negative memories associated with daycare from the 80s. It was not a pleasant experience.
In the US, it seems that we rarely take care of the caregivers to our two most vulnerable groups of citizens. Children and the elderly are cared for by individuals who don't even have the basics to take care of themselves.
Yet the owners of the establishments always make their money. I was seeing red and extremely angry when I learned that I had to pay for daycare when they were closed. Regardless of why they were closed. I had to pay for holidays and I had to pay for 3 entire weeks on 3 occasions when one of the staff members caught covid. Yet none of the employees were paid during those times. That was pure profit for the owners of the establishment.
Damn, that's brutal
I was looking around for some day care for my kid, and everything here seems to work out to ~$20/hour. I was thinking "Well, I guess that's about what I'd have to charge if I quit working at $FAANG and ran a day care out of my house.." and considering signing up.
If it's just some rich prick getting richer while an overworked person in front barely scrapes by, though, that is really infuriating. I guess that fits with every other customer-facing business in the bay area though. I feel lucky any time I make it out of a store without getting punched in the face around here
To be fair to the workers, nine daycare age kids would likely frustrate even someone being paid Musk-sized salary. Kids are entirely unreasonable which can be exceedingly frustrating.
There's a strong (underappreciated?) interaction with parental leave too.
If people got six months or a year, there would be far fewer babies in that labor-intensive category.
The fact that the US goes out of its way to legislate breast pump breaks and pumping rooms at work rather than just legislate 1 year of parental leave so a mom can properly breastfeed her child is insane.
We just had one put in. It's a fancy pod thingy with apps and lighting and a fridge. I wonder where the break even point is for such a structure relative to the number of employees using one?
In New York the ratio for children 2 and under is 1:2.
In NY, it is 1:3 up to 6 weeks and 1:4 after 6 weeks for day care centers. See page 22:
https://www.ocfs.ny.gov/programs/childcare/regulations/418-1...
The 1:2 ratio is for “family daycare”, whatever that means. That is on page 19 of this document:
https://www.ocfs.ny.gov/programs/childcare/regulations/417-F...
It has to do with facility type, I believe. I think operations run out of homes are “family daycare,” but I’m not 100% sure.
> Family day care home shall mean a program caring for children for more than three hours per day per child in which child day care is provided in a family home for three to six children.
From 413: https://www.ocfs.ny.gov/programs/childcare/regulations/413-D...
In general it usually refers to a family taking on a few extra kids vs a schoolroom/office taking on kids. Requirements are usually different for the family care ones, not necessarily less.
I thought it meant in a home, but wasn't sure if that was the exact delineation.
It’s genuinely not legislation. Labor is expensive, which combined with the reality that anything beyond a 4:1 child-caretaker ratio is pretty bad for children pretty much guarantees that child care can never be cheap in a rich country with rich country labor costs.
EDIT: I should've said "infants" and not "children" here, where the necessity of a 4:1 ratio really applies. As children get older this ratio can get higher.
I recommend https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/the-iron-math..., from someone who just assumed that child care costs were because of government intervention, and then did the math and found out this isn’t the case.
UK is as expensive as it gets, but full time nursery(5 days a week) is "only" £800 a month for us. American costs seem to be completely absurd, despite much worse employment protections and benefits.
I pay "only" 10% more than the exchange rate adjusted amount you're paying. Top 5 US city. Don't take too much stock in the ridiculous numbers you hear. I've lived in podunc land, the suburbs, and major city and I always paid within 10% of what you're paying.
£1200 in my top 5 city would get you a newly built daycare, with all the modern gizmos, a kitchen built "especially for young children", a teacher with 10+ yr experience, and peer children who are the son/daughters of doctors and lawyers. ~£800 gets you an average daycare that is fully up to license / code and generally does a decent job. ~£600 will get you a caring but gray market (usually bilingual or limited english) stay at home mom with a home daycare business.
I would wager the vast vast majority are paying close to ~£800, either through the black/gray market with unlicensed caregivers or in licensed facilities in the vast majority of lower cost of living portions of America.
What is this top 5 US city?
Half decent infant daycare in SF/SEA/NYC/LA/DC suburbs is going to be minimum $1,700 per month, in the cheapest of those metro areas.
In tier 2 cities, I would question the quality for anything less than $1,300 per month.
And in no major US city would I enroll my child in a $1,000 per month or less daycare.
You can even back into the max teacher pay based on monthly daycare costs since you know how much staff is required, and knowing the living wage in some of these cities.
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Kindercare (probably the lowest quality daycare I would find acceptable) is $2,000+ for infants in Seattle suburbs and $1,500+ in Portland suburbs.
I would have expected Phoenix to be more expensive, but it is probably cheaper due to more lax staffing ratios.
How many hours a week/day?
And yes, it's likely subsidized; around here there's "free 4k" and some of the pre-4k daycares are subsidized in various ways.
9 hours a day, 7:30am till 4:30pm. It's a flat £200 a week.
So 40 lbs a day, or a bit over four lbs an hour. Could work out how much they can pay based on number of kids.
...did you just use pounds(the unit of weight) to calculate pounds(the unit of currency) per hour?
government subsidized?
I don't get any money from the government for it. If it's subsidized then it's not on my end. They just charge £200/week, it's a standard price.
Genuinely wondering how anything beyond a 4:1 ratio is bad? My kids are in daycare in TX with well over a 4:1 ratio and seem like they are doing fine. What sorts of downsides are you referring to?
It greatly depends on age! Having six kids ranging from 1-12 is a lot different than having six infants, who will likely all explode at the exact same time.
Because it's hard to exactly define "daycares shouldn't have more kids than they can take care of" they institute fixed ratios.
Even if subsidized, if there aren't providers it doesn't actually fix the problem. Here in WA we have the Fair Start act to provide subsidies, but where it gets weird now is... does government step in and also start state-funded care facilities to cover the gap? Or does government create incentives to bring more private care providers into the market? As you point out, there's also a question of whether we've created a kind of rent-seeking if only corporate entities can meet the regulatory standard rather than the bad old days when essentially any stay-at-home mom could take in a few kids.
I guess it's a matter of social networking, but I would think essentially any stay-at-home mom could still take in a few kids. It wouldn't even occur to me to check whether that's "allowed".
In addition to taking “in a few kids” they would also take on a great amount of liability and risk.
I’m a stay at home dad or at least I was until my son started pre-k a few months ago.
There’s no amount of money that would make me feel comfortable also taking care of someone else’s children in my home. Just not worth the trouble or the risk.
Maybe I just think we still live in the 90s, but when I was growing up, I know my mom babysat, and I remember one of the neighbors regularly watching us. Liability probably worked about the same way back then, but I don't think anyone ever really asked or thought about it. I doubt anyone was licensed if that even existed. If one of us got hurt, we'd probably get in trouble for doing something we weren't supposed to.
I guess I assume that if you have a rapport with a neighbor, you can trust that they won't be out to screw you if a kid gets hurt, but maybe that's naive. Or maybe my parents were just lax; I remember my grandparents let us ride around on a moped that could do ~35 mph when I was probably under 10, and we'd go wander around in a forest near their house, or me and the neighbor kids would go play in the desert near my house growing up when I was probably ~6. Probably never more than .5-1 miles away, but still pretty much only "supervised" by older kids.
> Maybe I just think we still live in the 90s, but when I was growing up, I know my mom babysat, and I remember one of the neighbors regularly watching us.
Like a lot of things, informal, regular babysitting got ruined by a few people trying to hustle it into a business. This seems to be happening to everything that can be gig-ified:
1. People once did X informally for friends
2. Someone realized they could charge for X
3. People start doing X over and over for strangers, turning it into a business
4. Some disaster happens because X is now a hazardous unregulated business
5. Finally, the government steps in with heavy handed regulation, and now only licensed businesses are technically allowed do X.
People have been babysitting for compensation for probably as long as humans have existed. If prostitution is the worlds first profession, this has to be the second or third. Step 5 has to be the only new step in this chain, if there is a new step to be found.
I don't plan on making any of the mistakes that my own mother made.
At age 5, I was driving my BMX around Montgomery Co, Alabama with a single shot Remington .410 bungee strapped to the handle bars. I was a latch key kid from the day I started kindergarten. I was cooking for myself and dressing myself starting then as well.
I won't allow my own child to experience any of that.
Might depend on the kid. I had almost that much freedom, including unchecked access to firearms, and I absolutely fucking loved it and felt the freedom helped set me up for success as an adult. Other kids would be inside playing with mom and dad and I'd be "lets make a map of the whole fucking county by exploring everything." I feel like the future of my kid is mostly limited by ever more dystopian standards of CPS rather than the kind of freedom I'd like them to have.
Perhaps I lack perspective because my son is only 3.5 years old and it's hard to imagine him becoming that mature by 5. I'm lucky to be alive based on some of the dumb stuff I did as a kid.
At age 6 I wasn't quite strong enough to saddle our horses by myself so I would just hop on my quarter horse every afternoon after school and ride her bareback. She threw me once because of a snake and I spent ~3 hours hanging upside down with my leg tangled in a barbed wire fence because my ma wasn't at home. The horse was just standing there staring at me the entire time while our 3 dogs took turns licking me in the face as blood dripped from my leg.
I can't imagine my own son coming away from such a scenario unscathed, but maybe there is a good bit of development between 3.5 years and 6 years. I honestly don't know as this is our first child.
I'm not saying I'm going to hand my kid a horse and say good luck, nor that you should do so, but the downside of freedom is generally exactly what you say: that the potentiality for danger exists.
More free kids probably means more dead kids. Get a bad dice roll and the kid is dead and now you're in jail for some form of neglect induced manslaughter. Get a good dice roll and the kid gets life experiences, confidence, and more ability to navigate the world. Don't roll the dice at all -- maybe the kid locks up and can't rise to the challenge later in life when they meet challenges that threaten their life.
Life is a gamble. What I find ever more frustrating is the legislation and the child welfare organizations and courts increasingly take it out of the parents hands to determine what level of freedom and risk is appropriate for their children. I'm not sure there is any 'right' answer, but if there is a threshold I think we've long past moved beyond it towards the point of paranoia.
Yeah, I'd be leery of it even from friends and family, because nothing blows up like injury to children.
Of course, the poorer people have no choice and make it work, but I'm certain they get "caught" now and then.
In some states there are various regulatory hurdles - square footage, insurance, number of caregivers per kid, etc. Not to say that there aren't still under-the-table providers.
That's exactly how it works in tax brackets that are out of sight out of mind to most here.
Legislation has nothing to do with it. Staffing ratio minimums are 6:1 in California, which means $2000/child can get you pretty far.
The costs are the same as any other service industry - you have to pay more for higher quality teachers and you have to pay more for a location in more expensive areas.
Staffing ratios differ by state and municipality. In NY the ration is 1:2 for children 2 and under, for example and there are group size caps per facility. As I mentioned there's also a whole licensing regime that is quite expensive to obtain and maintain.
You think $2000/month after taxes is a good price?
Nitpick but it's tax deductible in the end, but yes after taxes up front
Only $7k per kid per year is tax deductible, and that only went into effect starting 2021.
There is no such thing as a “good” price. It might just be that the supply of labor to enable the price that people desire for childcare does not exist.
Childcare (specifically thinking of daycare) strikes me as a low-skill job, so labor volume should be fairly high -- excluding I guess things like extra-filtering for background. And as far as I can think of, there's no substantial upfront costs outside of the normal elements -- building, room setup, initial training, etc. It also strikes me as something that can be done with some scalability -- a decent sized group of children can presumably be supported by relatively few adults. At least proven by schools, which can have like a 1:16 - 1:24 teacher:child ratio.
So it seems strange to me that each child would cost ~$15/hr -- the full cost of a single low-skill resource, 1:1 with children; You're not seeing the scalability of groups kick in. Unless there's some overhead per-child I don't understand, it seems clear this isn't simply supply/demand. There are many who want childcare, but there are many more who should be capable of supporting it.
There are also of course difference in popularity/quality which will contribute to a price gradient, but if you're seeing $2k/mo/child as your "basic daycare" costs, there's something up -- there's no inherent reason to the job that I can think of that would stop someone from undercutting that price point.
Why are you assuming a job that is presumably low skill has a high supply of people willing to sell their time to perform that low skill job?
> Unless there's some overhead per-child I don't understand
I would start with liability costs, it must be massive for a professional daycare facility given how emotionally invested people are with their kids. Next would be redundancy of employees. Babies and toddlers transmit tons of germs, and so the adults around them would get sick too. Plus legally mandated ratios means there has to be adequate coverage for vacations, sick days, emergencies, turn over, etc.
And the population of working age people continues to decline, so I would not associate low skill with high supply of labor. I have never heard anyone tell their child to aspire to become a daycare employee.
I also would not describe managing multiple babies and toddlers properly as low skill, or at least not low effort. It seems to be very strenuous, and I do not think I could do it.
> Why are you assuming a job that is presumably low skill has a high supply of people willing to sell their time to perform that low skill job?
Because there’s a low barrier to entry, people want money, and unless it were particularly horrible or life-threatening, if you’re going to find a high supply of labor anywhere, it’s going to be in a low-skill job?
> I have never heard anyone tell their child to aspire to become a daycare employee.
I have never heard anyone tell their child to aspire to become a McDonald’s employee, or a bank teller, or a pool cleaner, or a gardener, yet I seem to find quite a few of them.
It’s low-skill — you don’t need a 4-year degree and aspirations to get into it. You just need to want money, and have no better options.
> I would start with liability costs, it must be massive for a professional daycare facility given how emotionally invested people are with their kids
But that’d be the same with anything taking responsibility over handling kids — eg summer schools, camps, extra-carriculars, etc. I’m sure they have good margins (parents throw money at anything supporting children), but I don’t think they’re getting barraged by insurance premiums for it.
Legal ratios might help explain it, but that’s part of the “something is going on outside of labor supply/demand”.
> It’s low-skill — you don’t need a 4-year degree and aspirations to get into it. You just need to want money, and have no better options.
So there is your answer. People have better options.
And prices for labor at the bottom have increased for almost all jobs at the bottom of the pay scale. Fast food, landscaper, bus driver, daycare worker, etc.
The obvious cause would be a reduction in supply of labor willing to do the jobs at the bottom of the pay scale.
I would expect the trend to continue as the labor force participation rate continues to decline, partially due to decades of lower and lower birthrates not offset by immigration and automation.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
Low effort certainly not!
Low skill, yes - perhaps not for the life-saving training needed, but I suspect most any able-bodied adult can be trained how to care for an infant or toddler in a week or so (after all, parents get zero training beyond "you need a car seat" when sent home from the hospital).
Whether there are people able and willing at the price listed, I don't know. It seems a job that could be done by teenagers (at least as assistants, supervised) but I suspect they are prohibited.
Teenagers are usually in school at the same time kids are in daycare.
We were paying $3k or higher per kid when we lived in the Bay Area.
Some people might be coming from a very different perspective on what constitutes a good price.
What's really insane is that the actual people providing childcare get paid pretty horrendously given that they are the ones that are going to be taking care of your kid potentially 8 hours a day (and it is a really challenging job).
This also means that there is concerningly high variance in the quality of individual care providers, since it's a difficult job and pays awful you get the usual mix of "passionate about kids" and "I can't find any other work". Even the best facilities you have to be very observant to make sure your kid doesn't end up in a bad situation. I recall one care provider fondly telling me how much she loves riding her bike to work only to later find out she had her license taken away by repeated DUIs and another that fled the country after too many parents complained about situations that looked a lot like abuse.
Ultimately they're very much like nursing homes for small children. Very frustrating to pay so much only to have to remain vigilant that you don't pick up your kid only to find they've been sitting in some other kid's pee for an hour.
On my street about 10 years ago there was a house where childcare was being offered, but at some point the kids were just out wandering around. Turns out the lady running the daycare had taken to drinking and was drunk much of the day. Fortunately they shut her operation down pretty quickly after that.
I can't wrap my head around this insane US model that takes grandparents out of the picture. Maybe it's because moving is so easy? But grandparents love grandkids and they do it for free - it's a win-win.
I would suggest that most grandparents don't want to look after their grandkids for 40 hours a week. And for that matter, many grandparents have jobs of their own – the average age of a first time grandparent in the USA is 50.
Their parents looked after their kids, it's just the most recent crop of grandparents that decided that it isn't their role anymore.
They'll nag you endlessly about when you'll be having more kids though.
Maybe the separate housing is the root of the problem. In more traditional EU societies, grandparents and parents live in the same house. This means one less set of people needs to generate income to pay for housing.
IME, that is quite unusual in Europe.
Given that every grandparent I know who is in their 50s or 60s are also still working full-time in the US midwest, grandparents aren't always an easy win. My mother would love to spend more time with my son but her job and her health make that an impossibility unfortunately.
Yep! We purposefully live within 30 minutes of both sets of parents, but due to covid and their own careers the arrangement didn't help us out as much as we had anticipated.
Good thing all grandparents are the same, or else our models of how the world should work would have to be a lot more complex
> people are pre-registering unborn children for childcare because there are so few slots available.
Shit I have to do this too? I’ve already started saving for the unreasonable cost of college, and the cost of childbirth, and the unreasonable cost of a large (enough) house in my metro. But now this?!
Tip of the iceberg. It was going on before Covid (where I live) and has only worsened with labor shortages and the fact day caregivers are in that band of labor that has inflated a lot in recent years. Also, daycares are hard to shop. If you send your kid to A, you likely will recommend A but you have no idea if B is better or worse. Staff and leadership tenure is the best correlation we found after having to change centers 4 times, you really don't want to have to go through that and it's tough on the kid too. Unfortunately, tenure is a weird metric with everyone changing jobs so much lately. Glad to be out of it but having them go on an academic calendar is a challenge too.
You can - you don't have to.
But there's a reason people pay so much attention to schools when buying houses - a good school district will almost certainly have good daycares, and it can be totally worth moving to get those.
Check if your state's 529 covers daycare or preschool, it can be useful.
yes, but take a breath because you'll figure it out. New parents and parents-to-be are probably the most taken advantage of people on the face of the earth. You'll get it figured out, don't let the horror stories on the inet keep you up at night and, no, using a generic brand of diapers won't turn your baby into a serial killer like the ads want you to believe.
/parent of two and went through it all
Yes. Even in my relatively low cost of living city (San Antonio, TX) some friends of mine about to have a kid are having to get on a wait list before birth for something near them. I don't really understand why this price spiral occurred but it is so hard for parents nowadays.
I'm up in Dallas but probably directionally same as down in SA. As you know, basically nobody makes the legal minimum wage in Texas. The market is higher. Caregivers are usually near whatever that "effective minimum wage" is. They might get paid $1 an hour more than someone working at Chipotle or similar. Up here, this wage band has gone from ~$10-$12/hr to $15-$20/hr in a short period of time. This is core inflation.
Unbelievable that Manchin blocked the universal childcare provisions in BBB.
The average is going to be skewed up because the people who take their kids to the cash only daycare where the toddlers learn a second language for free have long since realized that mentioning such an arrangement except to hand wring about it's existence is not the kind of commentary welcome on places like Reddit.
But yes, above the table daycare is ungodly expensive.
Think about the bank you could roll in if you opened a childcare facility. I understand it's not as simple as printing money as there are obvious risks, liabilities, etc.. I imagine it wouldn't be too expensive to get up and running or maintain compared to something like a restaurant.
this is the same in the UK. Childcare costs are abhorrent. As a sample of one, I have twins at ~2yrs old. We pay ~£3,000 per month between private nanny and private nursery. It's literally 2x our mortgage cost.
We were in exactly the same position in the UK, putting our twins into nursery from a very early age so my wife and I could continue our careers. In retrospect we regret it somewhat, as it clearly affected them negatively. But it has been positive financially downstream. At least you know you can afford to privately school them later on to make up for it.
Curious to know how you thought it effected them negatively.
Wondering whether I can see any similar signs…
I was going to put it on here but thought better of it, tbh. Buzz me on Twitter? I'll leave my username in my profile for a while or until I hear from you.
our (employer administered no less) daycare has ~24mo wait list and a costs ~2400usd/mo per kid. It's legitimately insane; expensive-private-school pricing.
There is no labor shortage. There has been a labor glut since women left the home (and men didn't go home) in the 1970s, driving down wages to subsistence levels.
Your source doesnt support your narrative.
> What accounts for the larger labor force withdrawals among less-educated women than men during the pandemic? It is complex but there seems to be a consensus that it partly reflects how women are overrepresented in certain health care, food preparation and personal service occupations that were sharply curtailed at the start of the pandemic. Although women overall are more likely than men to be able to work remotely, they are disproportionately employed in occupations that require them to work on-site and in close proximity to others.
> It is less clear whether women’s parental roles and limited child care and schooling options have played a large role in forcing them to exit the labor market. The number of mothers and fathers in the labor force has declined in similar fashion over the past two years.
My wife worked in daycare when we first got married. It is low-paying, high-stress work with high turnover. Parents drop off sick kids, kids with behavioral problems, kids in the middle of custody disputes, etc.
I'll bet most of the workers went and found other jobs and won't be coming back.
this was my exact situation when my kids were small. We added up childcare expenses and it turned out we barely came out ahead with our two income household. The extra money was not worth the commutes and logistics of managing two jobs and daycare for two kids. My wife quit her job, we cut back a little bit, and she stayed at home for about 3 years. Once the kids were school age she went back to work ( she's a teacher ). She did lose some ground on her pension and raises but at this point, about 7 years later, the impact is negligible.
I was pretty jealous of stay at home dads (I know two) and the things they were able to for their kids. My kids are older now and that ship has sailed for me.
In addition to this, measuring from just before covid until now, the US GDP grew way above its normally sustainable pace.
Fewer workers + fast economic growth = labor shortage.
Returning to the workforce does not mean returning to the office anymore. I can imagine mother-friendly remote work as a replacement/supplement to maternal/paternal leave
I cannot imagine that, babies and toddlers require attention frequently and randomly. Unless you have zero meetings, loose deadlines, and very asynchronous contact with the rest of the business, it would be a very difficult balance.
Might work for first 6 months when all they do is sleep, eat, and lay around, but as soon as they are moving or aware that they can get things they want, predictability goes out the window. Although, I would not even bet on the first 6 months being easy due to sleep deprivation.
Have you not attended meetings with parents taking care of babies? I sure have. People do difficult things all the time.
It's especially manageable if both parents are WFH.
I have not, and it may be my lack of understanding, but I don’t think taking care of babies during a meeting is a good thing.
Unless you and I have very different types of meetings, the ones I have are usually short and focused and I would be very annoyed if someone was constantly interrupted or distracted (just like I would be if someone is constantly checking their phone).
You are very lucky and privileged to have such useful focused meetings.
The vast majority of meetings are useless and unproductive, and if half the people on the call are muted the entire time nobody would ever notice.
I guess the question is would you rather have this employee that is sometimes distracted or no one at all.
That’s a very good question actually, I didn’t think about it like that, and it changes my mind on the subject a bit. Thanks for that.
I have attended meetings with people who had to remain muted the entire time due to their kid screaming at the top of their lungs constantly. Its not great
Well of course it's not ideal. Employees are people and people come with imperfections.
I've worked with employees distracted by kids. Distracted by substance abuse. Distracted by mental illness. Distracted by video games, TV, something on their phone, or even just a basic disinterest in the job.
When we talk about the job market as a whole -- such as in the article above -- it doesn't help to focus on a hyper-selective section of capable, skilled software engineers. The vast majority of workers are in a much messier, less efficient and effective environment.
It's sad that we have to consider children a disability to get companies to realize that parents should be treated with at least as much respect as we would give to someone who falls under the ADA.
Nobody would even think to say "I hate when our meetings get interrupted because Suzy has insert medical condition here and has to go off-camera for a few minutes".
You are right, we shouldn’t focus on whether or not someone is a parent. We should focus on whether they can effectively do their work.
I would react similarly if somebody was playing a video game during a meeting.
There is some AI now that can filter this type of background noise.
Ah, the beautiful future we were promised.
well, if it helps, the person with teh screaming kid in their room was suffering 10x more than you heh.
Yes, and it is not ideal.
Eh, I took a 1:1 with my manager and he was holding his newborn right there. Its a slightly different world of work now, I was just glad I wasn't in his position.
A newborn that has been fed and slept and lays around is easy, but it is not long before the kid wants to play with keyboard and mouse and headphones and unplug things, etc. I setup my brother MFC printer on the ground so they can mess with the display and open and shut the flatbed scanner and whatnot. The device can apparently take quite a beating.
Kids adore doing whatever their parents are doing, so giving them some "office equipment" can be a great way to get them "working away" for quite some time.
Maybe I should dig up some old IBM PCs, those things were tank-like, but likely the kids would start trying to beat each other with the keyboard.
> Kids adore doing whatever their parents are doing
Sometimes I worry that many parents focus in "teaching" or "instilling" a desired behavior at the expense of "role-modeling" it through personal lived demonstration. The latter can be far more powerful because of how kids are hardwired to mimic adults... at least up until a certain age where they go the opposite way. :P
> Maybe I should dig up some old IBM PCs
It's be great if there were more "child's version of adult thing" toys that focused on a realistic appearance rather than multicolored plastic. (Unless there's some research showing that actually helps?)
I was playing with my baby's fisher-price rotary phone (the rolling one with the googly eyes) and realized that in the past they would have had much more fun playing with it, since they saw mommy and daddy doing the same thing. It's unfortunate that much of the tools we use today exist virtually, making our kids interests totally virtual as well.
Yeah, there are some interactive My First Digital Device things out there (or baby-software to run on a real tablet one) but IMO that is a double-edged sword with respect to physical activity and screen-time addiction.
As a parent of, IMHO the first six months are when they need the most attention, not when they're the easiest. Infants desire constant affection, feeding, cleaning, and some never stop crying.
Once they can crawl it's off to the races. Basically anything can hold their attention for half an hour while you take a short meeting.
I've worked from home with two infants, then toddlers, and now kids. Infants were the hardest.
In my experience, once they start crawling, they are putting things in their mouth, or falling, or getting a finger stuck, or making a mess, or wanting to feed…and confining them to a kid safe zone just makes them want to be out of the zone.
The trick I've used is make a kid safe zone inside another kid safe zone, and they'll spend inordinate amounts of time trying to get out of the first into the second.
Note that "kid safe" and "kid unchangeable" are not the same, be sure to leave things that they can safely mess up (boxes of Duplo are great for this). It helps even more if you've told them not to touch the Duplo, heh.
And if they have visual line-of-sight to you, they'll often stay calmer, but if you move out of line of sight then the howling starts.
Ah, I liken it to rising flood waters. I removed everything in every space of the house that was remotely dangerous and could conceivably be reached by young children. So they had the run of the house, and it was totally safe.
once they start walking you have about two weeks then they can run. That's when the chasing really starts!
When both parents are WFH you just try to schedule meetings so that they aren't both in a meeting at the same time. This isn't always trivial to do, but it hasn't been a big problem for us in practice.
Asynchronous is the new norm. If I were a parent, I would absolutely push back on less important meetings and ask them to email me instead with a summary.
Asynchronous in the sense that your phone call with a colleague could be interrupted at anytime due to a baby waking up. I am writing from experience (as the parent). Or not even be able to schedule meetings.
I have not seen or heard of many businesses that are completely asynchronous.
Remote work while doing childcare is something I would not wish on anyone.
Definitely not an upgrade in my experience
Perhaps explains increased wages and low unemployment too.
this was the arithmetic we made 17yrs ago.
"If the lights and the T.V. are out, it kind of sets the table for romance . . . But, if you're running for your life, you can't make babies." - https://www.cargenerator.com/blogs/news/is-the-blackout-baby...
Baby booms have previously been positively correlated with blackouts, snowstorms, hurricanes and power outages. Now, remote work is a covariate as well. We're heading into a prolonged 2023 recession, coupled with job cuts, energy shortage, remote work as cost-cutting recipe and climate-related catastrophes inducing major downtime => huge baby boom in 2024.
Agree with that but have a question...you'd think logically with children being a major expense that economic downturns != more babies. Is that not the case?
Making babies is one of the least logic-driven decisions you will make in your life.
> Making babies is one of the least logic-driven decisions you will make in your life.
or at least the process of making babies :)
That is true. It is pointed out prominently in the article that this is a rare instance of a baby boom in an economic downturn.
> huge baby boom in 2024
Good. The US needs the new tax base.
Nothing gets me in the mood like the words "human capital stock"
I can understand that it's probably easier to track the numbers of children born to 'women' instead of 'parents', but my observation has been that remote work has resulted in a sea change as to what it means to be a full time working parent.
My boss works long hours and now has 2 kids under the age of 4. Pre-Covid he would have been out of the house from about 7-7 and only able to have moments of interaction at the edges of the day. Now, he works about the same hours, but when he takes a break, when he gets lunch or coffee, when his wife is busy, he can spend time with the kids. Play a little peek-a-boo, read some Dr Seuss, watch them grow. Our company is pushing back-to-work policies and he's pulling every string to get exceptions for our group. I think if push comes to shove then he's gone.
My brood is older but boy I like being there to help with the math homework. Even 10 minute to go though the process of "Here's the strategy, here's an example, here's why it works this way" makes a huge difference. I let them work out the problem by themselves, and 10 minutes later they come back with "I got it!". My partner, the scientist, is in his element. If we're not careful the kids are going to be going back to class and correcting their teachers.
It's redefined what it means to be a working parent. I hope it sticks. I'm old enough that I'm seeing the regrets from parents who quit their jobs to stay home and are in a unenviable situation post-divorce.
Beyond the hours, the lack of commute has changed so much for me. I can not only take my kids to their 5pm soccer practice, I can coach the team! None of that was possible when I had an hour commute each way.
I'm not coaching but I've taking kids to practice, turned on tethering, and gotten an hour of work done sitting peacefully at the park with no impact on productivity. When I was WIO I had to make deals with the boss - come it at 7 so I could leave at 3, send apologetic emails to my coworkers as to why I wasn't at my desk. It was demeaning - like I should be pathetically grateful to my company for letting my kid have extracurricular activities. What a horror show.
>>If we're not careful the kids are going to be going back to class and correcting their teachers That's okay, just remind them to give some time for someone else to pick out the problem before they bring it up.
“ If we're not careful the kids are going to be going back to class and correcting their teachers”
I will say, as a former teacher, I loved being corrected.
The article says,
"Much of that cohort was able to work from home, which gave parents more time and flexibility to deal with the life changes and demands that pregnancy and a new baby bring."
I guess it's indelicate to say that when a man and woman are both stuck at home, more babies will be conceived. People who were unattached during the lockdown were probably less likely to find a mate, though.
> I guess it's indelicate to say that when a man and woman are both stuck at home, more babies will be conceived.
It would be inaccurate to assume an increase in frequency of sex will lead to more babies, in the age of access to very effective birth control.
Many (most I assume?) choose when to have or try to have children.
> Many (most I assume?) choose when to have or try to have children.
Might sound a bit too cynical for this site, but plenty of people decided to get a dog in 2020. Why shouldn't they choose to have a baby for the same reasons?
I was wondering something similar - could it have been that in the first half of 2020 people put off having a kid and then after lockdowns were lifted, made up for lost time?
For a little more cynicism, that fits with their finding that the "boom" was most pronounced for first-time parents, aka the ones that weren't stuck home with their kids...
Not sure why so many people balk at the comparison of having a dog versus having a kid. You don't need some deep philosophical reason for either: humans have lived alongside dogs for thousands of years, and humans don't need a justification to reproduce any more than a dog would. We're animals, we make babies.
I did not opine on whether or not people should have had a baby or for what reasons.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that you had, rather I was suggesting that they did choose to have a baby because it filled a void that was created by lockdowns (and that others filled by getting a dog).
Roughly half of pregnancies in the US are unplanned, and with abortion and contraceptive access being removed or severely limited in many states, that situation is only going to get worse.
The only US source for data I could find was from 2011:
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/contraception/uninten...
> In 2008, women reported that more than half of all pregnancies (51%) were unintended. By 2011, the percentage of unintended pregnancies declined to 45%. That is an improvement, but some groups still tend to have higher rates of unintended pregnancy. For example, 75% of pregnancies were unintended among teens aged 15 to 19 years.
I imagine this has continued to trend downwards since 2011, especially amongst women who had the option of remote work (more educated, more lucrative careers, higher degree of financial freedom, less religious, etc).
This depends a lot on the phrasing of the question, because there can be a big difference between "unplanned" and "undesired."
When people actively want not to have children, they tend to be fastidious about using their contraceptives as intended, but they're less careful when they are less opposed to the idea.
Even if someone gets pregnant earlier than they had actually "planned," many are quickly delighted after the first bout of surprise and the slight stress of moving up the related plans, though this is not always captured in surveys.
Yeah, the questions have to be carefully designed to avoid questioner's bias, and to get at the root of what you're trying to determine.
There's a vast range from "we cannot have children at all" to "we are intentionally doing every single thing possible to conceive" and many people end up in the "eh if it happens it happens" middle somewhere.
Yes, but my point was that the set of 25 year old couples who ended up working from home and having sex more often because of it probably will not end up with a baby because they will not have forgone birth control.
Or a couple who has already had their desired amount of kids would not end up with more kids even though they are having more sex due to them using birth control.
Whereas a 30 to 35 year old couple who was already planning on babies in the next couple years would have opted out of birth control to take advantage of the increased time being spent at home.
Every birth control method has a failure rate, even for perfect use, never mind for average use.
If all else stays the same but the amount of sex goes up, the number of babies will also go up.
Are the 25yo couples who are having more sex making other changes to decrease likelihood of pregnancy? Realistically? Probably not. They probably use their birth control the same way they always have, since it previously worked fine for the amount of sex they were having before. They don't necessarily think, "Oh, I'm increasing the odds that I'll get hit by the failure rate," especially if the way they've been using it has been "successful" for years.
Is it possible the failure rates get so low with modern birth control that it is almost impossible to offset with increased amount of sex? Specifically, IUDs.
https://americanpregnancy.org/unplanned-pregnancy/birth-cont...
Even the pill is listed at 9%, which is low, and of course, abortion is the last resort to completely prevent a birth.
For couples who are finished having children, a vasectomy also basically has a 0% failure rate.
Those are annual rates, so 9% is not low. (Planned Parenthood puts it at 7% annually, which is still 48% failure over ten years!) https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-...
This is an important point. The failure rate measures, "If 100 people otherwise capable of becoming pregnant have an average amount of otherwise potentially procreative sex for a year, how many of them will get pregnant?"
Nine out of every hundred is a LOT to start out with. And if the "average amount of otherwise potentially procreative sex" part increases by, say, 11%, you get one new pregnancy out of every hundred.
I doubt that downward trend has continued (bet it's at least slowed) for the general population, I can't imagine sex ed has gotten any better nationwide. But I don't have any newer sources at hand either.
The Affordable Care Act providing free birth control did not even kick in until 2011. Between that, increased access to healthcare and doctors in general due to ACA, and access to more information due to proliferation of internet and smartphones, I would guess more women opted into birth control over the past decade.
>contraceptive access being removed or severely limited in many states
Not being combative but as someone who isn't up to snuff on this subject can you provide some examples? I haven't seen examples of this so I'd like to read more.
Sure,
In 2020 there was a SCOTUS decision allowing employers to refuse insurance coverage for contraception for their employees for "religious or moral" reasons, aka "we don't like it". https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/889112788/the-supreme-court-a...
At least twelve states have laws allowing institutions and healthcare professionals to simply refuse to provide contraception if they want. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/refusing-pro...
Meanwhile, the push to classify some methods (morning-after pill & IUDs), which may prevent fertilized eggs from implanting, as "abortifacients" and therefore subject to the abortion bans now active in many states, has been going on for years but is picking up steam. Missouri's abortion ban in particular, now active, defines pregnancy as a fertilized egg, implanted or not.
So those aren't examples of contraceptive access being removed, they're examples of the Supreme Court ruling that government can not force private insurers to cover specific things if they don't want.
It seems like the solution to that would be to pick a different insurance plan (Obamacare marketplace has no plans that restrict contraceptive coverage) or go through one of the hundreds of organizations like Planned Parenthood. Since any employee is free to pick an Obamacare plan by law, does that not ensure contraceptive coverage is always available?
It reads more as if both parents are at home, being able to take care of another newborn/infant/toddler becomes more manageable.
OK let's put "boom" in perspective. The 2021 ACS estimate puts the under-5-year age cohort as the smallest cohort, smaller even than my pathetically sparse mid-gen-x age bracket. So whatever boom is going on must have happened post-2021, which isn't consistent with the article, or was not large enough to offset the overall down trend.
How does a baby boom only exist among women? I don't understand the headline
Exactly. They somehow managed to do it without men?
Since when needs a woman a man to make a baby ? As far as i know this has not been the case since at least 2000 years.
Given the general degradation and lack of investment in physical infrastructure to support any growing baby boom, eg. childcare, education etc, what worries me is life being a lot more competitive for this lot of babies.
not gonna lie, getting to have a mid-day 'nap' with my GF while we WFH together is pretty great, I can see how it can lead to this
With a title like this, I’m pretty sure the author doesn’t know how babies are made.
> long-term issue of falling birth rates — a possible driver of declining economic growth
Pardon the slightly off-topic comment but statements like these are misleading. It's economic growth in the true sense of having X and growing it into X+Y. At best, it's more like economic expansion.
The truth is, it's population growth. Instead of the abstraction why not simply report the population growth knowing that eventually the economy will expand to that population?
There's a difference between "the economy grew" and "more births." Maybe it's because politicians can't really take credit for the latter?
I made a joke on twitter at the beginning of the pandemic that we'd see a baby boom because of quarantine. Someone dryly replied to me that it'd be entirely among families getting their first child.
I went looking for this line in the article, and sure enough... "The increase in birth rates was more pronounced for first-time mothers..."
We have had more parental leaves this year on my team then we have had in the last 5 years combined. Anecdotally confirmed
I had a lot of friends that got their first child during lockdown. Exactly 0 that already had a kid created another.
Take that for what you want.
I had a number of friends with 1 kid pop out another during the course of the pandemic. It's def a factor as well.
I had my first child in July 2020 and my second was born just two months ago. For someone who transitioned to partially work from home it's been a great time to be a parent IMO.
Not entirely surprising with so many couples suddenly at home all day, with any children at school.
I just hope they remembered to turn their cameras off.
And mute their microphones.
Didn't that end up having the opposite effect where people were stuck with their partners all day and no longer wanted to have sex?
Maybe it worked both ways. Couples in a more positive state got stronger, couples in a more problematic/conflict state got worse.
It's not that simple. It's how each psychologically responds to stress and gloom. Some get energized and others get shut down.
Funny how that worded to assume the lockdowns were stress and gloom. My partner and I flourished in the lockdowns. You posit that we reacted positively to stress and gloom, but we saw it as freedom. Working from home resulted in an uptick in projects, sex, cooking, and other positive freedoms.
I'll end that it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Some people hated being trapped at home and others thoroughly enjoyed it.
yes, but I have friends that were being stuck with their parents, so they decided during the pandemic that it was time for them to move with their partners instead.
I think a lot of people think with WFH they don't need somebody else for childcare. At least in my company (because of the bosses too) WFH is mostly a farce because they do work and childcare at the same time.
Super interesting from a psychological perspective, especially in contrast to predictions by economists that the opposite would happen. I think it shows bravery and optimism.
> especially in contrast to predictions by economists that the opposite would happen.
Economists don't have sex, that's why they are economists.
Wouldn't that make them software engineers as well?
Haha. Throwing shade this early.
Is it like that trend where some people work 2 or 3 remote jobs?
In what respect?
Taking care of a child takes up your time, it's a job.
Most babies spend a lot of time sleeping so you can probably get some work done, but if your child needs you you are going to have to drop what you're doing.
There is no problem if you are honest about this and your employer accepts it, but just as somebody can hold multiple jobs and not come clean about it, it seems like a parent could also dissemble about it.
Ah I see. I live in Europe in a country where parents have paid parental live for a year or more, so this is not an issue. However, if this is something that increases birth rates in the USA, I guess it's not a bad thing, especially if employers see no decline in the quality of work delivered.
What is the right way to discuss that at an interview? Discussing the applicant's family is typically off limits, but if the goal is to work and be a parent then you must have that conversation early.
You shouldn't discuss family obligations at a job interview, full stop.
I think if you are doing child care and work at the same time it is relevant. If somebody was taking their child to the office, however, that would relevant.
It's relevant, but it's illegal for a prospective employer to ask about and it's against a prospective employee's interest to raise the issue.
It's much more likely that putting "unreasonable" constraints on a work-from-home parent with small child would fall afoul of labour laws than someone working multiple jobs.
Also, Zoom has gotten surprisingly good - the "high" setting on background noise for "barking dogs" actually works frighteningly well - people on calls have apologized for their exploding dogs because the UPS guy assaulted the doorbell and we've heard absolutely nothing.
It's hard for me to imagine this working past the first 6 months, if even that.
Elon is worried about a population crisis, yet he's anti-remote work..
He's not worried about anything other than micromanaging.
i find it interesting that the title is "a baby boom among US Women". Why would women be called out here? Why wouldn't it just be a baby boom, or a baby boom among US parents? Once again, giving women sole responsibility and blame for babies.
jokes on you, not only in your country!
>You were created during scrum
So it is good for something at least?
The biggest blessing of remote work is being able to tune out and do something else during useless meetings.
It certainly revitalized the term "nooner"!
Oh, and that weekly "all company" meeting where everyone is there but only the presenter camera is on?... you have no idea what is happening during the boring round of every team manager promoting the this or that which their team was up to.
I don't care a whit about rep or points...
Someone please explain to me why the downvotes so I can understand.
Is it some puritanical thing? I'm baffled.
Or is HN leaning toward the incel concept? If so, I would argue that nerds are especially well suited for pleasing mates. We live to understand systems and provide optimal solutions. So all we need do is find a partner and serve them. If that's your issue, be not dismayed.
My partner liked to do her work, boring documentation crap, while I did my work on her. It was fun for both of us, and it was certainly a new kind of thing which could not exist in the office space. No doubt, she did high quality work with some pauses. And I made the best of the opportunity.
Those of you downvoting, be real and explain your reasoning. Or fuck off.
Edited: too many typos :(... am I slipping?