Social conservatives are poison. They can't keep their religion out of government.
15
Has no one read The Feminne Mistake.???
4
"Beautiful loser,you just can't have it all,you just don't need it all." Bob Seger
3
This article made me gag. Most women I know are as passionate about their careers as they are about their families. Taking years off from work takes women off the career track and they can never recover. If you don't believe in equality--say so. For those of us who believe in it--let both men and women find the right path for them. Going back to the 50s just won't do.
18
Toss this fat on the fire. Many employers do not provide health benefits to families, and if they do, those benefits come with a monthly premium that can be over $700/month, and come with whopping deductibles and copays. This is true for state employees in NC. So, if both are not working, you can see a huge financial hit right out of the starting gate.
13
Gee, I read through the whole article and not one mention of men staying home to raise the children while women go out to work. What a concept. And hats off to my brother-in-law who did just that.
37
Both sides refuse to address a major aspect of the problem: a professional culture in which quality and quantity of time are equated. In other words, in spite of evidence to the contrary, there is an unquestioned assumption that a person who works more hours per week is a more valuable employee than one who works fewer. This forces families to sacrifice one parent's career to maximize the other's so that someone is holding down the fort at home. It also provides an excuse for employers who want to restrict benefits to those who work full time instead of pro-rating benefits for those who work part-time.
18
You seem to imply that only the woman can stay home, was that your intent? Certainly, if we had better maternity leave policy, "mom" would have adequate time to recover, but after that, it seems like if a couple has made a decision to live on one income, it shouldn't automatically be the mom who stays home and dad who goes back to work.. For the record, through our kids growing up (all now in our out of college) I worked and my wife went full-time, part-time, no-time, part-time, full-time, but their was a massive difference in our incomes -- she is a teacher which is a whole different conversation. You also might want to explore how technology makes working from a home, regardless of gender, a much more viable option than it was a scant 15-20 years ago when we made this decision.
9
No, they weren't trying to "keep up with the Joneses" - they were trying to grapple with the very real stagnation of income over the past 30 years and the growing inequity. Maybe two-income households are "better off" than one-income households of the 1960s, but if both parents are working then they ought to be (and there is no quantification of "better off"). Also, how many men became unemployed and unemployable starting in the 1980s as corporations eliminated the "lifetime employment" contract of previous decades? It was financial suicide not to have both parents employable.
18
Is this where some kind of Universal Basic Income comes in? Not enough to pull anyone with real interests and ambition from the workforce, but enough to help a family care for small children, care for elderly parents, care for a disabled family member? I think it would be beneficial in myriad ways to recognize and to some extent, compensate this type of work. And the money would likely go right into the consumer-based economy, at least for those in the middle and lower socioeconomic classes.
16
In 1950 the average American house was under 1,000 square feet, and families were larger. Today houses are well over 2,000 square feet, and families are smaller. There are many angles to this issue--career, personal fulfillment, simple preference--but please don't suggest that materialism and hedonic adaptation aren't in the mix, too.
14
" Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
I like this idea, what does it look like?
Kids should be subsidized, but not to the extent that it makes having kids profitable.
Why do you stop getting a child tax credit when the kid turns 17? A 17 year old costs way more than a baby. When did this happen? Has there always been a cap at 17, or was this added separately at some point?
4
Ross, men and women (people) are capable of the most amazing things. Child bearing and rearing is part of that, and it definitely interrupts one’s career, if one is a woman. Yet the Merkels of the world marshal on. How do we enable these most capable women in the face of thinking like yours?
4
Gimme a break. No one has ever been able to have it all, one chooses to be a stay at home dad (or mom), part of a dual earner household or to be childless, or any option in-between. That's why people make choices. Or are you arguing that everyone is entitled to having everything? I thought choice is what maturity is all about.
10
I have long said that the result of women working as professionals was to drive up the price of real estate in good school districts because as a two income boomer household, that is what we used the 2nd income to achieve. The only way to counteract that is to create good school districts within reasonable commutes for the primary income earner. Good luck Conservatives with achieveing that.
7
I started life with my mother at home and daddy going off to work. My dad, however, was an army officer and he went off to the Vietnam War. Mom didn't hear from him for months and then she began to panic. I heard her say to my grandmother that she needed to be prepared to lose him. She had a teaching degree and she got a job teaching, just in case. Dad did come home, but I learned a powerful lesson: a woman needed to be prepared to care for her family, maybe not just war, but because of illness, a layoff, an accident or the declining salaries and benefits most families face in the US.
23
My niece has an almost three year old and six month old and works part time from home. She has the best of both worlds as she sees her children during the day and is able to be part of the workforce. The money she makes helps with the family expenses and she is able to keep her foot in the working world. She does have a woman who cares for her children so she can concentrate on her work.
When her children are a little older, she will be able to go back to work full time as she will have gained the necessary skills that have kept her relevant and employable. She feels it is important to be able to have quality time with her young children. They are young for such a short period of time. She does not want to miss their formative years so making less money is the price she is willing to pay for this situation. This is a choice she is happy with making.
5
Anybody who has children in this country is mad. Companies conspire to put us in debt and to keep us there. Homes, cars, education, phones, TVs, medical care - can’t afford to pay just put it on the card and your life belongs to the banks. Want more money at work and benefits to boot - sorry, no can do. Want the government to help out - sorry the rich guys need another tax break. Want to plan your family - sorry the family values people, who just love Trump, say you can’t and they are writing the laws to stop you. Lord save us - what hypocrisy.
13
Yesterday, the Times published a story about the terrible destruction humans are wreaking on the environment, threatening millions of species with extinction.
And yet Douthat continues to promote, with, as he himself says, "tedious frequency," the idea that Americans should have more children.
We are making a mess of the world, Ross. "...[A]ll is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, and wears man's smudge, and shares man's smell." We need less of us, not more.
16
It's about time that conservatives address the fact that their fiscal & economic policies undermine their social ideals, especially the pedestal on which they allegedly place the notion of families. If republicans valued families half as much as they do corporations, we wouldn't live in a world where only millionaires can afford houses, a stay at home parent is a status symbol, and children are a luxury item.
13
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
a) What subsidies? - Can you think of any the GOP would support LOL
b) Men's income has fallen as women get more education and training than them AND are more assiduous - More balanced in their lifestyles AND basically superior employees.
c) Most men are lousy lazy abusive husbands so naturally the women want more independence.
5
Ross Douthat, as he is wont to do, presents a compelling case for moderation in a superficially intractable conflict with a persuasive argument which balances the undeniable social, economic, and scientific benefits which we have achieved by finally allowing full participation by women in our workforce against the needs to balance and strengthen the family structures that have enabled us to become who we are.
Already, we are witnessing the emergence of an entire class of young, middle-class families who successfully are accomplishing exactly what Douthat has described.
For us liberals who sometimes slip into the trap of viewing ourselves as being the only enlightened individuals in a too-often threatening world, Ross, among several other noteworthy conservative NYT and other columnists, serves as a welcome reminder that we do not stand alone.
3
The two-income trap presumes that at least one person, usually the man, earns enough to support the family, and that the wife's wages barely cover the cost of childcare and therefore she's better off quitting and staying home. But what if both parents' salaries are needed to pay the rent/mortgage, electricity, heat, car and expenses related to the car, put food on the table, etc.
If he's making enough to pay their bills and her salary only covers the cost of childcare, then Warren's outdated theory rings somewhat true. But if you need two salaries or both people need to work two or three jobs each, then it isn't even a question. Both will have to work so the family isn't living on the streets or in a homeless shelter.
I always thought of the "what-ifs": what if my husband lost his job--fired, downsized, outsourced, and couldn't get another job right away or got a job that didn't pay as well? What if he ran off with a 16 year old, leaving me with the kids and all of the bills? What if he got killed, got sick, etc.? What if, after putting him through business school/medical school/law school, he gets his diploma and then decides to divorce me?
This issue is truly one with no right or wrong answer, and each couple will decide what is best for them. For some, that means the woman stays home. It is usually the woman, because she usually earns less money. For others, there is no choice--both have to work in order to make ends meet.
5
A very fine and thoughtful article. Perhaps our goal should be " The 1 1/2 income family that can afford the cost of living." for those that are in a 2 parent/partner relationship of any type.
Paid family and medical are already in the work space, but there are consequences for all parties for very long periods of time not formally working for compensation.
Excellent and thought provoking read.
1
@Mark: Where are paid family and medical already in the work space? I don't see it extended to everyone, just the ones who already make excellent salaries and whose jobs give them the flexibility to go to their kids' soccer games and school plays. I don't see it for the Wal-Mart workers, for the waitresses at the local diner, for the supermarket employees. I don't see it for the part time employees at the university where I teach, nor for the adjunct faculty. The President, Deans, upper level administrators, and tenured faculty are covered. The overworked and underpaid department secretary, who runs the place and without whom we'd be lost, the custodian who empties the trash, not so much. They're the ones who are hurt.
11
@marybeth I was thinking in terms of the California Paid Family Leave insurance program for example, which actually is non-employer specific and does benefit the lower rung employee ( such as the department secretary you mention). Vermont also has some specific laws as well. Then we move to paternity and maternity leave as well as FMLA, which only translates into paid leave if the worker has saved up PTO or sick, vacation, personal leave time. These last category of benefits do at least preserve jobs and benefits for those who have no PTO time.
I don't see a realistic paid leave program for part time work in our country however,as employers simply would limit hiring rather than pay that type of benefit. I am wary of centralized governmental mandated solutions as they rarely work as intended and sometimes have untoward overall societel effects, however well intentioned.
1
™No matter how gender-egalitarian society becomes, the physical realities of gestation and childbirth make it natural for most families to desire at least a temporary division of labor during the years when their kids are young, a temporary period of male breadwinning to balance the burden borne by mothers.™
This says everything you need to know about what counts as 'gender egalitarian' for the author.
True gender egalitarianism means the 'burden borne by mothers' is recognized as value-creating labor for society. Instead of chalking it up to a natural disposition to care and nurture
-which is why the caring professions are overpopulated with women making pennies on the dollar for traditional men's labor-
we should recognize it for the indispensable font of human self-realization that any successful society would cease to function in its absence.
Just because we don't have the metric established for remunerating this labor doesn't mean that it isn't labor upon which society depends crucially for its survival.
Capitalism crushes family values, and all values of associative cooperation, except for one.
10
I'm sorry, but employers have exactly ZERO loyalty to employees. I would never put all our eggs in one basket by having only one of us working. No thank you. Plus, having two parents working means it much easier to tell your employer to "take this job and shove it" if you are being mistreated. And it's glorious to be able to do so!
18
Thank you for this comment. You must have 2 incomes to survive the caprices of the modern workplace, where nothing is certain.
7
Another challenge in today's world (unaddressed in this column) is the frantic pace of parenting. Everyone wants a more simple life, but the nature of education and healthcare, etc., today create enormous time burdens on parents, e.g., forms to fill, appointments to keep, after school events, sending money for the carnival, on-line sign ups, schools and doctors all have 100s of pages of paperwork to fill out. Why are kids on electronics all the time? ...Because the parent who is home with them is busy on the school website, filling out yet another "profile." How are we parents doing it all?! I work 35% time, and my spouse works 150% time, so we aren't quite at 2 full-time jobs, and we can barely keep up. This is the Internet age; it's driving more professional (mostly) women from the workforce. Modern demands on parents are ever increasing. We are all drowning in administrivia. When a parent steps back from the workforce to "raise" children, what they are really attending to is not children, but the societal (and Internet-based) demands on parents. How can we stop the insanity...and inanity? It's not that helicopter parents are "over-scheduling" their kids. Schools, doctors, churches, Boy Scouts, etc., all "require" so much paperwork, shuttling, silly activities, etc. Parents don't have the option of "opting out" of these things. And yes, it's usually the mom.
6
No is just as good a word as yes. The secret to not being busy all the time is to say no to the things and organizations that require a lot of wasted energy. Choose a couple fulfilling things and make room for some do-nothing time to just spend together and it can be a lot easier.
5
Make pro-family policies about families and not women, and you have my support Ross, and the support of a whole lot of dads and moms.
Funny, we can all get what we want out of this: a bit more personal freedom, more economic security, and less constrained gender roles.
Why is it that both feminists and patriarchal conservatives can’t see this rather obvious fact?
4
Thoughtful opinion piece. It's just short on the most critical issue; namely, what are the parameters and costs necessary to "subsidize family life". To be meaningful, it might have to approach the costs of a universal basic income scheme, which nobody has figured out how to pay for. A tax credit of a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars a year will not subsidize family life.
2
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life,"
This is a meaningless platitude. The article should have started here and explained how to do this in detail.
If keeping up with the Joneses was really the problem--well that's their own personal problem. This article ignores the cost of living and presumes a historical economic anomaly after WW2 in America of the one income family with the American dream is how life is for everyone all the time.
12
@josh I was born in 1955. Believe me, women worked outside the home in the 1950s and 1960s, in addition to being wives and mothers. Working-class women were store clerks, hairdressers, house cleaners, and other jobs. Many middle-class women were teachers, nurses, and others in a very limited range of "women's" jobs that were nonetheless essential to society. My mother was a university professor. There were a great many secretarial jobs, which only required a high-school education at the time. And, if a woman married a man who owned a small family business, her unpaid labor was essential. Farmer's wives did endless farm chores in addition to housework, cooking, canning, and selling some produce and eggs at roadside stands. Store owner's wives did the business's secretarial work and bookkeeping, and also waited the counter and did errands as required. Most doctors and dentists were in private practice, and their wives usually ran the front office. My father's sister, who was middle class and had two children, worked many hours in her husband's small business, and also had a part-time dressmaking business on the side. What has changed is that women are now admitted to a wider range of careers and their labor is recognized as real labor--though they still are paid less than men for the same work.
15
@josh The average American house in 1950 was under 1,000 square feet. Today it's well over 2,000, and families have fewer children. The post-war "economic miracle" was something special, true, but there is also a hedonic adaptation angle to this story.
2
Those of us who chose to not have children or get married should not be burdened by those who made the CHOICE to breed. These are ...... CHOICES. Americans are tired of subsiding others decisions .....
10
Thank goodness for those of us who choose to have children. Without them, the future will not continue, taxes won't be paid, infrastructure won't get rebuilt, social security benefits will dwindle; and without children who "grow" up, who will be left to care for the environment, art and literature, the elderly and the infirm? Who will grow up to invent the cure for cancer or the next medical miracle? Or reconcile the carbon footprints of humans, or build world peace? who will grow our food? Our children?
5
@Patty. No one’s arguing that the world should stop having children. However, many people choose to have children when there’s no way they can afford them. There’s something to be said for more proactive, rational decision-making with regards to having children.
5
By the time I got to the fifth paragraph I really got it how far behind conservative thinking is. Pathetic poetic word salad...
7
I wonder how many women work because they can get a
job with health care when the spouse has a job without coverage.
12
@bob loring: Quite a few, I should think. Years ago, the dean's secretary told me that she took the job solely for the health insurance our then-employer provided. Her husband had a business, but it was so crazy-expensive to get health insurance that he told her that she'd better get a job with it, just so they could both be covered.
6
Wow! What a convoluted essay this is! Let me summarize: Warren,bad! And conservative ideas,good! What verbal and intellectual gymnastics. Quite audacious too.
7
Or you could just be happy we are having less children because over population is a thing!
5
Reading this article leaves me perplexed.
Ross, how many angels was it dance on the head of a pin? The points you make are about as relevant.
2
There was NEVER a "one-earner" income family. It's just that the women who stayed home and were never paid, nor protected by government programs, i.e., social security, disability, or private pensions did all their work for free, all while working a 7-day week. Today, because dual income households are more the norm, we have to "pay" for all of those sevices formerly done by for free by women.
16
Senator Warren was raised lower middle class in Oklahoma and Texas as I understand it. I’ve read suggestions that her experiences and the experiences of her parents in that environment helped shape her interest in and views on these matters.
It makes sense to me to think that we’re addressing a topic regarding which circumstance, wants, needs, and economic analysis intersect differently for middle class, upper middle class, and lower middle class people. And it also seems likely to me that Senator Warren’s 15 year old analysis as you’ve described it has more relevance today to the circumstances of lower middle class people than to the circumstances of upper middle class people.
2
I have a college degree. I worked before becoming a mother at Stanford University Medical Center (1986-1989). I interviewed for the same type job (Admin Associate) in 1993 after 4 years at with 2 babies. I was seated at a conference table across from 4 men (M.D.s) and one had the gall to ask me if I remembered how to spell and punctuate. Men did not have respect for the work that an educated mother does while raising young children. I was silently appalled but needed a job.
8
A lot of the "two-income trap" has less to do with families with two working parents and more to do with housing and healthcare costs. To blame these on two-income earners is rather inaccurate; the data doesn't fit. If anything, the influx of women into the healthcare industry ought to have depressed the cost of healthcare by depressing salaries; instead, healthcare costs have skyrocketed. Housing costs have much more to do with restrictive zoning regulations than with dual-income families bidding up prices. In places where housing costs have remained level, living a middle class life on a single middle-class income is still possible, if that single incomer earner has employer-provided health coverage.
4
Both cases are simply instances of supply and demand. Two income families bid on same house. If everyone has more cash, they bid higher to win. The end result is paying more for the same house. Anywhere you have limitations on a good, e.g., home in neighborhood with excellent schools, the price will rise. As for healthcare, the increased “demand” comes from employer and government paid insurance. The movement of women into healthcare workforce, in a controlled experiment, might have a dampening effect on healthcare costs. The small impact got overwhelmed by the tsunami of cash that flooded the healthcare system in late 70’s and beyond. In this case, the market reacted by increasing the supply of medical treatments and technologies to suck up that cash like a sponge. The market created more “houses” and we, if in the right plan, could afford them all.
One income earner family looking for home and family without government/employer health insurance: both in same boat, floating on an Amazon River of cash and none of it theirs.
Isn't a two income family in a better position, regarding a safety net? If one partner loses their job or becomes incapacitated it isn't as much of a catastrophe if both are earning money. College (tuition, living expenses etc) costs a fortune and couples must also save for retirement.
8
When, in the early 70s, my wife and I set out to buy our first house, we discovered that the FHA (which was insuring our loan) now took into consideration both incomes. That was a change, presumably throughout the lending industry. Immediately, we could afford more house. Shortly, that "more house" naturally became more expensive. A subtle irony -- by counting a wife's income as legitimate, a wife's income became necessary. Go figure.
3
@View from the street It is only fair that the bank assess both incomes, because both incomes are absolutely legitimate and in many cases, necessary for a couple to buy a house. When my husband and I bought our first house, it was my income added to his that clinched the mortgage loan for us. If a bank clears you for a larger loan than you yourself feel comfortable with, there is no need to use it all. Just buy the smaller house instead of the larger one. Also, single women need to buy houses. In the 1970s, my cousin's wife had supported him throughout their marriage of ten years or so. They had no children. Yet, during the year-long process of divorce, she had to take him to the bank to help her get a home loan because the bank did not want to lend to any single women. (They did not tell the bank a divorce was in process.) Good thing times have changed.
2
@View from the street
It becomes essential only if you take the bait and decide to get a bigger house just because you can.
2
When men labored in coal mines and factories and the wives stayed home with the 7 plus children, women did work. Women have always worked in families but have not always had the power of choice. They did not have appliances that washed for them, no mixers, no hot water. They boiled water in a pot to wash clothes as recently as the 1950's in many rural parts of the USA. Women had kitchen gardens and backyard gardens and "put up" hundreds of jars of tomatoes, beans, beets, peas for winter food. They kept chickens and killed them on Saturday afternoon for Sunday dinner. There was never a time when women did not work. It is just that now they have a few more choices about what kind of work they want to do and they do get paid a little better, sometimes. But, they are not dependent on the men they marry. They can approach marriage on an equal footing with the men and they can choose how many children they want to bear and raise.
9
A woman earns 83% that of a man to start. Subtract taxes paid. Additional work expenses (second car?) child care expenses, household service expenses (i.e. landscapper, house cleaner because both are too busy working).
It seems like a lot to spend just to have a slightly bigger house and central air conditioning with the pittance that is left.
5
Lol. Not If you consider the decades of pension/Social Security payments. Plus many of us have student loans etc. Very few people can afford to stay out of the workforce for a extended period of time.
8
Married people won't like thinking about this, but I've seen too many wives who gave up work to raise children end up feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage and unable to leave because they have no income or assets of their own. The loss of social security credits and the missed opportunity to save for retirement are additional ways that women lose out by giving up work. Poorer, more dependent, and without the leverage in the relationship that the partner bringing in the money has. It's a bad deal for women.
13
@Paul FALSE. The wage gap is a myth. Women fresh out of college and without a child actually earn MORE than men now.
4
My wife and I have just graduated our second child from a private u, and at 60, are within the past year empty nesters. We navigated these iNCREDIBLE social tensions as follows:
-- In the early 90s, I was a stay-at-home dad for 2 years. I had just graduated with a degree in an idealistic profession for which I had no social connections and for which my idealism did not allow me to compromise for something lesser. My wife worked as a high school English teacher - she just retired after 35 years. I have been working professionally for the past 25.
-- After 2-3 years of near constant care, my daughter was ready for full-day pre-school. Her grandmother who lived very close provided the 3rd year of 1/2-time care.
-- It was VERY tough for me to break in and move up the ladder afterward. But, I did it by by using the same skills in a different field altogether - IT - as a consultant.
-- My wife's salary grew slowly and steadily - and she had Christmases and spring breaks, random holidays, and summers to give the kids - plus a career that enabled her to leave on time - which is critical, especially when I was working the downtown corporate job(s).
-- As a consultant, I found I could give time between gigs in addition to the time my wife had to give. It was enough.
-- We bought low and sold high and bought low and leveraged banks' "free" $ during the housing bubble and self-managed builders who improved our starter home. And made it into the upper-middle class of home ownership.
1
What about single parents? With just one person raising children numerous problems arise. This is why children are better off with gay couple adoptions than foster care. My daughter and husband are professionals who manage their family quite well. And what about men staying home to raise children while the wife works.
4
The four Ds of reality: Death, Divorce, Desertion, Disability. Any one of these could occur at any time and women should always be prepared to support themselves and their children. My mother was a victim of desertion, being left high and dry by my father with three small children to care for. It was a real struggle for her to get back on her feet after being a housewife and mother for 12 years.
19
Ross,
"and while the cost of child care has risen, the average two-earner income has risen fast enough to compensate. "
This assertion seems unlikely given what we know about how changes to real income over the last 30 years. Do you have data to support it, appropriately adjusted for inflation, etc? What sources are you referencing?
Thank you
7
"nothing prevents today’s households from opting to live on one income, and if women don’t make that choice, it’s a sign that they find work advantageous and empowering. " Wow, another clueless Republican think tank. For a majority of those below the median income, both must work to make enough money to get to the middle class. It is the well to do that can afford to live in a one income household. those social conservatives who celebrate the family and a two earner household are delusional to reality.
8
@tom I entered the workforce in the 1980s. At least in the San Francisco Bay Area where I lived, it was absolutely essential for both members of most couples to work full time to own a modest two-bedroom house with a 30-year mortgage, and cover their living expenses. And save not just for retirement, but for the volatile work economy where most of those Silicon Valley startups went out of business after two years and so one member of the couple would lose his/her job and be unemployed for months. I was never interested in keeping up with the Smith-Joneses; I was interested in having the bank not foreclose on our house. My husband and I never took fancy vacations, nor did we do a lot of partying; we didn't even have the time. We never had kids. We never wanted any. Being a housewife, even for a few years, would have bored me to death. But now that we have retired, and assessed our carefully accumulated and invested savings, we see that we couldn't have afforded to raise and educate even one or two kids and still retire in security. It is absurd to assert that most women work so a couple can revel in needless luxuries. I still think free preschool and free college should be reserved for people in real financial need, not those who can afford those things and just don't want to pay. Having children is a choice and the world is already overpopulated.
13
I visited the home of a two-earner "power couple" in an affluent New England town. Their house looked like a typhoon had roared through it, and their kitchen was a sight, with cereal boxes and refuse stuffed in the sink, with the water left running etc. And sheets were strewn all over the bedroom. In short, they had to live like animals because no one had time to handle the domestic side, with both working and, apparently, were not earning enough to afford a maid
3
@Mark Browning Oh really, you met a dual income couple once? You realize that millions live that existence and that their domestic habits vary, just as those of properly single income families such as yours do. I'm not sure one needs a maid (or an unemployed wife) in order to avoid ending up on Hoaders.
8
Conservatives are concerned with family only insofar as it involves the role of women. Their concern is about women.
Of course, being able to afford living on one income is desirable for any family. However, it is difficult to believe that someone like Fox News entertainer, Tucker Carlson, is actually concerned with improving the wellbeing of families or persons in general.
This is true of the Republican Party in general.
6
There might be one young couple who have decided it is best for the wife to stay at home and raise their children. Money is not an issue and they feel it is important for her to be with their offspring and teach them the values they find important. The wife puts her career on hold because they feel the children grow up so fast and she wants to experience the joy of raising her own children.
Another woman may feel she has put a lot into her career and does not want go give this up. She knows she will never be able to return to this lucrative position if she is away from the workforce. She is able to afford quality daycare and is secure with her choice. Her husband wants her to be happy and he is all for her choice.
And there are some couples who are willing to sacrifice material goods so that the wife can stay home with the children. They are content with what they have and do not need to keep up with the Joneses. The wife can always return to work later if she so chooses but right now being with her children is paramount to both husband and wife. They know they have made the right decision.
1
When I read this Opinion piece, I thought - wow, an old guy, stuck in the 50's. Probably grew up watching Father Knows Best. I was so surprised to see that he's only 38, decades younger than I am. Where are the Dads in this article? They must all be "at the office, dear". The author's perspective is paternalistic and doesn't reflect today's society and culture. My son has been a stay-at-home dad for 15 years. His buddy down the street is a SAHD for three kids. In the 21st century many educated women have higher incomes than their spouses. Let families figure it out, but let's not knee-jerk and presume that women want to stay home and men want to bring home the bacon.
21
I'm sure the author would wholeheartedly support your call to "Let families figure it out."
Sounds very libertarian.
1
There are too many people on the planet. Nobody needs to have more children. Why subject your future offspring to the ravages of destruction this planet faces. As to marriage with one income? No intelligent woman should ever allow herself to be bound to the financial whims of a spouse. No income usually means no power. Most of the marriages I saw growing up looked like traps to me.
15
Paid Family and Medical Leave. Please and thank you.
124
@Bemused Millennial
Also personal leave.
10
@Bemused Millennial: Yes, that would help. The current FMLA guarantees 3 months of UNPAID leave, so you still have to have enough saved in order to be able to take the time off. I'd gladly pay higher taxes if this kind of benefit were made available to families, and not just to those who have a baby. When you're older, you might need to take time off to care for sick, elder parents and in-laws, or a spouse who is ill.
10
I deeply appreciate Mr. Douthat's insights on these important issues. I especially appreciate his approach drawing wisdom from opposing points of view to look for practical solutions with potential to cut across political divides. I dearly hope this approach will become more and more common (demanded, even) and the old conversation-stopping approach of drawing lines and picking sides will fall uselessly by the way side! There is so much good work we could be doing if we stopped wasting so much time attempting to control which version of our shared reality will "win" (in our own mind at least) and began to communicate bravely and honestly with one another. I thank you, Mr. Douthat, for what I take to be your efforts to advance just such a conversation around the important issues of home/work balance and options for women and families.
2
y you're a stay-at-home mother. Say you opted out of earning a separate income and stayed home to raise your children, and are thus dependant on your spouse's income. Say your spouse cheats (estimate are between 25-72 percent of all married men do), say your spouse is emptionally or physically abusive--you might be less inclined to seek divorce and so your stay in a very problematic or abusive marriage because you can't support yourself and your children as a single mother without an income or a career. And if it all works out? Once your children are older, do you know how hard it is for women at mid-life to reenter the workforce years after opting out in order to raise children? Years after having a current resume or cv?
15
The next time you write about this, you might include the Home School movement.
Our town paper recently had an article about a home-scooted teen-ager who got a perfect ACT score, as a high school sophomore — with none of those prep courses either — just reading a lot.
Figure in the value of that!
3
@Toms Quill. A brilliant friend of mine from a prestigious college was home-schooled. You can’t fault him for smarts, but I’ve never met someone at such a disadvantage to life because of his lack of exposure to the real world.
5
#first world problems
Get a grip. Don’t have kids unless you can afford it. Period. Want kinds? Figure it out.
13
This is an important topic. I grew up in the 1950's and '60's. My father worked outside the home to support our family of three. My father saved all of his tax files and I reviewed them a number of years ago. After adjusting for inflation, his sole income was equal to my husband's full time and my part time income while raising our two children. We were both highly educated professionals and were relatively well-paid.
It seems to me that one income, earned in Los Angeles by a chemist was more than equal to two incomes earned a generation or so later in a less expensive part of California. Thus it is close to impossible to achieve a middle class socio-economic level on one income presently, at least in California.
13
@Old Hominid: Not just in California, but here on the East Coast too. My husband and I have more education than both sets of our parents, but our standard of living is lower due to the high cost of housing and other things like food costs increasing. We're both teachers, me at a university, he at a high school. His parents were teachers, mine were working class. His father was able to support the family on one income, while my father worked two-three jobs so my mother could stay home while we were little. She returned to work when I was in junior high, and then only part time. Today, the houses that my husband and I grew up in are completely out of our reach, financially, even though we both make more than our fathers did. Neither one of us could afford to buy the homes in which we grew up, and the houses haven't changed. Those who currently own them are married couples, both working full time at high paying jobs. They wouldn't be able to afford it if they both didn't work.
5
Educate yourself so that you may be competitive in the workforce. Keep yourself employable and current. Save money/don't spend it, as it has to sustain you in your older years. I married a man with a PhD but he fell ill. On my own I raised our children and lived with AFDC (TANF) for a time. I've been close to being homeless. My middle class world came crashing down in a terrible instant when a heart attack felled my husband. One size doesn't fit all. I've fed my kids dandelions at times and have gone hungry. I have always worked but was unable to save money until my 60's. One child of mine graduated from Harvard. The other is in an honor's program in college. They are strong. I am strong. When they were babies, I had them sit on my lap while I worked--I had that option. I've found that life is more expensive now than ever and I don't afford myself any luxuries. Everything that I own is second-hand. My answer to all of this is to not buy anything but essentials, to work, to save, to be thankful that my health is good and that I have an education and that I can work. There is no one to bail me out. I enjoy the free amenities that society offers: libraries and parks. I will carry my own weight as long as I can and then I hope that my children will care for me, as I have cared for my parents. The valleys and hills of life are unexpected and, being prepared, at least by having the ability to work, is essential!
13
To the many who have argued below that as childless people they should not be required to support people who have “chosen” to procreate, I would like to reply:
Taking care of the old and the young is one of society’s most basic functions. It’s part of human culture.
But there’s your own self-interest to consider as well. Even if you don’t have children, you will realize benefits from other people’s having had them—because at some point you will be receiving most of your goods and services from people younger than you. So you are not really being asked to subsidize a lifestyle you have it chosen; you are being asked to invest in your own future, both as an individual person and as part of the society you live in.
12
@Patricia. Fair enough. It’s certainly why I want to pay more for public education, though I have no children. But why couldn’t what you describe be achieved if only people who can afford children have them?
2
I grew up in the 1950s and both my parents worked. My mom had a good job as a nurse. My parents had to pay for child care, but I do not feel cheated out of having a parent at home full time. I think it's important for a wife to work. In case of divorce or the death of the husband, no woman should have to depend on an entry-level job salary when she's in her 40s. Or older.
10
Ross, along with most, get causation wrong.
Its not that household costs rose and suddenly households needed the mother to work. Prices, which were based on a single-earner income, were responding to women's labor force entrance en mass by rising.
Both sides introduced by Ross are wrong. Women entering the labor force widened the inequality gap. The jobs that stay-at-home mothers do are, alone, low paying jobs (cook, cleaner, laundry, child care, etc.). As women entered the labor force they brought with them many of these low paying jobs because there was less time to do them. Combined in a stay-at-home mother, these jobs are a large savings to the household, but individually in the marketplace they are mostly low paying jobs in the economy. Yes, some women have been successful and earn enough, but their earnings have pushed up household costs while the stay-at-home mother jobs they are no longer doing, which are individually low-paying jobs, have proliferated and are mostly been filled by other women.
7
I Rarely agree with RD but there are some things he got right in this piece. With better support for families in general without favoring only one traditional family arrangement we would be much better off. But that means recognizing the monetary value of child care whether it is performed by the male or female parent, a child care worker, or an extended family member. And that means an income subsidy for those doing the work of child care and crediting the person doing the work with actual income and the ability to earn social security credits for their future retirement, not robbing them of future retirement income in exchange for caregiver income as some have proposed. For too long employers have benefitted from employees that can dedicate themselves fully to their jobs because of all of that unpaid domestic labor “donated” by the employee’s stay at home partner, usually the female partner. That is not fair to the stay at home partner (no matter how willingly they do it) OR to the co-worker who does not have the benefit of a stay at home domestic partner. If couples want that one income lifestyle, fine. But don’t reward the employees in the workplace who are benefitting from unpaid domestic help at home. Instead put everyone on a level playing field. There is also a separate issue of gender discrimination in the workplace, but we need to independently address caregiver discrimination to help families in the US.
7
I object to the use of the term "successful relationship", which implies that a successful relationship is one that lasts as long as possible. A relationship should be considered "successful" when it makes both partners happier; its success should not be based on its longevity.
The conservative notion that rising divorce rates represent a decline in society are outdated. Divorce is a success if it makes both partners happier. And when children are involved, there is no strong evidence comparing the outcomes of children raised in households in which the parents are miserable but stay together, versus children whose parents are divorced but happy.
I reference much of the strong research in Elyakim Kislev's "Happy Singlehood" book.
5
Yes, yes, yes! We desperately need a new majority to make common cause over quality of life. We need thoughtful conservative voices; I just hope they can get out of the one-issue trap on when it comes to women.
2
There are people, whether single or paired off (or, perhaps, are in some other relationship) who have to do things to get what they want. They try to do those things.
There are people who don’t have to do much to get what they want. These people have more choices.
I get queasy when some one person tells us what everyone in some grouping does, wants, needs, or needs to do. It seems a simplistic reach-too-far.
4
Feminism's goal was never to create a world that required two incomes to survive. Rather, it sought to remove the notion that only men could be bread winners and only women could be nurturing. The goal was women AND men sharing both duties, allowing bored homemakers a sense of accomplishment and weary breadwinners a chance to connect to their children. If we had passed the Equality Act, women would have been paid at the same rate as men. Then a couple could both could work less, share child rearing, but still earned the equivalent of one income needed to live a middle class life. That was the dream. Now, thanks to the dissolution of unions, not even one person working full time can live the dream.
7
“...social conservatives worried about the decline of marriage and childbearing...” Indeed those self same social conservatives should not be voting for the Republicans party if they truly care about families - especially those who are raising children. Even the most cursory review of Republican party policy clearly show that most Republican lawmakers are typically focused on serving (and becoming part of) the oligarchy and allowing it to continue exploiting American workers. Review the bulk of the legislation Republican lawmakers enacted the past 30 years. Voters who prioritize family values need to avoid voting Republicans into office.
8
Let's give a moment's thought to the pre-K teachers, nannies, and child care workers who, like many other care-givers, are struggling to have a decent wage and living conditions for their own families, let alone satisfaction, career paths, and all of the rest of it. Until the discussion includes these lives and not just the lives of men and women working at other jobs, it's incomplete.
9
If conservatives cared about families and children they would support universal healthcare, daycare and aftercare. They would fund infrastructure projects and support climate change, clean air and clean water. It is disingenuous to claim pro life and only support those before they can breath on their own.
14
@Deirdre as a long-time voting Democrat I would not vote for free daycare and free aftercare...
2
It is a simple fact that when you increase your labor force with highly productive, skilled, and intelligent workers, the result will be a stagnation or a decrease in overall wages. It is not an issue of gender, but one of supply. Sen. Warren is not far off in her assessment of one income families in the past compared to now. However, I would argue she is miscalculating the income potential as the economy expands.
When the economy expands, in theory, it creates more jobs which in turn increases the demand for workers which should increase wages. Of course the problem today for US workers is that we are competing with workers (men, women, and unfortunately children) from around the world. Until equilibrium is met, wage pressures will always be an issue. Profits for companies will not be. It is too easy for them to outsource or build plants where labor is cheaper.
2
Best decision I ever made was to continue working after childbirth. I have maintained my job and my salary. I have a pension and full social security benefits and my kids college tuition is in the bank. If we ever divorce I have my own assets and I won’t be dependent on anyone’s good will or generosity or hatred. I tell my son to only marry someone in his income bracket and my daughter the same thing. I know way too many women they find themselves living hand to mouth after 20 years of marriage to a guy who isn’t who they always thought he was. Surprise!
13
@Deirdre
There also young uneducated divorced women with children who find found themselves unable to afford daycare for their children.
1
Growing up in the Deep South, other women who did not have, or want to have, jobs outside the home were the most active misogynists, because they saw working women and girls pursuing an education as traitors.
But here was the problem: everyone could see what happened to women who were uneducated and stayed home to have a family. Their husbands cheated, and they either looked the other way while everyone gossiped, or they got divorced and typically were forced to work outside the home, but at much worse jobs than they could have had had they not given their "best years" to a cheater.
So girls like me who saw what happened to women in one-earner households decided to get an education--as much as we were insulted for it. It still beat the alternative. You just can't trust men that much.
654
@Ann This perspective is so important because it speaks to the power imbalance of a single-income household. Women have been forced to make this trade-off for millennia, serving a household for no compensation other than the family's well-being. A traditional woman's role was a selfless act, and she had to hope that she married a man who acknowledged/appreciated her needs. The breadwinner is empowered to make choices that serves his or her self interests, not just to further the family good.
The single income model works for some families, but when it's couched in feminism, it makes the homemaker position a woman's burden. The homemaker role should be assigned to who is best suited for those tasks, and discarded as a possibility if neither partner fits that role.
83
@Ann
Are you suggesting that the men -husbands-of women who work, do not cheat? That is absurd. My father "cheated" on my mother-and she cheated on him, in 1955, long before they divorced. Neither made it life or death . The truth is, staying together for the sake of the children, was an excellent idea and most fathers-and mothers-having "affairs" knew their prime partner and kids were far more important than a one night stand resulting from too many cocktails at an industry meeting out of state.
"Monogamy or death!" is just that.-The death of marriages-the suicides of kids who blame themselves, the death of one income ability to provide for families, as all a woman's married friends insist she MUST divorce her "cheating husband"(that'll teach him!) . . even as some hope to catch her hubby on the rebound.
13
@Ann
It makes sense to get an education for when you want or need a job but I didn't get how married men can't be trusted to be monogamous so women should be prepared to work. It seems to me that many men who don't cheat on their wives also dont earn enough to support a family in the manner that is expected
15
Just a warning for women considering being the non-earner in a single-earner family: This choice puts you at enormous financial risk should your husband opt out of your marriage down the road. Does the author's recommended subsidies for "family life" include family law reform, including better spousal and child support as well as a presumption of custody for the stay at home paren? This is the only way to protect women who opt to be stay-at-home mothers should the family's earner walk away with the benefit of 10, 15, 20 or more years of career advancement under his belt as well as the benefit of current social policies that favour equal parenting time post-divorce (and the minimal child support that goes along with it).
11
My husband and I have no kids and both work full time. We would have a very difficult time if we did not have two incomes. We paid off our mortgage in four years, have one 20 year old Honda, less money in our retirement account than we wish, bring our lunch to work, I have commute over an hour. We have enough in savings to pay off a $400, $400 or $40,000 emergency. We do everything right, yet we are just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. If a stable, successful couple with good financial policies and resources can barely imagine living on one income how could a family? Most people with kids seem to be stretched very thin unless they are lawyers or financial investors. No thank you and no kids.
5
@DNT NYC, California, etc. are different worlds...
1
There are many families that want to raise kids on one income, ... and instead find themselves pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door.
Many? Name one....
3
Many commenters below are saying "but what about stay at home dads?"
What they are missing is that being at home, or at least being part time, is what a lot of WOMEN specifically want.
Yes, there are wonderful stay at home dads. There are women who would rather work and have their husbands stay home. There are gay families.
These are not the majority.
The majority of women prioritize "earning potential" when they seek a spouse so they can have the option to cut back and devote more time to children. Women PHYSICALLY give birth, nurse, and nurture their babies, and women are the ones who feel the tug when they have to leave them, because women are the ones programmed by biology to be their primary caretakers. Most women want to be able to spend more time with their own children when they are small, either through temporarily staying home or working part time.
This isn't some "socially conditioned" thing that a big dose of "more equality" and "more programs" is going to change. This is human nature. This is who we are. MOST (not all, but most) women, from Sweden to the US to the Developing World, want to have babies and want to take a primary role in caring for them.
Maybe it is time for society to value that more, while also respecting the other dimensions of women's personhood and talents.
The idea that the desire for motherhood is somehow bad, regressive, and something that needs to be overcome is the grossest form of misogyny in our modern culture.
7
@A F
Be careful making arguments based on biology dictating one's "feelings" and "talents." These arguments have been used for centuries to keep women away from power within the family and away from power in the public sphere.
The truth, like most things, is more complex.
I carried my babies in my womb and then nursed them. I love them more than anything and it was painful for me to go back to work. I am nurturing, and loving, and my favorite thing to do is snuggle my kids when they still let me. They are my first and highest priority and I love being a mom.
Do you know what else is the truth?
I'm competitive. I'm aggressive. I'm smart. I'm ambitious. I'm accomplished. I'm hella educated. I'm excellent at my job, which is high-end, bet-the-company litigation. I love the thrill of winning and of making money. I also like working out and feeling physically strong.
Just as women are complex, so, too, are men. My husband, a formidable and cunning litigator, himself, is also a dad who tenderly holds his children, kisses boo-boos, sings to them, and rocks them to sleep, and makes them breakfast every morning.
Reductionist social assumptions based on biology deny the full panoply of, not just "women's personood," but men's personhood as well. You all aren't simply a bunch of unfeeling lumberjacks, despite how you've been "socially conditioned." Men feel despair and love and insecurity, and they also revel in the comfort of hearth and home and children and family.
9
@A F I'm 65 and have never, for one minute, wanted to be a mother. I've never had any children. I dislike anyone under 18 and avoid other people's kids as much as possible--which is almost all the time. I can name umpteen ways my husband and I have been happier without children. We have had a better, less stressful relationship than most parents do. Even though we've both worked long and hard, our non-work time has been our own. We've had a fairly comfortable lifestyle instead of being drained by our children. I simply cannot imagine why anyone would want children. So enough with "women's biological needs."
5
@A F It is not the idea that the desire for motherhood is bad or regressive that is misogynist. It is the idea that because women do it, it is less important or valuable to society that is misogynist. Let's not even get into the biology vs. society debate for a minute, and just consider that society has historically de-valued the contributions of women including child-rearing and housekeeping, by considering it as unskilled, non-paid work that only women are suited to perform. The solution is for society to confer more status, opportunity, and just compensation for these jobs to parents of both genders. Most humans want both meaningful careers and families, so let's make this reality reflective of society by enabling parents of both genders to have jobs AND be parents.
3
There's more to it than just "two-earner" households. How are women who don't get married supposed to establish that magic middle class life when they are paid 70 cents on the dollar to a man doing the same job? Of course, I realize that your thesis is about family life and not single life, so that question never comes into the argument.
9
This is the second article I've seen on this topic from a conservative columnist in the NYT within the past few weeks, and it contains the same logical fallacy.
Correlation does not equal causation. Dual-income families became more common at the end of the twentieth century, at the same time wealth and opportunity gaps widened. That does not mean "two-earner culture" *caused* those gaps to widen by creating some sort of "trap."
Families aren't struggling financially because they're trying to keep up with the Joneses. They're struggling because wages have not kept up with basic costs of living, and because in order to launch any white collar career today you have to take on $50K+ of student loan debt.
When the dream of being debt-free and owning a house is so far away it's laughable, people avoid getting married and having children. They wait until the day they can afford to give their kids a stable childhood...and that day never comes. Increasingly the only people having kids are young unmarried women with low earning potential. *That* is why the American family is in crisis.
12
Two-income professional couples are increasing the wealth gap by hogging two positions one of which should equitably go to a family that has no major breadwinner to help them raise their families. Supposedly this is women’s lib. They didn’t like staying at home in Westchester. Great for them but not so great for families on the other side of the economic divide.
@Edward
Please. Because a family with no major breadwinner has the same academic/professional credentials as one of a two-income professional couples?
Unlikely.
3
It has always annoyed me that Republicans, who call themselves the supporters of family values, refuse to support legislation that actually values families: paid parental leave, tax incentives to companies to offer shorter work weeks, federally subsidized pre-k and day care, etc. Not to mention health care for the whole family.
9
I was lucky. I got to switch to part time when my kids were young. Still had a foot in the work door, still got be be with my kids and do household stuff. But nonetheless, professionally I lost real ground, time and opportunity. So it troubles me. I am not one of those women who is ultimately fulfilled intellectually or spiritually by motherhood. It never really was my calling. I love my kids with all my heart, and am glad I had them. But the sacrifice I made to my professional and intellectual life will haunts me, and I spend significant emotional and spiritual energy trying to find peace with that.
10
I am wondering how many dads would chose to stay home if the societal pressure for men to earn money was not present? (Provided their wives are able to support the family with their income.) In cases of stay-at-home dads that I know, there is usually a need for one parent to stay at home and a clear imbalance in earning power in favor of their wives. However, how many men would agree to ditch paying careers if they wouldn't feel judged by society and rely on breadwinning by their wives?
1
@NM Also: how many more dads would choose to stay home (or take on part-time work) if child rearing and house keeping were considered valuable, high-status work? I don't know many men who have children who actually LIKE being away from their families for 80 hours a week or consider themselves effective parents to their children with that much time away from home. But child rearing and housekeeping is considered unskilled and low status BECAUSE women have done it for so long, and women still suffer loss of career status even when they "choose" to stay home and parent their own children. Men need to fight for their right to parent just like women had to fight for their right to enter the workforce. Yes men will suffer ridicule and discrimination (just like women did) but isn't the right to raise your own children worth it??
1
Here's an idea, Ross, a humane and sensible idea that all Christians, in particular Catholic Christians, should advocate: universal healthcare.
My Catholic conservative attorney died at the age of 51 last November of a massive heart attack because he was overwhelmed by his retail estate practice, his law school debt, his college-age children's tuition expenses, and healthcare for a family of six. He and his beautiful wife agreed that she would stay home and raise their children. She is now a widow with no employment skills and four dependent children.
This is a family that did everything "correct" by the "conservative playbook" and in addition a head-of-household who was an estate and taxation law specialist and entrepreneur with an innovative idea: to provide affordable estate planning in a retail setting.
Unfortunately the very "family unfriendly" Republicans have resisted and obstructed universal healthcare on every level and have wasted billions of dollars in lawsuits against the ACA--billions of OUR (U.S. citizens') taxes to fight OUR healthcare!
And not a word from the Catholic Church: Except to scold women for having abortions.
Unbelievable.
23
My Catholic Church talks quite a bit about social justice. However, I agree that too many Catholics are voting with their abortion hat and not their social justice hat.
3
I am having difficulty making sense of this piece. Not that it is too difficult to understand, but that anyone living in the 21st century thinks that the 2nd income in the 2 income household is optional? Whoever that is needs to break out of their bubble and visit the lives of real people.
6
With women in the workforce it’s simply high time we give worker/caregivers of all genders and stripes an assist by redefining what constitutes full-time work. Four 7hr. workdays per week should facilitate full employment, marriageability for men, an even playing field at work for parents (most women gladly and competently compete with male coworkers when not at the expense of their families’ well-being) and full engagement in household, self-care, and community activities by all.
3
... a temporary period of male breadwinning to balance the burden borne by mothers. "
Ross, please don't offer your lectures to women who would prefer to work and use a pump, gay couples, stay-at-home dads, and adoptive parents.
And by the way, when it comes to Republicans, the current one who is president was living with his second wife and Ivannah probably had a governess take care of them. I'm sure Donald rarely saw them and just wrote a check, which was obviously what he would have considered a "burden borne by Trump."
But most importantly:
We are never reverting back to that era that "inspired" conservatives.
4
@Jbugko Actually, Melania is Trump's third wife.
1
As a number of commenters have mentioned, the real issue is not so much the choices presented to happily-married women and their eternally-faithful husbands, but what happens when a stay-at-home mother finds herself alone. It is challenging enough when her children are grown and her lack of work experience makes finding an interesting job very difficult, but if her husband dies or becomes incapacitated, the entire family can become threatened if life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance is inadequate.
The worst consequences, however, are often those presented to women who are divorced. Especially in the South, judges and juries can not be counted on to ensure that, given the ex-husband's income and assets, the ex-wife has the means to prepare herself to be financially independent. When the ex-husband hides assets and sources of income (easily enough to do when the husband controls a business) the choice made in the halcyon days that the mother will raise her children and manage the household may prove to carry catastrophic consequences.
Here in Georgia, it is common for a woman with kids in high school to be awarded just a few years of alimony to obtain a relevant education preparing her for the workforce. When a women fresh out of school in her late 30's early 40's applies for a job brandishing her still-warm diploma it is altogether possible for her to have alimony ended and for her to be expected to live on her own.
7
It's unnerving to think that we live in a country where so many people are being forced to have children they cannot afford. If only there was a way to avoid the burden of nannies, music lessons, sports equipment, iPhones, and college.
5
We must also give credit to Admiral Ackbar for warning us two decades before Warren published her book.
1
@Christopher
Truly a hero ahead of his time.
1
Mr. Douthat states that he has argued "with tedious frequency" that certain conservatives and feminists should make common cause with one another. Don't subsidize day care or stay-at-home mothers--just family life.
Ok, Mr. Douthat. But what does that actually look like in terms of policy? As a conservative, are you really advocating looking to European countries as a model? Can you think of a single pro-family European policy that even one of today's Republicans would support?
5
This is not a conservative vs. liberal issue. Children are born into both camps. And are the children of today's two income families really "better off than kids in the 60s"? Maybe you had to be there to understand this, but there is no way to quantify the life-long benefits of having had a parent at the ready, of having other kids to play with in your own neighborhood, of having time to be bored, time to be creative, and time just to climb a tree and think.
6
Universal. Basic. Income.
5
To the author: for those of us who are not putting a strain on the economy and the planet with extra kids, the ones who cover for colleagues who go on maternity leave, the women and men with fewer deductions -- how do you plan to subsidize us?
Having kids is a choice, like choosing to go on vacation or buying a house as opposed to renting. Nobody makes you do it, and why special treatment should be given to parents, as great as they are, is beyond me.
I don't think we should subsidize individuals who make a lifestyle choice. If you are going to do that, then subsidize single people who take up the slack.
9
@KatheM
Having a child is not a choice like choosing to go on vacation.
Your choice to go on vacation benefits you.
Your choice to have children benefits society and the continuation of the human race.
Every functional human society aside from the Shakers has prioritized and understood the sacredness of marriage and parenthood. And where are the Shakers now?
1
Democrats have for years been advocating for meaningful paid family leave, gender equality in wages, and subsidized child care. Those policies, in tandem, would seem rather obviously to address Douthat's "flexible pro-family consensus." I suspect, Douthat's welcome contribution notwithstanding, that given the long standing conservative resistance to these sensible policies, "pro family" means enforcement of "traditional" gender roles rather than equality of opportunity.
4
Why can’t men stay home with the newborn while the woman goes back to work? Not every woman grows up with dolls and dreaming of one day birthing children. I think men can contribute more and should.
125
@Jaylee Women need at least 4-6 weeks to physically recover from childbirth, like any other major medical event.
16
@Karen L. And paid time off and FMLA should take care of that. After that, it's up for grabs. Most often, the man is the higher earner of the two. Still so many women work in a more casual way or have career jobs that are more flexible with time, so the woman quite often ends up at home. Hardly see how this is a political issue.
6
That’s why everyone should have the option to take maternal/paternal leave.
11
Conservatives should "SUBSIDIZE FAMILY LIFE" ......what does that ACTUALLY mean? And what would that look like? Financial support, emotional support, WHAT? Sounds sneakily like SOCIALISM......
Pro-family conservatism reaching out to mothers who have been driven to madness by corporate expectations? Because they swallowed the American Dream hook, line and sinker? Because they thought that they could make a bona fide contribution to society and have a family, too?
You've got to be kidding. What about all the single moms out there? And working women who are mothers....and one half of a parenting partnership. Most working mothers I know are struggling day to day, wondering what's for dinner. And who's picking up the kids? Who's staying home with the sick child? And how will we pay the bills? And these are women (with husbands) with advanced degrees, and high powered careers. And children. and homes. And cars. And insurance policies. And student debt. (Ah! Why don't you start with that, conservatives?) Their Sundays are spent getting ready for the next week. That leaves them with one day to ........ fill in the blanks. Do the laundry!
Your "social conservatism" seems to leave a lot out. You lost me at the end, when you really didn't have a plan.
5
I realize the original premise is based on a question about women entering the workforce, but that doesn't make it less telling that throughout the rest of the piece, in forwarding to present day America, the author makes the assumption that it's the wife who would stay home in a single earner household. There was another way to write this that wasn't so blatantly sexist.
8
Well, a rather retrograde piece by Douthat.
His 'mediation' between the conservative camps of whether a one income family is better than a two income family is pure abstraction that is almost irrelevant in most of America other than in the privileged world of highly educated, high earning elites.
Ross, how about examining real issues for most Americans not made up ones in the salons of NYC, DC and SF?
1
If the nation prioritizes childbearing+homemaking, then there ought to be an incentive for it. Having access to childcare services is not the same as having the ability to raise one's own children. It's a real shame that a lot of modern families are built on nannies and babysitters.
The focus should be placed on helping stay-at-home parents go back to work once they are finished with homemaking. Why not provide parents with scholarships/grants akin to veterans so that they can enhance their employability? Why can't employers prioritize hiring former stay-at-home parents?
1
Because there is no incentive for employers to do any such thing. Thanks to technology and globalization, there's a lot of competition for good jobs. And what about those of us who Stück it out and stayed in the workforce?
2
I've been lucky enough to be able to stay home to raise my kids. We were lucky to manage it, but I would have been willing to give up a hell of a lot to do it. I don't care how good the day care or nanny is - even the best care on earth by definition could not replace the time we have had together, and it would have torn me apart to have left my kids when they were small. I'm generally not conservative at all, but you can't pretend away that parents are the most invested parties in raising their own kids. While not all families can do it, it should at least be an option for a parent to stay home with a small child.
5
It all comes back to workplace rights and the ties that bind us to a job (e.g. heath insurance). We could start with a medicare for all and return to the 40 hour work week that has disappeared in the era of "CORPORATOCRACY" i.e.corporate exploitation of the 21st century American work force. We need a return to unionized labor. But just watch American workers vote against their own interests.
3
This article doesn't acknowledge that fewer than half (46%-Pew Research Center) of children in the US live with married, heterosexual parents. Twenty-three percent (23%) live with single moms, who do not earn equal pay for equal work.
We cannot simply support "family life', we must support women and change the myriad ways they are economically disadvantaged in this capitalist society because of their biological reality and institutionalized gender roles. Women become pregnant, give birth, nurse, and disproportionately take care of small children and disabled or elderly family members, and they do all of this not only for free, but with substantial economic penalties. Children of single moms in particular feel that pain.
If we stopped paying for trillion dollar tax cuts for billionaires, we could easily afford things like child care, parental leave, universal health care, and so on. The policies Tucker Carlson and his ilk support are the very policies that make it impossible for traditional families to exist.
7
I actually agree with Ross on this but there's one factor he doesn't take into account: dropping out of the workforce is extremely risky for anyone, even for a short period of time.
7
Ross said: "Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life...". How would we do that? Hmmm, perhaps by supplying a Universal Basic Income, or Universal Health Care?
In a later paragraph we are exhorted to look at Europe,where we see - if not the income side, at least something approaching Universal Health Care. Do we finally have a conservative embracing a logical social good provided by the government without screaming "SOCIALISM?"
2
I’m a married woman in my late 20’s and out of all of my friends, none are married and few want kids. Those that want kids don’t want more than 1-2. I don’t know a single woman my age that would willingly drop out of the workforce to raise kids. Many of us have aligned our passions with our careers. Dropping out of the workforce would feel like giving up on life.
Perhaps I live in a bubble, but this argument seems irrelevant to everyone I know.
11
Anthropologist Marvin Harris points out that the move to woman entering the work force was the declining ability to families to make it on one—not inspiration from Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.
1
Gay people, gay couples, and gay parents are completely erased by this conversation and made invisible in this article.
2
Mr. Douthat: This column is so convoluted, it begs for a flow chart.
What ARE you recommending? I was not able to discern what policies you favor or oppose. Greater tax credits for large families? A change in social security benefits calculations? You certainly don't encourage more support for unions - which would help us return to jobs that paid a family wage.
When you cited a (VERY one-sided and poorly supported) Institute for Families piece that concludes that there is a "general desire for more children" than American women are currently having (NOT based on any polls of actual American women!), I decided I could not trust you - not one iota - to contribute to a conversation about what is best for women and families in this country.
2
The more people work and buy, the more money can be made. So it is in the interest of capitalism that mothers work so they can afford a better lifestyle. When bread was baked and vegetables were canned at home, only the raw materials (flour, seeds, tools, etc.) were part of commerce and business activities that could generate profits for investors. The raw materials are still a part of commerce, but now baked goods, frozen foods, prepared foods, restaurant meals, and fast foods have also been moved out of the family into an environment where they are bought with money and give investors more places to invest.
Day care and schools, when private, also give investors new areas to invest and make money. And since we are all expected to save for retirement and rainy days, we are all investors and need for our investments to make money. So we add to the pressure for investment to draw everything into its nexus.
To make policies and social customs that are family friendly, we will have to challenge the position of investment in our economy and society. We will have to dethrone money, investment, and market efficiency as the chief determinant of how our society functions and develops. Since the default is to allow investment to continue to rule, this dethroning is radical and antiestablishment. It will also be socialistic, since it must be led by government; only a minority of investors will be able to make money by shutting down markets rather than opening new ones.
3
You have read the first sentence in Anna Karenina? I think that holds up across mankind.
We need happier people to have happier families. There is some science on this. I would start there.
2
Yes. Support families, and leave the decision making to the households. I could not agree more. But why would anyone who pays attention to politics want to ally themselves with conservatives or the GOP to accomplish this? The ONLY people consistently working for this goal are on the left, if not the progressive left, and they have been for decades. You want to support families? Then demand higher minimum wages, support unions, cut taxes on low and middle class and raise them on the rich, provide MORE social services, cheaper health care, more food stamps, cheaper education. In other words, fulfill the progressive agenda which is entirely based around providing working families with a decent quality of life. There is a reason Douthat is sparse on policy details in this piece, because the policy details are all currently part and parcel of the progressive Agenda and everyone knows it.
7
Very interesting to see how the other half lives and thinks.
After raising two kids alone, holding it together after losing one, putting the other through college (where he is currently), this conversation reminds me of my childhood and how the Brady Bunch depicted family life that was so foreign to me where my parents busted their chops to put food on the table.
How nice to have conversations from the longed-for 50s when my parents suffered abuses and humiliations at work for which they were paid less but somehow still had to teach their kids that this society would one day serve justice to them.
I'm teaching my kid the same now that it's clear it won't be in my lifetime.
5
Whatever form of child care subsidy is proposed, it should be limited to two children per family. The reality is that the Earth is overpopulated already. As yesterday's UN report makes clear, more people means more land devoted to feeding them, which means less room for wildlife, which means loss of biodiversity and increasing vulnerability to climate change. Americans lead a very resource-intensive lifestyle. If you look at the big picture, the last thing we should want to encourage is for Americans to have larger families. So I'm all for universal preschool, extended paid maternity leave, and subsidized day care -- for no more than two kids per family.
6
Wow. Mr. Douthat says some very curious things that, if taken seriously as his actual opinions, are much more progressive than his actual policy positions and those of his party. For example: "Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids." -- Subsidize family life? So is Douthat now in favor of a sharp increase in minimum wage? Or is this just an empty rhetorical point, like when GOPers talk about mental health care- but only as an alternative to gun regulations, not as something to actually fund? Then there is this: "The turn toward skepticism about two-earner households will change conservatism for the better to the extent to which it encourages a certain skepticism about how corporations treat families and an awareness of how government ignores them."
So are we to think Ross Douthat now favors the government not ignoring families but spending tax dollars to help them? He favors regulating businesses to get them to treat families better All of this is just an effort to put a fig leaf over the ugliness of actual "social conservatism" and pretend there is a perfectly reasonable way to be socially conservative. That he ends up sounding like he supports policies he actually opposes demonstrates that it is a fig leaf and not a sincere position.
4
I'm not a defender of his but I think that he's a social conservative who is for family-friendly policies, i.e. not of the Paul Ryan camp.
1
Getting rid of unions, allowing state sponsored companies to compete (Japan, Korea, China), beggar thy neighbor policies hurting American companies (BMW paid off by South Carolina, Mercedes by Alabama), eliminating progressive income taxation, eliminating capital gains on real estate (causing needles speculation in the residential market)deregulating transportation (a lever we simply abandoned to level the wage gap), fighting tooth and nail to prevent health care since Walter Reuther in the 40's and having no national housing policy other than building McMansion's in the farmland outside major cities and you have the real reason women need to work.
Mostly it was just bad policy, bereft of any creativity and leadership, slavishly dogmatic, championed by Republicans, Libertarians and a smattering of Investment Banking Democrats. Somehow we get what we deserve for how we vote. One thing is certain though. Ross hasn't a clue how to solve anything as far as real world economics goes.
5
Conservatives may try to paint a family values wash over the role of women in the work place, but they got what they wanted, a bunch of highly intelligent workers who were willing to settle for substandard wages for doing the scutwork men wanted to avoid. Now that women are beginning, and only beginning to succeed in securing wage and assignment equality, are conservatives paying lip service to the damage that has been done to women and families. But this damage did not occur because women entered the workplace, but rather because when they needed to enter the workplace, they were treated as second class workers.
7
I work part time as a physician and full time as a mother. My children are young. My clinical practice and colleagues are extremely flexible. Yet when the dust settles at home, it often feels like the only chance for equality within the family is to opt out of paid work.
So much in Ross Douthat's piece rings true. What's missing is that we need not only female champions but also male champions for pro-family policies and companies. "Equality" within families will be elusive without workplace flexibility and pro-family policies that recognize fathers as parents who can make tremendous contributions beyond just earning wages.
I have male mentors with big titles and jobs who express deep regret that it was their (working) wives, and not them, who were the go-to parents when their children were growing up. Now that the children are grown, they're struggling to know them and repair relationships. There are men, just as there are women, who want only to work and nothing to do with nurturing children. But for all of them I know just as many dads who would choose, in a heartbeat, greater flexibility and work-family-life options.
12
Hear, hear!
So much of the problem of domestic equality is about the world of work. And of course
most men would also be happier if they got to have some work-life balance!
I also think that even if a mother wants to live as part of a “mother-baby dyad” for some months, many jobs could accommodate the presence of an infant...depending on the infant!
1
This is a complicated question, hampered by the influence of other factors eg: offshoring made more viable through digital innovations, decreasing marginal tax rates, bank de-regulation, anti-union laws, unchecked real estate speculation etc. Longer lifespans also disturbed employment markets by increasing supply. Lastly, employers also discovered they could get a woman to do a man's job for less money so that 1+1 equaled 1.6 instead.
Lots of dual-income families feel and are trapped - by spiralling housing costs, long commutes, precarious jobs, healthcare costs, minimal maternity leave, user fees, privatization costs, and distortions of the labour market from unpaid internships, prison labour, and workers in poor countries and of course, a lack of affordable daycare and eldercare options.
It is important to remember that most other rich countries do not have these problems to the extent that American have them. Not even close. These torments were chosen by Americans, either actively or passively (by the many who think that politics is too dirty to engage with). Americans have the power to change this picture and to make life more pleasant and easier.
6
I work part time as a physician and full time as a mother. My children are young. My clinical practice and colleagues are extremely flexible. Yet when the dust settles at home, it often feels like the only chance for equality within the family is to opt out of paid work.
So much in Ross Douthat's piece rings true. What's missing is that we need not only female champions but also male champions for pro-family policies and companies. Shared work within families will be elusive without workplace flexibility and pro-family policies that recognize fathers as parents who can make tremendous contributions beyond just earning wages.
I have male mentors with big titles and jobs who express deep regret that it was their (working) wives, and not them, who were the go-to parents when their children were growing up. Now they're struggling to know and repair relationships with their children. There are men, just as there are women, who want only to work and nothing to do with nurturing children. But for all of them I know just as many dads who would choose, in a heartbeat, greater flexibility and work-family-life options.
1
You would think that Republicans would be all for Single Payer then wouldn't you? Um.....Uh.....Hmm... Let me think.....
5
You misunderstood her argument. Warren posited that women entering the workforce should have increased financial stability and well being of families, but instead it made dual incomes a necessity for raising a family. If one of the income earners should become unable to work, it would destabilize the family. She argued that we needed a stronger social safety net and also that we are not reaping the true rewards of our work. And additionally that all single parent families are screwed over by this system. This is why we need healthcare and childcare to be subsidized by the state.
Sometimes I wonder if conservatives are just willfully ignorant as they twist our words against us. More and more I realize they are actively misinterpreting our ideas because they are selfishly concerned only about themselves. A world in which we care only for ourselves is not a world worth living in.
4
I've been a stay-at-home full-time husband since 2003, and I've watched my wife's career flourish (physician, professor of medicine). I do some housework, but I also spend a huge amount of time engaged in community activism. Community engagement is what people are missing in their lives. Ideally we would both work part time, and we could, but our earning difference is so vast that we would have to sell our house to do it.
Lowering income inequality to near zero while providing universal benefits like Medicare for All, free child care and social housing would empower families to establish sensible work hours that fit their needs. Most people enjoy some work. It's a way to socially engage, learn new skills and strive towards a common goal.
5
Interesting stuff Ross, in a removed from reality and philosophical sense. When applied to reality, however, this comes off as naive and archaic. Although American conservatives may have once concerned themselves with these sorts of issues and debates, and may have once sought to enact policy based on the same, the reality is that American conservatives have reduced themselves to a simple ideology of winner take all in a Hobbesian battle of all versus all (in which, of course, the advanced starting position of white men is to be preserved and enhanced in all possible ways). This idea that you express that American conservatives currently care about woman in any way other than as vessels for childbirth and to take care of their men while their men "go forth in battle" is risible. I appreciate where you are coming from Ross. I also find myself the victim of wishful thinking with respect to the views held by American conservatives. I have simply seen too much though to be able to any longer realistically view American conservatism as being motivated by anything at all beyond outright greed, racism and bigotry, misogyny, extreme nativism and the celebration of the individual (white male) and his "rights" with absolutely no regard for any compassion, sense of responsibility to others or sense of community except to the limited extent any of those may temporarily serve the selfish needs of an individual. Awful, disgusting stuff, but, unfortunately, that is where we are.
4
I don’t have a lot of spare time today, but this blog should be kept open for eternity. Go Elizabeth!
2
Good arguments in this article. My millennial daughter, a lawyer and new mother is struggling with these issues. She loves her profession but the long hours and the lack of a progressive parental leave policy are really hard on her. She would have given anything to spend the first 6months with her baby. But the American workplace is unforgiving and our government too dysfunctional to really study and develop policies that would support all families ( Where are the “family values” people?). She would love to have more kids - but isn’t sure how they would be able to juggle it all.
1
The big item that has made two incomes necessary is housing. Size and air-conditioning does not explain the increase. Prices of houses in my area have skyrocket while the housed are the same size that they were when built around 1900.
Warren's argument is that housing prices were set, not by construction costs, but by bidding wars. Two-income families could bid higher, when they were a minority they had an advantage, when they became the norm then the higher price became the norm.
I had the good luck to buy a co-op when prices were geared to a single earner. Twenty years later it sold for ten times what we had paid.
Once upon a time, banks did not consider a wife's income when granting mortgages. This was opposed as discriminatory. Maybe we should get it back? It does not have to be sexist. The bank could only be allowed to use the larger income.
2
@Andrea Knutson so true and I continued to be stunned that the author and people he quoted are totally off-base in the housing dynamic of two- or one-income families. That's like going to a basketball game to watch guys run around without a ball.
Note to the clueless: Housing is THE NO. 1 factor driving two-income families. Not just in Brooklyn, in freaking Boise where I live. A state that has the lowest overall wages in America and the Boise metro area has the fastest-rising housing prices in the nation. Those two things don't equate.
I'm just stunned at the complete ignorance in this article over housing costs -- and not just buying, also renting is outrageous. Why is this so hard to see?
3
Construction costs are also stratospherically higher in high price housing areas. Scarcity bids everything up.
2
The rich have suffered enough what is needed is massive tax cuts for the top 10% and cut all entitlements /benefits in half if you cannot afford to live it is not the fault of billionaires . Citizens United and voter suppression will ensure GOP control of govt for 1000 years under the Trump family.
2
Years ago, I read Judge Judy's autobiography. What I still remember most was her statement that every women needs to have a skill set so she can take care of her family and herself. Further, she stated that time and time again, women both poor and wealthy appeared in front of her during divorce proceedings. There husbands had left and they had nothing: no money, no house and no job. Most women are left with nothing if men leave them. Having a way to take care of yourself is just a smart plan for every citizen.
12
My parents divorced when I was young. My mother worked, but never earned much as she had no job skills except for low-level clerical work. Maybe that's why I always knew that I would have to be my own guarantor of economic security. I've been married over 40 years, and I've worked all of those years. I have also earned slightly more than my husband. No matter what happens, my economic future is secure.
Unfortunately, in the early years of our marriage, we could afford one child but no more, much as we would have liked more. And we could not have survived on one income alone, so being a stay-at-home parent was not a realistic option.
I also know that, like many other women, I have something to contribute to society. That would have been lost had I and others been discouraged from being educated and joining the work force. Some of us both need and want to work.
5
Up here in the Great White North, we have a number of pro family measures :universal health care insurance, one year paid maternity benefits, and a decent government family allowance. This is allowing my brilliant oldest daughters to take significant time off and care for their children while still keeping positions they trained for.
We pay high taxes for all of these benefits, but not having potentially ruinous health bills and getting support for having and raising children from the government is one of the best use of those taxes in our view.
It is a shame that the conversation around policy options for American families is so narrow and mutually exclusive of each other. There are good ideas on both sides of the aisle and finding common ground on ways to help families would be a huge benefit to the country.
9
This is good effort to undertstand a very complex problem.I think Douthat underestimates the variable of real estate inflation. In many metropolitan areas, there is the problem for one-income families of finding ia home in an "acceptable" neighborhood with decent schools. Class polarization and the "winner-take-all" ethos for parents who are ambitious for themselves and their children makes average public schools and "average" middle class neighborhoods unacceptable. Second, women who "stay home" are vital in neighborhood and school activities--what Harvard's Robert Putnam terms "social capital."
1
sigh . . . has ross ever bothered to peep over the fence so he might know that this is not all about the granite countertops.
and, i'm old enough to have seen the other side of the trap first hand: women in my mother's generation trapped in abusive relationships without the skills they needed to be able to leave and support themselves. i made sure my daughters could always take care of themselves.
6
The middle class is always striving, whereas the working class are content. Corporations have exploited these natural tendencies, so that how we value our selves and families in term of work and life are distorted.
Imagine if we put our resources towards an honest contentment for all instead of this endless striving for material comforts that exploits our planets resources and sets a poor example for developing countries. American corporations are to blame more than anyone.
2
I was lucky enough to not work when my children were small. We lived on $300 a month in student housing and made payments on my college loan and even had a car, while my husband finished graduate work. I am forever grateful for the time with my kids, even though there were times of frustration with the 10th reading of Richard Scarey’s books. We were lucky and despite heavy school obligations, my husband spent plenty of time with me and the kids. WE were lucky and this was the late 60s and early 70s. Those times are gone.
Today, the expenses of even living simply are high and medical care and education can be astronomical. Ross, you talk about women as the home body but now women often work and the Dad stays home. Nothing wrong with that. Also to stipulate that interest in the family is a conservative concern is just unfair to all the Democrats that work for better health care, higher working wages and better public schools...all primary issues on any Democratic platform. There is more to the issue than just saying women should be allowed to stay home.
9
Women have to be prepared to be the sole support of their families. Divorce happens. Illness and disability happen. Spouses lose jobs (often through no fault of their own.) For all these reasons and more, it's not practical or secure to be a stay-at-home mom for very long. Maybe it never was, even when society deemed that staying at home was women's only true path. It's no wonder women of yesterday and today are so stressed. Unless they are rich or have rich families to turn to, prudent women limit the size of their families and keep working (at least part time) in order to be able to take over as major breadwinners, often when they long to stay at home with their young children.
8
@Holiday
Well yes, but don’t forget the many of women, often low paid who care for the children while others pursue their dreams?
2
Nonsense. Jus read “The Forgotten” by Ben Bradlee for a good history of Luzerne County PA (coal) and how it disintegrated into penury. As unions were being destroyed and industries deregulated, manufacturing began moving offshore, thus destroying fair wage jobs where a single income earner, namely the father managed to support the family. As the cost of living went up, and jobs and wages stagnated, women had no choice but to join the workforce. A two household income was necessary to support the family. Women joining the workforce wasn’t a luxury due to leisure time, nor “feminism”, it was a necessity.
The so-called religious conservatives and other conservatives have and are fighting against affordable healthcare, practical contraception, unaffordable higher education, improving schools, against daycare programs, against unions ( the latest salvo has been to destroy public service unions). If having a baby can be so expensive, why create life that will only suffer.
Housing is incredibly expensive. In cities like NYC, about half of working families have been forced out of the borough by greedy real estate developers who then convert affordable housing into luxury housing targeted to wealthy foreigners that need to wash the money. Mayor Ed Koch began the transition which Bloomberg continued with vigor. Remember how he closed St Vincent’s Hospital which served the poor and had it convert into luxury housing.
5
@Ted
It didn’t start in 1980’s coal country, though. It started after WWII, unlike after WWI, when women returned home, after WWII, they didn’t and they wouldn’t. As more and more left the home, they helped drive down wages, creating the beginning of the inequality we see between homes. It’s the biggest darn mess, I have ever seen. Many depended on other women whom they could pay sub-standard wages - they are few and hard to find anymore, so now they have tapped grandmothers. And after raising mine, and caring for the grandchildren, don’t you dare tell me I’m not worth my salt, because dear lady and sir, you have another thing coming!
1
Wow. I actually agree with most of this. And a true set of pro-family policies also embraces families headed by same sex couples. The overarching problem is an economic structure that only sees working people as cogs in corporate profit machines and not as people with lives and aspirations that work is only a means to fulfill. When work is made into the center of people's existence, and money into the center of life, families, and children especially, suffer.
4
Remind me again why we need all these children? Isn't the easiest, and BY FAR the most eco-friendly, solution to just NOT bring more people onto the planet? There is not a single problem in today's society that will be solved with MORE people.
3
@Keith Bee
We don’t have a future without them!
3
Dude. Fertility happens.
I get your point, I even agree, but what’s your policy going to be? Take away reproductive freedom? I assume that is not what you had in mind. Reward the child-free? Punish mothers? We already do those things. Refusing to support single mothers, or poor mothers, or schools, or daycares, because those mothers and those children *shouldn’t exist in the first place* is a pretty brutal argument.
Birth rates in the U.S. are likely to continue to decline, because that’s what happens in rich educated countries with a decent approximation of equality. We don’t have to go out of our way to make things hard for women who get pregnant, whether or not we approve.
2
If nuanced and contextualized this is a good conversation to have- was it not a few days ago there was a report in NYT of a Columbia University professor two-income family that struggled mightily affording something like a $120,000 child care cost?
Ouch! and Ouch! Yet another nother sign of a Possibly Collapsing America?
1
For one thing, while it’s often optimal or even necessary for one parent to stay home with young children or elders, it DOES NOT have to be women. It should be open to either depending on temperament, where in careers or even trade off. Going back to enforced servitude (which it was even for those happy with it because they had no choice- no daycares, employers not hiring etc) and putting women in a dependent risky role is NOT good for anyone.
3
Oh give me a break, the "the physical realities of gestation and childbirth" are such that mothers go home with an infant and a job. The job, whether it is the care and feeding of a newborn, as well as last week's laundry or catching up on your email from your needy boss, is the same. A "temporary period of male breadwinning" doesn't change a diaper and certainly cannot afford a nanny? There is a fair division of labor when after delivery a new mom can go back to work and be assured that her loving spouse is working just as hard at caring for their child. I don't know where some people get their ideas on being a woman considering that they have known one their entire lives, but clearly, someone was blessed with the ability to be absolutely clueless about things going on in their own home and in their own lives, and yet have a paid gig writing about things of which they know nothing.
6
Sigh... Both Warren and Douthat insist on taking us back to the 19th century. Bill Gates once scolded an audience in Saudi Arabia: "If you're not fully utilising half the talent in the country, you're not going to get too close to the top."
2
Rather amazing to read this in the New York Times, as was the Andrews piece last month. The paper's leftist lurch over the past year or so might be causing some second-thoughts in the editorial suite--one can hope so.
The Tucker Carlson monologue will, I believe, come to be seen as a rather large moment in the current debate over...well, about everything that matters. It is a sign that the current collectivist/identity/guilt political wave is finally hitting the shores of good sense...and the boredom of the average American with the preaching, finger-pointing, screeching of the ultra-left.
Right on, Ross.
2
The truth is that Elizabeth Warren is not an extremist like Republicans claim. She's a moderate who embraces responsible banking and family friendly policies that the GOP has long claimed to champion but, in fact, despises.
9
I have always found it interesting that given the supply/demand basis of capitalism; I have seen only ignorance of the effect of basically DOUBLING the available "labor pool" has had on wages; especially on the "working/service class.
So....he suggest that we should pursue policy ideas that "support.... family life that are neutral between different modes of breadwinning. Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
What policies are those? What would that look like? What a vague suggestion.
2
@VoiceofReason
"just subsidize family life"
The only possible answer basically is: pay people when they have kids. Which will go over GREAT with the conservatives who love giving money to poor people and non-whites.
1
Sounds like a very weak argument to me. Stops short of the "blame the victim" ideology of yesteryear, but still, a weak argument at best.
2
The solution is simple. Women should get 24 months paid maternity leave and after they are ready to return to work, the father gets at least 1 year paid leave to stay at home with the new child. Sweden does this quite successfully.
2
This guy has obviously never been poor. No, wages have not kept up with the cost of living and it's not because everyone is wasting their enormous amounts of cash on McMansions and "middle-class amenities".
6
The most conservative (or is it liberal?) position is that the government should have no opinion whatsoever on how people spend their time or balance work and family. At least, that's how a government interested in protecting liberty should operate.
1
The "two income trap" notion fits a pretty narrow band as single women, women in families whose skills put them in low wage jobs and women of color, systematically excluded from opportunities at all income levels, have always had to work. Being able to pay for housing and food did not make their families worse off. When wages flattened out and value for shareholders became the only god, middle class married women went to work to support their families, too. Pay equity, paid family leave and child care would go a long way to support families in this reality.
I can't buy the conservative notion that systematically encouraging half the population to stay home with the kids will improve family life. The way things remain people at home who are supported by a partner and who lack skills to join the work force are still one divorce or heart attack from poverty. Poverty is the "real trap" not wanting more stuff. The right labels those people as "welfare queens" or a "taker, not a maker" and they are dismissed as lazy and not worthy. We hear we need to cut Medicaid and food support for them. I wish Ross luck in bridging that gap.
3
The issue isn't two-income vs. one-income families. The question is what is in the best interests of the entire family, assuming children are part of the discussion. The reality is that the shift from what I would call a whole family-income to a single-income (roughly 1900 to 1960) and two-income (1960 to today) is about 120 years. Prior to that, throughout history the vast majority of income for families depended upon entire family units--farming, ranching, trades, etc.--that made the family the economic/social/cultural center of the each community grouping.
Clearly, since the shift through industrialization and now tech and service industries, the overall economic circumstances most families in most communities experience are filled with bigger houses, more and better transportation and lots and lots of stuff. But what about the well being of the family unit, as a whole? Are children really better when their parents farm them out to "professional care-givers?" Do marriages flourish when partners are separated for extended periods of time?
The time has come to rethink the expectations of what it means to live a meaningful life and to foster healthy marriages and families. The root of much of the ills our society experiences are rooted in the decay of the above and will not be solved until we rethink what matters most.
3
Firstly, I have to say that I believe in equal opportunity. No one; man, woman, gay, straight, black, white or other should be held back because of their difference from the norm, but women have been sold a lie when they are told that they can have it all. Life is about choices. I wonder about the way we judge things. The gender pay gap is one thing that I think is rigged. Shouldn't we look for pay equality between men & women of equal experience & seniority instead of placing a judgement on women who took time off to have kids & then blaming the system for inequality. What about family leave for the guys too. Some European countries give equal family leave for men to bond with their kids. In the US we bemoan the lack of participation of fathers with their kids. If we gave them equal time with them that would have to change. When we leave quality of life out of our social equations, we lessen our reason to work hard & get ahead. We live in an age of rampant depression, homelessness & drug use when we're supposed to be the richest country ever to exist on the earth. We need to look at the real issues of our times if we're going to make anything better.
1
It’s not just about social conservatism, it is decidedly also about economic views that are biased against so called “anti-business” regulation and real people.
Corporate culture has been allowed to become less and less caring about its human resources in search of greater and greater profits to please a small class of well-to-do investors. The result is an environment where the needs of parents, of either gender, are not considered relevant. Thus both parents find themselves working longer hours with fewer considerations for family life.
Workplaces can and should be more parent-friendly than they are and offer subsidized child-care options on site, for example, or more generous parenting leave options, or creating a culture where employees aren’t expected to work more than 8 hours a day. But, the current environment instead discourages family life.
This is a choice that we as a culture make, it is unfair to see it as a binary choice between parenting and working, that is mislabeled as social conservatism when it is less social than economic. If we were willing to value people over profits, we would be able to do both careers and parenting in ways that work for more people of any gender.
1
One of your arguments is that people want to have "more kids"...please, Ross, please study exponential growth so you can understand why that is a terrible idea we should be educating against!
Here are the most basic facts: if you keep the same exponential growth rate, you keep the same doubling time.
Human population went from 3 billion to 6 billion in about 40 years, 1960-2000.
If population growth doesn't slow down drastically, human pop. would be 24 billion by 2080. As we are on the verge of complete eco-disaster with only 7 billion humans, can you not see that arguing we should all be having more children is insane?
Even at ZPG we'd have a hard time keeping earth habitable. The millions of species predicted to die out in the near future may well include humans.
8
Ross is logical, reasonable with his argument “The better way here, as I have argued with tedious frequency, would be for conservatives skeptical of the two-earner norm to make common cause with feminists skeptical of the corporate bias against female biology and for both to unite around supports for family life that are neutral between different modes of breadwinning.”
Common cause? With feminists? Unite around supports for family life?
Well, that will never happen or work because conservatives, in general, and conservative men, in particular, adore and will fight tooth-and-nail to the death to keep their effort and ability to keep women “one-down” no matter the situation.
2
What a good opinion piece that does a good job of succinctly defining the issues. I'm old enough to remember when families were often one-earner. Houses were smaller, as the columnist points out, and I'll add that people just didn't buy as much expensive stuff. It would be nice to have a more flexible economy for families that accommodated more part-time workers. I will say, though, that many of today's young women don't want to "sit at home." And that is their choice.
2
I find it remarkable that this entire discussion is still predicated on the assumption that if one parent in a heterosexual family isn't working full time outside the home, it will be the woman. Women have been earning Bachelors degrees by age 31 at a higher rate than men for a while now. I understand that many conservatives see traditional sex roles as largely innate, but I'm hardly the only woman I know who doesn't fit that mold, and whose spouse does not expect her to (else I would never have married him). Please let's stop using a cookie cutter approach to both economical and personal fulfillment, and create a society that allows all of us (including men who prefer nurturing to zero-sum competition) to thrive in whatever role we're best suited for.
7
Ross,
Did you actually read Warren’s book? Or are you just relying on the title to make an unrelated point?
In The Two Income Trap, Elizabeth Warren wanted to understand middle class bankruptcies. What she discovered in the course of her research was that the most likely people to face bankruptcies were middle class, two earner families with kids who had struggled to move into great school districts. That’s why parents bid up home prices. They fell into bankruptcy when one of the incomes necessary to pay the mortgage on homes located in those school districts evaporated. This wasn’t at all about keeping up with the Joneses or female empowerment, the amenities of middle class lives, or, frankly, anything else you were talking about. She wasn’t advocating for an economy that made middle class existence possible on a single income.
The real issue is the disparities between school districts, and that ultimately comes down to money and taxes. If you want to cut back on the incentives for a two income trap, we have to address these disparities. As long as the quality of the public education available to your children depends on your zip code, you will continue to have parents determined to move to the best zip codes. Once these disparities disappear, there won’t be a premium placed on homes in these districts, and you make it less likely that couples will fall into the two income trap.
11
Why is there never a single argument for what is truly best for the collective family? Or what is truly best for a child, most especially during the critical stage of birth to age 5?
To be sure, all humans should have a sense of fulfillment in their lives and this will look different for each individual family. I only propose that it might be wise to dig deeper. Turn off the world’s voices (politics, money, and the abundance of fear) and take a hard look at the little (and big) humans in your life and make decisions accordingly. Let’s start there! It might mean dual income, it might not. Putting the collective needs of your closest of kin at the top is neither easy nor popular. But I would suggest that it might pay out the biggest dividends. Dividends that no bank account will ever see. Does this solve everything? Of course not—we still have bills, health care, and everything else the human experience throws at us. But we are starting with the best question.
I simply cannot wait on government or society to make things easier for me (and my four children) in the form of subsidies, studies, laws or bills. Time is tricky business, and I want abundance in the form of human connection. What is best for the humans I love the most? Not what is best for my account, status, ambition and political ideology.
I’ll ask those questions first. Then we will face the rest together.
2
I have been a stay at home, full-time mom for the last 20 years. Our society does not respect my time and energy, and how I have used my education. One former colleague said to me when I first decided to stay home "I didn't think you were the kind of woman to do that." Another person asked me If I liked all the soap operas I must be watching. Now, with all my children in college, I am looking for a job. My time at home is not respected, not even NYS considers my volunteer work or my parenting skills and responsibilities as valuable. -- In some ways I can see why an employer would want a younger or totally career focused employee. I know that my life can be sucked up by overtime, by all consuming work e-mails, by projects with deadlines, combined with the fear of being fired if I don't step up. I know that the laboratory or company will use me up and drop me, and yet they want me to commit my life to them. Making money and/or getting published is not my focus or my life goal. -- I would like to use my education and my experience-- and am still looking for how.
184
@kkm Yep, quite an imbalance here. Employers think they need and want young workers - considered energetic and cheap according to someone - who are also engaged in time-limited enterprises like ... having children and raising them. Young people also are looking around constantly for the next great thing where they can advance their careers. Well ... Employers are missing the boat by NOT hiring experienced and older workers who are *past* the child-raising period of their lives. Those of us with empty nests are not necessarily wanting or needing to be “the boss” with a big salary. We often want and need to be a part of a team, with a more moderate salary and a title that is mid-range, too. We know enough about ourselves and the work world to know that we want and can bring our experience and skills to a place where we can use them and our employer can benefit. That’s it. Many of us went there, did it - worked in management - and we don’t need or want to do it again. And we can, when needed, work the overtime - because no kids at home - and we can get on a jet and do the business travel an employer wants - because no kids at home. Employers need to revise their thinking and change what they do in the hiring arena!
48
@kkm I did what you did, and took a lesser job and worked my way up. But don't expect to be where you would be if you had worked the past 20 years. Better scale back your expectations.
31
@kkm
It's not necessarily because others don't respect your years spent at home raising a family. The fast pace of technology, and constant flow of new information, make experience and skills from 20 years ago nearly useless. If you read about trends in putting together a resume, any work experience beyond 10 years ago is meaningless because so much has changed.
36
Why is it assumed that it's the woman who would be the stay-at-home parent? I love my job and would go out of my mind trying to be a housewife. My husband, on the other hand, would love to work part-time, take care of the household chores, and help our daughter with homework, giving us all more time to spend enjoying each others' company evenings and weekends.
5
This article assumes a same-sex couple and male breadwinning...seems like the removal of gender from this topic, or even the inclusion of same-sex couples still experiencing the same issues, might allow us to get to the core of the matter faster: "Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes (replace with parents) figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids." It's not about gender roles, it's about division of labor, which I believe you are saying. You might be able to get at that point more quickly by choosing to anonymize genders in families.
3
If a significant number of women quit the workforce today, who would work their jobs?
That's your trap.
My husband and I both have professional careers. We have 3 kids. We love our jobs, and our family set up works for us -- tho sometimes it feels like such a delicate balance that even minor disruptions could cause everything to unravel.
We're happy with our situation, but I've also become convinced that two-working families shouldn't be something we strive for as a default. If it works for families, great, I want to support that. But I know how difficult it can be, how stressful, and it can greatly impact one's happiness and marriage.
We have a short commute, I work a reduced schedule, hubby is ok stepping off the corporate ladder-climbing for awhile, and we have enough money to pay for things like housecleaning. We also both love our careers, making trade-offs worth it. Without these advantages, I honestly don't think we'd WANT to be a dual-income family. Balancing everything on top of both parents working/commuting 50+ hrs/day is too stressful, and doesn't make for happy families. Esp. if you don't even really enjoy your job.
I don't support subsidizing childcare because I fear it will just make it harder for parents to choose to cut back on careers. I want men and women to have equal career opportunities, but I don't want to force the dual-career model on any family.
4
Universal health care will free people to work part-time, or take up self-employment / small business / free-lance work that allows for a flexible schedule.
Publicly protected clean water, clean air, quality education, public transportation, arts and parks will make it easier to live on the lower income.
ALSO - I find it odd (disgusting actually) that the author is holding up bigger houses with air conditioning as a good reason to earn more. This is just more consumption that will ruin our planet.
The sexism underlying social conservatism permeates this piece, which assumes as a basic premise that in a single-income couple it is the man [it also assumes hetero couples] who will work because the woman bears the children. And that if a woman in a couple is working, that couple will be dual-income because of course the man will work. Policies based on those antiquated (and probably never correct) assumptions will never allow all families to reach their full economic and happiness potential.
And I don't understand how the availability of universal daycare would adversely affect families who choose not to use it. It seems to me that the economy and general parental satisfaction would benefit from optimal flexibility and parents not having to make employment decisions based on the cost of child care. I can say in our case, if childcare were free, I don't think my husband would get a day job, but he may well have produced a lot more art during the years before pre-school.
6
@Anonymous The availability of universal daycare WILL affect families that choose to not use it. Right now, a family with a stay-at-home parent is forgoing the the 2nd income. True, they also don't have childcare expenses, but childcare expenses are temporary, whereas the other spouse is giving up earning potential for the rest of his/her career. Even if he/she re-enters the workplace later, earning potential will be significantly lower.
The high cost of childcare means that the dual-income family is weighing the fact that the 2nd income (a) exceeds the cost of childcare and/or (b) the long-term earning potential gain is worth the childcare.
If you make childcare free, the stay-at-home parent is now not only giving up income, but they are giving up the value of the subsidy.
The dual-income family is not only benefiting from the 2nd income, but also benefiting from the subsidy. They will have SIGNIFICANTLY more after-tax incomer.
Which can in turn drive up costs of housing and other things. It will become even harder for a family to have one parent stay home b/c that 2nd income will be needed.
2
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
So you want social conservatives to bring back labor unions, lobby for paid family leave, lobby for better healthcare coverage for all, lobby for more day care (for women who can't or don't wish to stay home), push for increases in affordable homes and transit (keep down the cost of car ownership) and in general fight against the hoovering up of all the money to the wealthiest families.
OK - sounds fine to me.
6
Conservatives live in dreamland where wages have kept up with inflation. Two bread-winners earning minimum wage of $7.25 make less than $15 per hour before taxes. If minimum wage had kept up with inflation it would be $15 per hour. Two parents now have to work just to make ends meet, and that's not counting the cost of daycare. Most parents have no choice at all.
These are the problems Democrats want to solve; get parents off of this horrendous treadmill and try to get home with groceries in time for dinner, help kids with homework, and tuck them into bed.
You would think conservatives would be all on board for raising the minimum wage and helping with daycare to get all the social, health and emotional benefits of not having to hard-scrabble for a living and half of a living wage. Instead, Republicans wait for the magic "market" to raise wages while giving the rich and powerful tax breaks, drive wages down, and ensure that Walmart shareholders are the richest people in the world.
4
speaking as the mom of 4, and someone who's been working for 33 years w/ 6-8 weeks of maternity leave for each child , max .... while I also wish part-time work had been a more feasible choice and find some aspects of this article interesting, there is 0.0% chance that I would align myself with any group for whom Tucker Carlson is a spokesman.
Also, I'm not nearly so interested in subsidized child care for my kids as I am in getting a public school system for all kids, especially those from impoverished neighborhoods, that sets these kids up for future success. Bring on 2 meals a day for hungry kids, teachers that are paid enough of a living wage to live in the neighborhood, playgrounds and outdoor class time for all kids, shop class & a path to apprenticeships for those who don't want a cubicle-driven life, and free community college for those who qualify. When I see a Republican candidate who speaks to that agenda , I'll take a look. Until then don't bother.
15
I really hope that "just subsidizing family life" includes helping people who have to help their parents. Kids are not the only people who require full-time care.
12
The big miss by many (including Strain) is real estate. While houses might be bigger today as noted in the article, out here in the west and intermountain west, if you want a house even a dinky town, even a marginal small house, you're running most likely $250K minimum, most likely $325K; in the cities $400K minimum for an sub-standard house.
You have to have a down payment and closing costs. Despite vast generalizations, most people aren't making tons of money. So when George W. Bush was encouraging one-parent working families, yet turning around and saying everyone should buy a house, he was living in the land of delusion.
Take NYC and San Francisco out of it: Someone tell me how the average family is going to buy a small house on one income in today's world? Even apartments are steep these days. Some people need to get out and see the world, starting with Mr. Strain.
8
I’ve made a lot of my career choices around having the type of job that would allow me to both be a mom and be the sole financial provider if necessary. That has meant being part of civil service and being unionized. The wages are not as high as some private sector jobs, but they are decent, and I have a life. I’m also working for the common good instead of for shareholders.
7
A big problem is with all the tech-driven constant connectivity, many people are essentially "on call" 24/7. Yes, parents could put down the phone but for many there is a legitimate fear that going off the grid for the evening or weekend would put their job in jeopardy. Decent affordable health insurance (NOT tied to employment) for everyone would also help a lot. And imagine the improvement possible in the school system if kids actually had parents who could spend more time with them!
4
One would think, considering the disaster of the current administration whose party pleases him, that Ross might find another slightly more timely topic; on the other hand the struggling middle/working class does interest most of us since it is us. And I don't want to complain too much since I look forward to RD's column on unicorns - no doubt coming any day now.
1
I really, really think the thrust of this current "movement" (especially EW's prescriptions) has more to do w/ necessary income than w/ the division of household duties per some "past" model.
I hear these arguments as: "Back in the day one full-time breadwinner w/ a moderate salary (like a god auto mechanic, or a factory worker, or a tradesman would've earned) could support himself and his family (albeit maybe a small family), at a fairly reasonable level of comfort and security. As well, without the endless worry of possible financial ruin (from relatively mundane occurrences - a moderate illness/injury that meant missing work for a couple of weeks or so; a blown engine in your car; etc)..."
If this was still possible, people would have many more choices today re: division of labor, or having children, or how many children, etc
So, the real issue re: this nostalgic past, is that there are surely a very great many single-income families that are such, not by choice, but via the "cards they've been dealt". If that past was still more of a current reality, those people could provide much better for themselves, as well as their children, w/ less financial strife (therefore a better quality of life emotionally), without working 3 jobs (therefore more able to better attend to the kids and their education, etc), and of course, less tax payer outlay for services (that will still barely keep many of these families afloat)...
2
The word "tax" does not appear in this opinion piece. It's often a major component of the decision. The tax code is more progressive than it's been in years. Moving from a median household income to mid-$100k range and beyond results in a dramatic increase in marginal tax rate (possibly from 0%). Marginal tax rate guides that second parent's decisions about work.
The typical 30- or 40-something parent is near their peak earning years. Tack on a second income and many couples land in an income range with much higher tax. A marginal rate of 40-50%, including FICA or SECA and state taxes, is not uncommon for a college educated professional considering a return to work. Add commuting costs and child care and you're netting very little from your first tier of additional income. Solution: either go big, or stay home.
For those wanting to see more women in mid and high level corporate America, and better work-family balance, take a hard look at disincentives in the tax code. It's not just the brackets, it's things like NIIT and credit phase-outs. I've run countless projections for couples who decided that anything but a high-demand, high-pay job for the second working spouse isn't worth it. Not surprisingly, we end up with either a stressed-out working couple that spends little time with the kids, or a stay at home mom whose education and talent aren't put to use outside of parenting. That's the real two-income trap.
5
And somewhere lost in the picture are the poor single people who, in addition to struggling financially to compete for the same housing and resources as double-income families, are now being asked to subsidize the lifestyles of couples who CHOOSE to have children? As it is, single people are already paying more taxes, which go to things like schools, which is a necessity in modern society. But paying for childcare, paid leave, etc.? What's in it for single people?
6
@Ed
These kids are going to pay for your retirement and your prostate surgery, Ed.
2
How? We all pay in to our own retirement. Gen-Xers and younger aren't going to be relying on Social Security; that's what 401Ks are for. This is a tired old trope that is no longer true.
YES!!
Sincerely,
A Once-Upon-A-Time, Top-Tier Investment Professional turned Stay-At-Home Mom to Little Kids.
4
There are poor people with bad credit and poor people with good credit. Poor people with good credit are called middle class.
1
@BeeRock
Until they get sick and then sued for their hospital bills.
1
Gee, Ross, it sounds like you’re advocating for “choice”. What a good idea!
What this author fails to highlight is the reality of how vulnerable women are who chose to be homemakers.
If your husband cheats on you, can you walk away? Not if your uneducated, and have zero earning potential.
What if your husband gets sick or gets hit by a truck?
The conservative perspective lays heavy the burden women must absorb when they become parents yet nobody discusses how vulnerable these vital caregivers in our community become.
If you want to encourage more women to stay at home, initiate some protection that requires half of all income gets shared forever more. That some social security gets stacked up for the stay at home parent, or some validation of the value of this homework being transferable to corporate America when the children grow up.
5
Some interesting thoughts here, but no ideas on solutions?
Ross is so medieval, it's like he comes from the 12th century. Why do we get subjected to such ancient but not so honorable thoughts? Whatever subject he takes on it gets filtered through the 12th century and regurgitated as "modern". Nonsense. Republicans have gone criminal and I'd like to go a little medieval on them but I am a modern human and have learned and accepted restraint all across the board. Something sorely lacking in Republicans with regard to greed. Greed for money, greed for power over men and especially women, see Brett Kavanaugh here. Arrogant, religious and greedy. Your average Republican, medieval crusader in shining armor.
7
Is this really what passes for "policy debate" in conservative circles?
Douthat starts with the basic premise, acknowledged by many and recently championed by Warren, that the increase in two-income households has led to reduced purchasing power per income (the two-income trap), which has in turn led to various issues (inequality, rising COL) including difficulty starting a family for professional (delayed advancement, limited time off) and financial (expensive child care) reasons.
Douthat then analyzes two different policy "viewpoints" from conservative circles. Andrews/Carlson advocate for policies that help families live on a single income (without ever really explaining what those policies would be...). Alternatively, Strain from AEI argues this is actually not a problem because MOST couples working full-time in 2019 are "better off" than a one-income household in the 60s. This is so stupid it's hard to tell where to begin.
Then, after mischaracterizing Warren's proposals (it's not just universal childcare, you dolt) and rejecting them as "an insufficient response" without any explanation whatsoever--we come to Douthat's glorious conclusion: "Don't subsidize day care, don't subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life."
What does that even mean? That's not a policy Ross, that's a bumper sticker.
5
The demise of Union workers in America also is a factor here.
5
Isn’t it interesting that there is an assumption here that it is the woman that would stay home?
7
Why the jump from one-income family to women stay at home? It could be the man in a couple who stays at home. Or it may not even be a man-woman couple. Sheesh.
9
@abo. I saw two dads out yesterday, one putting their baby into he baby Bjorn, the other smilingly assisting. Never once did I wonder about their marital status, work lives, etc. I just smiled in the joy that I --a parent long past that phase-- shared with them. Bravo for the love they bring, the rest is not important.
2
That toothpaste is not going back into the tube, Ross. Maybe you better stick to trying to outflank Pope Francis.
2
My wife and I made the decision that we wanted to have someone home with our children as the grew. Since I had the higher income and better career prospects, I worked and my wife was the stay at home Mom. She was one of the few in our neighborhood and this was difficult for her. On a single income, we also adjusted to a single income life - one car (I walk to work still), no big vacations (no Disney World or anything else), not a lot of family dinners out. Two of our children went to expensive private schools for college and we paid for the whole thing, no loans, no scholarships. The point is, you can do either but there are definitely sacrifices and trade-offs. Too many Americans want to have it all and have it all given to them. It was hard when we started on a single income but it can work.
5
"In her lost days as a heterodox public intellectual"- how gratuitously nasty.
9
Choice is a fairy tale.
3
This article and the one BEfore this written by Ms Andrews hark back to an era where women had few options and even fewer opportunities. It is a shame that such backward thoughts are given space in this newspaper.
Lets talk about everyone fulfilling thier potential and having some financial security doing it.
3
@Flikchik, what's even sadder is that there are still people who subscribe to "a woman's place is in the home."
3
As usual, Ross, you're behind the times.
Here you are arguing about the "two-income" bind, when, in fact, the world has moved on and the problem is nowadays the "three-income" trap.
The "Three-income trap" is when Mom and Dad need the puny income of their grown child, who has moved back home and is working a "gig" job, to pay the electric bill or Dad's hernia operation.
Now, the bad news for these "Gig Kidz" is that the Dept of Labor - that would be Trump's chum, Acosta - has ruled that 'employees' are not 'employees': They are now deemed to be "Contractors".
"Contractors" do not have to be paid minimum wage or get overtime or even have their Social Security taxes paid in.
I suspect, Ross, that you just wanted to find some left-handed way to smear those women again, gosh, it's amazing how many ways those women can ruin everything!
But, as usual, you, sir, are 60 years behind on reality.
This is a nation of "Temps". No living wage. No pension. Now no minimum wage and no Social Security.
Tell me again, Ross: Why do we keep you Republicans around.....?
9
You know what I'm tired of, is this universal presumption that OF COURSE the husband keeps on working full-time no matter what, and any accommodations and finagling to make an actual family actually work must be made by the wife. Let's see some daddies opting to work part-time while the kids are small! Normalize THAT, and I think you'll find that the hit to the career of a stay-at-home parent will dry up and blow away.
6
First - a pro-family solution that conservatives seems to fight tooth and nail is parental leave. Parental leave that allows either parent to leave the work force with income security and (maybe more importantly) some security about returning to a job, is perhaps the single most pro-family policy that could be enacted. As Ross points out, the desire to be a "one income" family may be temporary/changeable.
Second - the stress and strain of being a two income family arises in many cases because the world is still organized as if mothers didn't work. School gets out a 3pm. Music lessons, math tutoring, swim team, girl scouts etc. all happen between 3:30 and 6:30 and are almost never offered in the after school program. Working families are under impossible time pressure or forced not offer these enrichments to their children and instead leave them in mediocre/underfunded aftercare programs. A full-day school day, would relieve parental stress and perhaps allow children more time for recess and enrichment in school.
Finally - the Ross's condemnation women attempting "accommodate themselves to career paths made for men" misses the point. If grueling hours, late nights, and "lean in" is bad for women with families, it is probably bad for men. Instead of creating an off ramp or slow lane for women, lets create more human and family friendly work environments for parents of all genders.
7
I completely agree! I don’t understand why schools can’t offer longer school days and enrichment activities through the school system. The buildings and infrastructure are there- why are we wasting it?
5
@Maya
Because charter schools have been offering the extended school day in poor cities for years. When you have a 5 year old in school from 7:30 till 4:45, you are not bringing home a child that can socialize, engage in family activities or do anything but eat their Happy Meal, play Fortnite and fall asleep. ( No naps in full day kindergarten so you can tell me how much good quality learning is taking place after 12:30 ).m Most of these schools do just what parents want- function as a babysitter and a soup kitchen- with a little
"education-lite" thrown in on the side.
1
I see your point, but on the other hand, upper middle class parents pick up their kids from school and schlep them around to various enriching activities. If the school offered violin lessons on site, I wouldn’t have to drive my kids to lessons, for example. I would pay for after-school foreign language class if offered. Etc. I don’t want daycare and have never put my kids in daycare, so no, that’s not what I want as a parent.
2
Ross's recommendation of "a temporary period of male breadwinning to balance the burden borne by mothers" says it all: the assumption remains that the man is the principal breadwinner and the women the principal caregiver. Rather than reproduce this patriarchal, gendered vision of labor, we should argue instead for men to take up as equally as possible both the joys and the burdens of introducing children to the world. Without genuinely shared parenting, women will either continue to work a double day or be obliged to sacrifice their careers for their children or their children for their careers. And men will continue to miss most important years of their children's lives, an absence which is no more beneficial for their children than it is for them.
8
Can anyone elaborate what is meant by "subsidize family life"? which is the core argument of the article. It strikes me as irresponsible not to elaborate on that central point.
3
@Bighurt I'm not 100% but I think it means providing government assistance to pay for daycare or providing money (lost wages maybe?) to families where one parent stays home.
@H It could mean a lot of different things, like making child deductions much bigger on taxes; subsidizing children's healthcare; ensuring better funding in schools and communities to provide enrichment options more cheaply; at the state level, exempting children's clothes and school supplies from sales taxes.
You can quibble about which ones of those are good or bad ideas, but I think the point is to think through how we can make it less expensive to have kids WITHOUT specifically subsidizing working parents over single-income families (or vice versa).
It is maddening to me that the only option presented in this article is for full-time mothers as opposed to full-time fathers. Not very progressive thinking on the part of the author.
7
Any family has the option of going 'single income' for a spell when EITHER the male OR female partner can stay at home with small children. Nothing dictates that it should always be the women. However, that choice -- apart from the sacrifices it comes when living on one income -- also shifts the power dynamics subtly, and puts one of the couple in a disadvantaged position in terms of decision making. The 'breadwinner' inevitably becomes the 'master' of the house with final say on numerous decisions, large and small. It is naive to enter a debate about single-income households without explicitly addressing what it does to power-dynamics between couples and what happens to the 'stay at home' partner should the other one ever decide to leave for greener pastures.
4
@Sen I disagree that that power dynamic is inevitable. My dad was the breadwinner, but my mom was an equal partner in all decisions. The difference was that my mom's work was respected as an equally important contribution to the family. They each had different roles, but one wasn't more important than the other. My dad's role was important because of course they needed income. My mom's role was important because of course the kids needed to be cared for, the household managed, etc. One didn't work without the other.
The problem is that "women's" work is often greatly undervalued.
2
@Itsy I'm glad your mother got the respect she deserved from your father. But I think that reality shows that if the male is the breadwinner he will also be a power broker, especially outside the house. The very fact that "women's work is often greatly undervalued" means she is not compensated for that. When she is not compensated, like it or not, your father would have been seen outside of the house as the person with power, not your mother. If that changes, then I'd agree that a power imbalance is not inevitable. But until that happens, no matter how balanced your parents' roles inside the house, your father would clearly have held more financial and social power.
2
@Sen EXACTLY!
What's missing in this conversation is that employers now feel free to layoff workers, which was uncommon during the 50s and 60s. And ... there are many more employee protections in Europe, which was mentioned in the article.
I was new to the workforce when in 1982, companies started laying off workers, many of whom were men and the primary wage earners. It was a new, scary time, which got, sadly, less new and more scary.
I realized that I needed to be able to support a household because of this new economic uncertainty.
The Dual Income Trap is exacerbated by the uncertainty of employment, and has enabled wages to stay low because of fear. Corporations and 'right sizing' venture capital vultures have exploited this for their benefit. They are not paying near enough to support the safety net of the employees they exploit and discard.
19
@LAGirl1, thanks for making this point of utmost importance. A two income household can survive and/or recover from these setbacks, a one income family could be destroyed. I would only add this: in the past that Ross glorifies, there were pensions offered by companies. Any additional saving was by choice, social security was truly the third leg of the future planning stool. Now employees are expected to manage their own retirement fund, and pensions are gone or minimal. Social security is the pinata of the republican party and of some dems (like Obama), so people fear they truly cannot depend upon that unless you are already enrolled or close enough that the fear of turning off the faucet prevents bad actors from doing what they wish-- which is end it. (I am not alarmist-- if I was wrong about the attacks on SS-- then protection and expansion of it would be a campaign issue and a key part of the Dem's platform. Silence or a soft voice on this tells us all we need to know.)
2
Like many women, I stayed in the workforce because even if my husband can be trusted to behave himself, he can't be trusted to not die. In our case, he couldn't even get life insurance, so we both needed to maintain our professional standing so that it would be possible to make the mortgage payments and raise our kids should the other meet with an untimely end.
13
Social Democracy promotes citizens needs such as health care, education, child care and reasonable secure retirement. Corporate capitalism supports low taxes, less revenue, business interests . less regulations and usually leads to income inequality.
All social indices, for years, shows our country down the list on almost all social criteria and the Social-Democratic countries at the top. The experiment has been done, for many years, and the results show the correct way to assure the citizens best life.
WE have a very highly educated female population (50% of college students, 50% of medical and Law) are women. They are way past the stay at home high school educated women of the 1950's. Conservatives need to face the reality of the 21st century rather then go back to 'the old days".
10
Douthat writes that "what we increasingly have in the West [is] a lot of well-off dual-earner couples but fewer successful relationships ..."
This is the worst sort of intellectual sloppiness, combining two very different groups into one overarching social conclusion.
What we have in the West is a lot of well-off dual-earner couples who tend to have successful relationships--their divorce rate is MUCH lower than for the not-so-well-off single-earner couples--and a lot of not-so-well-off single-earner couples with unsuccessful relationships.
I'm not saying that there are no problems faced by the dual-earner, highly educated couples. They can face a lot of stress, and they may find themselves having fewer children than they would like. Moreover, it's mathematically impossible for everyone to be earning more than average. But let's keep the issues straight: female education and empowerment seems correlated with more stable, successful relationships, not less.
11
@Alec, both my logic and statistics professors in college would read "what we increasingly have in the West [is] a lot of well-off dual-earner couples but fewer successful relationships ..." and promptly award Mr. Douthat an "F" for such an absurd generalization.
Where are the statistics to back up this claim? My own experience with two-income couples that have raised families is that both partners are happier as a result.
More importantly, once the kids are grown and gone, there is a second act career-wise, and less economic pressure from the ever-higher cost of living.
Do a better job with your homework, Ross.
3
Ross totally ignores the fact that if you want one income families, you need to think about labor power, strong unions, government policies supportive of workers, limitations on trade contingent on worker protections. He ignores that to have two income families become a healthier option, you absolutely need all of the above with free, high quality child care from an early age, well-considered, intellectually and physically rigorous public schools with programs to attract all classes, including foreign languages, art, music, gifted programs, and daily recess and physical education in elementary school, universal health care, and strong protections for women and men in the labor market for the collective good so that we all can decide without extraordinary penalties to shift back and forth from full-time to part-time to care for our next generation.
6
Speaking from personal experience, I would have a hard time arguing our family is worse off for the "two-income trap." First, having two incomes 30 years ago enabled us, as a first-time-home-owner couple, to qualify for a larger mortgage on the house in which we still live. As time passed, and salaries went up, the fixed monthly mortgage payment became a smaller percentage of our family income, while we continued to enjoy the benefits of living in, and value/investment appreciation on, a "nicer" home/neighborhood with excellent schools. Second, my wife's income, combined with some belt-tightening, enabled our two children to graduate from college debt free. It doesn't need to get any better than that.
7
Hmmm....
On my right, there is a historically huge gain in prosperity over the last 50 years, measured in corporate profits and individual income net of taxes. This overwhelmingly accrues to the top 5% of the country, which is disproportionately single-earner. These folks control virtually the entire wealth of the US. Their increased well-being has been the singular policy focus in practice of their Republican allies, to the exclusion of all else.
On my left is the bottom 95%, overwhelmingly dual earner by necessity, with no luxury of family-friendly time, much less leisure time. There are about a hundred different narratives on how to best support these folks...but it all starts with the willingness to say to the capital class "you're taking too much out of the system. We need some back."
The question I'd ask Douthat (and Brooks, for that matter) is - If you actually believe in the family-friendly socially engaged world you espouse, why do you usually ally yourselves with Republican subtractionists? They will never get where you want them. Their battleship is traveling at 40 knots in the opposite direction.
15
Having grown up in a family of 12 children, my mother never sought employment with the exception being at Christmas to secure toys for us. Many of these toys were purchased used at the Goodwill store or Salvation Army outlet. We never lacked food, shelter, heating, or air conditioning. We kids learned to be self sufficient at an early age..i.e. removing snow in the winter and cutting grass in the summer thoughout the neighborhood. My father worked a steady job for the city earning, at best a modest income. We considered our living standard adequate but not at all poor or at poverty level. We were overall a very happy, loving family.
When we started my family, it was agreed that our children (5 in all) would have a stay-at-home parent. And we managed until we became empty-nesters. As I reflect on both generations i realized how fortunate we were/are. We managed with a lot of luck, hard work and a commitment to our children.
This has little to do with one or two incomes. It just seemed to us the correct thing to do. It was a decision that my wife and I agreed. As I enter my 8th decade on this earth, I’m amazed at how we can politicize something as simple and logical as family.
I don’t give a hoot who provides income and who remains a homemaker. If we focus on our children and their well being, this would be a better world.
1
@Hugh, since you're entering your 8th decade, you obviously grew up in a time when the overall cost of living was a LOT lower than today. Many families in the 1950s and 1960s raised several children on one salary, as the costs of housing, food, gas, utilities, medical care were a fraction of what they are today. And jobs back then came with pensions and other benefits, not to mention a bit of security. A "contractor" was the guy who fixed your roof, paved your driveway, or built an addition on your home for an extra bedroom - not a temporary employee at a corporation.
It's a far different world today with high costs of living and little to no job security. Understandably, couples are more reluctant to raise families in such an environment.
2
Look folks, this is actually pretty simple. Well-cared-for children are a huge benefit to society in the form of productive and useful future citizens, and the people doing the actual parenting work should be COMPENSATED. Then, with the choice of earning income within the family or out of it, each spouse can decide which, if either of them, takes the "Parenting" job as their paid work (with retirement savings please) and if neither likes the idea they hire a nanny or a Certified Professional Parent). Right now what we have is some dedicated but uncompensated women doing free parenting not just for their own kids but often for their kids' friends (oh, you don't mind picking him up for me today, do you? ) and becoming financially dependent and destitute in their old age.
1
@Jk, please. Stay at home moms better at mothering than working moms? Prove it. One income families superior in happiness and stability than dual income homes? Again prove it. Anecdote: a stay at home mom active in our local elementary school was vicious in her criticisms of the working moms. She certainly never did the favors you define as core to stay-at-homes. Fast forward: none of her kids graduated from college, her husband left her and the kids, without his income (and physical) support her home suffers from neglect, her weight ballooned. Meanwhile, her two working mom neighbors have well-maintained homes, happy and successful college grad children, and are still in the marriages that thrived in the mutually supportive environment that we all defined as part of a life lived well.
3
Reading this, one might suppose Ross would support policies to help level the huge - and still growing - income gap in America, which is the unspoken heart of this dilemma.
Ross - despite what you may believe, most of us dont have the luxury of "choosing" to be single income families.
9
While I would normally think a stay at home Mom is a good idea for children, & several friends would have chosen this, here are the reasons I don't think it works well:
- Complete financial dependence on the Dad, so if the marriage dissolves or Dad is disabled or dies - financial disaster ensues.
- No retirement or pension; widows are left trying to live old age on only SS.
Too me, these issues are HUGE and I would never let myself become financially dependent on my spouse or significant other.
8
How about if families decide to stop caring about the Smith-Joneses and break the cycle of consumerist acquisition that drives them into debt and servitude. No, you don't actually need that 4000 square foot house if you only have one or two children. Or that Tesla. Or all of the latest electronic gadgets. Then you might have the ability to take a deep breath and decide what works best for you, your spouse and your family.
5
@Bailey Shhh! That sounds like common sense.
1
My mother chose to be a stay-at-home mother for our younger years, while my Dad did odd jobs to provide for us. As I grew up, I thought I wanted to make the same choice as a mother, but when I had my first child last year (at 36 years of age), I quickly realized that I am not a stay-at-home parent. I would need additional helping hands to even consider being a stay-at-home, but we can't afford it and we don't have family near.
I'm a lawyer and make considerably more than my partner. He approached me about pulling our daughter from daycare, which cost more than our rent each month and was his entire paycheck, so that he could be the stay-at-home parent. I told him it's the hardest job he will ever have, but I watch him tirelessly care for her, clean the home, do the laundry and cook us food every day. He does want I can't do and makes it look easy.
We are expecting our second child and I don't have enough leave saved up to stay home more than a month. I wish I could too because two of us caring for our children, at least in the beginning, would make me extremely happy and would, in my opinion, be ideal for our kids.
Every situation is different, and being the sole-income earner AND child-bearer makes our especially so. I'm fortunate to be able to make the salary that I do and yet my family still has tough decisions to make. Whatever policies people push should be accommodating and flexible. For the women that have or choose to work and for the men that stay home.
5
My stepmother, who was an anomaly in the 1950s and 1960s as the president of a manufacturing company, learned some hard lessons after her first husband died, leaving her with four young children. The bank that controlled her late husband's trust was reluctant to have her step in and run the company ("she's a mother, what does she know about running a manufacturing business?") and she was almost kicked to the curb.
However, having an undergraduate degree from a highly-regarded womne's college, and subsequently earning an master's degree in the forerunner of business administration from another top university, she persuaded the bank to acquiesce and give her a chance in the driver's seat. Needles to say, she did an outstanding job and eventually sold the company in the late 1970s, retiring comfortably.
My stepmother never forgot those scary days when she could have lost everything, and urged all of her stepdaughters and daughters-in-law to (1) pursue a college and post-graduate education, (2) pursue a white collar career, preferably in something that could be resumed after motherhood, and (3) have their own bank accounts and retirement funds separate from those of their husbands. A philosophy I passed onto my daughter.
11
"Social conservatism needs not only visible female champions but also a rhetoric and a program that persuades women who are largely happy with their working lives that its fight can be theirs as well."
It is just amazing to see the world through his brain filter. I would not look to social conservative brother Douthat for analysis of the pursuit of happiness for women.
2
Many women bought into the one income myth in the 1950s and 60s only to find themselves without skills, income, social security benefits, once divorced. This position lets the US off the hook - a strong child welfare/day care policy would go a long ways towards helping families and building a better society. Works well in other countries; another example of US exceptionalism.
5
In the 1970s, I was the only person in my department at work who did not have a second job or a working spouse; my wife stayed home with our three children.
Since I was in a low-paying job (for a college graduate), times were often tight and we lived a frugal life; we made use of NYC's many free or low-cost activities. There was often too much month left at the end of the money and we regularly dipped into check-credit (paid back within a week) but never carried a balance on a credit card. I once ask my adult son if he felt bad growing up poor; he told me that he always thought that we were rich. (To him, going to sleep-away camp as his friends did was punishment.)
Our frugality continued even after my wife went back to work and we now have more assets than any of my former co-workers; they would not know it because we are still frugal.
3
At the end of WWII my mom, a Navy petty officer and then an administrative assistant for the FBI in their immigration department in New York, was making a good living and doing well. Mom and dad had been married while both served. When dad returned home in April 1946 they started a family and soon after mom left her job. In 1956 dad left mom for a younger woman. He was gone for almost 4 years. Mom was left, single, unemployed, her college education incomplete and also a new born, a 4 year old and a seven year old. We almost starved, had little new clothing, sometimes no money for fuel oil in winter and depended upon our grandparents to bring food and provide some financial assistance.
Conservatives are out of touch with reality and equally out of touch of what happens to women who lack education and/or good job skills.
Women face many challenges in life. Without education and a good job marriage and family should be last on the list. In the 1950s it may have been possible for a woman to survive on one income. No longer true since the 1970s. A family with only one working is a struggle to survive and prosper. Many highly skilled and educated professionals, doctors, lawyers, and others can make it one income. But not the rest of the world.
Our dad returned in late 1959. Mom had found another position in NY with the FBI again and was ready to move back to the city. Mom and dad stayed together until his death in 1971. Mom did not return to work and had another child.
4
I am the woman in that photo, though I didn't mean to be. (I don't mean literally, of course, but I became a stay at home mom by default when I was in my very early 20's. Somehow even with going to college in my 30's I never got on a career track. I am 100 percent dependent on my now husband for everything, and you know what? It doesn't feel that good. Articles like these make me feel terrible. This didn't have to happen to me. In part, it's the result of a failure in our system to value women and what they do, whether they stay home with kids or work outside the home. And I'm not 80 years old. I am not a relic from another age, only from this one.
Parents, tell your girls - over and over- how important it is to go to school with their peers and find a career that can support them and give their lives richness and meaning. There is too much importance put by our society on romance and baby-making. These fantasies - not to mention realities - hurt girls and women. It's not about one income or two. It's about the kind of lives we believe girls and women deserve.
19
"Strain continues, nothing prevents today’s households from opting to live on one income"
Really. This entire opinion is delusional. We have millions of people eating out of food banks, living in homeless shelters and on the streets, don't have an extra $500 in case of any emergency, can't afford health insurance, can't afford their drugs, many working 3 jobs to make ends meet, can't afford child care for those who can even afford to have kids, can't buy a house because they have high student debt and on and on and on.
11
What in the heck is Conservatism?
6
What about stay at home dads?
3
15 years old? Please. Learn some history. Those discussions went back to the 80's and not only amongst "conservatives". (I use quotes there because the term is meaningless.)
2
Mr. Douthat, you write, “don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life.”
Please, tell me more. I would like to read a column of your ideas of how to subsidize family life. I would find it more interesting and productive than this oddly defensive column was.
5
Why should a nation lose half its brain force in the work force?
4
"The better way here,*** would be for conservatives skeptical of the two-earner norm to make common cause with feminists skeptical of the corporate bias against female biology and for both to unite around supports for family life that are neutral between different modes of breadwinning.
Could the foundation for such supports be universal comprehensive health care? Nahhh - SOCIALISM!
3
The only thing more laughable than this article are the studies linked in this article.
3
Oh to have a corporate culture AND government policies that value families!!! As with much in America, we divide working from stay-at-home moms, dads from moms, and the well-off from the not. While we're all different, we shouldn't find ourselves living in conflict with our values because of prevailing cultural norms and expectations and realities. If conservatives and liberals can work together on the defense of families over our jobs (no matter how purposeful or necessary), I'm on board!
Stop using the term “woke,” Mr. Douthat—you’re using it wrong!
Here's my favorite part of this op-ed "... nothing prevents today’s households from opting to live on one income..." from Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute.
I assume Ross agrees with it. He lets it go unchallenged and later suggests that it's not the high cost of living that forces people to seek two incomes but their desire to have more stuff, keeping up with proverbial Joneses.
He gives Tucker Carlson cred as an intellectual thinker.
Ross Douthat is a smart guy. But, please. I. Just. Can't.
344
@Eddie Allen, that jumped off the page at me, too. I think about all the Americans holding 2-3 jobs because one fails to pay a living wage.
42
@Eddie Allen
He doesn't agree with it. Read the whole article.
5
@Eddie Allen bet Ross goes to work each day as does his wife, Bet their children are in a expensive day care or private school. Bet a housekeeper does most of the "woman's housework". How many NY type professionals are staying home with their children regardless of income.
20
Maybe I’m obtuse, but tell me again why we’re even having a mid-20th-century debate like this today, when there are so many genuine serious, unsolved issues before us as a society? For example, if healthy, happy families are your priority, you should be much more worried about challenges facing the high percentage of single-parent households (not even mentioned in this article). Or how about robust, proactive birth control support to curb unintended pregnancies, especially among teens, which would certainly reduce (although not eliminate) the need for access to safe, legal abortion. Here’s another one: getting serious about equal pay for equal work. And of course, the obvious avoided subject: significant, not cosmetic, middle-class family tax relief rather than lavish subsidIes of corporations and the investor class. All these core family issues are strongly resisted by many conservatives, who seem to recognize only one legitimate model of “family” — the traditional two-parent kind, ideally with a stay-at-home mom. Please, let’s look forward, not backward. Time only goes in one direction.
7
I've been astounded that Elizabeth Warren is proposing free daycare, considering that will push us further in the Two Income Trap she wrote about 15 years ago. Free daycare would be a massive subsidy to families with two working parents, meaning that families wanting someone to stay home with the kids would be even more greatly disadvantaged financially. In short, it will make it harder for families to choose to have a parent scale back or stay home with the kids.
I say this as someone paying thousands each month for day care and would benefit enormously from having free childcare.
I agree with this line in the article 1000%: "Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
4
In reading Warren's book, she seemed to believe when it was written (2002) that the most important thing that could be done was to equalize the quality of education provided by all public high schools, so the competition for housing in good districts would no longer squeeze middle-class parents.
2
2019: One must normalize for regionalism. Locales such as NYC have enormously high living costs. Even two income families might find it difficult to live in such cities.
Unfortunately, for a myriad of reasons, one can not just pick up and move. In SF there rare many 90k per year programmers who can’t find a decent place to live, unless they commute up to three hours.
3
It interesting that we give government and politics so much credit for something in all probability they had little to do with. That 1970's "feminists" commanded women to go out and get jobs. And the did! Maybe it had more to do with the great mass migration to the suburbs in the 60's and 70's. Both for middle class professional as well as the working class stiffs. Even though much of the suburban life style of that time was extremely modest by today's standards could you really afford a new home on one income? In a society where "more is better" conservatives are now going to convince people that "less is really better?" Families drawn to two income do it because it makes economic sense to them. For them dropping down to one income may mean abandoning the suburb and moving back to the old neighborhood or what is left of it. Sending their kids to urban schools? Not gonna happen. Great for urban renewal though.
I kept waiting for Douthat to get to the point I knew would come: the "natural" purpose of a woman is to stay home and have babies – and implied is all of the other conservative dreck that comes with it like subservience to men, dressing in feminine attire, and generally being the weaker sex.
Douthat wraps that point in an apparent discussion of political strategy, but his real strategy is another "tedious" defense of ancient Christian gender roles.
8
‘just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids.‘
Douthat could have made his point in one sentence. We all could do better by working from the above perspective.
"This is the real “trap” created by two-earner culture. There are many families that want to raise kids on one income, or one income and some part-time work, and instead find themselves pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door..."
This tension rings true to me. These are the sorts of questions we are asking now that I have gone from full-time work to P/T work. I have been happier and am home by the time kids get home. On the other hand we are going to have to wait on trading in our car, updating the bathroom and having more cash to spend a little more. All that would be super nice, but on the other hand, I've been a lot happier on P/T work and we've all been eating a lot healthier!
3
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life."
Really? And how exactly does one do that? Dress it up however you like, the latter condition requires at least one of the first two. As usual, Mr. Douthat's attempt to marry conservative "values" to effective (and desirable) outcomes is based on nothing more than wishful thinking.
2
Ah, yes. The endless search for new and improved justifications for making more women baby machines. A "holy" pursuit indeed.
8
The problem with your thinking is that the working women I know here in rural America,Trump country, have to work just to afford rent,food,car payments....just to get by.They don't go to work because of "female ambition" or to have "bigger houses." They don't even own a house and I'm talking about two earner families.These women also desperately need subsidized child care.I'm glad your children have been in "wonderful daycare programs".Lucky for them.I get that you're slowly moving into the Trump/Fox News camp.In fact it is this group that is actually the "elite" they like to condemn.Most of their media stars live in the 1% bracket and use the plight of the "working poor" to advocate policies that keep them poor.And.... to keep themselves in the spotlight both politically and economically.Nice trick for now but for the future....your playing with fire.
3
No no no! The two income families acknowledge the zero sum game! Stay in the top 10%, or at least the top 20%. Especially in Ayn Rand Land America. Because once you fall out, it is hard to get back. Plutocrats run the show. Evidence: look whom the Commander in Chief is and how each outrage is met by the sound of crickets from the right. Couldn't ask for a better example of whom is charge. So make sure you stay out of the food chain, and maybe you can shove some money into the capital markets, thereby increasing the size of your moat.
4
If we were all as smart and wise and meritorious and qualified as Queen Elizabeth I and President Donald Trump to pick the "right" parents we would have no one-income concerns or worries.
If we were all as smart and wise as Ivana, Ivanka and Melania Trump we would have no one-income issues or problems.
What was Eve's job? What did Mary do for a living? What did Mary Magdalene do for her living?
Hatshepsut? Nzinga? Queen Elizabeth I? Queen Victoria?
Who was Mr. Margaret Thatcher? Who is Mr. Angela Merkel? Who is Mr. Theresa May? Who is Mr. Kamala Harris? Who is Mr. Amy Klobuchar? Who is Mr. Elizabeth Warren?
1
Maybe some women don't want the "domestic life" of reproducing and becoming a hand maiden to your husband and children. Never appealed to me. Then, after the children have left the nest so to speak what then? Get a job at a local five and ten because education was sacrificed for raising a brood and your husband discards you as a used dishrag? Sorry, I've seen it happen. No going backwards...only forward to a better life for both.
9
@Diane Thompson completely false dichotomy. My mother spent her 20's graduating from college and teaching high school, her 30's raising 2 young children, her 40's working part time as a tax accountant, and her 50's getting a master's degree and becoming a librarian. If one isn't willing to sacrifice 10 years of their precious "career" to raise children, they shouldn't have children. Applies to both sexes. Plain and simple. If you're only speaking of women who don't want to have children? Then your argument is wonderful and I agree. But it's not relevant to this article.
1
@Erik: I get your point. Your mother sounds like an amazing woman who had a supportive husband. You're right... children weren't something I wanted, ergo, I didn't have any. Unfortunately, too many women don't plan as well as your mother and become trapped in a lifestyle without options. Yes, it does apply to both sexes.
1
What a waste of words and, for the reader, the time to read this stuff. This is another drawn out argument of no practical value since it is, as most Time Opinion writer's pieces concerning the economic and quality of life conditions of families in the United States, ignoring the simple fact that the cost of EVERYTHING that creates economic stability (housing, health care, higher education) is totally out of sync with most Americans incomes. Get out in the real world, Ross, David Brooks and all the other Times folks who are paid to come up with this worthless stuff.
9
A number of commenters are asking -- what does it mean, to "subsidize family life"? Here's one thoughtful discussion. https://familyandhome.org/articles/campaign-inclusive-family-policies
Good solution! Take away the props and figure it out youraelves.
Why the dislike of de Blasio? Please explain. The right has contempt for him, that implies fear.
1
How about adding an environmental strain to this interesting discussion? The cultural pressure to keep up with the two-income Smith-Jones is to some extent about conspicuous consumption of certain status markers. Homes are bigger now than before? How does that make sense, seeing that families are having fewer kids on average? And more air conditioning? How much of that is necessary? I grew up in Baltimore without air conditioning, and I'm still here. Lives revolving around SUVs and oversize pick-ups? For many people, there are more efficient and economical transportation alternatives. While I'm all in favor of greedy capitalists paying a more livable wage to their workers, another front where progress can be made is on opting out of much of wasteful, unsustainable consumer culture, and learning to live austerely but well. Bring the old hippie contingent on board!!
5
@Bill Q. Whether you need air conditioning depends on your climate. I now live in a climate where temperatures are routinely over 100 degrees at times in the summer. And some people die from it. Yes, we need air conditioning.
@Frances Grimble
I'll grant you that, but my in-laws grew up in Guaymas, Mexico, where summers are even more brutal than in Baltimore, and back in the day they survived by using fans, sleeping on the porch, and drinking insane amounts of beer. It's also true that many places don't need air conditioning and use it anyway, or crank it up to uncomfortable levels. This is what I mean by wasteful consumer culture-- we've been sold on "needs" that we can often (not always) do without. With a simpler lifestyle maybe you stretch your paycheck farther into the month, and have more time for the good things in life.
1
I think you made a wrong turn.
"No matter how gender-egalitarian society becomes, the physical realities of gestation and childbirth make it natural for most families to desire at least a temporary division of labor during the years when their kids are young, a temporary period of male breadwinning to balance the burden borne by mothers."
How about a temporary period of ONE breadwinner, and not necessarily the male breadwinner?
6
I have to presume female biology doesn't surprise Ross or corporations.
The problem is tax policy. If super rich people had to pay 65% of their top income in taxes, Steve Ballmer might have offered only one billion for the Clippers instead of two billion.
Then, players would be offered less, concessions would cost less and one-income families could afford tickets to the game.
This isn't magic. Some of us still remember the post-war period when top marginal tax rates were high and people could afford a house, a car, a vacation, parochial schools, drive-in theaters and the occasional Dairy Queen.
7
I can't wait for Douthat's take on the new season of Leave It to Beaver.
He makes some valid points about supporting a families' ability to choose their own path, but like everything around social conservatives it's always a deal with the devil, and the devil is in the details. It never feels genuine, like Bush's "compassion conservatism" it's an oxymoron, a ruse designed to go back to some religious-based Little House on Prairie fantasy world. Health care for all, family leave, better education, a good financial safety net - these are the tools that will let families pursue their own paths.
5
Employers use their brains to create and distribute products and services. They take risks and, if successful, are amply rewarded. Many of them complain about not finding competent or reliable workers. The reality is that they can not find the right workers because they keep too much revenue for themselves. The mechanisms for changing this are varied and complex. The political will to change this is only possessed by Democrat progressives. Socialists have the will as well, but, like Medicare for all, they are out of touch with the majority of Americans. And rightly so.
2
The simple solution, paying people more for their work, is nowhere to be found in this article. Interesting.
5
@John McGlynn Be careful! You're touching the cards on the bottom level of the house!
2
The glory days of the past and the single income family never existed for poor people. Poor women and children worked in factories and as domestic servants when they were not considered property. You are having a debate about a choice only afforded to the upperclass.
9
I thought that competitive labor markets were supposed to take care of this by offering jobs and career tracks that accommodated wonems and mens preferences for work life balance.
Universal healthcare, pensions, solvent and increased social security, universal childcare, paid leave for both parents when a child is born, free, or at least greatly reduced tuition at state and local colleges, and mandatory vacation time that employees are forced to take. Those policies will solve almost all of these problems. Because what's at issue is freedom. The freedom to actually make life choices based on how you want to live your life. Healthcare and lake of stable retirement are the biggest traps of all.
And every single one of these problems rests at the feet of republicans. I can't wait until Millennials and Gen Z take over. They won't stand for this garbage anymore.
3
Society had better address the gender pay gap if living on one income is presumed to be a solution to any social problems. Conservatives should get on board.
1
Ew. Another man telling women what they want. I'm a woman. I never wanted children because I saw what my mother had to do-- EVERYTHING. Yes, she worked and achieved heights in her career because she is an intelligent hard-worker. She was much more successful than my father. At the same time, she wanted children, but guess what? She wound up doing everything at home, too- my dad's laundry, our laundry, dinner every night, the cleaning, the cooking, the planning, everything. That looked like a sucker's deal to me. Men in this country (maybe all countries) think they can have their cake and eat it, too. And women allow it. Not this woman. I married "late"- a man who also doesn't want kids. We have a dog and relative parity in our relationship. But history tends to repeat itself and for the last several years, I have been out earning him by a long shot. It's not a competition but men need to stop hangwringing and start showing women that they don't think of them as indentured servants. I'm really sick of men saying "Accept me as a I am" but telling women that they must change. I'm good at what I do, I have an education and why should I stop my career to be a brood mare? Our male-dominated society offers zero incentives for that life.
9
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
I'm sorry, I can't figure out what the author is proposing here with "just subsidize family life." Anyone?
3
Women are better educated at this point. There's no reason that they can't be the single earners. I don't see that addressed here at all.
4
I have never been swayed by "conservative" social views, but trying to turn Elizabeth Warren into a proxy for forcing women to go back home, have more babies, and raise kids .. (not sure how, more pay? social safety net? seems against other "conservative" values) ..
This article really annoys me:
Fact: women are investing $40K in loans in addition to on-going contributions by their parents and their own jobs, and then loss of pay .. which all needs to be paid back
Fact: with divorce rates at 50%, the odds are even whether Mr. Breadwinner will really stay with you to support you in old age or will grudgingly pay child support are about even. Guess wrong .. you are poor. Hubby gets sick .. you are poor.
Fact: the Catholic and Evangelical chant about more children and less birth control means having more kids, having no chance to space children so you can work and raise them, having no end to fertility and having more than 8 bil humans on a planet that is heating up ..
Fact: these conservatives won't support anything remotely family friendly
Fact: lack of clout for workers means no one has a pension and all will face possible age discrimination at end of their career. So in addition to paying your bills, you need to save millions to pay your own pension . Health care premiums and co-pays are sky high ..
Fact: Women could have great careers but maybe they can't step away for 4-6 years ..
Fact: Germany limits work to 40 hours a week, why can't we ?
6
Ross Douthat esposing the Scandinavian model is something new.
I look forward to reading the next installment: high rates of taxation and commensurate high social return.
3
In the midst of all these mushy thoughts are a few worth consideration. Of course it all evaporates under the weight of the "conservative" be all -end all -- government is evil! Elizabeth Warren has the answers on this topic as does Bernie. Endless hours at "work" do not result in a healthy family or society.
1
Boy I wish there was a way to supports raising children and earn a livable wage no matter where you fell on the job spectrum. You know longer paid maternal/paternal leave, better care, subsidized child care...
Oh!
They call that place, anywhere but here...
2
Warren lost my vote when she couldn't figure out her heritage.
Now that vote will never happen.
If you want to be a "homemaker" fine, do it, but don't you dare decide that is the role of women.
We (women) fought to long and to hard for the right to vote, the right to work outside the home, the right to own property and not be property, the right to pursue our dreams, be it CEO of our own company or rise up the ladder in the work place.
We fought to long and hard for women's rights; to be treated equally and the fight to end sexual harassment in the workplace.
Again, if you don't want to work outside the home then don't - but don't you dare to take women's rights back to the 50's and the treatment of women under the control of men and the women are ignorant.
When women's issues aren't seen by the voters and the government, then they lose their rights all in the name of MONEY!
STEPFORD WIVES / HANDMAIDENS TALE?
3
In the midst of all these mushy thoughts are a few worth consideration. Of course it all evaporates under the weight of the "conservative" be all -end all -- government is evil! Elizabeth Warren has the answers on this topic as does Bernie. Endless hours at "work" do not result in a healthy family or society.
Ross, I think your question is not Did millions of women entering the work force actually make families worse off? but Did millions of men commuting to work actually make the lives of women and families worse off?
2
Just as an FYI, not all women want children and not all families have a husband and a wife. Some women are happy not reproducing. Some families have two husbands, two wives, or a combination of titles that they define themselves.
6
As expected douthat’s view, whatever that may be, assumes the woman will stay home. That belief runs through the cornservatives, like the mighty Mississippi.
6
Don't subsidize day care.
Don't subsidize health care
Don't subsidize paid maternity leave
Don't subsidize paid paternity leave
But support families in a neutral way that doesn't discriminate based on sex.
Your recommendation is serfdom, then?
1
A conservative coming to the conclusion the plight of the family is the same as the plight of the worker...in 2019.
Welcome to the party, pal.
1
Missing from the conservative view, and this opinion: the idea that the man could be the one to stay home. Sheesh.
4
Welcome back to the Stone Age, where men simply want to control women under the guise of "social conservatism."
4
We used to have a program that served this purpose. It was called AFDC - Assistance for Families with Dependent Children. Republicans branded it “welfare”, created a racist trope about “queens”, and cheered when a Republican-in-Dem-clothing President helped them destroy it.
Raising children is work, and vital work. It should be compensated. And like anyone who’s paid to do anything, there should be support, training, and other assistance for those performing the labor.
3
The problem is that we live in a country that claims to value its citizens while taking actions that indicate the contrary. The assumption that it's all about keeping up with the neighbors is superficial and, quite probably, wrong. It's about having enough money to pay the bills, attempt to save for the children's college education, save for one's own retirement, and have a bit of a life on the side. If you want to see the single income family as the way it should be you are living a dream.
We need a better social safety net in America. We need to stop assuming that family and neighbors will always step in to help. We need to stop stigmatizing women who do not want to stay home and those who do. We need to provide high quality day care for all rather than cutting off subsidies or eligibility for it at ridiculously low income levels. We need to end the gender gap, stop age discrimination, and provide health care for all rather than subsidies for premiums which, again, cut out at a ridiculously low income level.
In America money is everything. It buys character, credibility, a place in a good college, justice, etc. That means that people without money or who don't have enough are condemned to live in constant fear of losing everything. What we truly need is an understanding of how other countries manage to avoid the inequities that are driving Americans into poverty even when they keep their end of the social contract.
5/7/2019 11:40am
6
First off, big surprise that the AEI is calling for more workers making less money. You could just press a button to get their standard response to anything under the sun.
Secondly, it's long past time liberals exposed this fake feminism trap as well. *Allowing* women to do absolutely anything they want is obvious and beyond debate as a basic human right. *Encouraging* them to abandon millennia-old feminine traits for masculine ones isn't feminism, it's masculinism. Please take a breath until you read the next paragraph.
Finally, it's plainly obvious to anyone with common sense that children do infinitely better with a parent at home. I don't, and society shouldn't, care which parent that is. My brother is a business owner with an advanced college degree, but his wife is a practicing doctor with a higher income, so my brother stays home with the kids. When my wife and I had a child, she thought she wanted to keep working so we both cut our high school English teaching hours by half, and arranged complementary schedules. One year later, she hated it and quit, because she wanted to be home with our baby.
A huge silent majority of our society is tired of being yelled at by the "women only belong in the workforce and are identical to men and let babysitters raise the kids" crowd. Women and men are *equal*, not identical, and True Feminism means not only giving women 100% equal rights in every possible category, but elevating and honoring the essence of womanhood.
1
I believe Mr. Douthat misses an opportunity here by not focusing on the proper outcome.
Rather than "Are women getting what they want?" the question should be "What's the evidence-based way to ensure the best possible outcome for America's children?"
I don't pretend to have done the research to answer that question, but at least I've asked it. Maybe others should as well before pretending that they have any answers at all.
1
I’m a baby boomer, and a victim of having two working parents from 3-years old and on. I was born late to a former celebrity father and a much younger, beautiful, capable and intelligent mother. Considering everything, and looking back over the 75-years of my life, while I got lots of things and clothes from them, I would have traded it all for a closer daily relationship with either one or both of them. Today I see little value to having things. Having concerned, loving and guiding parents involved with a child everyday has far greater value than things, religion or education. It’s not good for a child to have distance parents anymore than for a nation to have bad self interested leaders. Unfortunately, at the present time we seem to have an abundance of both.
5
Subsidizing individual families is a terrible idea, as any individual family cannot take advantage of economies of scale to get quality child care. A better way to spend money more efficiently is to create systems of public childcare/daycare that can accommodate working families. It’s just like defunding public schools to give vouchers to all families. It may work out for some families, but not for most families. There are many European societies that create public child care/preschool networks. Show me one that works by giving families a stipend, otherwise stop experimenting on families and use policies that have been shown to work.
3
Having been raised by a single mother who had to work full time (because after fathering two children, her husband decided to leave with a younger woman... sadly not uncommon) I just have to look at all these arguments and think "well boo hoo."
Plenty of single mothers are doing it on one income - their own. They are the ones who really need assistance.
376
@Kate
The story you describe that was your mother's - had to work fulltime due to husband flying the coop for a younger woman - was mine, though I had to finish college and grad. school first. Not that it was easy - it surely was not - but I did it starting back in the 1970's when the economy was less cruel than it is now. As for "well boo hoo", I always had to grin inside when women who had husbands and lots of income agonized over whether to "be liberated" and work, or not.
10
@Kate I could not agree more Kate. I also wonder if any of these married women who want to live on one income are planning ahead for a possible failed marriage AFTER the kids have grown. I know someone who sadly faced this terrible fact. She tried to enter the work force with no marketable job skills after her kids were adults and her marriage ended. In addition, she lost 20 plus years of Social Security taxes being paid since she was a stay at home mom. Getting half the marital assets in a divorce settlement is simply not enough in this era of inflation. I'm sure most women don't consider these possibilities. It's not nice to consider; but luck favors the prepared.
38
@Ellen
There is nothing saying that both didn't apply. My mother needed to work to support 3 children on her own in the 1950s-60s, but I also realized that she needed to work for her own fulfillment.
She did have the advantages of a bachelors degree and 10 years of work experience and professional contacts from before she married that helped her find a challenging and well paid job. But that education and those career years would have (or did?) mean that staying at home as a 50s-60s housewife would never have been enough for her.
3
Our current economic model is to maximize GDP and to divert as much of it as possible to the top 1% of earners. This is incompatible with one earner families.
First, removing significant numbers of talented women from the workforce would produce a measurable hit to GDP and to the equity markets. Second, the improved income and benefit structure required to make one earner families viable will be found intolerable to the plutocrat class that dominates the Republican Party.
The 1% endorses socially conservative positions only when they pose no threat to their economic dominance. If the one earner family makes any progress, it will be as a liberal cause, not a conservative one.
4
Interesting how the interests of the Times and Conservatives converge in their joint focus on the trials and tribulations of the upper middle classes.
Most dual income families are trying to pay the rent and basic bills.
1
I as a young girl I witnessed what happened when you husband divorces you and you have never had a full time job. Those days you got a very low paying job, (if you were lucky) and lived in poverty. I decided that was never going to be me. I'm glad I have worked all of my life. I have a loving husband and an adult son.
6
How would you reconcile your argument with people who argue that smaller human family sizes are essential if there is to be a human future? For many people it is hard to see how larger family sizes serve any interest but short-term nationalist concerns.
4
There is a dual-income trap. My spouse and debated the finances of having the extra salary effectively be wiped out by childcare costs vs. actually enjoying our children grow up. There is more to life than a paycheck, and we compromise with our choices to be a part of our children’s lives.
Even when one can afford to do it on a single income, the increasing demands of work (at nearly all hours), what children are expected to do (homework, extracurricular activity commitments, etc) make for truly stressful lives when there aren’t the inevitable exigencies of sick parents, etc.
But, I look back at what my grandparents and great-grandparents struggled through and the problems just morph into different shapes. Thank goodness we don’t have the likes of polio, dust bowls, world wars, and true depressions. For now.
4
I would like to point out that women have always worked in or outside of the home since the beginning of time. If you don't think that growing/harvesting all your food, canning it up, serving it up, sewing all the clothes, blankets linen, rugs, hats, cleaning the shop of your spouse's business, keeping the books,working as servants in the Big Houses, nannies, nurses, teachers, ranchers, farmers isn't working because it is not paid in money or very little money, you negate, discount,ignore the economic contributions to the bottom line women have been making since the beginning of time. If women had stayed "home" there would be no clothing, food,health or education "industry" - No consumer "buy stuff" economy Just because it is not valued by male society and value awarded in the billions to women, doesn't mean women are not working and not adding income to the family unit. What did some smart person calculate recently, if a man had to pay for all the services provided by a stay at home "mom"/"spouse" he would be out of pocket to the tune of ...$150,000/yr +/-. If you are going to complain about women and all their faults...all the time, go do it on the other side of the Moon. We don't have time for stuff like this, anymore. We need to be having meaningful conversations about Earth, health, pollution, hunger, climate refugees,education, voter exclusion, housing, racism, and of course sexism, to start a very very long to do list. Either pay women equally or get off the pot.
8
In our world of multiple experiences, the argument about the better of one income or two income households is unresolvable. However, it’s my observation when a family feels their situation is a choice as opposed to an imposition, they end up doing just fine.
1
Until the right recognizes that this is a family issue and not a female issue that partnership will never happen.Your own article promotes the bias by asserting that pregnancy and childbirth magically make the mother the best caregiver. It is not about a woman wanting to stay home and be a homemaker (some do and should have that option) it is about the ability to choose to live on a lower income to have more time raising children. It does not matter if the husband works and wife stays home or the wife works and the husband stays home or if both work part time.
You also seem to ignore the impact of socioeconomics on this dilemma. Those who are poor accomplish it by not marrying, not disclosing the father's name and collecting public benefits as a single parent. The more well off do it and get bonus points from their peers for making the career or European vacation cancellation sacrifice. Neither of those solutions are good but they come from the same place. Our society is to focused on acquiring and displaying wealth. This is further exaggerated in the time of social media bragging through photos of the vacation, car, cottage, designer shoes and never ending stream of see what I have photos.
Good luck convincing the selfie generations that what is on the inside is more important than what is on the outside.
3
This conversation misses some important points about what financial resource and freedom can mean for women. Despite whatever advances we have made for women, our legal and judicial responses to domestic violence are lagging at best. While there are myriad subtle reasons why women (and yes, some men) get into and remain in abusive relationships, a key factor is financial. While conversations about the "choice" to stay home with children, the impacts of corporate capitalism, and the fiscal issues and disparities that may engendered by two vs. one income homes are important - they miss a key point - fiscal dependency for women is dangerous (not just in America but all over the globe). It would be lovely to think that all committed relationships are happy - as a shrink I can say unequivocally they are NOT, and fiscal stress often magnifies the toxic dynamics of relational violence. Until our country has better safety nets for people fleeing unsafe relationship spaces, an economy that tolerates "breaks" from a given occupation, better access to technical education and education as a whole, and a better ethos to prepare young people to make less desperate choices when selecting life partners - there is an inherent danger to a woman handing over her financial welfare and sacrificing "choice" should things become abusive as happens within single earner households.
8
Parents who are fortunate enough to have a two income option should have easy to use free software available to them to enable them to make informed economic choices about how to mutually balance work and home responsibilities. Such software could provide them with alternative scenarios about how much tax-affected money would actually wind up in their pockets if one spouse stayed home or worked part-time rather than working full-time, taking into account locally available prevailing costs for nannies, housekeepers and day care. If such software were available, in no time flat of course it would be hooked up with nanny agencies, nanny share services, housekeepers (the nanny usually doesn't do the breakfast dishes) and day care so that the user could get an actual as opposed to a theoretical projection and also a pipeline to services. The informal and underground nature of the home service economy is inefficient; it is adding to costs and subtracting from quality. Making such software available would rapidly operate to streamline the working parent service market and improve the quality of services provided.
As a society, as individuals, can we choose to consume less, and live simpler lives? Much of the answer in Ross' column lies with public policy. But maybe we need to ask different questions.
Do we really need to eat at restaurants or get hot food from the market, or order out as much? Could we make more meals at home and sit together as families around the table more?
Do we really need two cars, or a new car every five to ten years? Is a staycation or camping such a horrible alternative to Disneyland?
Do the kids really need all those presents at Christmas, or over the top birthday parties? Do we need the newest and best electronics every year? Do we need cable? Do we need that $5 frapuccino every morning?
There are a lot of reasons for the two income trap. One is that we consume so much, and we "need" so much. Reconsidering our "needs" would be one possible step out of it. Not to mention, it is our consumer culture which is ruining the planet.
3
"The turn toward skepticism about two-earner households will change conservatism for the better to the extent to which it encourages a certain skepticism about how corporations treat families and an awareness of how government ignores them."
While such "skepticism" might be a step forward in "conservative" thinking, it will have no practical effect until it is embodied in regulation. ... Wait, a pro-regulation conservative? ... I guess maybe if you wrap the argument in Christian terms?
Skeptical I am.
Either one of these "traps" pale in comparison to the trap we find ourselves in due to an entrenched capitalist/environmental exploitation mindset that needs systematic overhaul - fast! How happy are children going to be in an overheated and flooded world devoid of coral reefs and monarch butterflies?
3
I don't think that this statement is even close to accurate: 'Great preschools are no easier to build than great high schools'.
3
Interesting piece. What would be examples of subsidizing family life in a breadwinner-neutral way?
1
Like a true Conservative, in this column, whether to have a two-income or a single-income family becomes an exclusive issue of whether women go to work or stay home. No such thing as two-father household or a stay-at-home dad.
4
My husband and I both work as engineers and have two teenage children. It has been very stressful and exhausting and we're both burned out. We live within our means and don't worry about keeping up with anyone else. We chose to both work because neither one of us wanted the sole responsibility for either income or household chores, but to share those burdens. This has made us very secure financially, but at a price in other areas. What I would love is for society to decrease what is considered a normal work week so we both work fewer hours and have more time and energy for the unpaid labor life requires. This allows more of a cushion if one person can't work. Losing half your income is less painful than losing all of it.
13
I never agreed much with my mother's view of the world (nevertheless I loved her very much). But she gave me excellent advice when she told me "never depend on a man (for money)".
I've seen several examples that have convinced me of the wisdom of her words. The worst of all was this: one of my closest school friends had a brother who suffered brain damage when he was a baby. Her mother gave up working to take care of him and he got to live 18 years instead of the 2 or 3 the doctors had predicted. As soon as her brother died, her father left the family and moved with a mistress he had kept for years . He refused to pay alimony and left his family (wife, two children still at school) to fend for themselves. This was a middle class family and this guy had not money problems. He even dared to tell his wife "Get a job, you have lived at my expense all these years". After that I knew my mom's advice was 100% right.
7
How many marriages last? Not a majority I think. So women left behind who haven’t worked are pretty screwed. They have forfeited an ability to be hired, to make a living wage, to stand on their on. Many are left in poverty when the marriage ends.
10
Subsidize family life? What a great system, we can't even support family life without subsidies.
Every billionaire is a policy failure. You can go further down the wealth ladder and find one failure after another. The rich screwing the poor. Trump is the poster child for this vileness.
4
first, conservatives complained that large numbers of women entering the workforce was disruptive to family life. quickly, they realized that women work cheaper than men and are easier to replace, so they changed their tune. men,who earn more, were put at a competitive disadvantage in the workplace, which further depressed the possibilities of gaining rises to keep up with the increases in the cost of living, making it much more necessary for many households to have two wage earners. in the fullness of time, many categories of work were exported to lower wage countries, stressing domestic workers even more; this is one reason middle class wages stagnated for decades even as costs for essentials such as healthcare and housing skyrocketed. business (Republican backers) is ever chasing cheaper labor, so first women, then also stagnating men, then jettisoning domestic labor in favor of cheap foreign workers... and you can see the ultimate goal is elimination of labor costs all together through a combination of automation and a kind of human work that is de facto slavery, or indentured servitutude, but will inevitably gain some high tech sounding name like disruptive destruction.
2
It would seem a lot of the pundit discussion of two family incomes centers around the higher income professional couple who might be some combination of academics, physicians, entrepreneurs, financial pros, what-ever. How about the vast majority of couples who might be some combination of fire or police, public school teacher, electrician, fast food worker, restaurant staff. These folks don't come out ahead with two incomes, and child rearing costs. And most certainly can't afford the 3000SF residence. So, Warren's hypothesis is still valid in many respects.
6
Once, people put their incomes together and lived pretty solid lives. Then landlords, businesses and everyone else decided that these people had more so they were able to pay more. So prices started increasing for no other reason than because they could. Bit by bit, more money was extracted and it finally reached a point in which people have been bled so much that you can't live on a single income anymore.
Raising wages does nothing because the same thing will happen again. Prices will creep up to pad the pockets of everyone but the worker who will find themselves back to struggling to cover the basics in no time at all.
Anyone who depends on a spouse for their housing and food is making a mistake, in my view. We don't live in the '50s anymore. Online cheating and other extracurricular activities in that vein are available in one's own home now. What happens in these single income households when the spouse takes off for greener pastures? Should the stay at home spouse just put up with whatever because they are totally reliant on the other?
This situation is not limited to families with children. A married couple that struggles to maintain the basics while pooling earnings needs some consideration here too. Leaving them out of the conversation will guarantee that they won't support all this "generous paid leave" that parents are always asking for. Open this "generous paid leave" to everyone who needs it and we just might have a chance.
6
This springs from another issue that Warren has backed a tax on super wealthy capital. Two incomes in a family is a must for many middle class families to raise children. The real estate market is the only capital that middle class families possess. Gentrification is more of a problem caused by upper middle class affluent people pricing out poor and lesser income people from an area. The two family middle class family has to live a long way from where they work. So more time commuting and less time with the family. A tax on capital is essential to stop the harmful stratification of wealth. Like the Hubble constant the wealthiest moving away faster and faster from the of society. And the smaller pie and the conservative austerity makes for more anxiety for the middle class.
1
Ah, the luxury of having a choice. Most people would rather stay at home with their infant children.
Most people would rather not work 40 plus hours a week, with another 10 in a stressful commute on dismal infrastructure. Then maybe get a meager 20 days "vacation", if they have paid leave at all.
Most people would rather not be trapped by a bad job simply because they need the healthcare benefits provided, such as they are.
"Social conservatives" is an oxymoron. Conservatives have done everything they can to dismantle the middle class, destroy millions in poverty and reward the rich. They apparently care nothing for the well being of Americans or there would be more social programs--universal health care, subsidized education, decent, affordable housing and modern infrastructure.
Most people don't work as Douthat says "to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door."
But then how would Douthat know? He gets his ideas from, among others, that eminent thinker, Tucker Carlson at [don't fall down laughing] Fox.
14
FINALLY!!!!!
I have been saying this , and had suspected it, since I had a mom who stayed at home but desperately claimed she also wanted " . . .to work too!". It caused a terrible set of arguments as so many depression era men had their identities wrapped in the idea of being able to support a family, alone. My parents split, then, my father took the family income and left to marry a patient, of his.
My mother-who (along with so many of her upper crusty friends, once thought the world was coming up roses, was then forced to work and half the family,(wife and 2 sons), were reduced to a bare, pink collar existence , except when the boys were sent to the fathers house every 2 weeks.
This occurred in increasing numbers of households as millions of "boomers" can attest- my mother now HAD to take in a boarderas well as work.
I notice that when every "identity group" insists it must have a bigger piece of the pie-only the pie gets smaller.
I would never marry as a result-and never consider it-and children of divorce are not to blame for the family feuding we lived through.
3
One must be cognizant of the fact that women generally earn only 75% of what men make for comparable work. So when women entered the workforce they added millions of workers into the American economy that not only competed with men for jobs, thus driving down the price of labor, but also generally costing 25% less. It’s no wonder the economy benefitted, but unfortunately we have seen those benefits go to the wealthiest among us.
2
Glad there is more conversation around this and talk to find conciliatory solutions. There is no one size fit all but all families could use a. More options b. More empathy around their individual problems.
The article by Helen Andrews drew a lot of hostility which I felt was misplaced. Whenever women's possible choice to stay at home to raise kids is brought up, liberal women seem to bring up scenarios of failing family life, evoking 1950s style expectations of women, domestic abuse and choice of women to have kids later, to defend the current feminist position on this issue. They seem to miss the point that none of those statistics and problems are relevant when discussing issues for women who do want to stay at home by choice.
3
The argument in this article seems to be missing the reality of many parents’ lives. In the Bay Area, it is rare to find a family that can afford to live without two parents working. And, the cost of quality childcare for young children is extremely high - more than housing costs for some. Many families don’t have the option of family-provided childcare either because they have no local family or because their family members also have to work. Corporations also make parenting very hard by not providing regular schedules for service workers, requiring round the clock coverage by phone and email, and/or not providing enough sick leave or time off. Parents (often the mother) often pay the price for taking time off to parent as this can prevent them from getting promotions and other job-related opportunities. There are also many single parents, whether by choice or not, who must work, lack family support, and have to rely on some aspect of the government safety net to barely scrape by. Yet many of these same parents are referred to as “welfare mothers”, often by the same people who want to do away with birth control and abortion. This leaves me to wonder how you can care so much about a life before it is born yet punish it for being born into poverty by eliminating or reducing the social safety net. I’d like to see those who profess the sacredness of life demonstrate this belief through pro- family and child policies that are based on the realities of lives in this country.
10
UBI.
A guaranteed basic income would incentivize having children by removing the financial pressure.
The greatest myth perpetrated by capitalism and conservatism is that providing our people with the resources needed to live and make good economic decisions will dissuade labor and innovation. If that were the case the middle class and wealthy wouldn’t do much at all. Let’s start valuing the supercomputer sitting on top of every persons shoulders properly and giving it the power to function efficiently, then many, if not all, of these economic issues will be alleviated.
The problem is that our culture would change dramatically, and the religiosity bubbling under the surface of Mr. Douthat’s masturbatory editorial would be disrupted.
Let’s be honest: these are not economic issues they are cultural ones. Most of us don’t really care about people, we care about looking like we care about people. We don’t honestly want people to have lives better than our own because our deranged national religion, oligarchy dressed up as capitalism, has taught us to fight each other instead of help each other.
5
Many of us had no choice. I had to put my husband through college (we decided to take turns because we had a baby). Afterward, he couldn't find a decent job, so for a while he stayed home. Alas not for long enough, but at least enough to make an impact on our young son.
My mother had no choice because she was (as someone else here pointed out) cheated on, then divorced. At least she was young enough to climb through the ranks at work. She was, however, looked down on by other non-working mothers, including several women teachers (mostly mothers themselves). I guess they didn't see their teaching as "work."
8
Notice, again, rehashing the same old, stale ideas regarding "work-life balance": Let one partner be a full-time stay-at-home-parent while the other is a full-time employee. Or let both partners work full-time and pay others to be their housewife. Or let the government subsidize childcare or family formation.
People seem positively allergic to the idea that perhaps we need to make major changes in 20th century workplace rules in order to accommodate the realities of 21st century families. Here are two ways:
1. Allow part-time workers to have the same career advancement opportunities and decision-making authority as full-time workers. As it is now, an experienced manager who chooses to go part-time is shunted into "support staff" positions, as though reducing work hours means they've lost IQ points and years of hands-on experience.
2. Redefine "full time" to 30 hours weekly. "Full time" used to mean 48 hours over 6 days weekly. It was legislated to be 40 hours over 5 day weekly a few decades ago. Let's redefine it to 30 hours weekly. If both partners have jointly 20 more hours to spend caring for family demands, that would make a world of difference.
Note that Henry Ford reduced his full-time workers hours from 48 to 40 with no change in pay. He noticed that worker and workplace productivity increased rather than decreased as a result of this change, a fact rediscovered by current workplace productivity studies.
7
An alternative which allows both parents to have a career if they wish is to have generous paid parental leave and readily available child care. Also government-provided health care. Our son and daughter-in-law have no inclination to leave (socialist) Spain and give up the generous benefits they have there and would not have here.
7
The solution is "socialism," generous state-funded family leave when a child is born, requiring both men and women to take some of that leave, "free" child care (under our system, parents are paying thousands of dollars month for child care, penalizing people who have children), generous vacation time (imagine having a full month with your family every year the way my Austrian and French friends do!) and cost far less when paid for as a collective. These programs exist nicely with capitalistic business practices in all developed countries except ours.
2
There are two things that I take issue with. First, the assumption that it must be the woman should stay home. I expect it from FOX, but to have the NYT repeat it, is astounding. A simple substitution for the word woman with the word parent and we can have a substantive discussion.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is that I don’t see the discussion about the cost of living increases unrelated to childcare. Today’s households have 2-3 cars, untold computers, untold other “must haves” that my parents generation and certainly the “good old days generation” that seemingly conservatives wish to return to. This is also tied to the out of sight increase in college costs, (never mind the fact that everyone goes to college now, when they didn’t go back in the day, and when they did there were free excellent colleges such as CUNY). A number of factors exist today that did not back then, and we can not, nor do I think we should, go back to that. The discussion should be laser focused in the increase in the gap between wealthy families and poor families, and the disappearance of the middle class.
6
The overarching reality is that the two income family in America has no longer become a choice but a necessity. There are those of the upper economic tier, individuals working in high income professions or business world. Then are are those of the middle class, the workers/wage earners, whose lives have devolved from the prosperous stability that once identified the nuclear family into one demanding the type of maintenance expenditures once largely not required. Such as daily child care costs for working parents. What we have today is a revised operational template of American family life. One where for too many Americans a life time of credit card debit has become a way of life.
3
George Oglethorpe to the rescue!
The key, Ross Douhat, is for conservatives to find what you call a "rhetoric and a program that persuades women who are largely happy with their working lives that its fight can be theirs as well." I am a retired, and a leftist who did not work outside the home while raising our children. Yet I have never felt anything but disrespect and even belittling for me and fellow women, especially those who did not have the luxury to work outside the home when we felt able to do so because of discrimination and lack of flexibility in the workforce.
The conservative commentators seem to be missing the central element to Warren's argument. It wasn't a question of whether two income earners were better or worse off than one. The central thesis was that when one working parent was the norm, American's had a bit of a safety net. The uncertainties of the economy could be countered by bringing in a secondary breadwinner. As the cost of living rose, it became more and more necessary for households to have dual incomes to sustain the same middle class status. Home values have skyrocketed in areas with 'good schools' while wages are stagnant. Without access to a safety net more people live closer to being one accident or layoff away from financial ruin. She also makes a very compelling argument that directly refutes the myth that spending is the root of all our ills by showing how wages and cost of living compare with those from the past. It is disingenuous for conservatives to cherry-pick bits of her research to try to prove women shouldn't work.
10
Did anyone else notice that he completely glossed over the economic impacts on modern families? What process is there to make it possible for a family to live on a single income (when all relevant economic data suggests a family of four must have income from 2 jobs paying at least 16.50/hr?) To talk about this issue without dealing with the exploitation of labor-power in the US is useless
4
It gets a little tiring to hear people claim that both parents work because of all the 'things' people didn't have back in the day (of course, the glorious 1950's), that multiple wage earners are because people want that huge house,that big car, etc. Of course we have things people didn't in the 1950's, that is a given, but that is a distraction, because keeping up with the Joneses was just as much a part of society in the 1950's and 60's as it is today, people used to buy new cars every couple of years, as TV sets improved people bought them, then bought multiple tv sets, etc. We didn't have smart phones back then, of course, but a phone was fairly expensive in other ways, things like getting charged for local calls, long distance was expensive, etc. On the other hand college was a lot more affordable back then, especially in the 60's and 70's, as both federal aid and college aid became common, a lot of people could afford to send their kids to school, since the Reagan 80's aid has been slashed, the cost of college has soared, and worse, it is now pretty much a requirement.
The real answer lies, though, in what has happened to wages, something conservatives want to duck. For most families, even with 2 people working, their income is less in real terms than it was 30,40 years ago, for people in everything but the top 1%. Sure, the young couple working in tech or whatnot have a lot of income, but a typical middle income family cannot afford to live on 1 salary.
7
Neither social conservatives or corporate conservatives have credible ideas or solution for the current predicament of middle class employment or income. This primarily because both camps believe in unregulated capitalism which had caused huge income gaps and they do not believe in welfare state and safety nets. Their arguments and proposed solution will not results in any improvement in current sate of the affairs and likely will results in deny women the right to work and be compensated adequately for their work both at home and work place. Ms. Warren is only candidate running for president who has detailed and credible program to deal with such issue.
2
I'm glad to see this issue finally getting attention. When our son was born my wife went back to work and we paid for child care and as I recall got a decent tax break for that.
Later, when we decided it would be best for our son if she stayed home, sometimes working part time at lower wages, we got no tax break for what was actually a more expensive solution to child care.
What's the fairness in that? It was simply a bias that said working mothers deserved a financial break, stay at home mothers did not.
And there were more subtle examples of this bias. My wife became active in support of our son's school, support provided free by her. While working mothers there often assumed the stay at home moms would carry that burden since the working mothers "didn't have time."
Worst of all was the vacation my wife took with our son and two neighbor boys, ten days on the road camping, visiting the state fair, etc. etc. Then when the other working mother (working for very high pay) was presented with her half of the costs, she nitpicked the tally, obviously more concerned with perpetuating her financial advantages than supporting the wonderful experience her boys had.
My wife is a staunch feminist, as I'd like to think I am, but in the end the world usually divides along financial fault lines, with those who have more wanting more, and those with other values often suffering the financial consequences.
1
Healthcare is a decent chunk of the reason that my wife went back to work a bit earlier than she would have wanted to after having our first child. There was the obvious expense of adding an extra dependent to my health insurance, which came out to an extra $4,000 per year for just her. More importantly was the ever-present danger that if I had lost my job, all three of us would be without insurance - a scary prospect with an infant in the house. By having two earners, if one of us looses our job we can quickly become a dependent on the other's insurance, as it is a "qualifying event" to be added outside of the open enrollment period.
5
When we had a child my wife and I both decided that it would be important for bringing up baby that a parent stays home with the child so they could be present at least prior to beginning school. Being available during those formative years was important to us and served us well.
In our case it was the Father who was the stay at home Dad, while Mom went to work. This is not the way it normally plays out but in our home it did. There is no rule that says in a one income family that it is the woman who maintains the household, does the shopping. meal prep and diaper changing.
Thirty two years later our daughter is very grateful that we did this.
2
"No matter how gender-egalitarian society becomes, the physical realities of gestation and childbirth make it natural for most families to desire at least a temporary division of labor during the years when their kids are young, a temporary period of male breadwinning to balance the burden borne by mothers."
Or we could join other civilized countries who mandate paid maternity/paternity leave to ensure that parents can have children without losing their jobs.
8
The consumption environment that we have created drives most of the two-income behavior and there is very little likelihood of going back to a 1950's -style "dad works and mom stays home and raises the kids" model. What family today would want to have only one car? Not one that lives in the suburbs where the nearest grocery store is over a mile away. And who today would settle for the 1000 square foot house with one bathroom on a tiny city lot with three kids? Especially when your friends all have 3000 sq ft houses on three quarters of an acre with a pool and all the trimmings? We have empowered our daughters to "reach for it" in education and careers and we have allowed our sons and daughters heads' to be filled with visions of what the "good life" is supposed to look like and there ain't no going back.
2
Simple: Give women who stay home w babies a stipend that matches the subsidies that would be spent if that baby was in daycare.
What someone needs to articulate is that daycare is NOT the same as one-on-one dyadic care. ANd it will NEVER be the same, due to the numbers.
Babies need one on one dyadic care. Daycare, which is one on four, is a pale substitute-- with only 25% the holding, talking, attention focused on the baby. In the early years (0-2) relational attention, joy, physical affection, carrying, and comfort are very important to the R brain. Daycare is an attention desert.
1
I would also argue that, at least with respect to housing, a major shift from the 1960's is that housing transformed from being merely a place to live, to an investable asset class. Housing used to be just a place to live and raise a family, with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage guaranteed by the government. Our grandparents' generation never thought about what kind of compounded annual return they were earning when they sold their house after becoming empty-nesters.
The rental property market was also very fragmented, and dominated by owner-operators, who often lived alongside their tenants. This also changed, as pools of investor capital entered the scene seeking to charge rents as high as possible, made easier by the advent of Property Management Software and they ability to purchase large swaths of inventory through debt financing at low interest rates and high LTV ratios.
Perhaps this was a response to realizing the economy's productivity gains, and the increases in income for two-income households. Because supply of both existing and new housing was increasingly owned and/or developed by a small group of firms, they were able to to take a larger share of these gains for themselves--turning a nominal income gain into stagnant or negative real income.
1
One income, two income families...whatever the choice the world of work barreled along changing nothing in terms of the attitude towards labor. An employee (blue or white collar) must give all to the employer. No time for family life. Children are merely an expensive hobby. Elderly parents are also an expensive hobby. Neither of these real life concerns is worthy of any change in the attitudes towards employees or the practices of employers. Feminists didn't see that this was happening. The work world was happy to have more employees to exploit.
2
couples "find themselves pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door."
for 90% of couples it's 90% financial need that forces both parents to work outside the home. God bless the 10%.
2
I don't think that too many people would argue against women having choices, but how many of them really have choices. A family with two children here in Seattle face child day care costs on average of $3,400 a month or over $40K per year from take home pay. Even with only one child in day care the annual cost is over $20K. Add to that the cost of a car to commute another $8,500 a year and without adding the other incidental costs of working the family is facing costs of $28,500 to $48,500 a year out of take home pay. So this model works for the affluent such as your family not so much for everyone else.
2
The two-income trap is not a trap. I am in my 50s now trying to make up for the 0s in my Social Security records so that I can collect a greater Social Security check later. There is no romance in staying home. I did a lot of free labor outside of the home in the name of volunteerism, and I regret it. In contrast, my sister will collect a fantastic pension; she has been the main breadwinner in her family and her husband often did not have a good job (or work ethic) though now he's doing well financially. Still, it is her job that has the health benefits in retirement and the generous pension. P.S. I did not leave the work force to opt out; I was laid off in a way that targeted women (what else is new?) because we don't "need" our jobs the way men do. Fortunately, I can also retire with full health insurance benefits and my 401(k) but choose to keep working so that I can rebuild what was lost during the Great Recession and the years I "stayed home."
10
I don't know a single married woman that works to keep up with the Jones's. I live in rural America. There are very few family farms here that could survive without the wife working in the private sector to provide decent health insurance and extra income. It's been decades since the family farm could exist without the wife in the workforce.
4
Interesting article... One thing I have noticed, that is not covered, is a number of men have opted into the role of housekeeper. They all have spouses that earn solid professional wages so are not forced to work to keep a roof above their heads. Also, men occupying this role is becoming more culturally acceptable. In my younger days these men would have been frowned upon, but not now. I predict that we will see more of this as families realize that the tradeoffs linked to that second income are steep relative to the benefits, and men are more free to stay at home.
5
The notion that women can work is great, the notion that both parties of a marriage have to work in order to purchase a home, rent a home, send their kids to college, eat well and purchase a car has been the norm since the 1980's. With the Republican deregulations, starting around the time of Regan and the desire of women to work things have changed. With both members working either the couple needs to pay for child care or not have kids, child care is expensive. Everything is expensive now and probably at least 10 times more than the 1960s. What deregulation and other Republican policy has done is line the pockets of the corporations, banks and the very rich, the rest of us have seen the quality of our lives diminish and the world itself decline as a planet.
7
"This is the real “trap” created by two-earner culture. There are many families that want to raise kids on one income, or one income and some part-time work, and instead find themselves pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door."
Are we forgetting how "trapped" women were when they were expected to stay home and depend on their husbands for money?
If one feels significant financial pressure to keep up with the neighbors, odds are one will be fairly miserable no matter what work and parenting arrangements are made - only the wealthiest family on the block can avoid this crushing feeling of inadequacy. Some poor saps have Bill Gates for a neighbor. How miserable they must be!
Maybe the Smith-Joneses have two incomes because the wife is planning on leaving or because a layoff or health problem is looming for the husband. If a family has the luxury of choosing to be single-income - which is often a very strong signal about their finances/career security, health and relationship - most others will be jealous of them and not the other way around.
2
The only countries in the world that have been able to sustain family oriented policies and benefits as those cited in this article are countries that are governed by some variation of "Social Democracy". Examples are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Holland. Despite their hollow vocal support of families, the policies of Republican Party are the main obstacles to achieving improved family welfare in our political-economic system.
13
True!
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life"
OK... but what does "subsidize family life" mean in practical terms, if not subsidizing real costs like day care and a stay-at-home parent (does not have to be the mom, of course)? Douthat makes a nice case that neither side has it exactly right, but he stops there, without explaining what what *would* be helpful.
He also skates far too lightly over the issue of "feeling pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door." What's the source of that pressure? The fact that our society measures individual success in terms of possessions/consumption. Why do we measure it that way? Because corporate success is defined in terms of infinite/perpetual growth. It's tough to persuade people that they need less, when literally everything around them is telling them they need more. As long as consumption is the primary driver for the American economy, nothing is going to change. If we really want things to change, we need to look at new economic models such as the steady-state economy, and stop equating "bigger" with "better".
The "physical realities of gestation and childbirth" certainly imply the need for maternity leave, but not necessarily, as Douthat argues, a "temporary period of male breadwinning to balance the burden borne by mothers." My husband and I are happy with our single-income arrangement, in which I took the 8 weeks of leave offered by my employer, and he has since been the stay-at-home parent, while I went back to work full time.
3
Elizabeth Warren's "two-income trap" hypothesis is almost 15 years old. She viewed it then from the perspective of the economics of the household. Now social conservatives view this from the perspective of declining fertility rates and the GOP inattention to family policy (possibly incl Ivanka Trump's paid family leave proposal too?). While Ross Douthat has been thoughtful about this as a policy issue, I think he should have also included how today in 2019, corporations are expecting workers to work much longer hours, regardless of whether they're men or women. Workers who work more hours i.e. bankers and lawyers are better rewarded. This was highlighted in a recent NYT article "Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got Greedy." So I don't think that this is only a policy issue. Corporations / Employers have to play a role to prevent male and female workers from working too many hours. Obviously, there should be time for the family.
2
In 1973 I read an article declaring that all women with children must work full-time and should not stay at home raising their children. Knowing this was unrealistic, I chose to work part-time as a librarian, creating a co-worker position with another woman, to raise my three children. When they were older, I worked more hours, until they were all out of the house when I worked full-time. This solution allowed me to be with my young children while utilizing my education and improving my skill-sets.
In my Grand Rapids, Michigan sub-division, the married women with young children are a cornucopia of the income conundrum. With three boys, one chose to stay-at-home but now supplements their income by cleaning houses. Another works several days a week, but then employs a retired teacher as a nanny for her two boys when needed. The neighbor across the street is completing her nursing doctorate so she can teach part-time, while having summers free. Finally, another nurse home-schools her two daughters, yet works one day a week.
All will say the same...We require flexibility because of the time constraints, need for extra income, and desire to work in our professions, while spending precious time with our children.
Reading Mr. Douthat, I wonder just what planet he is on?
I was a Social Worker in Baltimore County home to a large population of middle class families of all backgrounds and ethnicities. Multiple earners are required for people to just make a living. This is and has been true in all places that I have lived: Chicago, Detroit, Boston.
In Baltimore all my mother bear anger smoldered as I helplessly witnessed a young single mother struggle to gain or keep temporary low wage jobs, no benefits, using clearly sub standard day care for her youngest children, negotiating public transportation, and trying to keep her promise to her first grade son that she would be at school for his science project. This woman is Not unique. There are loving, responsible parents, grandparents and family members all over who keep the roof overhead and bread on the table. They don't have time to read the NYT and theorize about loss of values. They are living their values.
9
Two big problems with conservatism are that it's filled with wannabe authority figures trying to tell people how to live their lives, and that it will go through amazing contortions to divert attention from the fact that the economic system it's trying to preserve is doing a worse and worse job of making it possible for working people and their families to get by.
12
The elitist myopia of this piece is stunning. From start to finish, Douthat treats one-income/two-income as a static matter of personal, familial and cultural choice, citing Strain to the effect that "nothing prevents today’s households from opting to live on one income" and Andrews to suggest that all that's at stake in a second income is a "bidding war over middle-class amenities."
Warren's analysis of the "two-income trap," in contrast, is historical, taking into account all else that has changed with women's entry into the workforce, specifically the reduced buying power of one income, that make it a genuine historical economic trap from which there is no choice of escape for many families now. Families today struggle with two incomes as comparable families once struggled with one income, other economic changes having made one income today completely untenable.
Thus all Warren's remedies aim at raising incomes and lowering risks and expenses in ways that would benefit all families, one-income and two-income. Douthat proposes nothing except some vague "feminist-conservative centrism" and unelaborated "skepticism about how corporations treat families and an awareness of how government ignores them." Warren understands it is a class war. Douthat still thinks it is all a culture war, as he must, because addressing, even mentioning, our Neo-Gilded-Age economic inequality is the untouchable third-rail of class-bound, 1%-servile, thoughtless conservative "thinking."
9
Arguments against the two-earner household paradigm go much back much more than 15 years, Mr. Douthat. Other than that, your comments reflect that you have thoroughly studied and carefully considered the issue.
I am therefore puzzled that missing from this piece is any mention of the negative consequences to child development (and therefore to society) caused by the widespread use of day care. Along with the myth that one can "have it all" is the myth that a little bit of "quality time" with one's offspring will balance the effects of 50-plus hours weekly in institutional care, in which the lowest paid members of the workforce substitute for parents. Deep and broad sociological studies unquestionably indicate the opposite, yet many parents consider the decision sound. (The phrase "no brainer" comes to mind...).
Commune dwelling hippies, home schoolers, Mother Earth News types, hairy-legged earth mamas, Macrobiotic enthusiasts and other assorted New Age fruitcakes get little respect for their opinions and practices in this woke and connected society. But study after study confirms that their choices in child rearing, especially the rejection of institutionalized child care, produces much better outcomes than the rest of America experiences. And the average outcome in America continues to deteriorate.
1
@William Romp
High quality day care has no negative consequences to child development, especially if parents (both) prioritize spending time with their children all the other hours of both weekdays and weekends. Poor quality, poorly regulated day care and parents who have to work multiple jobs, are children themselves (birth control is a sin .. so is sex), or have health or mental problems .. yes that has negative consequences.
Government agencies provide high quality day care, we know how to do it. Cost should be maybe subsidized for lower income people, or maybe child care provider training could be free. We want single poor women to work, we have to provide a safe enriching environment for their kids so they can become productive citizens.
4
My dad taught me since I was small that a woman should have some way of making a living and not be completely dependent on her husband. A husband can disappear or become disabled all too easily, and then what happens to the wife and children? So I got a degree specifically designed towards being able to make enough money to support a family, but that would also lend itself to part time and/or contract. When my husband and I were planning to be married, we planned to live on just one salary and save the other so I could stay home with the kids until I was ready to go back to work. We bought a decent but not extravagant house, much less fancy than most of our friends but comfortable. We drove reliable but not luxurious cars, and wore clothes mostly bought on sale. I stayed home for about 4 years completely and then worked part time and contract for the next 16 years. It was perfect for us and we feel the kids definitely benefited. And even when I went back to work, we still saved my entire salary plus part of his, so we are fairly financially secure now. It's all about deciding what kind of life you want and planning how best to accomplish it, and practice good financial habits.
1
Douthat uses corporations as a shiny, distracting object of this piece. The context for a discussion of two-earner households is the history of how capitalism, modified by anti-union, anti-worker, pro-wealthy conservative governance, has produced massive income and wealth inequality in the last several decades. It is a measure of Douthat's desperation to avoid a real debate over capitalism and conservatism that he's eager to broach subsidies--the other shiny, distracting object of this column.
But, OK, subsidies: who will pay for them? Given conservative tax policy, not corporations and not the wealthy. Should the federal government borrow money to pay for subsidies? Not according to conservatives. What federal programs should get cut, then, to pay for subsidies? Not the military, according to conservatives. Maybe health care? Anti-poverty programs? Food stamps? Those are all too politically sensitive. So, conservatives, if they want those pro-family subsidies, will just add to the federal debt that will burden younger family members and the next generations for the rest of their lives. Maybe it would be better to have that conversation about capitalism and conservatism after all.
2
If Mr Friedman truly wants to mediate, please start with not using the loaded words "feminist" or "feminism" which is cliche and passe, and unintended meanings.
I'm a working mother and a career woman. I've lived those choices for the past 20 years or so. Of course there are many difficult choices to make, ones that are made in concert with my husband who has been supportive in both child-rearing and chores-sharing. THAT is what makes life easier, someone to share the burden and stress with. That allows both of us to stay on the career track without stepping off. THAT's how we (or I) could make it work, even without extended families around to help out.
Some of the things that allow us to make it work: Work and employers that allow flexitime and telecommuting. Great childcare and public school systems.
These alone have gone a long way to allowing us to multi-task without having to step off. Let's face it, it's hard (sometimes impossible) to get back on track once you step off from career, no matter how accommodating an employer is. This forces individuals to make sacrifices. We were fortunate not to have to make those sacrifices. There's stress, of course, but financial concerns is not one of them. THAT is having two incomes provide us freedom with, allowing us to make decisions later on in life (eg. buying a house, sending kids to college, vacations, investments, retirement) without worries. THAT is what Warren and far-right don't want us to know.
4
@tiddle
Great summary, but why would Warren not want you to know this ? Social programs could help the high numbers of people who are not as lucky as you, finding a good spouse that you can work with as a family, staying healthy, having good jobs, probably an education, having healthy children, probably started middle class ..
Why is everything about families? Plenty of women are single, childless, and on one income.
7
Douthat's opinion piece is premised the erroneous notion that women working outside the home is a choice for families who wish to maintain a middle class lifestyle. If, as recently reported in the Washington Post, 46% of families cannot cover a $400 emergency, both spouses must work outside the home in many families just to stave off financial disaster.
4
Many excellent points about the unintended consequences of dual earner households. Let's make it possible for familes to make it on one income- whether the breadwinner is female or male. That should please well-intended conservatives- right?
1
Ahem, once again, the legions of single mothers who are doing a great job working this all out on their own are ignored. I know a bunch of them. And the folks who are having a lot of difficulty are more affected by poverty, racism, segregation in our schools, access to services, etc., than they are by their "singleness". What conservatives really hate about blossoming numbers of single mothers is: we show it can be done and we don't necessarily need the patriarchy.
4
I'm sure that everyone would benefit from greater flexibility in our working conditions; why are child care and family life the only forms of private life that we expect our employers to recognize?
But the real elephant in Douthat's room is the human threat to real-life elephants. I'm struck by the disconnect between this argument and the Times' coverage of the UN report just released detailing the mass extinction event on our horizon. We have more serious problems that some people's desire to have more children.
6
My mother was a stay-at-home-mom with 3 kids. By 11 AM she had her first beer. By 3 PM she was taking a 'nap'. All family decisions were taken by dad, after all, he was the head of the household and supported it all. She was so utterly bored and unfulfilled in the role that was forced upon her that I took one look at that situation and swore I'd never be in that position. And, thankfully, I never was. My husband always earned enough to support his family (2 kids) and I always worked outside the home, albeit, through a stroke of good luck, part-time when kids were small. Both kids are grown and on their own, not yet with families, they're still in their twenties. No student loans for them to pay off, our income guaranteed that we could pay for their education. I have my own social security benefits and I don't worry about our retirement. We did have, and could afford, excellent childcare which made of course a big difference. Don't tell my daughter she'll have to stay home with a baby if she doesn't want to. Those days are over, and good riddance.
12
Why can't working parents deduct the cost of childcare?
4
Such rich irony! Having pushed for economic and social policies that plundered the working and middle class for decades, forcing those who wanted to have a family to also have two incomes to support one, now Ross, you and your conservative peers are waking up to the disconnect between these two visions. What's a good conservative to do?
Well the answer lies in the direction anathema to all conservatives: a larger role for government on behalf of the working class. No, not socialism - though that's what you'd call it - but things like universal health care; free tuition; subsidized day care; mandated minimum wage; and support and protection for unions. (On this last point, unions should be reincarnated along the model of Germany, with oversight by government to ensure they don't fall back into the behaviors that helped along their demise). More progressive taxation, and much higher taxes on short term profit taking, and lower taxes on investment in companies that create decent paying, sustainable jobs for Americans. Raising taxes/tariffs on goods and services produced outside the U.S. and lower taxes on goods and services produced domestically. All of these would promote the creation of good jobs and higher wages, while reducing the costs of major items like healthcare, childcare, and education.
Conservatism is simply codespeak for a return to a feudal society, and the Law of the Jungle. Wake up Ross.
6
Douthat writes about "essentially ask[ing] women to accommodate themselves to career paths made for men."
No! The career paths we have in the US are not made for *humans* who want to live fully. Men, too, would like to come home early on a beautiful summer day; see their grandparents or parents; enjoy taking a kid to a park. Perhaps women in the US are more attuned to the inhumanity of the structure of work in the US because they see the cost more proximately (going back to work while still in the post-partum bleeding phase, for instance) but sick leave, vacation time, and health care are also useful for men.
For inspiration we need to back further than the postwar 1950s and to times when Mom did the beer brewing and Dad ran the front of the house; when Mom did the vegetables and the chickens and Dad did the dairy cows; when "spinster sisters" raised a niece while both doing work in the home and out of the home. It's the industrial revolution that forced work outside of the home, and the technological revolution, with instant messaging and video chat, that can allow work to return back to the home and neighborhood. There's no reason in the US that we can't have sane hours for all.
6
I don't really know what Ross is trying to say other than spinning his wheels. He's focusing on the symptom instead of the obvious cause. It's not a complicated issue - families often need two incomes because a single income is insufficient to the cost of living (and the cost of raising children!). Are families trying to make a political statement by having two incomes? Or are they just making a rational decision given their economic reality? Try to solve that problem instead of saddling it with some grand cultural import.
(The same could be said of one-income families. If you can afford it, I'm happy for you. In purely economic terms, it's an immense luxury to be able to leave the workforce and be with your kids full time.)
5
How about mothers and fathers both work 30 hours a week and both contribute equally to childcare and housework. That is what I would like. Everyone benefits if all parents have time to spend with their kids and pursue a career.
14
I’ve been thinking exactly this since my children were born! One point missing from the article is that women can’t afford to withdraw from the workforce for an extended period of time. You can’t depend on a partner to support you, and you need to keep a foot in it to be able to resume your career. You also need to keep contributing to that 401k for your future. We need to be able to take care of ourselves (and our children) if the unforeseen happens.
5
Maybe single income really is a good idea and maybe the stay at home parent should be the father. Lets try that for a while and see how the cookie crumbles. Really shouldn't it simply be a choice, and isn't there benefit to both options?
3
How about 2 part-time earners being able to support a family and share parenting responsibilities more easily? It's like Conservatives are trying to undervalue the role of fathers... the single income earner model hurts fathers and children too. And the proponents seem to forget about the consequences (or even the possibility) of having the income earner die prematurely or leave the household. It's not a true pro-family policy, and it's bad economics too. Another reason to vote for single-payer healthcare. Employer based benefits helped create this trap.
10
Wasted words.
We live in a new world, where American business has turned its back on the American people to make more money by building factories in China, or Mexico, paying workers peanuts, and selling the products for high prices in the still rich countries.
This new world usually doesn't present most ordinary people with the choice of staying home or not, for while the unemployment numbers look good, they are not for the kind of jobs that let one parent stay home.
Live in NY or SF or Portland and find cheap housing?
I am a socialist because I recognize that the private world has tossed the ordinary American under the bus, and they need to gain power to ever live a decent life. Or did you miss the fact that Trump is taking away health care from millions of the poor?
That is America. That is what is going on...
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
329
@Hugh MassengillI bravo!
8
@Hugh MassengillI
I agree.
and......
Your words are never wasted, thanks!
9
All I know is it is a mess and kids aren’t reaching their full potential because of it all. And, those kids are the only future any of us have. In many areas, there aren’t any choices as to whether or not mom will work, and grandma is the only one available for miles. And, consequently, many are tapped for daycare. Even eighty year-old great-grandmothers. I offered to help one, a little bitty well dressed gal in Walmart one day, who, given her height and strength, and the size of cart, was unable to lift her chubby 18 month-old grandson high enough to get his legs out of the grocery cart. It’s a lot of weight over the head and outstretched for such a tiny little lady. If you lived in any of these areas and they are plenty, you would understand Elizabeth Warren’s call for Universal Daycare. I honestly believe, as the next generation comes of age, you have a crisis on your hands.
7
Politicians of ALL stripes are completely missing the point of taxation.
Overall...incomes are Falling. It does not matter whose income you are taxing........there's LESS income to tax.
You'll never fund govt operations if you continue to debate how to best tax incomes. It gets worse when you put nearly 50% of americans on the govt payroll......now you're taxing tax money. Dang People.....figger it out.
NO.
Its time to put a little intelligence into how to effectively TAX THE INTERNET.....which we are current all spinning around on a flower carpeted hilltop whistfully chanting ... Free Internet. Its not free. Sorry. Tax It.
You quote Strain as saying that nothing stops families from living on one income.
Nothing, you might point out, except for the fact that so many families don’t make enough even with BOTH spouses working to make ends meet.
How much of a cake-eater is Strain to say something so (to put it politely) foolish. How much of a cake-eater are you to quote it without mocking him?
8
Did you not read that op ed about women who work harder than men in households? Progeny is not why you were created. You ain't made to make more people. We ain't ants. And now we are hearing that millions of species of animals are on the verge of extinction and you want more babies?
10
Unfortunately, the Republican Party, the supposed conservatives in America, is dominated by reactionaries, misogynists. Like the Roman Catholic Church, they imagine that men can make the decisions for women without any input from women.
8
Men might want to stay home and bond with their children too. Just saying...
3
I would take conservative plaints about the decline of family formation more seriously if they spoke them to their corporate friends who put people "on call" days, nights and weekends. Waiting to hear if you've been scheduled to work until moments before your shift, not knowing your weekly paycheck in advance to plan expenditures, and other "innovations" are killing family life, increasing stress and health related illnesses. NYT columnists should spend some time with people who labor for the corporations they admire.
7
lol conservatives against corporate values. Remember Romney: corporations are people too! That’s the conservative screed.
1
The two-income household is both trap and opportunity, but society is paying a much higher price that is evident from your analysis.
Ross, you and your wife may have found great programs for your kids and I'm willing to bet you find a way to love them that enables them to bask in that love and thrive in its warm glow. God bless that.
However, I fear - based on much of what I see about me - now that we live with the fruits of 40+ years of children raised from infancy in settings where genuine love is insufficiently present.
We humans evolved our massive brains and their power for science, art, culture, communication and surpassing acts of love in settings that raised our children in love nests: family, extended family, even the whole village, if you will. This love is the love that utterly adores the beauty, innocence, helplessness and potential of the child and empowers the caregivers to love their dependent and demanding offspring enough to endure the decades-long demands placed on them.
We wonder at the rise of mental illness and general incivility among us. We need only look at how we have raised the last few generations.
Someone has to stay home with the kids - I don't care who, just someone who loves them more than they love themselves.
2
I would have loved to be a career housewife, but that option ceased to be available before Second Wave Feminism got going. By the 1960s it was no longer economically or socially feasible for women to opt out of the labor force permanently. The deal was you could quit work during first pregnancy, then take off 10 years for childcare, then back to work. Of course with that interruption the only work available was pink-collar drudge work. The choice women had was not between careers outside the home and career housewifing, but between careers and boring work with a few years off for mothering.
And that was the best case scenario because there was always the prospect of divorce. You could always get dumped even before your 10 years off were over.
Housewifing is one of the best jobs around: varied duties, autonomy and, unlike most pink-collar jobs outside the home, it’s largely manual labor. You aren’t trapped behind a check stand or in a carrel. And you’re just taking care of 2 or 3 of your own kids for a few years rather than 30 of someone else’s smelly little brats until retirement. Housewifing is a great job, but hard to get and there's no job security.
Want single-income ‘traditional’ families? Sure. Guarantee women life-long financial support. No return to work for women after the kids are grown, and no divorce. Men reneged on that deal and, arguably, that was what initiated Second Wave Feminism.
7
@Harriet Baber
"No divorce" would be a disaster for many women.
2
All I know is it is a mess and kids aren’t reaching their full potential because of it all. And, those kids are the only future any of us have. In many areas, there aren’t any choices as to whether or not mom will work, and grandma is the only one available for miles. And, consequently, many are tapped for daycare. Even eighty year-old great-grandmothers. I offered to help one, a little bitty well dressed gal in Walmart one day, who, given her height and strength, and the size of cart, was unable to lift her chubby 18 month-old grandson high enough to get his legs out of the grocery cart. It’s a lot of weight over the head and outstretched for such a tiny little lady. If you lived in any of these areas and they are plenty, you would understand Elizabeth Warren’s call for Universal Daycare. I honestly believe, as the next generation comes of age, you have a crisis on your hands.
1
We are overpopulated and are facing dire loss of species and the destruction of ecosystems that we rely on to survive. We need to change, now, our reverence for the traditional 'family.'
5
It’s encouraging to hear that a liberal politician and a conservative columnist have an interest in a similar policy issue and are not on opposite sides of it.
106
@lester ostroy
Sure, they both agree that the problem exists, but Douthat categorically rejects Warrens proposals because they are not a "sufficient response." He then offers no alternative policy solutions, instead suggesting that we "just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids." But what exactly does that mean? What concrete policy proposals would Douthat support? Clearly he doesn't support the "existing liberal answer," but he only advances nebulous platitudes rather than actual policies.
This is why we can't make progress on many of these issues in my opinion. Both parties acknowledge the problems, but GOP categorically rejects any policies proposed by Democrats (socialism!) while offering no alternative policies. For example, GOP say they agree that healthcare should be affordable and accessible, but then fight tooth and nail to destroy Obamacare without a ready replacement or even a proposal. It's just smoke and mirrors. The GOP has no intention of passing healthcare reform, but they can't win if they admit this, so they lie to their constituents and voters are too ignorant or complacent to see through the lie. Propaganda and misinformation is a heck of a drug.
16
@Sam Yes, I liken this to Ronald Reagan's "block grants" to states with no advice on how to allocate the funds. One state might subsidize child care, another tax credits for state-at-home parents, and yet another to anti-abortion campaigns. Then it's a matter of living in the right state.
8
@Sam Yeah, and I'm not entirely thrilled about "just subsidizing family life" for a bunch of parents to stay at home. I think the Blue State citizens already subsidize enough of the lifestyle choices of the Red State citizens.
8
Don't assume the single earner would be a male. The issue isn't economic benefits but rather personal fulfillment. Evidence indicates that men really don't like to share traditional female household activities. Why? It isn't in the genes.
Let Carlson stay at home and his wife, if he has one, earn a living. One would wager that he wouldn't be happy even if she were earning the income of a major corporate CEO. He would demand a staff (including a wet nurse?) so that he could be free of household "drudgery," drudgery because it is traditional "women's work," unlike the drudgery of working on assembly lines or in mines.
2
The two income home discussion, a fairy-tale of the right and the left. Most people don't have careers, they have jobs. They don't like their jobs and receive very little beyond some cash to pay the bills in these jobs. Each day is a effort to survive a large corporate culture that doesn't see them as individuals. They can be fired at will with very little repercussions, losing health insurance if they were lucky enough to have it. Then, what happens when there is a divorce or one spouse dies. This happened in my family where the mom died leaving the father behind to care for two children. The spouse that died made 2/3 the income and carried the health insurance. Now what!!! On top of the grief of losing a loved one, you can no longer keep the same lifestyle. You have to take those children that have just lost their mother and move them to a cheaper house in a cheaper neighborhood. This two income trap is a discussion amongst the economically, professionally, and personally comfortable. It doesn't speak to the real life tragedies that occur. Life is not pleasant for most people. It is a daily slog to survive. Self-fufillment is a discussion most people can't afford to have. If most people made better incomes and worked in a place that valued them, there would be no need to discuss child-care vs. stay at home parenting. And, I suspect if most people made more sustainable incomes both the socially right and socially left would find themselves pleased by the outcome.
11
What about men and women who work full time and don’t have children? Any solution to this problem needs to be fair to them, too.
11
@Liz morrill Basically, we aren't, for some reason, considered 'families.' In reality, with the state our environment is in, I consider us ideal families.
7
@Liz morrill
Right. There's a larger problem when working people are set up to resent one another. Native vs immigrant, black vs white, breeders vs no kids, men vs women. There are more useful dimensions: owners vs laborers, lenders vs borrowers. Trump is wrong about interest rates, since we need to respond when there is a downturn, but he is right about the need for massive infrastructure projects that would drive unemployment even lower and raise wages. Even if the projects are boring (roads, bridges) instead of future-oriented (solar panel manufacture and installation, tunnels for new subway lines) they will make employers pay better wages.
1
@MMNY . I agree! My husband and I have been faithfully married for going on 44 years and do not have children. I always hear couples say they can't wait to "start a family" and wonder what they consider us? Worthless bumps on a log? Selfish? Guess the friends, family and charities we have given time and money to over the years don't count - to say nothing of our rescue dogs. : )
3
The job market may be better for men if no women worked outside the home, but the economics for many families are better if wife works outside the home. We cant go back to 1950
115
@Juanita K.
Then we'll need day care and pre-K and a living wage to pay for all that. And college.
8
Hi. Men can be stay-at-home dads, women can be the single earner for a household even if they aren’t a single mom. And sometimes -gasp- two women or two men have a child and yes, they face this conundrum too. I’m so tired of the narrative that raising children is women’s work and part of a woman’s natural lifelong desire. We need an economy that enables us to raise children in single-income homes because in situations where there is no extended family support, that is what’s best for the child (as opposed to shelling out $$$$ for daycare and spending 90% of childhood with strangers). Let’s have that conversation without presuming that a woman will be at home and a man will be bringing home the bacon.
2
Where you lose me is your insistence that only women can do housework. As a man, nothing g would please me more than to be a stay at home dad. Speaking with my friends, my position is not unique.
4
Whether you think dual income families are a good idea or not, now everyone can choose for themselves how to live their life and utilize their talents.
4
In the summation the author advocates what feminists have been advocating for a hundred years...give people realistic choices to pursue their self-defined happiness. Funny, it almost sound like something written about 230 years ago.
2
Families are smaller because no one is home anymore to take care of the children. Most people prefer to go to work because they desire a social structure. Neighborhoods are emptier as a result. There is less community to interact with to stimulate and engage with. As a mom that stayed home I sit on the fence. There are positives and negatives to both scenarios. The only solution I see is encouraging part-time and/or subsidized training opportunities for either the mum or dad that stays home with child through community centers where the child will interact as well with other children while the parent can advance themselves through innovative skill building programs and maintain their adult communication skills. Maintaining skills is desirable for the economy and for mental health. This will translate into better marital relationships, and happier parenting and less of a vacuum effect from the work world.
1
The typical viewpoint of those who write for, or read the New York Times has nothing to do with the reality that faces half of the younger people in this country who need two earners to rent a small apartment and truly can hardly afford to have children.
It is strange to read people who are in a position to decide how much house to buy opine about the need for two earners. Think about two earners raising two kids on just-above-minimum wage jobs before you draw any conclusions.
6
Several factors are working against the single income family. First and foremost is the cost of housing. A 45-year-old house in my area that sold for perhaps $60,000 - $70,000 originally new will now fetch close to $400,000. You'd need two incomes to qualify for the mortgage, which would be pretty substantial. Forget having any children for a while - two full-time, high income jobs would be needed, unless the husband or wife is already making a strong six-figure or better salary.
The cost of health insurance is another obstacle. A recent report on NPR detailed how, even on employee-sponsored insurance plans, deductibles have soared from several hundred dollars a decade ago to several thousand dollars now. That money must be set aside for potential emergency care.
The third speed bump is the cost of higher education, which (like housing prices) has run way ahead of inflation since the end of the 1970s, when the prime rate actually hit 20% (believe it or not). How do you take out a mortgage, cover your out-of-pocket health insurance costs, and put anything aside for college when the deck is stacked against you economically?
Simple. You don't have children, as some young couples have decided. Or you have one child; maybe two if you can afford it. The economic environment in this country is just not friendly to starting and building families.
For most couples, the one-income lifestyle is a fantasy.
4
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids." -- That sounds very reasonable and I'm sure it would be a huge improvement but you are not going to get many corporations to volunteer to do this. And given that corporations have a lot more money to give to politicians than families do, it is going to be a tough slog to get a majority of Congress members on board also -- especially in the Senate.
The solution? Don't agonize, organize. More white-collar professionals, women AND men, need to join unions. Collective action is the only way that we can pressure corporations to do the right thing in so many areas: family life; workplace safety; environmental responsibility; not to mention livable wages for all which would allow many more workers to decide whether they wanted a one- or two-income household. For too many workers now, both parents need to work at least a job or two just to make ends meet.
7
Just maybe we should have salaries that can support a one working parent. Why is the solution to social problems have to mean giving subsidies. Why not have a living minimum wage so that families who decide to have both parents work can get ahead. If we had a living minimum wage, that could eliminate the need for so much government subsidies, which in turn would help our deficit. The narrative that companies pay women less because they may get pregnant or leave more often than men is now false. [ it is the reason but] Companies are not providing women or men a steady work environment that guaranties a job. Back in " leave it to beaver " days UNIONS were the norm and one parent could provide for their family. Seems to me corporations looked at two income families and said to themselves we can pay less and they can still afford what we sell. Just in case you are not familiar with Capitalism its not the cost of the item you sell its how much can I get for the item. 10% be damed. Look their are many reasons why women go to work, some because they have to some because they want to. What ever the reason it should be a choice not a necessity. The key to all that is discussed in the article is money and who is going to pay. I prefer that companies pay enough in wages so couples can decide what is best for them and equal pay for equal work along with a living minimum wage would go a long way to making family life a choice. Maybe co. should have a school tax to pay for education.
125
@oscar jr
Oscar, my friend you and I are on the same page.
" Seems to me corporations looked at two income families and said to themselves we can pay less and they can still afford what we sell".
Truer words were never spoken.
Thank you,
Stan
29
@oscar jr:"Back in 'leave it to beaver' days UNIONS were the norm and one parent could provide for their family. "
Leave it to beaver days? My progressive friends tell me those days either never existed or were horrible white bread days in the US.
It's a good thing they're ALL GONE for good, no?
3
@oscar jr
The "Leave it to Beaver" days were better in some ways and worse in some ways than today.
From a financial perspective, pensions were not as widespread as you believe, and the benefits were not vested. People got fired two months before qualifying for a pension and pensions were cancelled if a company hit hard times.
Kids had dinner with the whole family and discussed their days, which meant they had meaningful conversations with their fathers on a regular basis.
Unions were fabulous for white men, but they were designed to prevent black men migrating from the South from competing with white men. Same for minimum wage, which was the equivalent of $4.20 today and only applied after 48 hours in the low wage food industry.
Kids saved up their allowances to buy a camera. Parents were not under pressure to provide $300 sneakers.
In most of the country, two parents working full time for minimum wage have enough income to buy a house, raise their children and get a $12,000 gift from the federal government in EITC and child credit that refunds all of their payroll tax and then some. That makes the household income the equivalent of $40,000. Very few people work at minimum wage for extended periods of time.
Single parents working for minimum wage get substantial government supplemental income, which is a preferable to your theory of imposing extra costs on employers, which will result in fewer unskilled workers ever getting their foot in the door.
9
Maybe if the corporations stopped skewing worker productivity vs. earnings to benefit only the shareholders and the personnel at the top of the corporate ladder, mothers and fathers could be more prosperous, work less and enjoy parenting more. This isn’t a woman’s economic issue, it’s an everybody issue.
3
“Just subsidize family life” sounds like a delightful form of socialism. Perhaps the Right is finally catching on!
Perhaps feminists and social conservatives alike should learn to mind their own business, make their own choices, a permit graciously others to do the same.
@D I Shaw We feminists would love to make our own choices, including birth control and abortion.
5
@MMNY
What a strange response to my comment to the effect that people should mind their own business!
Would it not be implicit in such a remark that birth control and abortion would be the business of the person using them BUT likewise, that the woman who chooses home, motherhood, and a marriage with a traditional division of responsibilities should be permitted to do so in peace without being shamed and scolded as a tool of the European male patriarchy?
At least at this moment in time, you and other feminists (an unfortunately vague term which on its face seems exclusive and sexist if not also misandrous) ARE still free to make those choices, and have been for forty years. That freedom has been at increasing risk lately, and is certainly to be preserved, but part of that risk, it seems to me, is a reactionary response to the shrill, overbearing rhetoric of some feminists who, not content to accept the law that permits them their own freedom, also demand that the rest of society remake itself according to THEIR standards.
This, don't you think, is the apotheosis of meddling in the lives of others.
I can only encourage you to lead your own life as you wish, to the extent that you do not impose yourself on others. I can only support laws that allow you to do that. However, I would hope greatly that you would accord others the same freedom, even if the life they choose bears no resemblance to yours.
Ross writes: "...Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
How specifically does one "subsidize family life?" This sounds god, but what exactly is meant by it? How do you subsidize family life? Is his a religious, coded term that actually means something else?
I can’t tell what Douthat suggests. Maybe the radical idea that people should choose their family model?
Isn’t that too liberal for our Hamden Hall-Harvard author of “More Babies Please”?
I’m mathematically twice Douthat’s age—a female from Connecticut who taught in the public schools of New Haven at the end of the seventies.
Stunningly out of touch:
Does Douthat himself have children? The first year I taught at Richard C Lee public high school in New Haven, a teacher was shot and killed. We were let out early to attend the funeral.
Elizabeth Warren has “lost days as a heterodox public intellectual”?
THe Republian party—in light of Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal (so different from Susan McDougal) and Shera Bechard—most likely would have problems pontificating heterodoxedly on family values at this point. But maybe not. Their base chows down on wholecloth.
And this: “Strain continues, nothing prevents today’s households from opting to live on one income….” Really? How about this: “40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense.”?
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-household-finances/index.html
Mr. Douthat does not know the daily struggle most of us do, it would seem.
Yesterday’s headline concerned the million plant and animal species on the verge of extinction. When I was born in 1952, the globe supported three billion people, right now we verge on eight.
Anyone puzzling over why there are not more babie is the true puzzle.
5
Raise the minimum wage.
1
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life, and let the sexes figure out how best to balance work and life, their ambitions and their desire for kids."
Okay, and what do you propose for that, Mr. Douhat? The lecturing is tedious because you tend to not offer solutions. The thing about Warren, whether you agree or not, is that she at least tries to tackle the issues she raises besides wagging a finger and saying "it can't be done." Fine, then what's YOUR solution? Please dedicate a column to what actual policy prescription you propose, in detail, than some vague handwaving made in obeisance to the conservative altar.
4
What makes me wonder is that an entire article can be written about family life and not once take into account the interest of the children.
1
Please explain what you mean when you say "subsidize family life." It sounds as if you do not really know what you are writing about. Also, why do you consider this to be "conservative"? Non-conservatives have the same concerns.
1
So what the heck is your policy proposal, Ross? I can think of a couple, but you left the punchline off of the joke here.
Are you talking about some form of kindergeld? Would you be willing to support a policy that taxed the wealthy progressively in order to pay say $20,000 to any stay at home parent with a child under age 5 or a $20,000 voucher To any family with young children for childcare?
Is $20,000 enough?
1
Ross misses the point his "family" isn't going to even be next door to the Smith-Jones to compete with them on one income b/c house prices have gone up so much. The house we bought in Houston in 1997 for $297K is now $1.1 million. Zillow says the house we live in now is $1.1M. No WAY kids starting out or along their way in their 30's with young kids could EVER afford that (even on 2 incomes).
Ross & the whole "conservative" movement also don't get, in our "dynamic" economy, when layoffs inevitably come, the 2-income family can limp along while the laid-off family member gets unemployment and looks for while, but the 1-income family is toast.
4
Why is there never any discussion of a one income family where that income is earned by the female?
1
Russ, I was on board until you posited couples having more children as an unquestioned good.
3
As a single mother with a Ph.D. and over 20 years of work experience who is still struggling to make it financially - I am troubled by the assumption that everyone lives in a two-adult household or should live that way. For many of us it doesn't work out. And women who are heads of households face the double burden - we are not paid as much as our male colleagues (my peers drive BMWs and live abroad during summer vacations - while I still have a 12 year old car); and we alone are responsible financially for our households. I don't see anything in Douthat's discussion that addresses these challenges.
3
Being now in my mid 60's I have seen this country go from the primarily single earner households to two earner house holds. I trace this back to the conservative revolution started by Pres. Reagan. It started with conservative policies to break the unions, and reductions in taxes and ending the progressive structure of the tax code which forced the Fed. Gov. to cut spending in all sorts of ways that supported the middle class. This started the slow erosion of the middle class both economically and in their power base, the unions. Without strong unions to protect domestic manufacturing jobs what was a vast middle class composed of both college educated and non college educated workers is now primarily just for the highly educated. And because of the tax structure the Gov has stopped supporting public higher education making a college education extremely expensive. It is conservative financial policy which has destroyed the single earner household.
While liberal attitudes have made it acceptable for woman to peruse careers the choice was taken away by conservative pollicy.
6
Ross Douthat's column is worth the read. Having said that, there are some basic assumptions which are somewhat questionable.
For example, the desire for more children is certainly not shared by the large number of people who think the human population is dangerously over sustainable levels now.
As with other posits in the article (such as 2 family incomes being the reason for greatly increased home air-conditioning now compared to the 1960s instead of inexpensive window units) he reaches for causes that fit what he is writing about whether or not they are factual. This is dangerous territory for conservatives in this day of "alternate facts".
Still, I look forward to more columns like this.
4
As a (non)-social conservative, I found this article very thoughtful. It would be good if there were widely accepted (and remunerative) life paths in which ambitious child-rearing persons, could focus on kids/families in 20s to early 40s and then get on a highly focused more externally focused career track thereafter.
Some people, of course, pull this off now, but it takes some real going against the grain of both educational and career structures to pull it off.
2
We all need to just do what is best for our own families and let others do the same. I was a stay at home mother when my children were young, would not change that for the world, it worked for us because we made that decision. But..... we also had a lower standard of living, took years to get back to earning capacity on my part, and it wasn’t easy. Couples have that luxury of deciding if one parent (and I do know of dads who are the stay at home parent) should exit the work force for a period of time whereas single parenting doesn’t. Parents have to decide what works best for you and your family, who cares what anyone else thinks.
2
Don’t get married or have children unless you can afford the freight. Neither is an entitlement. Setting up and running a household is a gender neutral proposition. Is the real “trap” for men that women are demanding behavioral changes? Money = power.
4
@PMD
You shouldn't get old or sick or otherwise be human unless you can afford the freight, either, and you'd better be able to take care of yourself and all of your needs 100% until the day you drop dead.
1
@PM Procreation is a biological necessity> Soceity should an must do all to support and encourage.
You want to help families??
Here’s how.
Health care for all
Guaranteed short and long term disability
Sane work weeks — 30-35 hours tops
Real paid vacation, sick and family leave
Guaranteed pensions for the home maker
That’s the way to support families.
758
@Patricia Wholly agreed. We need unions more than ever to be able to fight back agains corporate greed.
50
@Patricia I was a "homemaker" and am now in a paid position and the number of years in the work force will far outstrip the 10 years I was not active in it. Most people are not homemakers their entire lives, nor should they be. My mother reared 5 children and stayed home for 20 years. She also worked before and after having children. Should working women support those homemakers who opt out of the workforce their entire lives? I think not. Perhaps there is an alternative, but someone staying home for 50 years is not for the children.
36
@Patricia
Homemakers are guaranteed the bread winner's Social Security benefit. Is it your position that a stay at home mom is entitled to more SS than a working mom?
Health care for all is not the same thing as health insurance for all, which benefits big medicine without even guaranteeing access to care. Put in place a system where there are government subsidized hospitals and clinics with sliding scale fees so that everyone has access without having to pay the CEO of a wealthy charity hospital a seven figure salary plus benefits or Michelle Obama a sinecure of $350,000 per year for a part time gig because she's married to a Senator.
People who work for a living have SS disability if they are long term disabled. People who haven't ever worked have Supplemental Security Income if they are long term disabled.
What is the difference in your mind between short term disability and sick leave? Why should an employer be on the hook for mental health days. Eighty percent f the work is the world is done by people who really didn't feel like going to work today.
People who do not have a 90 minute commute each way can work 40-50 hours per week as a normal work week without breaking a sweat. People who need a 3500 square foot house are trading off a long commute for personal values. they can figure out how to make productive use of their commutation time via mass transit or carpooling if they cannot manage an eight hour day at work.
The federal government cannot fix you.
5
The best solution, as Ross points out, is to subsidize family supports such as paid ma/paternal leave, day care, after school and pre-school activities, more generous sick leave policies that allow parents to stay home with sick children, etc.
The old cultural conservatives' argument is clearly meant to keep women in their place -- which it certainly does: If you opt out of the workforce, you have severely limited your options and are in a much worse position when your husband/male partner philanders/abuses etc.
4
The sexism that underpins conservatism is rampant in this piece. In his opinion about one or two income families, never once did Mr. Douthat consider that the single earner might be a woman! As a man whose annual income has always been dwarfed by the income of my wife, I take exception to this. It is the unthinking prejudice that a man must, perforce, be better than any woman in the job market.
If my wife and I were to rely on my earning potential alone, we would be impoverished. The most I ever earned in a year was 48k, in 1989, but my annual income from 1989 to 1998 dropped from 48k to 16k. This was the result of the bottom dropping out of the courier business as fax, and later, electronic filing rendered much of the courier business obsolete. Ultimately, GPS and routing apps like Mapquest removed the last vestiges of challenge and complexity, rendering what had been a small but vital cog in the machinery of civilization into another small package delivery service, indistinguishable from UPS and the USPO.
The only thing my income managed to do in 1997 was raise the tax bracket my wife and I were in. At that point her income was five times what mine was, so we decided to try the one income lifestyle... hers.
That was 21 years ago. We're happier than we have ever been, and economically healthy.
Thus we refute sexism!
4
It's always so fun when men try to theorize about what women should do. I'm old enough that I remember angry conservatives through the 70s and 80s telling women their place was in the home. And now they're back. What fun.
You know who's always worked outside the home? Women of color. Immigrants. Poor women of all races. Single mothers. All the women whom conservatives, in their longing to recreate the world they imagine the 1950s to have been, would like simply to disappear back into the margins of society.
24
Thank you for being the first to mention this. The attention given to women’s work “outside the home” is one that continuously and largely ignores women of color whose work precedes the popularity of the debate and the wave(s) of feminism with which it corresponds. Seriously need to take an intersectional approach and not just assume the white, middle class, heteronormative default as the sample representative of the whole.
4
All this talk about women staying home versus working, and no thought of men having the same choice.
If a man stayed home, and never ever worked in any job, and benefitted lifelong from the fruits of his wife’s labor, he would be viewed as lazy by most people.
To all the people that point out men and women do not yet have the same rights, you are very correct.
3
@Doctor
Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how many women would choose a spouse (male or female) who, during courtship, told them that they did not want a job but wanted to stay home and manage the household. And therefore be supported financially by her. This would have been unthinkable in 1970. How about now?
2
Also left out of this discussion - women who have never had any desire to have children. Conservatives may find it hard to believe, but we do exist. If I was forced into staying home, I'd be staring at the yellow wallpaper in no time.
8
Ross reads his usual spate of conservative articles decrying the difficulties faced by stay at home moms who can't afford the desired complement of 8 or more biological children. Then he looks at his hard working, delightfully talented, inarguably brilliant, happily employed professional spouse, and both burst out laughing.
Then he writes this.
5
How nice. Feminists should find common cause with a bunch of people who want to remove our reproductive rights. How’s that going to work exactly? In addition family life is not restricted to the conservative construct of one man one woman. Tucker Carlson isn’t my idea of anyone I’d want to follow for any reason whatsoever.
8
Pro-family conservatism is a great idea. Do you know any parties that fit that? Certainly not the GOP.
6
So, the Conservative factions each have parts of the solution, while the non-Conservatives are all wrong and not worth listening to, except when one needs something to put down. Got it. No religion here.
2
Why does no one ever mention that when the children are grown and the bread winner gets restless, leaving his wife for a fun younger woman—whom he may well have met at work!—what happens to the jettisoned homemaker? She has no salary, no CV nor experience to go job-seeking with. At one time there was something of a taboo about divorce, but no longer. Stephen Moore didn’t pay his court-mandated alimony nor child support, and gives a speech about how women’s wages are too high (I guess he was doing his part for that philosophy by withholding the money he owed to his wife): a great pick for the Fed! David Brooks leaves his children’s mother and ends up marrying a business associate half his age—-and writes a book bragging about it! I wonder whether he’ll make over the royalties to wife #1? Abandoned wives are bound to sink in class status or even to face real financial hardship. Before you quit your job, wives, think about it. No one anticipates a divorce on her wedding day, but divorces do seem to happen and often!
10
"In her LOST days as a heterodox intellectual..."
We certainly wouldn't want to give a her credit for being smart.
6
We both work and our boy gets all he needs/ wants. We have no issue with both of us having jobs
1
Why do I get the feeling that Ross views this issue through the rosy lenses of a two-earner family, of which either income is sufficient to maintain their current lifestyle?
2
I seem to know a lot of women who consider themselves "feminist", espouse a lot of politically correct feminist speak, yet remain financially dependent on a man who makes much more money than they do. And they are apparently fine with this hypocrisy. Let's make this clear: Women in straight relationships who choose not to work, or who choose to follow their passion and make very little of the household income, are choosing to be financially dependent and financially subservient to a man. Call it what it is. Women: If you let the man make most or all of the money, you are financially powerless, no matter how much rationalization and how much faux feminism you try to cover up your dependence with. You are "kept". I guarantee you, no matter what politically correct things he says about the situation, he believes this too. He knows he has the financial power. Don't let it happen. Financial independence is strength, and if you don't earn anything, or don't earn enough to support yourself and your children, you are not independent, you do not have freedom, and you are not free to choose your future.
6
Duh. Of course the two-earner family makes more. The issue is that it doesn't make double the money than one equivalent salary would have made in the 70s - even though productivity has grown tremendously. The average earner is making less than what they would be making in the 70s.
Warren is very clear as to where the money is going, because she has actually studied bankcruptcy. It wasn't on consumption. A lot of bankcruptcy is caused by the lack of healthcare.
More pertinently, perhpas, Warren has said that when she took up this academic subject she expected a lot of 'freeloading', dubious bankrupties. What she found made her abandon the Republican Party. She, unlike most current Republicans - including you, Ross Douthat- actually looked at the evidence. She let it change her ideology, rather than allow her preconceived ideas pick her facts. This, to me, is a major reason to vote for her as President.
Oh, and by the way, childcren have two parents. Their care is a parental, not a maternal issue.
5
All this contorted talk, to avoid stating the obvious: wages have gone done the drain, and "conservatives" fight every effort to make help working families.
Reading Douthat, you'd actually think "feminists" oppose government support for day-care and health.
Absurd? Of course. But how else blame both sides? And else ride in heroically with a solution which makes his own side look less ridiculous?
Then again, when your party is on the wrong side of everything what is left, but more tortured argumentation?
1
Just as we mock and deride those who have come before for adhering to standards of their day, some day people will look back at our times and mock and deride those who thought we could raise children without mothers.
1
Many European nations have powerful pro-family policies.
But that's "socialism". The American Way is to use taxpayer money to kill people in foreign lands. That's important, children are not.
4
Women it is normal to stay home to raise your kids.
Stop getting guilted.
If affordable why not do it.
Why allow a daycare and school system that honor?
Thirty plus years of this argument has shown a generation lost !!
It's seriously lacking to attempt to have this conversation without any acknowledgement of the way misogyny and the need for men to control women's choices play into this debate.
2
Ross Douthat's column follows a an old, well-established pattern--one played out most recently after the end of World War 2. Every time a society faces large numbers of men who have trouble finding employment, conservative "intellectuals," pundits and politicians try to drive women back into the kitchen.
Ross might play the "in the middle moderate," proudly boasting of his working wife and kids in daycare, but he's fully on board with this claptrap. Deep down, however, he must know that while there are and will forever be some June Cleaver types, the thrust of history is leaving them behind.
4
As an engaged couple some 30 years ago, the best advice we were given was, “Never base your purchasing power on two incomes. Use only one income in calculating your mortgage, car payments, etc...”
And that’s exactly what we did.
But the worst thing we did was listen to our realtor/mortgage lender who told us how much we qualified for with that single income. How much you qualify for versus what you can actually afford to spend and still live your lives does not add up.
One thing we did not figure into the equation was the increasingly high cost of healthcare. When we started out in our careers, we paid nothing. Over the years, our contributions have increased and our deductibles skyrocketed. Now it’s the single highest cost we have.
What people really need are choices. There is no “one size fits all”. You might have aging parents to care for, a chronically ill child, an injury, be a single parent, business owner, self employed...who knows? What I do know is people need to have the freedom to be able to adapt to their individual circumstances, and most of us do not have that flexibility.
Guaranteed access to affordable healthcare would help everyone. Having employees who are covered would help businesses. Knowing that you won’t have to file bankruptcy if you or a loved one becomes ill would bring peace of mind. It is the one thing that sets us apart from other developed nations. It’s truly the elephant in the living room, and it wasn’t mentioned once in this article
469
@Kathryn Bradbury
I'd go futher with your reasoning and with what Mr. Douthat hints at with his point about the A/C.
Simply put, the baseline has done up. i.e.
-Compare the efficiency, safety and performance of a modern car vs. one from the 60s.
-Smartphones vs. rotary dial phones
-HDTVs vs. black and white analogs
-And to your point about healthcare: look at the advances in medical technology (drugs, diagnostics - MRIs vs. plain Xrays for example) vs. what was available in the 60s.
Along with the point about air-conditioning.
I wonder if any analysis has been done that looks at how the rising baseline has also contributed to the higher cost of living and thus compelling many families to need 2 incomes to make ends meet.
12
@Kathryn Bradbury Thank you for your comment. I badly wish I had heard the advice about ensuring one salary could cover the mortgage. Then again, in most metro areas I don't see home prices where that is possible unless the one salary is in the 200k and up range....
15
@Kathryn Bradbury
When I was 26 and bought my first house, my housing cost consumed 45% of my income and my $10/month health insurance payment and $2 copays consumed less than a percent of my income.
At 65, my Medicare premiums. supplement, part D, out of pocket consumes 12% of my income and housing consumes 15% of my income. If I took SS, those numbers would be cut in half. [That's down from 33% of my income when I was 64.}
What people spend their income on changes over time. If Obamacare had not been imposed by the Democrats, your current healthcare costs would be 15-20% lower today. During the unwinding of Obamacare, expect the costs to remain high until a rational replacement can be legislated. Big medicine is not giving up their largesse without a fight, and they have the money to create the illusion that change will be negative for Americans and the money to buy Congress.
Big medicine is not taking a pay cut with Medicare for all.
3
As a professional tax preparer, it is clear that when the costs associated with a second earner are tallied, it is shocking how little additional income is added to the family coffers. Income taxes, commuting costs, childcare, work wardrobe, and extra meal costs add up quickly. I sat down with one woman and showed her that she was taking home about two dollars an hour. I don’t want to make this a gender issue. If a couple with kids and one professional salaried member, sends the other off to a part-time or modestly paid job, they seldom wind up with much to show for it. Of course there are other reasons to work besides money. (not for me, which is why I worked only ten weeks a for forty years)
1
Families who cannot afford children are squeezed out through attrition. At least nowadays people realize it's not a great idea to raise children on someone else's tax money.
1
Social conservatives, want to live off one income, so mom can stay home and raise the kids to instill "good old American family values?" And at the same time, suffering no decline in living standards, or ability to acquire material possessions? I propose a new government subsidy. The One Income Stay at Home Mom Federal Relief Act. How does a new federal program, paid for by US tax dollars sound? Hypocritical right? But, the arguments for such a program could easily be cloaked in a Make America Great Again initiative. This, no doubt, will appeal to Trump's base. And they'll defend it with the same zeal they want government subsidized healthcare abolished. Hypocrites.
2
Today’s problem is that for the majority two incomes are necessary for middle class life: a house, good school, necessary child care, and health insurance. (Not to mention college and retirement savings!). When a sizable proportion of families cannot handle a $400 emergency expense.....the present system is not working.
No one....no one!.....would choose a “mommy track” as a good career path. It is a sop and compromise at best. No business sees several years out of the workforce raising children as anything but a major negative.
And, the extra care needed for elderly parents, or for a child or spouse with illness or handicaps makes these compromises impossible. The Ivanka-espoused idea of forcing parents to choose between later retirement OR taking more than 6 weeks home with a newborn only points out that conservatives pay lip service to the family but legislate for bloody-claw capitalism. (It’s strictly business, dear.)
219
@Susan
a house, good school, necessary child care, and health insurance.?!?
these must be the middle-class "amenities" referred to in the article.
4
Hmmm, I'm on the "mommy track" and love it. I work at a great company doing work I enjoy, and have a decent income. I also work part-time and rarely need to take work home with me. I'm not really climbing the ladder any more, but I don't care.
I feel like I scored gold, and know that many women wish they had more middle ground choices. Most of the time, it seems like careers either require 110% commitment, long hours, and high stress; or they are more low-level admin-type jobs that don't necessarily utilize the skills and knowledge a woman has.
14
@Susan
I am a mother and I still have prejudice about people on the "mommy track". When some woman is out there in the community trying be a mover and shaker around some issue and cites her role as a mother as her primary qualification, I inwardly roll my eyes. Even though her role as a mother may actually be an excellent qualification for the issue she is working on. Or if not that, an excellent motivator to become more qualified than others to address that issue. But I am still prejudiced. "Mothers Against Drunk Driving". Just be against drunk driving. You don't have to be a mother.
6
Gone with the wind, are the old days in the old country.
Mostly in the old country the mothers would go and sell in the market, the grandparents took care of the children and the men sat under the big shade tree drinking beer.
3
Another solution would be the French route --- make a 35 hour work week and force companies to stick to it, including for high paying jobs. That would make work much easier on families.
Families would be better off with more time with fathers, not just stay-at-home mothers. A SAHM makes it easier (and more necessary) for the father to work long hours, in pursuit of advancement and more pay.
2
Douthat says: "Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life..."
OK, great. How? Reality involves money. Look at the social democracies of Europe. Their actual practices are far more pro-family than conservative policies in this country could ever hope to be.
And guess what? It's expensive. Wealthy people and corporations pay high taxes in those countries. Healthcare is subsidized. New mothers get paid to stay home for months (in some countries, a year) with the child. Average workers get far more paid time off than Americans. These are capitalist economies with high taxes.
Mr. Douthat's children have had excellent daycare experiences. He can afford it.
People cobbling together 2 or 3 part time jobs or otherwise working in the growing "gig" economy don't get excellent daycare.
Middle class wages and benefits have stagnated. The cost of health insurance is staggering and has gone steadily up. Our middle class is dying.
I am sick of hearing "conservatives" spout "family values" rhetoric while backing it up with nothing but tax cuts for rich people.
If you suggest hey, how about subsidizing care for that non-aborted baby you were so concerned about when it was in the womb, the response is "Socialism!"
Most Americans are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy, no matter how many family members are employed.
So I'm glad Warren inspired conservative debate. But that's all we'll get from conservatives: Empty words.
5
Good for you, Ross: wise words, even if you feel you've said some of them with "tedious frequency."
Helen Andrews' essay received a lot of outraged reaction, but it's hard to argue with some of her observations, most especially "There’s no point paying someone $11 an hour to raise a woman’s children so she can go out and earn $11 an hour if that woman would be happier staying home and raising her children herself." True dat. But the statement would also be true if "a woman's" and "that woman" were changed to read "a man's" and "that man."
I was going along with Ross for awhile. But his constant emphasis that women should stay home to care for children is retrograde at best and the worst part of conservatism. As far as larger home and with airconditioning -- well the large homes are superfluous since I grew up in a home with three children and two parents that would fit inside my current home. The problem with housing costs is lack of choice for smaller and more affordable homes in good locations. Finally, if a person is focused on keeping up with the Jones-Smiths of the world, then that is their choice.
4
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life..."
So, basically don't subsidize day care (conservative = check), don't subsidize stay at home moms (which nobody has ever suggested and certainly doesn't happen now), and I assume the "subsidizing family life" = tax cuts, since there are no other policy suggestions listed here. So, bottom line is - just cut taxes. What a surprise innovation! Conservatives will love it.
4
"Don’t subsidize day care, don’t subsidize stay-at-home moms; just subsidize family life"
What does "subsidize family life" even mean? So replace two ideas with potential policy solutions with a hokey imaginary idea?
3
Just subsidize family life? How about, universal health care, and a decent minimum wage, and pre-school and day-care for those who need them? How about aid for families where one or both parents are trying to pay off education loans? For a lot of Americans, financial life is about managing the expectations of the finance company that holds the note on the car.
2
@writeon1 Universal health care would go a long way in addressing the pressures families face. I know many families where the 2nd income earner works primarily to afford (or receive) health insurance for the family.
2
A ludicrous argument and I am shocked that Warren and her daughter would support such premises. “Duel income trap” is the same as “low income trap”.
What would the homemaker do after the kids are grown? The homemaker would always be dependent on the income earners and the income earners would always dictate the terms of the relationship. Equality is not about sex but it is about equal opportunity to chose and to do.
141
@Binh It is ludicrous. They don't support what's suggested the the article. The article significantly miscasts Warren's central argument made in "The Two-Income Trap."
24
@Binh, I totally agree with you. I was shocked to hear the spin from Warren that is reminiscent of the conservatives' right. Most people have far too little concerns about finances when they step off the career, with only the fancy notion of being a homemaker. Sure, if you enjoy it, all the power to you. But, in 17 years' time, kids will be out of the house, and you'll be back to square one. In a bygone era, people would be making retirement plans for cruise and vacations, but these days, you'll be looking at financial worries of "how do I afford retirement" or "I don't have enough money to buy medications." And then, they'll be kicking themselves for having only single focus on raising kids, but little else.
8
@Binh I'm 47 and starting law school next year when my son graduates from high school. I guess that's what they could do after the kids are grown.
9
The idea that it is “natural” for women to want to stay home raising children smacks of misogyny. The writer is clearly pining for the ‘good ol days’ when men were the breadwinners and women were in their ‘place’ at home raising the children and taking care of the home. Women stayed home in the 1950’s out of necessity - there were few opportunities for them, and certainly a much lower pay rate. Additionally, a family could survive in the 50’s, even prosper, on one reasonable income which at that time was only possible for a man. Thankfully we live in a time that is more egalitarian. Women have opportunity as well as ever increasing wage earning capacity. It is natural to want ones children raised by someone who cares for them deeply. Either mother or father is capable and qualified.
3
Sounds like Tucker Carlson is a closet communist. Literally wants government control to force one income families. Few details were given but how else could this be achieved? Or maybe he wants women out if the work force which is in his MO. Where as Warren is providing social economic policy to soften capitalism’s hard edges.
-
As for economics, averages truly drag us down.
For example if everyone works 40 hours a week and can pay the bills. Awesome.
Now let’s say 1/3 of the population starts working 60 hours a week to “get ahead”. They may get ahead for awhile but all costs go up for everyone else. Now another 1/3 of the population has to work 60 hours a week to keep up with them. The last 1/3 moves towards poverty.
Sound like the United States yet. When we had strong unions and a solid 40 hour work week things were good. Because of deregulation and union busting now everyone must work longer hours.
It’s all about averages. In the end the only group that enjoys a temporary advantage is the one that out works the other. But you take a marathon and start turning it into a sprint. After awhile it’s just literally a rat race to the bottom. As any benefits enjoyed from our running the other people initially will force them to run as much as you. Now everyone has to run that much all the time and everything costs more.
I don’t have a magic solution but strong worker Unions are actually probably the most likely to achieve reduced work hours with greater pay.
3
Your hypothesis lacks mechanism: how does 1/3 of the population working an extra 20 hours drive up prices? It might entitle them to a nicer vacation or car, but those things aren’t scarce. Most things aren’t scarce: what is manufactured can be manufactured in greater quantity more cheaply, in fact, due to economies of scale. If anything, then, more work yields lower prices.
Thanks, Ross. You're my favorite NYT editorialist and by far my favorite conservative.
Why? It's your ability to pull together different ideologies and synthesize possible solutions that cut across current political lines. Here, you manage to fuse the center-left positions advocating better support for working mothers, with two different strains of conservatism: the business-first one of Strain and the socially conservative side of Carlson/Andrews.
Then you suggest we can put them together in a way that might actually be conducive to real family values, not just opposing liberals on wedge issues like abortion and sexuality (while opposing every type of spending that actually improves new families). I like the idea of improving women's ability to choose freely whether or not to work full-time while raising young children, ideally with a minimum of pressure on women to pick one option or the other.
I don't agree with everything here, and certainly not with some other stances you take (e.g. abortion), but you're making valuable contributions to political discourse at a time when very few writers are willing to look across the spectrum for ideas. We need more writers, from all political persuasions, who are willing to do that.
1
Besides women aspiring to more than staying home Republican economics since Nixon has all but required women to go to work to afford a middle income lifestyle.
3
Social Security already subsidizes stay-at-home spouses (of either sex) through the retirement benefits formula. In our family, my wife stayed out of the full-time workforce for fifteen years (despite having two master degrees) because we thought this was the best option for raising our children. Despite the resulting huge gap in our earning records, she now receives slightly over 50% of what I receive as a retirement benefit after having paid only a quarter of what I paid in FICA taxes. That seems like a great deal until you consider that my wife could have received 50% of my retirement benefit without ever paying a single penny into Social Security. The tax code should not be used for social engineering, so let's completely eliminate the unearned spousal benefit. We should also make the benefits formula better reflect the amount of FICA taxes paid into the system for recipients at all income levels.
23
@Earl W.
"Unearned"? Did your wife manage a household, perform the physical labor of cleaning and cooking, and raise your children? Did she run your errands so you could be at work? Every single thing your wife did so that you could focus on your job was work. Fixing our system will require recognizing the very real work that goes unpaid in our society.
414
@Other. Perfect reply, Thank You. 20 years ago author Ann Crittenden wrote about exactly your points. It documents statistics and comparisons to other advanced democracies.
The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued
by Ann Crittenden
27
@Earl W.
"I am actively receiving this benefit which I deem unfair, in my favor. The system must be changed so no one else gets this unfair benefit."
Would you agree to have this change affected on your wife's "unearned" benefit starting in 2020?
18
This topic exposes the fundamental problem with modern conservative thought. Conservatives promote conservative social values but neo-liberal economic ones. They do not see the connection between social policy and economics. It seems to me that having a robust social safety net [affordable day care, paid maternity leave, proper affordable health care, free or subsidized tuition, quality public schools, etc] would go a long way to convincing couples to have more children and think about staying home with them. Yet conservatives routinely oppose such measures. They bemoan the loss of the family, and the scourge of abortion, but their economic policies promote consumption, anti-union legislation, anti-minimum wage, high education costs, driving down labour costs and other laws that make having children expensive. This forces more couples to both enter the work force to pay for these children or not have as many children as they would like. At what point will this become obvious?
6
Ignored in the whole debate about women entering the workforce is how it has been enabled by illegal immigration. Without cheap labor provided no benefits, the delta between what women earn and what women pay for child support would be too great to make it worthwhile. Ask yourself – have you or does anyone you know pay their childminders on the books and offer benefits? And that includes nurseries and day-care centers. Of course not. The economics just aren’t there and we’re trying to square a circle.
1
The Jenie is out of the bottle and real estate prices are a cork that keeps her from returning to her place. If someone wants her back inside that one-income bottle then they can raise men's wages by 60-70% (?), the % of a man's wage earned by women.
Millions of women entering the workforce did not make families worse off. If it did, they wouldn't have done it. Glad I could clear things up.
3
Douthat as an educated white male deserves credit for joining the debate about socio-economic conditions affecting women and families, giving his own as evidence, but his arguments ignore important variables which undermine his credibility, such as:
1)the success girls and women have enjoyed competing with males in school, graduate schools and professional careers, despite persistent pay disparity with males;
2)a woman who works, especially a single parent, must pay a third to half her salary in child care;
3) dual incomes and rising standards of living bring larger homes, individual rooms for a son and a daughter, multiple cell phone plans, two or more cars and larger garages; 4) women who choose to parent their own children full time should not be disparaged as "stay at home moms;" medical visits, parent teacher conferences, arts, sports and science activities, and volunteer community service and organizations often have them out of the home and on the road more than their spouses ;
5) birth control and family planning have greatly reduced the number of children per family, but longevity and elder care of post-retirement parents adds to demands on uncompensated women's time.
2
With options for reasonably affordable health care tied to employment, EVERYONE has to work until age 65. Except of course the very wealthy and congress. I could have taken time off to raise our children but going on my husband's plan was exorbitant as was Cobra. As it turned out, I never needed that health insurance for anything catastrophic, but I sure wasn't going to run the risk of bankrupting my family by going without.
2
Has nobody read any Edith Wharton? Unless there is a large pool of money, not working outside the home is incredibly risky. Your spouse could be an absolute paragon, and still get hit by a bus. And then what happens? The one who stayed out of the workforce is in a whole world of hurt. No income, a miserable time actually finding work. I've always stressed with my daughter that you HAVE TO have your own income stream of some kind, or you're just begging for trouble.
356
@Leslie Holbrook It's called life insurance.
But in general I agree with your premise that it is important to develop your own skills, abilities, knowledge, and continue developing them throughout your life. Even with life insurance there are no guarantees.
14
@Leslie Holbrook
I agree with you, and personally find that being the sole earner, and the sole parent (thank you science), has been the best way to raise my daughter. Hopefully, she will not be afraid of taking on anything, because she has watched me work it out.
8
@Leslie Holbrook, Interestingly, your advice to your daughter was EXACTLY what my mother told me and my sisters back then. She told us she and our father worked hard to afford us a good education, for both us the girls and my brothers equally, as far as we can go. This was so that we can afford a career that she (my mother) could never dream of.
My mother was a very capable woman, wise and shrewd. But back then, there weren't much career choice. And the girls in her family all took a backseat when it comes to education. (Boys went to school, girls stayed home.) She never wanted a life like that for us. Not surprisingly, my mother (in her 90s) is even more progressive than Warren.
27
“Recently, under the somewhat unlikely inspiration of Elizabeth Warren, some conservatives have revived an old debate...”
Given how intellectually bankrupt the conservatives are, one can presume that the intent was to attack Warren, and women, as opposed to admit how conservatism has failed America and American families in not admitting a problem or proposing a solution.
Some context on the meeting place would have been dramatic writing, if not helpful: “as we blew rings of cigar smoke in a Trump building while enjoying hors d’ouvres served by ‘illegals’, we heaped condescension on the women’s movement and the immorality of solutions that defied male patriarchy and the god of markets in the natural order of things. Then we chanted tax cuts till we passed out in delirium...”.
Do nothing, conservatives (that comma is redundant in the second reading). There’s a reason people abbreviate the name to cons.
7
Ross, you really think that women want to have more children? I think you're off base with that thought. Even in third world countries it's found that as women become more educated they have less offspring which is a really good thing for our planet as well as for women who find other avenues for fulfillment other than childrearing. As far a families being culturally and financially pressured for bigger houses and bigger cars thusly increasing the monthly debt burden, this is a choice they make if they want to pursue this route. The end of this desire is more and more consumption.
3
While I think Mr. Douthat makes some good points, I personally found lacking one major part: where is the space for the dads? Here in Norway we have a very generous maternal leave policy, which allows women up to a year off work (where the government subsidizes their income). However, couples are eligible to take out the most leave when both the mom AND dad take some time off, choosing how to split it themselves.
While I agree with Mr. Douthat that in the early years mom has a crucial role, what dad wants to be shoved off to endless hours of work, as opposed to taking his share of quality time with dearly beloved children? I say YES to helping families survive on one income in the early years, but let's keep options open for both parents to do so. Perhaps that is the best way to maximize time with a parent at home!
661
Well said, Eloise! Stay-at-home motherhood is premised on the sexist idea that the relationship between mothers and their children is inherently superior. A few years ago, my good friend, a recently converted Third Wave intersectional feminist, implied as much when she was reciting the orthodoxy. I was a little shocked and had to remind her that, as a gay man who hopes to be a father, I’ve heard the same argument from homophobic social conservatives who oppose marriage equality my entire life.
46
@Eloïse-Some Times columnist seem never to consider learning what 21st century countries may have done to avoid a problem getting worse. Interestingly, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is here in Sweden to observe how her time in Lund led her to fight for better support for women in America. She says this revolutionized her thinking. Me too, first in Finland, all so in the 60s and then in Linköping 1991-92 and since 1996 for life.
More researchers should do that.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
42
@Eloïse Just look at the photo chosen for this article. I don't know many women who want to go back to that. Or many men.
29
I predicted this in 1978. I stated explicitly that the things that families need will inflate to soak up the extra buying power, and that he main culprit (would be) housing.
Why should this be? Because with housing, the supply isn't flexible enough to meet the demand.
If the world needs more washing machines or bicycles, the capitalist system will produce more of them to meet the demand. As more money pours into the demand side, manufacturers ramp up and produce products to meed the demand and capture some of that money.
With housing, it isn't so easy. It's more capital intensive, and it is difficult to find land and get permission to build on it. Once households had two incomes to spend on housing, they bid up the prices until now, as the article states, it takes two incomes for a family of normal means to house themselves.
The same thing will happen with the minimum wage. Landlords know how much a minimum wage earner can afford, and that's what they charge. When the income goes up, low-end housing will follow.
You can't uncouple income from supply for something as capital intensive or inflexible as housing. Any attempt to do so will result in some sort of blowback.
Families are far smaller now than in the long past days of Conservative wonderland...
... the number of children per family and the age parents are having children must be factored into the discussion.
dear ross i hope u read the comments section. because this entire very long column ignores the elephant in the room..........
wages stopped going up in the late 70's early 80's ONE PAYCHECK WOULDN'T SUPPORT A FAMILY ANY MORE
i happen to be one of the cohort of women who did begin a career around that time in finance. so i don't come down on either side of should women work or not. it's just a fact that economically they had to work.
i always wondered if all the "be all u can be" rhetoric of that time was just to make an economic necessity palatable.
and then when 2 paychecks weren't enough the borrowing started. we've basically had 40 years of stagnant wages--what were people to do?
5
Recognition of the problem dates at least 30 years--prior to Warren and Tyagi's work: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/27/magazine/the-perils-of-a-two-income-family.html ("The Perils of a Two-Income Family")
Solutions--beyond a few social and monetary management adjustments by individual families--have been in short supply. Government can help but our economic and political structures do not show signs of making this much easier.
Single payer affordable health care would solve about 50 percent of this. Fixing social security to support the basis of a secure retirement would fix much of the rest of the problem. Subsidized day care is good for families and paying day care workers a living wage would also be a good thing.
"Conservatives" have fought single payer healthcare for generations; they have gutted social security; and they are going after Medicare and public education. (Charter schools as a policy are not about educating children but are another way to divert taxes into business revenue--see Betsy De Vos.) They will not rest until the middle class is extinct and the lower classes are illiterate and back in chains. Let's stop pretending there is any intellectual basis for these specious arguments and policies or any good will toward humans and families in their proponents.
10
This is a wonderful and thoughtful column about a very important issue. I'm delighted to see both conservatives and liberals earnestly struggling to find solutions.
Women are, indeed, in the work-force to stay and this is--all in all--a very good and empowering thing. However, the fact that most families now need both parents to work full-time in order to maintain a middle-class standard of living is bad. Really bad. At least when a family has young children.
I look at my own life and see how things have changed in this country. My dad, who only had a high school diploma, supported a family of four for most of a decade, when I was little. We owned the house we lived in and had the basic amenities of a middle-class life at the time.
Four decades later, I'm also part of a family of four. And although I have a Ph.D. and am a college professor, my salary alone isn't enough to provide my family with a middle-class life. We could get by on it, for sure, but I doubt we could own and maintain a home or accumulate any savings. And when both parents have to work, especially when raising young children, it adds a lot of stress to a household.
3
Our nephew chose to be stay at home parent. His personality is better suited to it and my niece's is better in a work environment--she's an RN and he's the king of finding a deal. It's been interesting watching their family of one child evolve. Today she's six and being home schooling. He also realizes that he could never get a job in his profession as a bio-mechanical engineer with a masters because he's been out of the work force too long. The biggest gender difference is that my niece smothers him with compliments and brags in public about his parenting and housekeeping skills. If more husbands did that about their stay at home wives... let's just say that no wife ever filed for divorce from being too high on a pedestal.
1
Here's another thought.
Most people go to work because they have to pay for necessities. Yeah, my $600 Apple Watch is nice, but it is not why I went to work. I went to work because I need to have access to healthcare, and I need food, and I need a home. The niceties that people buy are not proof of some corrosive influence of affluence. That's an insulting suggestion: that we must live spartan lives or shut up about being unable to have work-life balances that allow us to have lives at all.
The answer to this "problem" is actually very straightforward. Use government to return power to labor so that labor is not at the mercy of capitalists, and let labor decide what it needs. You'll end up with higher wages, better benefits, and rich people who aren't quite as rich at the top. The "diminished work incentive" argument is nonsense. Innovation would suffer because Bill Gates' taxes might go up? Please. The American superpower emerged in an era of 90% marginal rates on the wealthiest citizens. It has sputtered and struggled under a tax system that demands far less of them. This country does not need richer rich people.
If you raise those taxes and exert government power to force money back down the ladder, you'll also accidentally solve this "one-income trap" problem. Living wages give more people flexibility and autonomy--to pursue whatever life they want. You don't even need to aim at the problem to solve it... if you just stop thinking so small.
14
Why is no one commenting on the big elephant on the room? Marriage itself seems to be such a social construct- one designed mainly with the purpose of raising children. Most married couples I know are staying together only for the sake of the children, and most women I know would feel very isolated living only for the sake of the “family”. Don’t we all have a larger destiny to fulfill in this world? Children grow up to find their own destiny- we are only their temporary guardians, to prepare them to meet the world. Women have been conditioned to think of themselves only in terms of their relationships. But I think by keeping our material desires simple it is possible to find our destiny, love our children, and ultimately find happiness within ourselves. Isn’t that the point of life, not chasing after these temporary pleasures? Not trying to fit every individual into a silly archaic traditional “family” mold, when family can mean very different things to different people?
4
Two earner families are here to say. The main issue for conservatives that actually care about families is how to change the mindset that calls for decreasing taxes on the rich and cutting social programs which help less well off two earner families, as well as one parent families. Until conservatives solve that problem, there will be no real "pro-family" conservative.
205
@Bob Mcl I agree, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for conservatives to figure it out. "decreasing taxes on the rich and cutting social programs" is Republicans' only real platform.
6
@Bob Mcl
What is the progressive/Democrat solution?
The proposals to increase taxes on the rich are not going to collect a dime of extra revenue from the top 2%. As with the Obama tax increases , the definition of "rich" is $150,000 individual, $200,000 MFJ.
Although someone living in Memphis, Tennessee can pay extra federal taxes at that income level, that is middle or lower middle class in many blue states.
Democrats screamed bloody murder at the Trump tax reform that decreased income taxes for 80% of tax filers. The only filers who saw an increase were households in high tax regions with incomes over $300,000. That hit fewer and richer households than the tax on the rich that Obama imposed, but the demagogues pretended it was a tax on the middle class.
Go ahead and vote for Elizabeth Warren and her plan to tax wealth. After two years of no revenue appearing to cover the free tuition, expect your 401(k) account to be subject to the wealth tax. College administrators, meanwhile, will have increased tuition to absorb 60% of the government largesse. Their pay increases will be cast in stone.
Progressive represent that their redistribution scheme take from the rich and give to everyone else.
The reality is that Obamacare gave billions to big medicine executives, gave pennies to the poor and the middle class got higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
Free college tuition is going to make college administrators richer and costs higher for everyone.
The societal costs of two parents working without a social support system is why Elizabeth Warren's ideas are the right ones for our time.
We've rightfully committed toward this path of equal opportunity for men and women. Simple supply and demand theory suggests wages will stagnate as the numbers of workers available increase. The stagnated wages benefit corporations bottom line. The result is approximately the same income even though 2 people are working.
Before women entered the workforce they were doing real valuable work at home and in the community that is not being replaced (despite the fact women are now more often trying to do both jobs). So now there's 3 jobs being done by two people. What could possibly go wrong?
What foolishness! We cannot put the genie back in the bottle. The pill put women in charge of their bodies, and women have always been able to make choices about bearing children, with or without daycare. Warren et al speak to the reality this article rather ignores that for many women who may be single for many reasons andhave children must work. The period for a woman's life lasts much longer than do her childbearing and raising years, so careers as life aspirations mean a great deal. Justice Ginsberg had trouble finding job, had a good partner, and the two together raised two daughters. We ignore social reality at tremendous costs and consequences. Of those 40-50% one commentator quotes as being raised in single parent households, a greater percentage no doubt are below many lines of income, if not the poverty line. How many men imprisoned for insufficient cause, for years? Erase more of the stigmas ot race and income and make universal childcare like other civilized countries do and women will make their own choices depending on their own situation. In our economic policies which consider humans last, I'm beginning to believe, Silicon Valley is making choices that leave the human out. These two go together: more working women in positions of making policy as Warren was/is will move us toward a more humane life. Consider that, Mr. Douthat.
2
If companies paid workers their true value, one would sustain a household. The problem of too little money is solved by increasing pay considerably. If that decreases profits, the executive ranks can help out by restoring Exec / worker pay ratios of the 60’s. Any other fixes of too little pay fail to grasp and remove the root problem.
9
I’m missing how two income families “bid up” the cost of child care and housing.
An increase in productive labor (which we know is productive because an employer pays for it) should increase the supply of everything except raw materials.
What puts housing and essentials beyond the reach of families is wage stagnation for the middle class and lower and inequality. The supply is there, just not for everyone. That is, it’s that some families have two low incomes and some families have more wealth than they and their descendants could ever consume.
The solution is always going to be hated by conservatives, whether it’s the ones who dislike women working or the ones who condone historic income inequality or the ones who worry that helping people with kids incentivizes irresponsibility.
13
I’m about Sen Warren’s age. Old enough to remember when mortgage underwriters didn’t include a wife’s salary in qualifying income for a home mortgage. I was also a real estate broker.
When that changed, and both salaries could be used to qualify for mortgages, couples bought larger homes with larger mortgages. Naturally, following laws of supply and demand, the price of house shot up. People with one income had a greater struggle to qualify for the more expensive houses they were competing for.
Warren is right. Not sure her solutions are.
One issue pointed out is that we as a society have told ourselves that we need cable TV in every room, we need on suite bathrooms and walk in closets in our master bedroom, that every family member needs a cell phone with unlimited data service, and going out for dinner is routine rather than special. Those needs require money. If we began to scale back what we need vs want income wouldn’t need to be as high.
7
@JWyly
Corporate CEOs also don't need 13 homes, an airplane, multiple cars, designer clothes and to make 1000x more money than some of their employees.....which is the bigger problem?
5
@JWyly Most people can cut back some, but if everybody lived the most frugal life possible guess what would happen? The economy would collapse! When 40% of US families can't afford a $400 emergency something is seriously wrong and it can't be fixed just by going on a budget.
My mother was a stay at home mom. I was born in 1949. I believe that corporate America determined that if it need an executive, let's select a woman because we can pay her 50% of a man's comparable salary. If corporate America required receptionists, secretaries, other service related personnel, again, women were cheaper, providing there was no heavy lifting. No or much smaller pensions and absolutely no pay equality. Men and women were pitted against one another over the almighty dollar bill of which, if they were employed or seeking employment, over which they had little or no control.
There is no need to criticize Ms. Warren, as that she makes very important points. Women usually worked because for everything from prejudices to death or disability, the male was unable to earn an income which could support a family. What makes sense? Serious and generous family leave remains one of the most illusive necessary ingredient for America. Please don't tell me about off the job disability, which in New York State is a maximum of 6 months. BTW, off the job disability insurance providers rarely pay more than 30 days worth of payments because they [insurance] only covers the medical part of giving birth. But if America is going to decry a declining marriage and birth rate, then there is a tremendous need for programs, paid for by the government to address and support families, women and babies, after they are born.
2
Not working is a trap for many women.
How much suffering in a bad marriage is the result of not being financially able to be divorced?
For those women who are widowed or divorced and left without sufficient experience to get higher paid jobs or sufficient funds from insurance or savings - being married and not working was a bad decision.
Really, who made the decision that there should be only one wage earner in a family, anyway?
34
@Margo The patriarchy decided that.
2
Somewhere around 40 to 50 % of children today are being raised in single parent households. More American children are also living in poverty than any other westernized nation today.
We really don't care too much about low income, single mothers or their children.
21
Make home ownership a priority government policy.
I think one of the most significant government interventions would be to make owning a home more affordable. Since the financial crises of 2008, many distressed properties were purchased by wall street investment funds, which was a new tactic for them. As a result,house prices have increased out of proportion to wages, and home ownership is out of reach for many working millenials, even in my mostly blue collar county, and rents in many large cities are outrageous. I have two married millenials with children; the moms work part-time, but one is a highly paid nurse so they do alright. Sad to say, we are all waiting for the next crash, hoping housing prices will fall.
5
@Jeanne Prine Yes, the devastation and tragedy that was losing a home during the recent recession was merely an "opportunity" to make more money by the 1%. Steve Mnuchin (who's a republican) was was one of the people who profited on foreclosures. It's time to start making capitalism work for the working and middle classes. The rich are rich enough.
2
Bad mortgage lending is bad mortgage lending. That will just end up in more foreclosures. Subsidizing mortgages will not help the aspiring homeowner nearly as much as the lenders and sellers.
Douthat writes as if it's totally up to the women whether or not to work. Most women do not have a choice - it's necessary in order to make ends meet for the household, whether there are children or not. And if it's not a choice, there ought to be social supports and constructs to enable women to work outside the home and raise a family. Universal childcare and Pre-K would help make that happen.
11
Excuse me, where does it say that the person who decides not to work in a one-income family is the woman? Jeez.... why is this debate always framed as a feminist choice between mothering and working? Until we economically support and celebrate the advancement of men in the home, this debate will just be a rehash of women’s roles and not a true discussion about the financial realities and career options of raising a family in the 21st century. Sigh.
23
Why do people assume they invented everything last week?
I recall debating the question of whether doubling the labor supply might drive down the market value of labor in the late 1970's (not "15 years ago").
It ought to make any feminist nervous that a bunch of men are debating whether women should wuss out and let some man support them (maybe fewer will vote for Trump next time).
Baby Boomers didn't invent everything! Women in the work force is a concept invented by my mother's generation (born in the 1920's) during the 1940's. When the war was over, many of them (including my mother) decided it was a good thing and kept working for decades.
It was grand to be a latchkey kid--really! Today, mothers are "expected" to coddle their inmates and keep them away from "bad influences" for 25 years (a tension between work and parent-guilt), but wait! People are having fewer children in industrialized nations.
Finally, it would seem the macroeconomy has had a long time to adjust to the increase in labor supply. I would look to other commenters' ideas about AI and automation, and the trends in living standards, to decide what the labor market might do now. Obviously, it won't gain much traction if we all just sit and blame women.
5
@Charles Coughlin Thanks for this comment and for pointing out the women working is no new thing. But, I'd add that women in the formal work force is a concept that predates our mothers' generation (mine was also born in the 1920s). Some have even argued that the Boomer generation enshrined the notion that women should stay home in suburbia and raise large families. My great-grandmother worked as a seamstress. Both of my grandmothers worked, starting at age 15 -- they joined working girls' sororities and Girls Friendly societies. Of course, many women typically stopped working in the paid economy when they married and had children, but even this pattern changed for some in the Depression -- when my grandmother went back to work for a movie theater owner, as my grandfather could find no work at all. My own mother did interrupt her career for children-- but then went on to work for decades.
1
Women give birth and during that period just prior to birth and just afterwards, women need to have time to prepare and heal. But the act of childbirth has been ATTACHED to the responsibility of raising children. NOTHING in a woman's anatomy makes them a superior provider of day care, scheduler of doctors appointments, etc.
The natural and FALSE assumption is that because women are the only ones capable of birthing children we are the only ones capable of raising children.
14
There is a paradox at the core of this. If having a lot of financial resources is what enables people to have children, then why do highly-educated wealthy young people have so few of them?
Maybe the graduate degrees and six-figure jobs -- and the 3,500-square-foot houses and Lexuses that those jobs buy -- maybe all that wealth has a corrosive effect on people so that they lose a sense of what human life is really about, so naturally having children drops off the radar along with a lot of other meaningful activities.
The substitution of dogs for kids among educated young people -- I don't know what it means, but it sure is an interesting sign of the times.
I understand Warren's point, and it's true that housing costs are a real problem in all of the nation's most vital cities. But at the same time, in my city there are lots of inexpensive 700-square-feet row houses that used to be full of kids, and there's no law preventing that from happening again.
3
@Tom I wonder how many women in the past would have preferred not to have children had they only had the choice....the point is everyone should be able to decide how they spend their time here on earth. Human life isn't just about reproduction...just like it isn't just about acquiring Lexuses. I'm sure for a lot of people having children is wonderful...and for others not so much (take a look at all the miserable parents out there).
2
@MJ I agree. Nobody should be having children (or anything else) out of duty.
I just find it interesting that the very people who DO have the financial resources to raise children tend not to have children. Maybe it's just extremely demanding (and, presumably fulfilling) careers.
First, Mr. Douthat should not assume that feminism is behind this. Many dads want to stay at home. Second, there are let's not think that parents would not love to stay home, mom or dad, with kids if they had the chance. Almost all two-parent earners do so out of necessity. How do we make home prices more reasonable? How do we make cell phones more reasonable? How do we make car prices more reasonable? If the federal and state governments can subsidize some of these extreme costs perhaps more families could leave a parent at home.
3
@Anthony
We make prices, including the prices of the junk you want to buy, reasonable by requiring employers to pay a living wage. We need government subsidy of daycare and early education so that all women have a real choice. Many dads want to get paid better for jobs that provide health care and retirement. Right now, employers keep most of the revenue for themselves and give money to politicians who let them do that. We need very cheap contraception here and around the world. Low fertility is not a problem in an age of automation.
"essentially asks women to accommodate themselves to career paths made for men"
This should read "...career paths made to suit the employer". The economy and our lives are driven by a relentless emphasis on growth. It does not require a study to conclude that kids will do better if a capable parent is their primary caregiver every day--not a low wage worker.
7
@Teal Actually, this is just Douthat jumping on the victimhood bandwagon, along with so many liberals (of which I am one, though not of the victimhood culture variety). Women who choose to not work are choosing to let the man be financially powerful in the relationship. They are also choosing to be subservient to that financial power, just as he chooses to be subservient to his job. Women choosing to not work are not victims. They are merely choosing financial dependence over independence.
1
The argument of income-vs-lifestyle makes some sense when applied to (sub)urban couples, a primary earner currently making north of 120K and a secondary making whatever. But this is exactly the demographic that has been hollowed out by the wage and cultural practices of American industry, and which simply doesn't exist in the rural heartland.
4
If we could have subsisted on one income, we definitely would have. We tried one of us working full time--access to company health insurance a big reason-- and one of us working freelance from home but we could not keep up with rising costs. It had to be two incomes.
4
An interesting perspective, but when it comes to the "meat" of the argument -- what to actually do to improve people's lives -- all he says is "subsidize family life." What does that even mean?
Also, in light of the UN biodiversity/life on earth report from yesterday, I don't think we need any policies to encourage an increase in the birthrate. If anything, we should be passing out free contraception to everyone.
10
@Treetop Yes, I was wondering that too. He rejects subsidizing either daycare or single-income households, but then doesn't offer specifics for his own policy recommendation.
2
What does "subsidize family life" mean? Well, we've had recent proposals to give tax breaks or other subsidies to offset the cost of paid childcare. If instead you give tax credits to all families with young children, I woull call that "subsidizing family life." Then you wouldn't only be relieving economic pressures on families who pay for childcare, but also on families who reduce income so that a parent (or tag-team of parents) can provide childcare at home.
1
Women not working outside the home was always a mid-20th century middle class thing, not some great historical trend. My working class grandmothers always worked - then pulled a second shift at home.
12
Our problem is that we live in a culture of narcissism. Selfishness is not only socially acceptable but seems to be normal. It was the selfishness of upper-middle class men that inspired feminism in the first place. Women of that class found themselves when the husband married the mistress rather than kept her, that they had a college education and had to work trivial non-professional jobs. At the same time, our political economy moved away from the ideal of a "living wage" into a social milieu of dog-eat-dog hyper-capitalism with wealth moving from the middle-class to the rich and forcing the entire population to work outside the home just to survive.
I don't think Douthat knows much about the reality of the world of paycheck-to-paycheck living where increasing numbers of people have to not only have two incomes but four incomes as people, particularly in the working class must take two part-time jobs because employers don't want to pay for benefits and so on. Conservatives simply cannot understand the toxicity of predatory capitalism and will look anywhere but at the obvious cause of our explosion of depression, anxiety, and drug addictions.
32
"But to win the political battles that Carlson and Andrews envision, social conservatism needs not only visible MALE champions but also a rhetoric and a program that persuades MEN who are largely happy with their working lives that its fight can be theirs as well."
I suggest that we go to a one-income family model but disrupt the expectation to be that men are the parents that need to stay home to raise the children and keep the house. They can depend on their breadwinner wife and be the little man in the picture.
Women in the work world could agree that their guys could get a little part time job when the kids are in school just to feel like a part of something and earn a little money for a new shirt now and again.
How does that sound to you fellas? The tone of this opinion piece strikes me as condescending.
14
“There are many families that want to raise kids on one income, or one income and some part-time work, and instead find themselves pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the dual-earning Smith-Joneses next door.”
Conservatives talk about personal responsibility.
If people are pressured, financially and culturally, to keep up with the Jones who is responsible for that?
And, why should some conservatives suddenly become paternalistic about this matter?
But isn’t the real issue the fact that middle class wages have been stagnant for so long while income has migrated to the top 1%?
And, isn’t the real issue that many Americans work in industries for minimum wages with working hours held under 40 hour per week so that no benefits have to be given to the workers?
These are issue conservatives appear to be uninterested in addressing.
10
@Michael Roush I absolutely agree! I think Mr. Douthat's assertion that two-earner families are chasing after discretionary 'middle class amenities' rather than simply trying to pay the bills is disingenuous.
5
Work more , buy more, help "grow the economy," that's all that matters. Make the corporations wealthier. The hippies were right, drop out.
5
I'm intrigued that this essay is all about the parents and not one word about what's best for children. The first day care generation is now in their 30s and the results don't look good. Gen Y has more mental illness and more alcohol abuse than my generation. These serious problems cannot be blamed on iPhones, Facebook or even the economy. There may be a multitude of reasons for the decline of people, but inadequate, non-emotionally invested caretakers may be one factor. You can't pay someone to love your child for you.
9
@Anne I don't think this is terribly accurate. Nannies and daycare providers can provide loving childcare arrangements if they are decent at their jobs. And kids have been raised by extended families for centuries. It does not, and has never, really needed to be "just mom or dad" for good childcare to matter.
The problem I think young people have today with anxiety is not because they went to daycare. It's that they are literally never left alone. They have no independence because their parents schedule every free minute, no time outside, no time to roam the neighborhood on bikes because of fear of kidnapping. So at 18, they have no strong sense of self and no ability to function like adults, because they never got practice doing it during their early years.
8
@Anne The first day care generation is GenX. GenX was the big latch-key, day care generation.
@Anne - My children are on either side of 50 now. It was common back then for children to go to day care. In fact, teachers said that children who arrived in kindergarten having ONLY been cared for by a parent at home were behind the kids who'd had some day care or pre-school.
3
None of this has to be about gender. Zero. Politically it will be anyway. But socially there is no advantage in making this a discussion about gender. Other than... women should absolutely be making as much as men for doing the same jobs. If a middle class family decides to have two earners, so that they can have a nice house, huge underground pool and exotic vacation time, sacrificing family time with work and child care. we should absolutely live in a society that makes that possible. You know, without anyone believing they're really going to get extraordinarily rich. Those on one income should not have to sacrifice decent housing, a smaller pool and vacation time all together and we also need to make that a normal expectation for American families.
3
If anyone ever wants to see what an essay from the standpoint of privilege looks like, I'll send them to this one. Douthat doesn't seem to get that men are not permanent - they die in car accidents, they used to "go out for a pack of cigarettes" and never come back, etc. Once they became impermanent, their families were doomed to abject poverty due to sexism in the workplace and "insurance policies" that paid jack squat. While mainline feminist leaders pushed for professional recognition, their less-educated working class sisters were fighting for both fairness AND survival.
29
No, Helen Andrews did NOT "argue that American politics desperately needs a prominent spokeswoman for the desires and interests of mothers who wish to stay home."
What she argued for was a return to policies which make life for women who need / wish to work outside their homes as difficult as it was back in the 1950's.
4