Jane Galt is worried about the economics of childcare and she gives a good account of the hard choices women often feel they must face about bearing and rearing children:
bq. Should we stay home, or shouldn’t we? It’s a difficult question for professional women. … We want to be successful as much as our husbands do. Taking five or eight or ten years off to get the kids started off right before they go to school is going to mean irreperably harming our prospects for advancement. We want very badly to convince ourselves that day care is really just as good, better even — or at the very least, that it is sufficiently not-worse that it’s justified. … And if I am a professional woman, my child is going to be spending ten or more hours a day with [a child-care provider] — more hours than they are with me. … And that’s assuming some hypothetical ideal of day care. Then there’s the actual day care we get, which pays people between $12-20K a year to babysit a large number of children.
Jane’s initial question — “Should we stay home, or shouldn’t we? It’s a difficult question for professional women” — effectively concedes the case as lost from the get-go. It frames the problem as wholly belonging to the prospective mother. Dad has no responsibility towards his potential offspring, is not required to make any work/family tradeoffs, and indeed has so much autonomy that a woman who chooses kids over career is “taking a huge financial bet on her husband’s fidelity.”
Jane’s dilemma is real, but its reality isn’t a necessary fact about the world. Rather, it’s a product of how the institutions of work and family are organized. As she herself says in passing, “society is not set up to allow women to take a break. Jobs aren’t made to accommodate it. And neither is marriage.” She’s right. But instead of framing the question in the terms society hands to you (this is entirely a problem for individual women which necessitates a tradeoff whose costs are borne solely by individual women), we can ask how these institutions might be reconstructed.
Two useful places to begin are Nancy Folbre’s The Invisible Heart and Joan Williams’ Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. If you’re interested in fresh and practical perspectives on work/family conflicts, I’d recommend both these books, especially Williams’. (Here’s a Q&A with Williams.)
Folbre is very good on the general state of affairs that allows corporations to free-ride on (and profit from) the informal production of care within the household. (This is the much-neglected “invisible heart” of the title.) Williams focuses on the same set of choices that Jane discusses, showing how they are not the unavoidable, individual tradeoffs for women that they may appear. As Williams shows, the problem does not lie with women who want to have it all (and who subsequently can’t decide what to do), but with the “Ideal Worker Norm” built into the structure of professional careers. This is the gendered conception of the good employee, the role that companies want their employees to play. It’s institutionalized in their formal and informal expectations about how workers should behave on the job, in systems of reward and promotion, and in the benefits the state provides to workers and employers. It presupposes, at bottom, that the employee has someone at home to take care of him. It’s what needs to get reconstructed if there’s going to be any real progress on child care in the United States. In the long term, stop-gap solutions of the sort mentioned by Mark Kleiman just continue to let organizations in the formal economy off the hook.
Now, framing the issue this way will not make the problem Jane faces disappear. An individual woman deciding whether to have a child still faces the decisions she describes. But your basic orientation to the problem really does matter. The social world is not natural, which means there’s a sociology and a politics of child care as well as an economics. The institutions that structure people’s career paths may have deep roots, but that’s not because they spring naturally out of the earth. Cross-national comparison shows both that there’s considerable variation in the institutionalization of child care, and that this variation can have odd origins. For example, a very nice paper by Kimberly Morgan shows how working parents in France, Sweden and Germany presently live, for good or bad, with the residue of 19th-centrury conflicts between church and state over children’s education. These institutions aren’t immutable, either. In fact, in the U.S. they’ve changed a great deal since the early 1980s, often in response to surprisingly small shifts in law or policy.
Looking at the problem this way makes one less likely to fatalism about tragic choices, wanting to have it all, and the inevitable clash of work and family. It allows you, as Williams does, to propose some practical social policies — often as simple as changing the tax incentives offered to corporations — designed to shift the balance in favor of families. It won’t solve the problem overnight, but it does offer a more powerful analysis of it. It also has the virtue — as C. Wright Mills put it forty years ago — of letting us “grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society,” rather than forever being stuck at the level of individual women facing insoluble work-family tradeoffs.
{ 28 comments }
Chris 09.03.03 at 10:06 am
A somewhat mischievous thought passed through my brain whilst reading the above, Kieran.
You write about:
bq. the gendered conception of the good employee, the role that companies want their employees to play. It’s institutionalized in their formal and informal expectations about how workers should behave on the job, in systems of reward and promotion, and in the benefits the state provides to workers and employers. It presupposes, at bottom, that the employee has someone at home to take care of him.
Elsewhere you’ve held up Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” as providing some kind of a model for academics to aspire to. Now is the ideal-typical scientist gendered? Does he have someone at home to look after him? Should academics not have children? For, certainly, any academic tenure or promotion process that takes something like Weber’s scientist as a model of excellence is not going to be very child or carer friendly.
Anders 09.03.03 at 2:06 pm
Kieran, let’s say the Dean presidential campaign asked you for advice on how to make a big difference on this issue over the next eight years. In your opinion, what are the three or five most important steps we could take in the US (and “overthrowing capitalism and creating a utopian society” doesn’t count as an answer)?
carla 09.03.03 at 3:30 pm
And let’s not forget Arlie Hochschild’s “The Second Shift.”
Two thoughts. First, I think women should be asking themselves a slightly different set of questions, something on the order of “Do I think this man is going to participate equitably in the running of the household and the raising of any children?” And they have to ask a lot of hard questions, and be willing to not have kids if they don’t get the answers they can trust. That’s the personal level. Yes, I know that unpredictable things happen, but if that guy you’re living with doesn’t clean the bathroom, piles his dishes in the sink, or pays someone else to take care of the chores of his life for him, what makes you think he’s gonna suddenly be all stay-at-home-dad who participates fully in raising children?
As for anders’ question, here’s one suggestion: provide more incentives for onsite childcare, of the type that even takes sick kids, and provide more funding for child care for low-income parents.
Finally, I happen to know two men who spent significant time raising their infant children while mom went back to work, and a couple of others who have spent significant time and effort in child care–and they all talk about how incredibly cool and rewarding it is/was, even as it’s also sometimes boring and tedious and the like. But acknowledgement of this joy (and tedium) is nowhere to be found in much of the public discourse. Can you imagine something like this on one of those man-shows? Of course not; it’s perpetual adolescence, where the main reason to get a good job is to get bigger and better toys.
zizka 09.03.03 at 5:26 pm
Making the question non-sexist just divides the problem between two people. It doesn’t solve it. An already-successful, nurturing man marrying a much younger ambitious woman could do it, I suppose.
A solution would be to become VERY successful and then hire a high-quality nanny. Who? An English or History PhD. Many of them are already working for about $30,000 / yr., and that’s the ones who have jobs. Drop by the Invisible Adjunct if you’re hiring. ( http://www.invisibleadjunct.com ).
You also might try hiring immigrant PhD nannies on one of those special visas that allow you to have an employee deported if he tries to change jobs. (We’re being non-sexist here, so you’d have to hire a dude rather than a babe nanny).
Jane Galt 09.03.03 at 6:06 pm
Hiring an expensive nanny doesn’t get around the fact that at that point, someone else is essentially raising your children; someone with different goals and desires for your child. Imparting values and life experiences to your child is simply not susceptible to effective delegation. That presumes, of course, that you can get these PhDs to work as child care providers (the reaction of the English PhDs I knew to such a suggestion would have been –er, somewhat pungent); that you make, after tax, enough to cover salary+benefits for your nanny, plus work expenses; and that you broadly wish your child to acquire the mores and values of a modern English department.
As for societal change — well, that’s not a very helpful suggestion for my friends, colleagues, and classmates who are making decisions about childbearing right now. Their ovaries aren’t going to wait for the revolution to come. I agree that society will change, because the current setup isn’t tenable. Telecommuting may make the whole discussion moot, for example. But I don’t see it as obvious that the change that will happen will favor companies making the change; one can say that the fault lies in gender norming, but that’s also a rather more efficient way to run a company. The “family friendly” regimes I’ve seen impose rather significant transaction costs, and at some point it simply isn’t practical for a company to hold its production line hostage to the child care needs of key employees. America has dealt with this by requiring its female employees to outsource their child care much more completely than Europe; Europe has dealt with it (it seems to me) by putting women in charge of the family, giving them wide latitude to care for their children — and then keeping them out of mission critical areas. I find neither solution satisfactory, and don’t see how extending it to both parents is practical. Europe’s system also seems to be one of the key factors behind their plummeting birthrate. I’m not sure how a small shift in tax credits would compensate for this, although I might if you expanded.
In house child care is, I agree, nicer than the outside sort, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental fact that child care provided by someone else seems to be, in most cases, inferior to child care provided by Mom. And has to be, because child care means less attention from a less motivated provider — even before we consider that after taxes, most of us simply can’t afford to pay someone enough to get a really high-quality provider, even if we spread the cost over five children; their salary, taxes, benefits, insurance, rent, etc. would eat up the vast majority of our take home, unless we’re in the top income quintile. And IMHO, if your young child is spending the majority of their waking hours with someone else (or elses), that is who is raising your child, not you.
Simp 09.03.03 at 6:59 pm
just my personal anecdote:
My partner and I are struggling with this issue right now as well….wait, I should say that I am struggling with it.
I am looking at being a stay-at-home father. Once I found out that we were expecting, it took me less than a millisecond to realize that her career is more important, both to us and to society, than mine is. We are fortunate enough to be in the position to consider this as a real option simply by, as Carla states, giving up some toys.
What I do see, from a selfish point of view, is what an amazing and “once in a lifetime” opportunity this could be for me. Yes giving up the toys and the casual DINK lifestyle will be a change, but the perpetuation of my adolescence will be fed from raising my child (I only fear of becoming more of a “best-friend” rather than a strong father).
One of the big points touched on here is the cost of daycare. What is the percentage of my take-home pay that I’m willing to sacrifice to day care simply to ensure the continuation of my career? Am I willing to sacrifice that enormous amount of time away from my child?
I don’t want to trivialize my desire for a meaningful and rewarding career or my fear of re-entering the workforce, but I see myself as being out, realistically 3 to 4 years, not the 5 to 10 suggested here.
I’m still struggling with the decision, but unless some perfect community co-op daycare suddenly reveals itself (which is a real possibility where I live), I’m staying home, raising my child and cleaning the bathroom.
Simp
p.s. Great to see Ted back in the community, cheers!
clew 09.03.03 at 7:14 pm
Zizka, your first suggestion works: the old successful guy marries the up-and-coming young woman; she telecommutes from the hospital, he moves home but keeps an advisory position suitable for minor emolument and social station. She’ll live long enough to see their grandkids; in her late middle age, she’ll take up with a young man who needs polish but can’t afford kids yet…
Can’t work for a whole lot of people, but it sounds like a movie already.
kokomo 09.03.03 at 8:07 pm
What I value the most is the love and respect of my wife, children, and community. Since I’m fairly well educated I had the luxury of changing careers — and trading cash for time.
Not everyone has this luxury, though Jane Galt’s friends would, if they could get over the enormous peer pressure to achieve “succes” through high income consulting & banking jobs.
The really difficult choices are made by those without the luxury of having one (or both) parents with high income potential pedigrees and resumes.
Does your family of 4 live on $30k while mom stays home full time for several years? Does mom work too? Does dad get a second job?
And what if Mom is better suited to the labor market than Dad, but lives in a conservative rural area where Dad is ridiculed for being a full time Dad while Mom exercises her comparative advantage as the family bread winner? What then, Jane Galt? Get over your petty self.
Jane Galt 09.03.03 at 10:16 pm
I’m not in that position myself, Kokomo. First, I’m not married, so I’m not facing this decision right now, and second, I’m a journalist, which gives me a whole lot more ability than most people to build creative options for combining work and childcare. Yet, strangely, I am capable of sympathy for people with problems I do not share.
Low SES parents have different child care problems that are indeed pressing. I didn’t mean to imply that because high SES women have problems, low SES women did not; I am not suffering under the delusion that the fact that one set of people has problems means that the rest of the world is sailing blithely along on cloud nine. I simply meant to discuss a problem among a group of people with which I happen to be acquainted. If we, as a society, value that group of people having children, as we presumably do, than we, as a society, should be concerned about about structural problems that might discourage it.
So far, the solutions offered by both left and right are unsatisfactory. The solutions of the left don’t work: more institutionalized child care is, I think, fairly indisputably inferior to a mother at home; and requiring companies to provide expensive family leave and support services leads to the kind of ghettoization of the mommy track that one sees in Europe. Yet the solutions of the right are no better; it is simply not realistic to expect women to stay at home when, on one end of the socioeconomic spectrum, it is not financially viable, and on the other end, the costs to the women involved are potentially enormous.
natasha 09.04.03 at 12:00 am
“The solutions of the left don’t work: more institutionalized child care is, I think, fairly indisputably inferior to a mother at home; and requiring companies to provide expensive family leave and support services leads to the kind of ghettoization of the mommy track that one sees in Europe.”
Both of those statements do seem to assume that the father will not be involved. Is mother care naturally inferior to father care beyond the breastfeeding issue? Would the mommy track continue to be a career ghetto if more men gave it a try? Also, institutionalized child care is almost indisputably better than none at all, and may make the difference between getting by and dire poverty for some families.
It also speaks from an outlook of the professional office job. But what about the many other kinds of work that women have always done, many times right along with men.
Before the golden age of ‘Leave it to Beaver’ painted a world that barely was, lots of low-income mothers worked. Sometimes that work was in the home (farm labor, taking in laundry or sewing, making items of value for the household), and sometimes it wasn’t. The modern middle class ideal of a full grown adult who has no responsibility other than caring for their own children is rare in the course of history, and in the experience of most people living today.
Considering that the home was formerly a small factory for many things, taking care of one was no little achievement even when Laura Ingalls Wilder was living on the prairie. And this is probably closer to the experience of a not insignificant portion of the world population, it doesn’t directly compare in a world of supermarkets and modern conveniences.
What defines our modern experience, in part, is the abrupt dividing lines placed between work and home. The rigid compartmentalization of children into certain designated areas only, the segmentation of socializing by age, the demise of family businesses where everyone worked together, and the tendency to live far from family members who might share these burdens all add to the dilemma.
It isn’t only that we haven’t thought of good, new ways to handle this, but that we haven’t paid much attention to getting a clear idea of what the old ways really were.
zizka 09.04.03 at 12:07 am
You wouldn’t have to hire a deconstructionist lit PhD. You could hire a conservative historian, perhaps from Alabama or Mississippi, who’s being blackballed from the profession because of his views. If you can’t afford a PhD, an ABD might do.
PhD’s would probably have to go back to school to become nannies, but at least they would ultimately be relieved of the stigma of being English Lit PhD’s. No one would ever have to know, really.
Childraising is really economically a very bad proposition for both parents, regardless of how the costs are divided up. It is really not a rational thing to do. On the GNXP site where I am tolerated, they are eugenically worried both about the low fertility of educated families, and the high fertility of uneducated families. They have not accepted my argument that this is because childraising is a dumb choice, even though it is entirely consistent with the ideological tenor of the site.
Childraising is an irrational choice. For Jane even to consider the possibility of having kids would be an indication that she is subject to one of those hormonal things that sexists wrongly say females are subject to, if the sexists were not mistaken about this. (And of course, the GNXP eugenicists are on the lookout for hot blonde babes, instead of marrying the fertile wives-to-be their parents have already picked out for them.)
In many societies even the childbearing itself was subcontracted to less elite subwives, for example Jacob’s biblical family.
The dynamic of having someone else raise your children is also a factor in uneasiness about HS education. Who in their right mind would work as a HS teacher? Certainly NOT the people who are insistent on having the best for their kids. (I once tried to imagine one of the Bush, Cheney, or Reagan kids teaching high school — for all the pious talk, parents of that type would rather have their kids whoring about high society [like, e.g., Ron Jr.] than sinking into a proletarian job like that).
Invisible Adjunct 09.04.03 at 12:56 am
“Drop by the Invisible Adjunct if you’re hiring. (www.invisibleadjunct.com ).”
Are you kidding?! I’ve got my own career obstacle (er, beloved 2-year old son) to look after.
Great topic, Kieran. I’ve not yet read the Folbre, but have read Williams’ Unbending Gender, along with her series of columns at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Williams argues that, despite its self-image as more liberal and progressive than the rest of society, the academy is actually _less_ progressive when it comes to this issue (the main reason being, of course, the unforgiving demands of the tenure clock: when tenure was developed, the assumption was that the scholar had a wife at home to look after his material needs while he devoted himself to the life of the mind).
I actually _would_ dispute the statement that “more institutionalized child care is, I think, fairly indisputably inferior to a mother at home.” First, what is meant by “institutionalized”? The phrase carries a hefty load of ideological baggage, conjuring up images of neglected waifs starving for affection in a Romanian orphanage. There are many different kinds of child care other than that of a full-time mother at home: small family child care, preschool, and the like. The quality ranges from excellent to poor, but then, so too, I would suggest, does the quality of care offered by a mother at home.
Kieran Healy 09.04.03 at 1:36 am
Chris:
any academic tenure or promotion process that takes something like Weber’s scientist as a model of excellence is not going to be very child or carer friendly.
That’s correct. Williams (as another commenter noted) argues that academia tends actually to be worse at arranging itself to fix this problem than other, apparently less concerned sectors. It will be interesting to see whether the (I believe) inevitable rise of dual-career academic couples will put pressure on Universities to do something about this. My feeling is that sheer demographic change won’t do it by itself, though.
Anders:
“overthrowing capitalism and creating a utopian society†doesn’t count as an answer
Who said anything about that? It always surprises me that we’re at a point where anyone who argues that we need some kind of institutional reform is put in the “barking socialist utopian” box. Carla’s initial suggestions are good. Williams has more in her book.
Jane:
Their ovaries aren’t going to wait for the revolution to come
There we go again. Who said anything about a revolution, for God’s sake? And as I said (twice) in my post, reframing the question doesn’t solve it in the short term, it just gives you the tools to fix it in the longer term.
one can say that the fault lies in gender norming, but that’s also a rather more efficient way to run a company.
This is just saying “It’s cheaper for companies if they can externalise all of the care-related costs of their workers (and future workers).” To which the response is, Yeah, but we’re supposed to take that lying down? It’s cheaper for them to externalize pollution costs, too. That doesn’t mean they should. Folbre takes on this argument in her book.
Natasha’s and Invisible Adjunct’s comments speak to your baseline assumptions that (1) fathers have no responsibility for childcare, (2) a staff of childcare-free fathers or their equivalents is the only efficient way to run a company, (3) “institutionalized” childcare is always worse than “mom at home”, and (4) mom at home by herself all day is the natural state of affairs. If you think these are immutable facts about the world, then of course you are going to lose in a big way.
As for the changeability of these arrangements: As the Kelly and Dobbin paper linked to in the post shows, a few small changes in the tax system effectively gave rise to the modern maternity leave/childcare industry in the United States, much to everyone’s surprise. The general point is that changing the system is quite feasible given a little political will. In the longer term, the expectations of corporations and people generally are also quite changeable, especially when many people have to adopt new work arrangements in the first place. People got used to the idea that women having careers in the first place wasn’t going to cause society to collapse, for instance.
The broad goal should be to build institutions that allow families to make real choices, and not the kind of painted-into-a-corner decisions that you and many other professional women now face.
Sue 09.04.03 at 3:44 am
If we, as a society, value that group of people having children, as we presumably do, than we, as a society, should be concerned about about structural problems that might discourage it.
Jane, glad you’re raising the question, and sensitive to the short term dilemma individuals face while we’re working on society (or not).
But. One very big part of the problem here in the US (and in Germany) is that large segments of the population don’t value having “high SES educated women” having children, because they don’t particularly value such women. They like the idea of upper-middle-class women deciding that it is wrong, somehow, to do anything besides stay at home and raise children full-time. It is a morality play, and a rather offensive one at that.
I fear you are buying into their argument, unintentionally, even though you think you are merely giving the claim some dispassionate attention. Here’s why.
Children are different, from adults, from each other. My son wanted nothing to do with staying home alone with me all day, and liked the nanny idea less. He was happiest when we found him a family day care setting, licensed and deeply trusted. He’d be happier if I stayed there all day too, but not much. Yes, we are very lucky to have found such a wonderful setting, but not ridiculously so – neighbord found a provider they love just as much.
I too worried that he would spend 8.5 hours a day with someone, less time awake than with me, surely she would claim his loyalty. But of course, that’s silly. First of all, there are naps, making the hours awake more compatible. Second, there are weekends, holidays, and the rest of his life. After all, Daddy is just as special, despite a much less flexible work schedule.
A child’s affection is not zero-sum. Love for others doesn’t cime out of Mommy’s share, and being loved by others doesn’t make Mommy’s love any less.
Child-care providers are also different. Depending on where one lives and the constraints of jobs and price, some poeple don’t have good care options. That doesn’t make it wrong for folks who have more choice.
Parents are different. Whether one haws the temperament to devote oneself to child-care varies. Some of us bought into the independent, career-driven ethos, to the point where it would feel more “right” or productive to work for a paycheck in day care than to stay at home for no pay. Self-awareness doesn’t make this less emotionally compelling. Some people need time alone, or the comfort of books and solitude, or the challenge of conversation with someone over the age of three. Some people are more able to work in bits, while a child naps or plays. Others aren’t. No one is well-served by guilt-tripping such a person into full-time child-care.
The opening question, and analysis, assuming that all things equal, children are “better off” when a parent is supervising 24 hours a day, is rigid and unrealistic for all the reasons other people have mentioned.
Mothers beat themselves up in this way all the time. I have a friend who was wracked with guilt because when her premature infant came along, her two-year-old would only have Mom’s undivided attention for maybe four hours a day, and had to share her the rest of the time.
When you consider the plight of potential mothers, try not to reinforce their already-extreme sense of guilt and imperfection. Otherwise you replicate the problem while under the illusion that you’re questioning it. That is, the only practical impact will be making individual women feel worse, perhaps with company, whether or not they have children or stay home. That’s why so many of the comments here have focused on the other agents – employers, fathers, etc.
cafl 09.04.03 at 4:41 am
From the vantage point of a professional woman whose two happy, well-adjusted kids are leaving for college (or nearly so), let me disagree with Jane Galt about in home and out of home child care vs. staying at home with the kids. You’ll find that your kids go through different stages where all these options rise to the top as best. Babies and toddlers, I think, probably do best at home, and I think mom’s regrets at not being there for that rapid development make that stage a perfect time to stay at home or cut back work if possible. But gradually increasing outside care in a good preschool works well.
Kids from K-5th grade (5-10) are very happy spending lots of time playing with their peers, and if you “stay home with your kids” you’ll actually spend your time carpooling them to sports and friends homes after school. Better to arrange things to have one day a week to do your share of carpooling and soccer watching, and arrange after school care where the kids are with their friends but with adequate provision for supervised homework if needed.
At 6th or 7th grade, kids don’t like being treated like babies, and don’t do well in day care. Great time to see if one parent can adjust his or her schedule to be home early, or part time reliable supervision that comes to your home daily in the afternoon to inconspicuously be around to supervise their time with peers on the days they are not playing sports or doing after school activities. You’ll still have carpools. If a parent can do it, it also facilitates being around to hear about school events, listen to worries about peers, and to have that propinquitous discussion about sex.
When they hit high school, they have more mobility, and a parent can move his homecoming later. If your values haven’t been transmitted by age 16 or so, you’re a failed parent. They’ll be out of the house by 18 anyway.
Thus speaks the voice of experience. Not easy and does require some sacrifices but this can be combined with career with juggling.
Laura 09.04.03 at 4:43 am
I totally agree with Sue’s comment above. Lately I’ve been shocked watching my friends fretting over how much their babies need them. “I feel like what I need to do right now is be a better mother,” says a friend about to come up for tenure. Mind you, her husband works from home, she herself is home more than most working mothers, and the toddler in question is completely thrilled with his life. It would seem to be an ideal childraising situation, but she clearly feels pressure to be the one who’s there all the time. In fact, when she and her husband are together, she tends to act as if he doesn’t know how to change a diaper, despite the fact that he does so more often than she does.
I’m sure you could draw more than one lesson from that, but what jumps out at me is the extent to which the problem is in how we think about this, in just the ways I see Jane doing in this discussion. Fathers are useful too. Daycare has advantages over even the most happy-with-her-lot stay-at-home mother, never mind over one who is frustrated that she has a PhD and never even gets to talk to adults.
Policy change is indisputably important. But professional women also have to get the hell over this idea that it’s all up to them. I intend that as both a sociological argument — we need some change in our culture’s understandings about childcare — and as an expression of deep frustration that may well turn to minor violence if I watch one more of my friends actively prevent her husband from parenting and then talk about how you just can’t be a mother and get ahead professionally.
Thomas 09.04.03 at 5:03 am
Why is it that “corporations” are the ones doing the free-riding? Is that just another word for capitalist?
In a world where some men and some women prefer the current state of affairs, with its division of labor falling in somewhat predictable gendered patterns, why is the task automatically one of recasting the problem? Shouldn’t we ascertain first whether most people think there’s a problem, and if there is, shouldn’t we be careful that the solutions don’t inflict needless harm on those who’d make different choices?
Robert Schwartz 09.04.03 at 6:08 am
“Hiring an expensive nanny doesn’t get around the fact that at that point, someone else is essentially raising your children; someone with different goals and desires for your child. Imparting values and life experiences to your child is simply not susceptible to effective delegation.”
Sounds like this is a real dilema. The cake can sit on the cake stand or it can lie in your stomach, but it cannot be in both places at once. You may feel better about working if your significant other is home taking care of the kid, but you will still be at work and not at home with your kid.
In my life I worked full time and a half and my wife worked about 30%. I still regret every minute I spent in some windowless conference room arguing with some ninny about the wording of a document that no one would ever read agian, it was one less minute that I spent with my kids when they were babies. Now they are snarky teenagers who don’t want to be caught dead with their parents.
Choices. its all choices.
Anders 09.04.03 at 2:06 pm
_It always surprises me that we’re at a point where anyone who argues that we need some kind of institutional reform is put in the “barking socialist utopian” box._
Kieran, sorry I wasn’t clear enough. I’m all for institutional reforms — that’s why I asked, what would you tell Dean’s campaign. I said utopian answers because I _do_ think we need to fight for reforms.
The problem I have with, for ex, Carla’s excellent suggestion of “provide more incentives for onsite childcare, of the type that even takes sick kids, and provide more funding for child care for low-income parents” isn’t that it’s not a good idea, but that if we fight for it & win it, we’re still in pretty bad shape.
My niece is 4 years old. When she’s old enough to have kids, I don’t want her to face the same no-win choices that her mom and women of my generation did. I want to fight for my niece’s future, I’m just not sure what to fight for.
Anders 09.04.03 at 2:08 pm
Oops, I meant to say, “I said utopian answers don’t count because I _do_ think we need to fight for reforms.”
Jonas Cord 09.04.03 at 5:08 pm
Now they are snarky teenagers who don‰?ªt want to be caught dead with their parents.
To be fair to you as a parent, no amount of staying at home earlier in your childrens life is known to avoid this sort of behavior later on.
natasha 09.04.03 at 5:10 pm
“Is mother care naturally inferior to father care beyond the breastfeeding issue?”
That should have read: Is father care naturally inferior to mother care…
thomas – “Why is it that “corporations†are the ones doing the free-riding? Is that just another word for capitalist?”
Corporations are the ones doing the free-riding because they’re getting a benefit (care for their employees children, and the work of raising their employees in the first place) they haven’t paid for. And this is another problem, the issue of pay.
There is no reimbursement for being a stay at home parent. No tax break, no social security, nothing. This is always touted as the most valuable activity under the sun, but no one wants to put their money where their mouths are. And indeed, the only subsidy given to poor mothers who want to stay home with their kids is constantly derided as immoral, possibly the first small step towards a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.
And it’s overwhelmingly done by women, who are raised with the perverse mindset that leaves them feeling guilty for asking people to pay them adequately for any valuable work they provide. (Which, imo, is at least part of the reason why our salaries tend to be lower. The not asking for it part.)
Our whole society free-rides on womens’ willingness (and often a guilt-ridden insistence) to do *for free* the work of making sure that the next generation of people grows up adequately well. It’s a long-term benefit that our usual short-term planning stubbornly refuses to recognize.
And if nothing else, this could be a major reason why having more stay-home dads will change things. Men aren’t raised with the idea in their heads that they shouldn’t be compensated for their work.
Labors of love are great and all, but to paraphrase Heinlein, when a man speaks of honor you should make him pay cash.
Thomas 09.04.03 at 9:01 pm
natasha–Well, “corporations” certainly aren’t any different from, say, law firms organized as partnerships in that regard. As for getting something and not paying for it: government, by that logic, is equally free riding, since it gets the benefit of someone else taking care of the kids. Or, really, one could hypothetically assign the duty to care (or pay for the care) for children to anyone, and then assert that they are free riding because they’re not, in this world, actually paying it.
And what does it say about our construction of the world that the sole measure of value is the market’s value for a particular activity? While we’re reconstructing the world in our minds, could we take that part out?
natasha 09.05.03 at 1:24 am
thomas – Yes, government is free riding, too. So are small businesses, and any other kind of company.
I would formerly have agreed with your statement that it was silly to assign value to things by how much ‘the market’ would pay. But the fact of the matter is that unless people are made to pay for something, they seem to believe that it exists in unlimited quantities and has no opportunity cost.
But everybody pays for public education, which is strangers teaching kids how to prepare for life. And they should all pay, because everybody benefits. But let’s extend that.
Money has, like it or not, become the yardstick of value, the language of worth. What I’m saying is that it’s silly to fight completely against the tide. Instead, force the market value to reflect our ethical and human values. Force childcare to be recognized as a valuable activity by assigning it a proportionally correct market value.
If people only know the price of everything, and the value of nothing, then the price should be pushed into line with the value. And I think that line of attack would be useful in many more arenas than childcare.
zizka 09.05.03 at 1:34 am
I’ve heard this all before two different ways. On the one hand, there’s the first-wave feminist idea that work thought of as women’s work is undervalued. By now you could actually cost it out: a nanny plus a housekeeper / cook plus a concubine. Looks like about $80,000-a-year-plus to me. (A surrogate mother? $50– 100,000?) So for Jane to give up a career (the opportunity cost) for that really wouldn’t be an enormous sacrifice — if women’s work were valued and paid for. But childraising is not in the cash economy, so a kid is strictly money out, a luxury like an expensive sports car that needs constant mechanic work. And the devout stay-home mothers she admires were rewarded mostly in Heaven. The guy earned money, the parasitic wife-mother spent it and got beaten from time to time.
So one problem is that Jane cannot expect to be paid for her off-market childraising work. Or to put it otherwise, if a child is an expensive luxury item, Jane hasn’t earned enough to buy one of those high-maintenance little goodies.
This also looks (on the other hand) like the old dual economy, with the colonials producing products in a traditional non-market system, motivated by custom and feudal ties and pious fictions, which are then bought at market price by the colonizers. The market economy always strangles and dominates the traditional system, IIRC, though they can coexist for long periods.
So maybe eventually childraising will all be on-market. You will then be able to speak, for example, of a $500,000 soccer-playing Harvard freshman, or equally of a $5,000 high-school-dropout gang member. This will allow class relations to be properly quantified and objectified. You also will be able to think more rationally about your $500,000 Harvard graduate* working in a copy center and hanging out with his buds, perhaps marking him or her down and writing off your losses.
One solution to the problem, hired day care, stumbles on the wage question. To get a nanny good enough for her kids, Jane would have to get someone as good as herself and pay her as much as she herself gets. She would then work for nothing and let the nanny have all the money she earns, in return for giving Jane owenership of the kids. (As I said, NOT a rational choice!)
Or else she could recognize that childraising is an inferior, femalish activity not worthy of high pay and hire an cheap illegal lady to do it. This is actually a common solution, and I noticed that when she thought of day care she planned to pay the market price rather than (as I suggested) going above market and getting a PhD-level nanny. (Though of course, her survey indicated that most PhD’s are too proud to sink to the nanny level — though probably her friends are successful PhD’s anyway, and not $30,000/ yr. adjuncts.)
* The $500,000 college graduate is not the same person as the $500,000 Harvard freshman, who upon graduation should be worth at least $650,000 — more if he or she actually studied while in school.
Robert Schwartz 09.05.03 at 5:22 pm
“Now they are snarky teenagers who don’t want to be caught dead with their parents.
To be fair to you as a parent, no amount of staying at home earlier in your childrens life is known to avoid this sort of behavior later on.”
I understand and accept that. The point here is not that we were good or bad parents. We did the best we could. The point is that I did not get to spend enough time with them when they were babies.
My friend Kathy is a partner in a law firm and her husband Marvin stays home and takes care of their 3 children. Kathy is not at home with her kids and she misses them.
There are no institutional arrangements, short of the abolition of the division of labor and the surrender of industrial civilaization, that will resolve this dilemma. If you are working, you are not at home and that is all there is to that.
Its a dilema and you can chose which horn to impail yourself on, but you cannot avoid it ever.
JT 09.05.03 at 6:38 pm
Natasha writes: “But everybody pays for public education, which is strangers teaching kids how to prepare for life. And they should all pay, because everybody benefits. But let’s extend that.”
That is not logical. Everyone benefits from the food industry, without which the nation could not survive. But the food industry is basically a capitalist enterprises (lets leave aside benefits and costs imposed on it by gov’t) and everyone does not pay for it. You can come up with many more examples. In fact, specific industries generally benefit the whole country, yet they are not “socialized.”
On another topic, the problems of making life easier on parents is that you are not pushing the costs on to the corporation — you are pushing them on single or childless or post-child-rearing co-workers. Suggestions like this, clothed in the vapor of anti-capitalist language, need to be treated very carefully.
natasha 09.05.03 at 7:50 pm
jt – “But the food industry is basically a capitalist enterprises (lets leave aside benefits and costs imposed on it by gov’t) and everyone does not pay for it. You can come up with many more examples. In fact, specific industries generally benefit the whole country, yet they are not “socialized.—
I’m sorry. Who is it, exactly, that doesn’t pay money to the food industry when consuming their products? Are there really that many self-sufficient food producers?
This analogy leaks like a sieve.
“On another topic, the problems of making life easier on parents is that you are not pushing the costs on to the corporation — you are pushing them on single or childless or post-child-rearing co-workers. ”
Ooooh. Beware the scary anti-capitalist. I’ve heard an awful lot of religious talk in my life, and if you’ve elevated capitalism to the status of unquestionable dogma, your pro-capitalist arguments are probably a little suspect.
Those childless and post-child individuals benefit from child care also. Just like they benefit from education.
They benefit because the large majority (no matter what the scare mongers tell you) of people in our society are reasonably well behaved. They benefit because they get competent coworkers and/or employees. They benefit because, unlike Brazil or Somalia, it’s comparatively rare in America to have hordes of roving, lawless youth. They benefit from the lower crime rates. They benefit from the overall increased productivity of a population that by and large will, and is capable of, maintaining gainful employment.
The benefit is diffuse. It stretches out over time, and in varying degrees of immediacy over the life of a given individual. Sometimes we are the recipients, sometimes we pay for others.
Children can’t pay to be cared for, hence the direct recipient of the service (everybody) is incapable of paying the provider at the point of use. This can’t be fixed, unless we want to go back to having 10 year olds work in factories, and look how those societies run.
Once someone has become a desperate societal outcast, it’s usually both too late and heinously expensive to then throw money at reforming them. But we do anyway, so that those whom no one would pony up to care properly for as children create a demand for the incredibly expensive public service of prison. And then everybody pays without complaint, because I haven’t heard anyone ever argue that people in this country should entirely privatize prision and policing.
Which would be fairer, by your logic, because then everyone could take responsibility for their own safety from the violent criminals running around the streets.
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