Oddbean new post about login | logout This is an interesting conversation to say the least I think few people if any think that men and women should not take equal part in life’s labor, I just think it’s the labor that has changed I do think there is a gendered predisposition for women toward aesthetics and socialization, and likewise for men for physical toil and risk-taking. But if aesthetics and socialization can be bought with money, and physical toil can be avoided and risk managed with money, and the western world’s methods for procuring money are not gender specific, then the need for traditional gender roles certainly diminishes. Essentially, with enough money you can replace a wife or a husband. The question then is two-fold - 1) is it ok to abandon traditional roles because we are sure we’ll never need them again (should we maintain them as a backup?), and 2) are we sure that our evolutionarily rooted needs are not being abandoned if we abandon these gender roles (Chesterton’s fence)
Hmmm. I actually think it's sensible to not want a perma-housewife. "Housewife", in the sense of a woman who does not help generate any income. This is useful, at the beginning when she's focused on becoming a mother and establishing a household, but most couples find some way for her to bring in a bit of cash, work part-time, or become more involved in managing family businesses or trading, at some later point, and that seems in keeping with Proverbs 31. I think the conversation should move away from housewife/careerwife and toward having one major breadwinner (usually the husband) and the other person being financially compensated within the marriage.
I think it's important to note that my system works just as well for any marriage or partnership, where one income stream is significantly higher than the other. Stay at home fathers are arguably in the worst financial position, in fact, as they don't have as much political/legal power as women do. They're a relatively large group (in some demographics, almost 25% and climbing) and anything too gender-specific would preclude them, unnecessarily.
Now we’re talking. I do think it’s detrimental to a marriage for both spouses to have two totally unrelated jobs with two totally different sets of bosses, co-workers, clients, etc. But working together in a family business? That sounds like the dream. Obviously many people make the two separate careers thing work, and they find other ways to connect and integrate. I just think they are starting from a challenging position. And then, yes, of course, the home-making and child-raising is a more demanding job early on, so being able to transition in and out of that is a question to address.