Paying stay-at-home parents and subsidizing childcare both have the same drawbacks RE: reinforcing gender roles. In both cases, the person most likely watching your kids will be women.
It's a social issue that should be addressed, but for the purposes of alleviating what is ultimately an economic issue, I think it should be ignored. I think it's much easier to solve social issues after alleviating the economic pressure borne from them.
+2
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Paying stay-at-home parents and subsidizing childcare both have the same drawbacks RE: reinforcing gender roles. In both cases, the person most likely watching your kids will be women.
It's a social issue that should be addressed, but for the purposes of alleviating what is ultimately an economic issue, I think it should be ignored. I think it's much easier to solve social issues after alleviating the economic pressure borne from them.
Agreed. And I really thing the issue here isn't that more women than men are doing so in Norway, because statistically even in a highly equal ideal world likely a signifigant number more women would choose to than men (even if only 51%) due to complications in childbirth.
The real problem keeping the male/female ratio apart is likely gender inequality in pay. Norway is the third best country for pay equality, but still has a signifigant gap in pay:
On average, for every $1 a woman earned in Norway, a man earned $1.27, which translates to an average annual salary equalling about $57,856 for women and $73,257 for men. Just slightly under 76 percent of Norwegian women are part of the national labour market, while Norwegian men's participation is 80 percent.
That's a few years back (2016), but if that number were $1 to $1 I'm pretty sure we would see a much higher number of men staying home relative to now.
I 100% agree that if you make the economics more equal it will help move this issue forward but I still feel icky with some of the undertone that if women are choosing to stay home and raise children that it's 100% a systemic issue.
I think we'd find that after every lever is pulled and everything is as equal and progressive as possible that the ratio will still lean towards women.
In short, I think policies that seek to enforce or target 50/50 participation are harmful. The ideal should be to make it a free and unencumbered choice.
I think pay inequity (for women) as well as toxic masculinity (Mr. mom / ridicule) are the big hurdles here.
I think I have shared this but when I am out at the park or pool or wherever with my boys during a "work day" I am surrounded by mom's giving me the side eye or even "where's mom" comments.
This is in Canada so we got a long way to go...
There's as much incentive to avoid women being stranded in the home with no alternatives as there is forcing one parent to care for a baby purely on economic grounds. I think directly funding childcare would provide the best incentive with wage subsidy for the caregiver being more of a bandaid on a systemic issue. A necessary bandaid, though.
0
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I 100% agree that if you make the economics more equal it will help move this issue forward but I still feel icky with some of the undertone that if women are choosing to stay home and raise children that it's 100% a systemic issue.
I think we'd find that after every lever is pulled and everything is as equal and progressive as possible that the ratio will still lean towards women.
In short, I think policies that seek to enforce or target 50/50 participation are harmful. The ideal should be to make it a free and unencumbered choice.
I think pay inequity (for women) as well as toxic masculinity (Mr. mom / ridicule) are the big hurdles here.
I think I have shared this but when I am out at the park or pool or wherever with my boys during a "work day" I am surrounded by mom's giving me the side eye or even "where's mom" comments.
This is in Canada so we got a long way to go...
Just want to say, I agree with you 100%. For lots of reasons I imagine that getting even within the 60% would be unlikely and not helpful. But getting a better spread than 7% male / 93% female is probably going to require pay inequality for most of that leveling out.
Being child free is kind of a social faux pas, it's more acceptable now in 2019 than ever, but we shouldn't really encourage that either.
Is it? I've never gotten dirty looks for talking about being child free, the worst I've ever gotten is from older people suggesting I'll change my mind later. Nobody's ever suggested I wasn't doing my part to ensure the continuation of the species or a functional society/economy/workforce.
I don't know about elsewhere, but at the very least its pretty controversial when my mother comes over for dinner.
Yeah you're not getting chased out of town but people think you're kind of weird.
Especially if you're the one who calls your dogs and cats your furbabies.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Everyone who questions my lifestyle choices regarding marriage and children shuts up when I tell them my student loan debt amount
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Everyone who questions my lifestyle choices regarding marriage and children shuts up when I tell them my student loan debt amount
This always works, too. I'm child free by choice, but I can't imagine how much it must suck to want kids but know that you can't have them for financial reasons.
Having children is something you should decide on the basis of whether you want them, not whether you can afford them. I think the problems being discussed in this thread as unintended consequences ought to be addressed on their own. If you want to deal with the side effects of enforcing gender roles or tackling the fact that immigrants aren't integrating, then craft policy to address those issues, instead of using parental pay as a proxy, because the idea of taking that away now is going to hurt more than if it had never been implemented.
Everyone who questions my lifestyle choices regarding marriage and children shuts up when I tell them my student loan debt amount
This always works, too. I'm child free by choice, but I can't imagine how much it must suck to want kids but know that you can't have them for financial reasons.
Having children is something you should decide on the basis of whether you want them, not whether you can afford them. I think the problems being discussed in this thread as unintended consequences ought to be addressed on their own. If you want to deal with the side effects of enforcing gender roles or tackling the fact that immigrants aren't integrating, then craft policy to address those issues, instead of using parental pay as a proxy, because the idea of taking that away now is going to hurt more than if it had never been implemented.
It isn't like it needs to be shut off like a light switch, programs can be phased out and replaced. But if the goal of the policy is to ease the financial burden of having kids, paid daycare is probably a more efficient means to do that. *
But it seems to me like the core of pro-kontantstøtte argument isn't just that it alleviates the cost of having a kid, but that it enables a specific preference to have a kid in lieu of working.
*Typical US daycare runs $11500 per year. The average person in the US earns 32k. So unless you are looking at really large families, with very closely timed births, or multiple births, there is basically no way that paying someone even 80% salary to stay home with the kids doesn't end up costing way more than paying for daycare. Given something pretty typical like 3 kids over 5 or 6 years it ends up costing ~3 times as much.
So, is there some argument that paying women to stay home for 6 or so years(average 2 kids) of their professional life doesn't cause them to be more dependent on their spouse? As well as create an expectation among employers that this will be common, further devaluing female employees.
Cause enabling them to return to work sooner and for single parents to better afford to work by paying more for child care seems like it it would decrease the impact of that lost time, and increase their for employers.
My father was abusive. My parents getting a divorce was a good thing. That decision being harder, to it taking longer, would have lead to me and by brother being physically, verbally and emotionally abused more. But my mom pretty much had to work, and get out of the house and be around other people. Both of which helped that. So, I have bit of bias.
Child rearing is a project, no more respectable or societally valuable than the coding project I work on. In fact, if I finish the security I'm working on, it will potentially have a greater net positive effect on the earth than the average of any given person's child, which generally turns out to be a net negative for the planet.
I support giving people more freedom to choose how to spend their time and support their interests, but having children is no more intrinsically valuable than a variety of other projects.
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Child rearing is a project, no more respectable or societally valuable than the coding project I work on. In fact, if I finish the security I'm working on, it will potentially have a greater net positive effect on the earth than the average of any given person's child, which generally turns out to be a net negative for the planet.
I support giving people more freedom to choose how to spend their time and support their interests, but having children is no more intrinsically valuable than a variety of other projects.
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
this is amazing to me as a concept. Aren't you, the child of any given person, supposedly creating something of great value to The Earth?
Are we to suppose that you're the outlier and the rest of us, and our kids of course, will generally turn out to be a net negative?
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Child rearing is a project, no more respectable or societally valuable than the coding project I work on. In fact, if I finish the security I'm working on, it will potentially have a greater net positive effect on the earth than the average of any given person's child, which generally turns out to be a net negative for the planet.
I support giving people more freedom to choose how to spend their time and support their interests, but having children is no more intrinsically valuable than a variety of other projects.
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
this is amazing to me as a concept. Aren't you, the child of any given person, supposedly creating something of great value to The Earth?
Are we to suppose that you're the outlier and the rest of us, and our kids of course, will generally turn out to be a net negative?
Heck, I haven't figured that out for myself yet
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Yeah, uh, I'm not seeing anyone saying "a women is wrong for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom" specifically just talking about women. There's definitely some other silly stuff but none of it seems specifically to be a complaint that a women might decide to stay home with the kids.
It's definitely not what the OP and what they are generally going on is talking about. The issue with the results of Norway's program is not that women were being stay-at-home moms, it's that they were doing so in a disproportionate fashion.
Any discussion about the value of having children or the claimed lack thereof ultimately ends up being pretty irrelevant because people gonna have kids no matter what and unless your belief is that society/the government/etc has no interest in making sure they grow up as stable and productive members of society, you are implicitly supporting funding the existence of children and the raising there-of.
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Yeah, uh, I'm not seeing anyone saying "a women is wrong for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom" specifically just talking about women. There's definitely some other silly stuff but none of it seems specifically to be a complaint that a women might decide to stay home with the kids.
It's definitely not what the OP and what they are generally going on is talking about. The issue with the results of Norway's program is not that women were being stay-at-home moms, it's that they were doing so in a disproportionate fashion.
That is itself flawed and regressive as a concept. What is "disproportionate"?
Spool, your last clause is an opinion not held by anyone here that I'm aware of, right? It's specifically refuted on the post you're quoting, for example, in the opening paragraph.
Well, let's be specific here - OP's opinion is that the policy of making it easier for women to stay home and raise their own kids is bad, and the reasons why the policy is bad are that they succeed in letting women stay home, a thing with strong enough downsides that it should be discouraged regardless of the desire to do it.
That's a pretty fine hair to split, and I don't think anyone can credibly do so. if you think staying at home shouldn't be subsidized because it's bad for feminism and for society to support that behavior, you also think at least partially that staying at home is itself bad for feminism and society. If you don't, your position is incoherent.
The 'why' of the disproportion is important, and pretty well-documented. It's not a mystery.
Subsidizing parents to stay home and raise their children is not anti-feminist, even if the parent that stays home is female.
But it should be considered and discussed why, despite the law being passed without language that encourages one gender over another, and yet somehow the gender discrepancy over which parent becomes the SAH childcare provider is so vast. Just don't discuss it at the detriment to doing anything at all.
Child rearing is a project, no more respectable or societally valuable than the coding project I work on. In fact, if I finish the security I'm working on, it will potentially have a greater net positive effect on the earth than the average of any given person's child, which generally turns out to be a net negative for the planet.
I support giving people more freedom to choose how to spend their time and support their interests, but having children is no more intrinsically valuable than a variety of other projects.
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
this is amazing to me as a concept. Aren't you, the child of any given person, supposedly creating something of great value to The Earth?
Are we to suppose that you're the outlier and the rest of us, and our kids of course, will generally turn out to be a net negative?
I'm not an outlier but I exist on a bell curve, yeah. Most people are pretty shit at raising children. There's nothing inherently valuable to society about it.
Any discussion about the value of having children or the claimed lack thereof ultimately ends up being pretty irrelevant because people gonna have kids no matter what and unless your belief is that society/the government/etc has no interest in making sure they grow up as stable and productive members of society, you are implicitly supporting funding the existence of children and the raising there-of.
But there is nothing particularly valuable to society in letting a particular individual decide how to raise them. In fact, on the net, people are pretty terrible at deciding how to raise children.
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Yeah, uh, I'm not seeing anyone saying "a women is wrong for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom" specifically just talking about women. There's definitely some other silly stuff but none of it seems specifically to be a complaint that a women might decide to stay home with the kids.
It's definitely not what the OP and what they are generally going on is talking about. The issue with the results of Norway's program is not that women were being stay-at-home moms, it's that they were doing so in a disproportionate fashion.
That is itself flawed and regressive as a concept. What is "disproportionate"?
Spool, your last clause is an opinion not held by anyone here that I'm aware of, right? It's specifically refuted on the post you're quoting, for example, in the opening paragraph.
Well, let's be specific here - OP's opinion is that the policy of making it easier for women to stay home and raise their own kids is bad, and the reasons why the policy is bad are that they succeed in letting women stay home, a thing with strong enough downsides that it should be discouraged regardless of the desire to do it.
That's a pretty fine hair to split, and I don't think anyone can credibly do so. if you think staying at home shouldn't be subsidized because it's bad for feminism and for society to support that behavior, you also think at least partially that staying at home is itself bad for feminism and society. If you don't, your position is incoherent.
No, it's not either one of those things. You are again missing the point in the exact way I've pointed out twice now. Disproportionate means exactly what the word has always meant and is the kind of analysis we apply to all sorts of problems of this sort. We look at all sorts of behaviours and actions on a societal level and ask why they fall unevenly across demographics. (eg - arrests by the police as a function of race for a super obvious one) And in this particular case there's tons of supporting evidence for societal gender roles and gender wage differences being a thing that can be influencing the (as far as any numbers I've seen) pretty massive difference in who ends up dealing with childcare. None of that is any sort of judgement on any particular person for their own choice. Because, again, even ideal desired outcome these things are being measured against is not "no women is ever stay at home parent".
Any discussion about the value of having children or the claimed lack thereof ultimately ends up being pretty irrelevant because people gonna have kids no matter what and unless your belief is that society/the government/etc has no interest in making sure they grow up as stable and productive members of society, you are implicitly supporting funding the existence of children and the raising there-of.
But there is nothing particularly valuable to society in letting a particular individual decide how to raise them. In fact, on the net, people are pretty terrible at deciding how to raise children.
Actually there is. Hugely so. Parent-child bonding is incredibly important for childhood development at a young age.
And that's not even touching on the logistics and huge fucking potential pitfalls of getting too much into the child-rearing game.
The 'why' of the disproportion is important, and pretty well-documented. It's not a mystery.
Subsidizing parents to stay home and raise their children is not anti-feminist, even if the parent that stays home is female.
But it should be considered and discussed why, despite the law being passed without language that encourages one gender over another, and yet somehow the gender discrepancy over which parent becomes the SAH childcare provider is so vast. Just don't discuss it at the detriment to doing anything at all.
Gender pay disparity is an issue that something can be done about, and generally things are being done but it's not going to go away overnight, but at the end of the day "gender roles" sounds a lot like people have decided for themselves but because it doesn't match some Platonic ratio of 50/50 so the government must step in and force the issue.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Honestly, your entire argument here doesn't really make much sense in the context of this discussion because the objection you raise is based in some idea that people are saying women shouldn't be stay at home moms. Which is literally not what any of this is about.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it [raising their own kids -spool]. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
Yeah, uh, I'm not seeing anyone saying "a women is wrong for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom" specifically just talking about women. There's definitely some other silly stuff but none of it seems specifically to be a complaint that a women might decide to stay home with the kids.
It's definitely not what the OP and what they are generally going on is talking about. The issue with the results of Norway's program is not that women were being stay-at-home moms, it's that they were doing so in a disproportionate fashion.
That is itself flawed and regressive as a concept. What is "disproportionate"?
Spool, your last clause is an opinion not held by anyone here that I'm aware of, right? It's specifically refuted on the post you're quoting, for example, in the opening paragraph.
Well, let's be specific here - OP's opinion is that the policy of making it easier for women to stay home and raise their own kids is bad, and the reasons why the policy is bad are that they succeed in letting women stay home, a thing with strong enough downsides that it should be discouraged regardless of the desire to do it.
That's a pretty fine hair to split, and I don't think anyone can credibly do so. if you think staying at home shouldn't be subsidized because it's bad for feminism and for society to support that behavior, you also think at least partially that staying at home is itself bad for feminism and society. If you don't, your position is incoherent.
No, it's not either one of those things. You are again missing the point in the exact way I've pointed out twice now. Disproportionate means exactly what the word has always meant and is the kind of analysis we apply to all sorts of problems of this sort. We look at all sorts of behaviours and actions on a societal level and ask why they fall unevenly across demographics. (eg - arrests by the police as a function of race for a super obvious one) And in this particular case there's tons of supporting evidence for societal gender roles and gender wage differences being a thing that can be influencing the (as far as any numbers I've seen) pretty massive difference in who ends up dealing with childcare. None of that is any sort of judgement on any particular person for their own choice. Because, again, even ideal desired outcome these things are being measured against is not "no women is ever stay at home parent".
Yes, the ideal desired outcome of at least some of the thread is specifically for women to not stay home with their kids.
Except it's not just about people wanting to stay at home. Children and parents benefit from parents being able to stay at home (at least to some extent) with their children.
A lot of the issues around parenting are a lack of widespread societal support for parenting as an activity. We basically expect people to just, like, deal with it. Like it's just a thing that happens.
The research does not show a strong benefit for children from stay at home mothers (or fathers). Some shows a benefit for working mothers, some shows a negative but the effect is certainly not large.
Its certainly the more traditional route and that's fine. But the delta of even a fairly slanted reading of the research does not really justify a subsidy specifically to encourage the behavior even before you get the reduced labor participation downside.
The research shows strong benefits from children spending more time with their parents. This is especially true for fathers who, under traditional roles, tend to spend the least time on childcare for various reasons.
I mean, no it doesn't? Sure, that's what feels like its true, but that's why I linked actual research.
Yes, it does. Strong parental relationships in the first few years of life (not coincidentally the many sections of time we are talking about with parental leave and such) are crucial for infant brain development. Along with many other things for both parent and child.
ED right up at the top of pg4 is arguing that the "ideal solution" is for parents to leave their kids in daycare from age 1 and go back to work! No one checked or challenged it at all.
The alternative, which we have, is government-subsidized daycare. This allows women to enter the workforce, helps immigrants integrate into society (and natives to be used to living around and with immigrants), and is better for all children. But all this is undermined by kontantstøtte.
Your problem still seems to not be specific to women, spool
OP's goal in ending a subsidy for stay-home parents is to restrict and disincentivize that option for women. That's the whole point - the imposition of a supposed societal good through reducing the number of women raising their own kids.
Your problem still seems to not be specific to women, spool
OP's goal in ending a subsidy for stay-home parents is to restrict and disincentivize that option for women. That's the whole point - the imposition of a supposed societal good through reducing the number of women raising their own kids.
Maybe rethink your language. Placing your kid in daycare or hiring a nanny doesn't mean you aren't raising your own kid.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Your problem still seems to not be specific to women, spool
OP's goal in ending a subsidy for stay-home parents is to restrict and disincentivize that option for women. That's the whole point - the imposition of a supposed societal good through reducing the number of women raising their own kids.
I get what you're saying. And I get where you're coming from.
But I'm still raising my kid even if I work full time and she's at daycare.
fair, it's an inflammatory construction and I don't begrudge anybody the choice to go back to work. My whole intent here is to advocate for the choice, and try to push back against the recurring theme that women choosing to stay home to be the full-time primary caregiver is bad for some or all of kids, women, society, and feminism.
spool32 on
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
fair, it's an inflammatory construction and I don't begrudge anybody the choice to go back to work. My whole intent here is to advocate for the choice, and try to push back against the recurring theme that women choosing to stay home to be the full-time primary caregiver is bad for some or all of kids, women, society, and feminism.
Is it a choice over the entire population? If we were to raise a kid and one of us were required to stay at home there is not really any doubt who it's going to be. That's only a "choice" in the most technical sense.
There's a difference between making a choice because it's the logical thing versus what one really wants to do.
That's why looking at an individual situation doesn't really help, it has to be done at a population level. To see the pattern.
Edit: by "we" I mean me and my partner, not me and spool.
fair, it's an inflammatory construction and I don't begrudge anybody the choice to go back to work. My whole intent here is to advocate for the choice, and try to push back against the recurring theme that women choosing to stay home to be the full-time primary caregiver is bad for some or all of kids, women, society, and feminism.
Is it a choice over the entire population? If we were to raise a kid and one of us were required to stay at home there is not really any doubt who it's going to be. That's only a "choice" in the most technical sense.
Edit: by "we" I mean me and my partner, not me and spool.
:winky:
Seriously though, that's why I support a subsidy for staying at home as the primary caregiver - it makes the choice easier for women because it blunts or removes the financial penalty for doing so. Anything that brings stay-home parenting closer to financial parity with daycare + job should make it easier to choose between them.
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It's a social issue that should be addressed, but for the purposes of alleviating what is ultimately an economic issue, I think it should be ignored. I think it's much easier to solve social issues after alleviating the economic pressure borne from them.
Agreed. And I really thing the issue here isn't that more women than men are doing so in Norway, because statistically even in a highly equal ideal world likely a signifigant number more women would choose to than men (even if only 51%) due to complications in childbirth.
The real problem keeping the male/female ratio apart is likely gender inequality in pay. Norway is the third best country for pay equality, but still has a signifigant gap in pay:
That's a few years back (2016), but if that number were $1 to $1 I'm pretty sure we would see a much higher number of men staying home relative to now.
I think we'd find that after every lever is pulled and everything is as equal and progressive as possible that the ratio will still lean towards women.
In short, I think policies that seek to enforce or target 50/50 participation are harmful. The ideal should be to make it a free and unencumbered choice.
I think pay inequity (for women) as well as toxic masculinity (Mr. mom / ridicule) are the big hurdles here.
I think I have shared this but when I am out at the park or pool or wherever with my boys during a "work day" I am surrounded by mom's giving me the side eye or even "where's mom" comments.
This is in Canada so we got a long way to go...
Just want to say, I agree with you 100%. For lots of reasons I imagine that getting even within the 60% would be unlikely and not helpful. But getting a better spread than 7% male / 93% female is probably going to require pay inequality for most of that leveling out.
Yeah you're not getting chased out of town but people think you're kind of weird.
Especially if you're the one who calls your dogs and cats your furbabies.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
This always works, too. I'm child free by choice, but I can't imagine how much it must suck to want kids but know that you can't have them for financial reasons.
Having children is something you should decide on the basis of whether you want them, not whether you can afford them. I think the problems being discussed in this thread as unintended consequences ought to be addressed on their own. If you want to deal with the side effects of enforcing gender roles or tackling the fact that immigrants aren't integrating, then craft policy to address those issues, instead of using parental pay as a proxy, because the idea of taking that away now is going to hurt more than if it had never been implemented.
It isn't like it needs to be shut off like a light switch, programs can be phased out and replaced. But if the goal of the policy is to ease the financial burden of having kids, paid daycare is probably a more efficient means to do that. *
But it seems to me like the core of pro-kontantstøtte argument isn't just that it alleviates the cost of having a kid, but that it enables a specific preference to have a kid in lieu of working.
*Typical US daycare runs $11500 per year. The average person in the US earns 32k. So unless you are looking at really large families, with very closely timed births, or multiple births, there is basically no way that paying someone even 80% salary to stay home with the kids doesn't end up costing way more than paying for daycare. Given something pretty typical like 3 kids over 5 or 6 years it ends up costing ~3 times as much.
Cause enabling them to return to work sooner and for single parents to better afford to work by paying more for child care seems like it it would decrease the impact of that lost time, and increase their for employers.
My father was abusive. My parents getting a divorce was a good thing. That decision being harder, to it taking longer, would have lead to me and by brother being physically, verbally and emotionally abused more. But my mom pretty much had to work, and get out of the house and be around other people. Both of which helped that. So, I have bit of bias.
I support giving people more freedom to choose how to spend their time and support their interests, but having children is no more intrinsically valuable than a variety of other projects.
Edit: Good education of children is intrinsically valuable, but on the average we'd do better if individuals didn't choose it. Instead we should have state sponsored creches.
Turns out a bunch of people are saying exactly that...
regressive 2nd wave feminism and mathusian eugenics are routinely declared dead, but kick off a topic about the value of raising kids and they just keep popping up
this is amazing to me as a concept. Aren't you, the child of any given person, supposedly creating something of great value to The Earth?
Are we to suppose that you're the outlier and the rest of us, and our kids of course, will generally turn out to be a net negative?
Do you mind quoting where people are saying that? Not "in aggregate" or trying to find a better balance between moms and dads staying home, but where people are actually saying "women shouldn't be stay at home moms"?
I don't remember reading it. But some of these posts make me angry so I may have missed it haha
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Heck, I haven't figured that out for myself yet
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It was just three posts up from here.
Then there was ED and Abdhy on pg5 both just flat-out saying that the ideal was daycare after age 1. Chokem on that page as well, saying that having kids at all was bad (among other things), Mortious on that page taking a softer line of just letting parents 'do whatever' and only assisting with daycare.
More gentle but still 2nd wave is Javen above on pg 8 saying that a woman engaging in childrearing in any capacity was reinforcing gender roles.
OK so most of those examples are not "women," but men and women. That's a very different thing which I feel is more tangential to your issues re: your SO and feminism.
I don't think that's what Javen is saying either. You may be looking at that post with a bit of bias and reading it with a more negative interpretation than it deserves?
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hey yo @Javen
am I off base here?
Yes, you are
Yeah, uh, I'm not seeing anyone saying "a women is wrong for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom" specifically just talking about women. There's definitely some other silly stuff but none of it seems specifically to be a complaint that a women might decide to stay home with the kids.
It's definitely not what the OP and what they are generally going on is talking about. The issue with the results of Norway's program is not that women were being stay-at-home moms, it's that they were doing so in a disproportionate fashion.
That is itself flawed and regressive as a concept. What is "disproportionate"?
Subsidizing parents to stay home and raise their children is not anti-feminist, even if the parent that stays home is female.
But it should be considered and discussed why, despite the law being passed without language that encourages one gender over another, and yet somehow the gender discrepancy over which parent becomes the SAH childcare provider is so vast. Just don't discuss it at the detriment to doing anything at all.
I'm not an outlier but I exist on a bell curve, yeah. Most people are pretty shit at raising children. There's nothing inherently valuable to society about it.
But there is nothing particularly valuable to society in letting a particular individual decide how to raise them. In fact, on the net, people are pretty terrible at deciding how to raise children.
No, it's not either one of those things. You are again missing the point in the exact way I've pointed out twice now. Disproportionate means exactly what the word has always meant and is the kind of analysis we apply to all sorts of problems of this sort. We look at all sorts of behaviours and actions on a societal level and ask why they fall unevenly across demographics. (eg - arrests by the police as a function of race for a super obvious one) And in this particular case there's tons of supporting evidence for societal gender roles and gender wage differences being a thing that can be influencing the (as far as any numbers I've seen) pretty massive difference in who ends up dealing with childcare. None of that is any sort of judgement on any particular person for their own choice. Because, again, even ideal desired outcome these things are being measured against is not "no women is ever stay at home parent".
Actually there is. Hugely so. Parent-child bonding is incredibly important for childhood development at a young age.
And that's not even touching on the logistics and huge fucking potential pitfalls of getting too much into the child-rearing game.
Gender pay disparity is an issue that something can be done about, and generally things are being done but it's not going to go away overnight, but at the end of the day "gender roles" sounds a lot like people have decided for themselves but because it doesn't match some Platonic ratio of 50/50 so the government must step in and force the issue.
Yes, the ideal desired outcome of at least some of the thread is specifically for women to not stay home with their kids.
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OP's goal in ending a subsidy for stay-home parents is to restrict and disincentivize that option for women. That's the whole point - the imposition of a supposed societal good through reducing the number of women raising their own kids.
Maybe rethink your language. Placing your kid in daycare or hiring a nanny doesn't mean you aren't raising your own kid.
I get what you're saying. And I get where you're coming from.
But I'm still raising my kid even if I work full time and she's at daycare.
So maybe, I dunno, tone back just a smidge?
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Is it a choice over the entire population? If we were to raise a kid and one of us were required to stay at home there is not really any doubt who it's going to be. That's only a "choice" in the most technical sense.
There's a difference between making a choice because it's the logical thing versus what one really wants to do.
That's why looking at an individual situation doesn't really help, it has to be done at a population level. To see the pattern.
Edit: by "we" I mean me and my partner, not me and spool.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
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:winky:
Seriously though, that's why I support a subsidy for staying at home as the primary caregiver - it makes the choice easier for women because it blunts or removes the financial penalty for doing so. Anything that brings stay-home parenting closer to financial parity with daycare + job should make it easier to choose between them.