The pay gap can't be explained by what field one chooses. Fields like nursing which are predominantly female still show males earning more. It's pretty much across cultures that women's work is lower status, even if it's the exact same job as in another culture. The time off for child care thing is a bigger issue.

It is the reality that having a kid hits a woman's career in a way that it doesn't men's, for the reasons you cite.

The current system is pretty godawful for most mothers, though not for most fathers, because having a kid doesn't tend to hurt a man's career prospects. And it's not that women want to have it all, it is that there is this social pressure to do it all. To go to work and come home and work second shift. Basically to have two full time jobs.

I'm not sure "Yeah well that's just the way it is, suck it" is particularly productive.

The question is do we want women to have kids, or do we want a population drop, or do we want to import new people from other places? Do we want women to work outside the home, work part time, work full time, or stay at home? What does the ideal situation even look like? Thoughts?

I think honestly, as much as I would hate it myself, we're going to need to go back to a several generations under one roof model. This would solve several problems, including the problem that in a lot of places housing has gotten too expensive for young people. It could help with the childcare issue. Parents could work, older grandparents could stay home or if they're still working it's easier to afford child care with more salaries. It would suck though. As much as I love my parents and like my mIL fine, not sure I want to live full time with them...

Why the SUV craze? Because today's parents are too good to be known for driving a van that just reeks of children and children's messes and parental responsibilities.

They broke enough of these women that there is no going back to the nuclear family structure or an extended care from grandparents. The social experiment did what it was supposed to do: destroy America's old structures that resisted communist domination. It's hilarious that the novel and ingenious proposal is matriarchal tribalism. (It's also funny because this creates even less responsibility for men as the women continue to barrel headlong into mindlessly demanding more responsibility.)

If a woman does not produce value for a business commensurate with her wage or ideally 3-5x her wage, then she doesn't deserve the wage - neither does any man - since her inability to work while having children creates no value for the business. It used to create value for her husband and her family, but the modern independent woman needs neither of those, so instead she relies on trying to claim she's creating value for the state by raising up a little chattel slave for the state, hoping that future tax obligations of her offspring will entice the state to give her money now.

If only she could have just kept a man and waited for that ring on her finger before having kids.

"She imagines a place where women in different ages and stages of life might come to live and share the work of child-rearing and care taking."

This is illegal. Daycare rules are voluminous and stringent. What this woman imagines as a bright future is quite clearly illegal. Hence such places don't exist.

And it's not that women want to have it all, it is that there is this social pressure to do it all.

Gee, I wonder where that came from? one of the greatest lies feminism told was that women could have it all.

Everyone must sacrifice to get what they want, one way or another. Why are 98% of workplace fatalities male? It isn't because we are clumsy, it is because work that is dangerous must pay more to get people to do the work. Driving an oil tanker? You get hazard pay. Men also work longer hours and have longer commutes (so the family can live in a nicer place) than women. So no,men don't get to "have it all" either. It is total crap that women work more than men. If the man works more hours and has a longer commute and then does yard work and helps the kids with homework and teaches them to throw a ball, sure he isn't doing as many dishes but he is working. If you count the hours women get to do other things, it becomes more clear. If a woman with small children gets together with other mothers for a play date and the ladies chat and have lunch, this is not the same as cutting the grass, sorry.

Women even when they work do NOT want to be the main financial support for the family and if he loses his job divorce becomes much more likely. Being a single mother is not an ideal lifestyle and is not good for the kids either. The idea that any choice one makes should be made good by the government is simply a terrible idea.

NicoleK above says women get paid less than men not merely due to job choice. Not quite true. Single women (no kids) in major cities in US make MORE than single men the same age on average. Yes, taking 10 years off to raise kids does cut into your earnings. You expect to make the same as someone with 10 more years experience?

Why is "don't be a single mom" not an easier option than communal living?

"The pay gap can't be explained by what field one chooses. Fields like nursing which are predominantly female still show males earning more."

Nonsense. AFTER you IGNORE the absence of women in deadly professions yet count those as male advantage, Federal contractors MUST offer identical pay for identical positions, such as radiological field work or Control Room Operations, yet women, who skip overtime to tend to family, DO CHOOSE less pay.

You might want to look at the jobs offered by a serious multinational - from clerical to explosives handling - and see which you would choose.

Who is foolish enough to think that the woman is the one to stay home and look after kids and the man stays working because of some societal patriarchy mandate?
Those decisions get made at a much more granular level, around the kitchen table, where partners discuss who would most prefer to stay home, whose job pays more, whose job is more sensitive to time away, whose job gives the better benefits, who has the worse commute, who can more easily work from home, etc..

Now if you want to talk about assumptions about who is the better caregiver to children, one need look no further than the biases of the nation's family courts and the judges who preside there.

"The pay gap can't be explained by what field one chooses. Fields like nursing which are predominantly female still show males earning more. "
Yes, it largely can be.
However, where it can't, that's because the men tend to work at more skilled and more difficult specialties within a field (e.g., surgical nurse), and they tend to work more hours. The women opt for flexibile schedules and shorter hours.

The pay gap is largely a fiction created by the likes of writers for Cosmopolitan magazine and network news anchors (who don't have sufficient math skills to understand what is going on) and their gullible readers.

Women are currently reaping all of the "rewards" feminism has to offer -- and are less happy than ever. So suffer.

Is it any wonder that both government and business have both gone "all in" for feminism? More workers to drive down wages, more dependent, taxable serfs looking for a surrogate "husband". Ah, life is good!

The poverty rate for single mother headed families is about 34%, versus about 6% for two parent families. https://www.bing.com/fd/ls/GLinkPing.aspx?IG=7C2321878B5947A4810D890939770B78&&ID=SERP,5355.1&SUIH=9wBJ-6vccCPLDJhvW2oLqA&redir=aHR0cHM6Ly9zaW5nbGVtb3RoZXJndWlkZS5jb20vc2luZ2xlLW1vdGhlci1zdGF0aXN0aWNzLyM6fjp0ZXh0PVRoZSUyMHBvdmVydHklMjByYXRlJTIwZm9yJTIwc2luZ2xlLW1vdGhlciUyMGZhbWlsaWVzJTIwaW4lMjAyMDE4LGxpdmluZyUyMHdpdGglMjBtb3RoZXIlMjBvbmx5JTJDJTIwNDAlMjUlMjBsaXZlZCUyMGluJTIwcG92ZXJ0eS4

Probably the best way to guarantee a life of poverty for mother and children is to live in a household headed by a single mother. The idea of a women’s commune sounds like another utopian fantasy which will be another failure, in the historical string of utopian commune failures. Reality can be very harsh on those who make poor decisions.

She has taken this year to further develop her plans for a woman-centered communal living project. She imagines a place where women in different ages and stages of life might come to live and share the work of child-rearing and care taking.

OK, do it. Who cares?

When I asked her why she thought more of these kinds of places didn't already exist, she answered bluntly: "Because America and the world would collapse in 20 seconds if women were showing up for each other instead of being exploited for every form of labor."

That belongs in the category of mothers estimating their financial worth as cooks, chauffeurs, charwomen, etc. Self-important much?

> "The pay gap can't be explained
> by what field one chooses. Fields
> like nursing which are predominantly
> female still show males earning more."
>
> Nonsense.

👍

Imagine if you'd built your entire personality around the butthurt of thinking you'd been cheated by the MAN, who done you wrong… As if you'd never been at the helm of your own craft at all.

Or imagine that even if you suspected in your heart of hearts that all the contemporary whining was bullshit, you figured it would be easy to score some cheap brownie points by carrying your body, and your mind, in a posture of resentful powerlessness.

That would suck, wouldn't it?

Because, Momof4, it isn't just single mothers affected. Married mothers are affected as well.

Here's the question... of the women having to drop out because of the pandemic, I wonder how many of them had careers they loved or that earned a significant percentage of household income.

I ask because anecdotally my friends who lost their jobs were part-time hobby workers and my friends who kept their jobs either were following their passions or earning good change.

As for lawn-mowing, I'd say it is more comparable to vacuuming/general cleaning than child care. I wonder why we don't hire teens to vacuum, though...

"I wonder why we don't hire teens to vacuum, though..." ~NicoleK

Some do. Mostly the elderly. The main issue is vacuuming is done in the house, an area mainly considered private. Mowing is done outside in a publicly accessible area.

And for the most part teens don't mow lawns in the US. It is now an adult commercial enterprise. The same is true for professional maid services.

NicoleK when you compare apples to apples women make more per hour than men do. At least here in the US that is true. Women choose less dangerous jobs, more flexible hours, and work fewer hours.

As you mention women typically have the kids and hence solely bear the burden of raising them when they are the only parent. If you are pushing for custody reform in the courts then I am with you 100%. Women win custody 98% of the time. It is almost impossible for a father to get custody here. But if you are presenting this as some example of 'society' going after women then you are full of bullshit. Women fight to get their kids. If there is any pressure from 'society' it is actually the opposite. Only the very sexist views of family courts support that argument. And in that case it is the women demanding the 'burden'.

Very good points, NicoleK.

Your first post reminded me of what my father told me when, in the 1990s, he was teaching ESL to adults in Prague. I don't know how he found this out, but it seems that in the Czech Republic, paid babysitting (as opposed to hiring nannies, maybe) is practically unheard of. Why? Because Czechs don't tend to move hundreds of miles away from their extended families the way Americans do - IIRC. So they depend on their relatives. And they return such favors as needed - maybe. After all, even in the U.S., there used to be the attitude that WOMEN should be constantly doing unpaid work for their communities - and be happy about it!

This got mentioned near the end of that long 2000 article I posted a while back about the Baptist homeschooling family. Quote:

...And after college? Neither Megan nor Steve is outright opposed to their daughters' working, especially before they have children. Like many conservative Christians, they warm to the idea of a wife running her own little business from the home. ''Proverbs 31 talks about the woman who made purple linens at home and sold them,'' Steve points out. But they warm even more to the idea of their daughters ''having an eye to serve without compensation,'' as Megan says. They think too many working women have forgotten the virtues of volunteerism. And if one of their girls was to pursue a full-fledged career, Steve says, ''we'd still love her and encourage her and, after all, at some point it's her life,'' but they would also find it hard to disguise their disappointment. ''A career takes away from what I think their primary happiness will be, which is being a good mother,'' Steve says...

(Note that they don't talk about the need for the daughters to be able to support their HUSBANDS and children, should disaster strike. "A little business" isn't likely to do that.)

Oh, yes, and how many kids does it take for a babysitting situation to turn into an "illegal daycare center"? What if a grandmother is looking after her ten grandkids, whether or not a neighbor's kid gets added? Could that be illegal? I doubt it.

"I wonder why we don't hire teens to vacuum"

*I* wonder why more parents don't realize that doing chores together with their kids, regardless of age, counts perfectly well as "quality time." Therefore, they should just make their kids work and work until BOTH parent and child can afford to spend a short time playing cards or jogging - and not feel guilty about making them work instead of sending them to some extracurricular activity they can't really afford.

(Also, screen time - instead of working on chores - isn't just bad for kids' bodies, imaginations, and attention spans - it's often a money pit as well. Not to mention that at least half of any toy you buy will likely go to a landfill some day.)

Bottom line: to be happy, it helps to think of useful activities (I.e., activities that are healthful or that can help save money or even earn money) as more emotionally fulfilling than useless, passive, costly or brain-dead activities.

Adult life is about choices.

This is the part that seems most difficult for people to grasp, that choices have consequences.

If you choose to drop out of school, you have chosen to have no marketable skills to offer the world. You have chosen to forego an education or the opportunity for skills development. Your subsequent lack of ability to find employment that pays above minimum wage is not a result of corporate greed, but of your own choices.

With that in mind, does dropping out mean you're doomed? Not necessarily. The answer to that question depends greatly upon the next choice you make. I know a guy who dropped out of high school and the next day signed up for the local community college's carpentry program. Today, he owns a general contracting firm with as much work as it can handle. That, again, was the result of the choices he made.

"What if a grandmother is looking after her ten grandkids, whether or not a neighbor's kid gets added? Could that be illegal? I doubt it." ~Lenona

In most states you would be wrong Lenona. For the most part if you are supervising your own kids the laws permits that no matter how many. But the moment you add anyone else then you may be violating the law.

What is probably confusing you is that the law is largely unenforceable against grandmothers and teenagers. You have to have someone complain and then the police, child services, etc all get involved. Enforcing the law isn't that easy. So lots of small time illegal operations happen all the time. But once you are providing housing plus child care services you aren't a small time illegal operation. All it takes is one person complaining and the cops will come shut you down. Not to mention the permit office before you even begin construction of the 'commune'.

"Oh, yes, and how many kids does it take for a babysitting situation to turn into an "illegal daycare center"?" ~Lenona

Depends on the state (or city some times) and the age of the kids. Here are common rules. Though your jurisdiction may have stricter rules.

https://www.childcare.gov/index.php/consumer-education/ratios-and-group-sizes

This is why child care is so expensive. It is required to be so by law. If you have an infant and only 4 infants are permitted per worker and you are making wages anywhere near what that worker is making the minimum labor cost for child care is 25% of your income. Simple math.

This is why child care is so expensive. It is required to be so by law. If you have an infant and only 4 infants are permitted per worker and you are making wages anywhere near what that worker is making the minimum labor cost for child care is 25% of your income. Simple math. ~ Ben at December 27, 2020 7:42 AM

Quick back of the envelope:

Four infants per worker. Assume the worker requires more than minimum wage. It is, after all, a job requiring training, credentials, and state licensure. ERI says the average daycare worker in Charlotte, NC with 1-4 years experience makes $12 / hour, so we'll use that.

Add benefits and other employer costs at the standard multiplier of 35% and your daycare FTE costs the daycare center an estimated $648 per week and you're paying $162 of that. That's without overtime - i.e., the parent is late picking up the child. Keep in mind, too, that California requires overtime for any hours over 8 per day.

Some of the overtime costs can be kept down with part-time workers, but that runs a higher replacement costs as those folks find full-time work elsewhere.

Now add in another percentage, let's say another 35%, to cover the maintenance, HVAC, food, toys, management, insurance, etc. that all daycare centers need and the annual cost to the daycare center per FTE runs roughly $43,740.

At four children per FTE, you're paying ¼ of that, or almost $11,000 per child. Keep in mind that b-o-t-e calculation leaves no room for profit margin or other costs.

Again, this was strictly back-of-the-envelope. Don't take it as an expert or full breakdown of daycare costs.

Of course, costs will vary in different labor markets. They will vary by the quality of the care as well. You'll pay a more to have a daycare center that provides an educational environment, for one that is in a "nice part of town," or for one that has a lower workers-per-child ratio.

To the best of my knowledge you don't see much difference in workers-per-child. You have enough people joining up and dropping out that stability is a real issue in this business. And given how expensive things already are anything more than the federal requirements pretty much puts you out of business. So people who want and can afford that feature just go the nanny route. And while nannies typically fall under the same rules it is much easier to run an illegal nanny operation than an open to the public business.

Where I have seen big differences is in facilities offered. Namely food. If you want to serve any kind of food, even goldfish in individually wrapped bags, you must have a restaurant grade kitchen. At least around here that is the rule. So there is a huge step up in price depending on if the daycare serves food of any kind. On the order of doubling the price.

More education environments, play equipment, trendy yoga thing, etc. all seems to change the price in a more reasonable +/-10% range. The one that makes a huge difference is food.

If you want to serve any kind of food, even goldfish in individually wrapped bags, you must have a restaurant grade kitchen. At least around here that is the rule. ~ Ben at December 27, 2020 12:20 PM

I read somewhere that start-up costs are the biggest barrier-to-entry in starting a daycare. With a rule like that, I can believe it.

I suspect that rule was pushed by corporate daycare providers (e.g., La Petit) in order to shut down home-based daycare competitors.