This is one of the most infuriating articles I have ever read and the moral is don’t marry (or stay married to) men who are useless and refuse to help raise their own children. https://www.thelily.com/i-had-to-choose-being-a-mother-with-no-child-care-or-summer-camps-women-are-being-edged-out-of-the-workforce/?fbclid=IwAR2ly86prcjuEcAQqkEJPi82QhIzusMqpm33G3R_d89oSHOp2JN1kyKTljM

If I read “her salary barely covered the cost of childcare so she decided to stay home” one more time, I’m going to snap. (1) childcare should be a mutual responsibility, not juxtaposed with only her salary. (2) work is also an investment in a stable future.

Men know this, which is why they overwhelmingly continue to work even when they make less money than a female partner. Quitting to raise kids puts you in a very vulnerable position, financially dependent on a partner - and means a lifelong earnings hit if you do try to go back.

Couples split up. Assumptions about your family’s finances turn out not to be reality. People die. “Well it just makes sense for me to stay home” when you found meaning in work actually doesn’t make sense - it makes you financially vulnerable now and later.

Work brings social engagement & a variety of mental health benefits. A job offers a sense of accomplishment and a paycheck means some level of independence. These things are important, and if your husband pushes you to forgo them (or doesn’t help you maintain them), big red flag.

It's also important to think about the messages your kids see. Do you want the message to be that women are caregivers and men are breadwinners? There's a reason sons of working mothers do more around the house and spend more time caring for their children when they're grown.

Men with stay-at-home wives are less likely to hire, promote, and fairly compensate their female employees in the workplace. This stuff is subtle, but it runs deep, and assumptions about who works for pay and who does most of the at-home work shapes all our opportunities & lives.

OF COURSE lack of paid parental leave forces many families into impossible decisions. OF COURSE the focus on maternity leave, often with no or very limited paternity leave, establishes sexist patters in the house that are hard to break. The policy piece is huge here.

But it's not JUST policy, which you can see if you look at countries that have better policies. It's also about deeply-held expectations of who does care work and who works for pay, and how those expectations and patterns shape what we think "just makes sense" in our homes.

And honestly it is just really, really hard to have an egalitarian relationship if one person has all the resources. How many husbands of stay-at-home wives would transfer 50% of all income to their wives with each pay period?

The line that all income and assets are shared and just because he makes all the money doesn't mean he has more power and motherhood is the most important job in the world gets tested with divorce. And guess what? All of a sudden, he'll be very sure that money is and was his.

From another Post piece today: Women over 55 who lose their jobs have the toughest time get rehired. Separately, women who divorce after 50 are much more likely than divorced-after-50 men to wind up in poverty. Dropping out of work makes you vulnerable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/personal-finance/women-55-and-older-who-lose-their-jobs-in-the-pandemic-face-greater-risk-of-long-term-unemployment/2020/05/22/7df768ea-9c3b-11ea-ac72-3841fcc9b35f_story.html

And again, OF COURSE childcare is the great big problem here, and lots of women are pushed into making choices they don't want to make. But overwhelmingly, it's women who drop out - even when they made more than their husbands. This isn't just about individual choices.

It is very much about how "what's best for our family" involves a silent expectation that women make hugely disproportionate sacrifices and take extraordinary risks with their financial futures that systematically enable men to maintain power and get ahead.

As an aside, everyone is pissed at the husband in the lead story, and I agree he is the absolute worst. But the rest of the husbands aren't much better - systematically, women drop out because there's a presumption that childcare is their job, and their husbands don't do enough.

Beyond that story, we have statistics about (1) time use by gender, and (2) the relative benefits and drawbacks of dropping out of the workforce. They paint a very clear picture: Men do far less to care for children & the home, and women pay the financial and psychological price.