Women: employment or child care?

[Warren Dew]

There was a discussion on this topic on another site that was ultimately not permitted to continue freely there. However, it seems to be a topic on which people were interested, so I thought I'd try it here.

I have a personal interest in this topic, as my wife and I both work full time and we have two young children. Also, one of our children is a daughter, so the issue may eventually affect her as well. Based on our experience, we feel like the deck is stacked against two income families as far as children are concerned; should we encourage her to swim against the flow as we did, or should we encourage her to plan on dropping out of the job market when she has children? Obviously this affects a lot of other things, like how much education she should get, etc.

I'm going to start by answering some of the issues Gallstones brings up from here:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post4 ... ml#p422954

The specific issue is child care options in the context of a family where both parents work, and they have children who require care. I'll give my preliminary views of each of the options Gallstones mentiones in turn.

With respect to a nanny, I don't think I'd argue that they weren't competent, but I might argue that it wasn't as good as a mother's care in some cases. In the U.S., it may also be extremely inefficient economically. Here in Massachusetts, for example, a full time nanny is about $40,000 a year. The second income in a two income family is generally taxed at about 50%. That means that the mother has to make about $80,000 a year just to break even financially on hiring a nanny.

Similar arguments apply to day care. In Massachusetts, legal day care is around $20,000 a year per child, so with two children it's just as expensive as a full time nanny. Day care is even further from a mother's care than is a nanny, especially with respect to emotional support. Also, day care tends to be a significant disease vector.

In my opinion, grandparents are a good option if you have them and they are available. In our case, my mother, at 78 and with various chronic diseases, is too old for anything close to full time day care, and my wife's parents aren't interested in more than occasional visits. I suspect most grandparents in the U.S. are not available for full time child care.

I think it's even less likely that an aunt or uncle will be available, since they're likely at a similar age to the parents and thus off tending to their own kids. Also, trusting an uncle for day care runs into the problem that a male caregiver is a significant risk factor for child abuse, though obviously that depends on the specific uncle.

[Eriku]

Surely that's up to their men to decide?

[maiforpeace]

I'm just curious why this would affect your daughter more than your son and why would you encourage her differently than him?

A lot of men are choosing to stay home and be the primary caregiver, and many women make more than their husbands. I feel fairly certain when your children become adults this will be even more the case than it is now.

[Warren Dew]

That's a good point to bring up, mai.

There are some fairly clear biological differences. Men can't breast feed, so it makes sense for the woman to stay home with the infant for those critical first few months. The woman could pump and the man could bottle feed the breast milk, but that's much more of a hassle for both parties - pumping is a pain and can interfere with work, there will be interminable pump parts and bottles that will require otherwise needless washing, etc. Often this is reinforced by laws that provide for more maternal leave than paternal leave.

After the first few months, if a parent is going to continue to stay home, again it makes sense for it to be the one who can easily breast feed, at least until the infant is weaned at a year or two old. A year or two off work is likely to affect one's earning power significantly, at which point it makes sense to have the same parent continue to take time off as long as parental time off is necessary. Of course, that parent is still the woman, since she had to be the one to take the first few months off. You can see where this goes.

There's also some chance that the biology also extends beyond just the breast feeding. In known hunter gatherer cultures the men do the hunting while the children stay with their mothers, helping with gathering. If we've been doing this long enough to be evolutionarily adapted to it, then normal child development may depend on, or at least be better when, the children stay with their mothers or other women for the bulk of the day rather than with men. That this is biologically ingrained isn't a sure thing - there appears to be some indication that neanderthal women, for example, hunted along with the men - but does one want to take a chance when it comes to one's kids' development?

I'm also much less confident than you are that wage equalization between the sexes will continue to occur. I suspect that feminism may have reached its high water mark for these few generations. There are still many factors that work against women in the work place - especially women that want to have children - but no one is trying to address the remaining issues. Few even worry much about retaining the gains that women have already made, and amongst the millenial generation, prejudice against womens' capabilities seems to be higher than among boomers and gen X. I fear that by the time my daughter joins the work force in a couple of decades, the pendulum may have swung rather sharply back.

[Beatsong]

We have two young children as well. I share your feelings about the difficulties of bringing them up with two working parents, although in our case we are both self-employed, and I work largely from home, so that allows us a lot of flexibility in tailoring our work patterns around the needs of the kids.

Maybe I have an unrealistic idea of norms, skewed by our own experience. But I can't help feeling your concerns are based on a lot of overly absolute assumptions.

One answer to the problems of two-working-parent families may be for the mother never to work at all, but I can think of (and have observed) plenty of others. Such as either or both parents working part time; either or both working full time but taking career breaks around children; extended family support etc. (You explained that Gallstones' ideas weren't applicable to your particular case - fair enough. But you now seem to be generalising that and presuming as well that they won't be applicable to your daughter's.)

You also say that a man has a better chance of earning better because he doesn't have to take time off during critical breastfeeding phases. But those phases aren't very long, and anyway that's only one way of looking at it. Here's another: it's pretty difficult to predict how well a lot of people will earn throughout their career. Success often depends upon a lot of unpredictable and indefinable factors. By having the option of either or both parents working (ie, by both being qualified to work in well-paid professions), a family increases its chances of maximising wealth - by having the one who happens to be earning most continue to work while the one who earns least (or in more extreme circumstances, can't work due to unemployment, injury etc.) look after the children.

This is not just theory. In practically every family we know in our circle of friends, the woman earns more than the man. That may be unusual, I don't know. But I do know that in many of those cases (including our own), the main thing that has allowed those families to live comfortable middle class lifestyles has been the woman's job.

Having the option of both jobs also allows the family to adjust around the outcomes of job satisfaction - another thing that is notoriously difficult to predict. ie if it happens to turn out, ten or twenty years down the line when the children are beyond infancy, that one parent is in their dream job, loving every minute of it and wanting to work as much as they can, and the other has ended up stuck in a job they hate going nowhere, the second one can give up or reduce their hours, and take the burden of home duties instead. Regardless of gender.

Finally, you have no idea what sort of person your daughter will grow up into or what she will want out of life. Maybe she won't WANT children, and the only thing that will engage her is having a full-on high powered job. Maybe she'll find a genuine vocation, become a doctor and go to Africa to cure AIDS. Maybe she'll be gay.

All this being so, the idea of restricting her education now because it probably won't be "necessary" seems absolutely perverse to me. And, if I'm honest, more than a little sexist: Given all the variables I've mentioned, I just don't buy your idea that you can accurately predict that a family with the man working and the woman at home will be better off than the opposite.

I don't know how tight money is for you, and I understand state-funded education is not the same on your side of the pond as mine, especially when it comes to the higher levels. But I can't imagine not giving everything I can to give my kids all the opportunities they need to make the choices that suit them. And I certainly can't imagine favouring one of them over the other (I have one of each too) just because he happens to have been born with a penis.

[Trolldor]

Gen Y is my generation, and no we do not have backwards views of women. You'll find that those with particularly 50's attitudes will have been born in to a pre-existing culture of such.

A man is a more "sound investment" for a business than a woman because they don't, as standard, have to take time off even when starting a family. A woman has to have, for nine months, doctor's appointments and checkups and they may reach a physical point where they can no longer perform their duties and there are the risks of complications. A man, by constrast, doesn't have any of those issues to deal with - not from the business' perspective, anyway, as he doesn't have to take time off work barring the exceptional, even if he should.

On the matter of education, it's absolutely necessary. There is never a point in a child's life where they don't need to learn.

[maiforpeace]

My two cousins in France are both Gen Y parents - one is male and one is female. I marveled at how they share all the earning and child caregiving responsibilities equally - it truly was 50/50. That was definitely not the case for my generation - equal parenting would have been more the exception rather than the rule. Also, I do believe this equal parenting is made easier by the socialized health and child care provided in France. Men get long paternity leaves, breastfeeding isn't pushed for as long as it is in the US, so in so women aren't tethered to stay home nearly as long. Families get help in the home during the time the child is an infant, and at less than a year old they have the most amazing childcare available called a creche - 1 caregiver to 3 babies, 4 days a week, 7 hours a day, on a sliding scale. Though they are fairly well off (she's a buyer for an upscale fashion house, he's a sales manager for Microsoft) they pay $600 a month for this. That would be unheard of in the US. In my opinion, and from personal observation, socialism is much more supportive of the family than capitalism is.

[Warren Dew]

Gen Y is my generation, and no we do not have backwards views of women. You'll find that those with particularly 50's attitudes will have been born in to a pre-existing culture of such.

Just for the record, I'd like to avoid the term "gen Y"; the reason being that it has two meanings, namely "born in, roughly, the 1970s", and "born in, roughly, the 1980s or 1990s". "Millenial" means only the latter.

A man is a more "sound investment" for a business than a woman because they don't, as standard, have to take time off even when starting a family. A woman has to have, for nine months, doctor's appointments and checkups and they may reach a physical point where they can no longer perform their duties and there are the risks of complications. A man, by constrast, doesn't have any of those issues to deal with - not from the business' perspective, anyway, as he doesn't have to take time off work barring the exceptional, even if he should.

This is exactly the kind of "prejudice against womens' capabilities" that I'm worried about. At present, I don't think most U.S. employers would take that attitude; rather, they would look at individual cases. And that would be justified: the working women I know who got pregnant worked right up until the day when contractions started, so they didn't miss any work during pregnancy.

Howeve, you are correct that if it were permitted, businesses could use sex as a hiring factor to allow them to be lazy about figuring out individual circumstances. That would also be true, of course, if they could use obesity or HIV as factors to avoid hiring people that might be taking sick days. My concern is that use of sex will become more culturally - and ultimately, legally - acceptable as a hiring factor as attitudes like this take hold.

[Warren Dew]

That would be unheard of in the US. In my opinion, and from personal observation, socialism is much more supportive of the family than capitalism is.

I don't think it's socialism so much as European views towards working mothers. Europe has fertility levels far below replacement, and European governments recognize that this is going to cause a problem when the current workers retire with no one to replace them; as a result, most European governments heavily subsidize child care.

Meanwhile, the U.S.'s recent step towards socialized health care not only doesn't do anything to help in that respect, but also moves towards prohibiting health insurance coverage of abortion, which will increase the number of unwanted children who won't have adequate child care. Socialism can work against women as well as for them.

As far as breast feeding is concerned, breast feeding has many scientifically verified benefits, for example increased IQ for the child. Encouraging formula feeding might be a way to encourage working women to have children in European countries with demographic issues, but at a cost to the current and future well being of the children. I think they'd be better off encouraging pumping instead.

[Warren Dew]

Beatsong, you bring up a lot of good points.

We have two young children as well. I share your feelings about the difficulties of bringing them up with two working parents, although in our case we are both self-employed, and I work largely from home, so that allows us a lot of flexibility in tailoring our work patterns around the needs of the kids.

Was tailoring work patterns sufficient before your children were school age? I've heard of couples that simply work in shifts, but they end up never sharing time when the whole family is awake, which doesn't seem to me an ideal family situation. Does one of you have work that can be done while taking care of kids?

Maybe I have an unrealistic idea of norms, skewed by our own experience. But I can't help feeling your concerns are based on a lot of overly absolute assumptions.

To clarify, my concerns are not so much about how to manage the situation given current societal circumstances; I agree there are various ways of managing that, though I think it requires above average incomes to make them worthwhile, given the U.S. tax system. It may be easier in a system less dependent on a graduated income tax, and more dependent on a value added tax, which would discriminate less against working mothers. I certainly agree that the flexibility of being able to get by on one parent working at a time is a big plus, if you can get away with it.

Rather, my concern is primarily that by the time my daughter is an adult, factors like those I mentioned will have led societal norms in the U.S. to revert to "man works, woman takes care of the kids", with the attendant prejudice against women in the work place. If that's the case, setting an expectation on the part of my daughter that she'll focus on her career first and worry about kids later may be swimming against the tide.

You explained that Gallstones' ideas weren't applicable to your particular case - fair enough. But you now seem to be generalising that and presuming as well that they won't be applicable to your daughter's.

Valid point. Certainly in the general case, I think "parents work, retired grandparents take care of kids" is actually a good model. However, given our ages, I don't think we'll be able to provide much care for children of my daughter - unless she gets pregnant as a teen, which isn't something I hope to see. Gambling on her husband having parents of the appropriate age with an interest in child care seems chancy at best.

This is not just theory. In practically every family we know in our circle of friends, the woman earns more than the man. That may be unusual, I don't know.

Given the statistic that average women's wages are only 77% of average men's wages, I think that would indeed be unusual in the U.S. I don't know what the situation is where you live.

Finally, you have no idea what sort of person your daughter will grow up into or what she will want out of life. Maybe she won't WANT children, and the only thing that will engage her is having a full-on high powered job. Maybe she'll find a genuine vocation, become a doctor and go to Africa to cure AIDS. Maybe she'll be gay.

Actually, I think we do have some idea. Furthermore, I think we have a considerable amount of control over it. Thus far we've managed to guide her into liking cars and not just dolls, and into having blue instead of pink as her favorite color - both of which are quite contrary to the attitudes of most girls her age. I think it would have been - and would perhaps still be - quite easy to brainwash her into thinking that the purpose of women is to get married and have kids, had we wanted to do that. I do agree there are lots of things we have little control over, but parents do have a lot of influence as well, even if they don't always exercise it consciously.

All this being so, the idea of restricting her education now because it probably won't be "necessary" seems absolutely perverse to me.

Sorry, I didn't mean restricting her education now. Rather, I meant setting expectations for things like whether she should expect to go to graduate school.

[Rum]

I don't see why the bias is towards women being the 'natural' carers. When my daughter, now 20, was born I left my career and had two years at home looking after her, being the 'house husband' and doing all the household work. It was one of the most enjoyable two years of my life and it also resulted in us having a very close relationship, which has lasted to this day. I was lucky enough to be in a profession which I knew I could get back into and there were less hard times, so it may not be as easy an option for either parent now of course.

We were a lot poorer for a while, but I had no regrets.

When she was 2 and a half we used day care for a while and that all worked out fine.

[DRSB]

I am here with Rum on that!

My husband was made redundant 1 month before our son was born. He opted for several years house-husbandry while I returned to my banking (and well-paying) job. Our son attended day-care facilities on some days a week even when his father was available for care-giving, because we did not want him to miss out on the socialization aspect. I don't see any downside to day-care.

In my own family (both parents teachers), I never saw the one doing anything differently from the other, either at home or outside of it. I cannot imagine any other family model than the one with equally shared responsibilities.

It would be wrong and unfair to set up your daughter for choices YOU deem adequate for her NOW. Give the girl all the education you can afford!

[Thinking Aloud]

Ultimately it will come down to individuals and circumstance. We can only give our kids the "benefit" of our own experiences, and they'll decide whether what we did has any value in the circumstances they find themselves at the time.

For my part, Mrs TA took about six months off when our first was born, but then went back to work part time, at which point I also went part time so that we'd both be working roughly three days a week. The kids would have one day in daycare per week. We're still doing that, though as the second one approaches school age, Mrs TA is looking at going back closer to full time. Our circumstance was also convenient in that I worked from home, so logistically it was straightforward.

[Tigger]

We did it too, and I was pretending to be a writer for a while, while Mrs Tigs went to work. It was great.

[floppit]

I logged on to the computer just to reply to this, but I can't do it from an objective stance. Even if I had the time to trawl through research I seriously doubt I could truly overcome my own feelings enough to think critically and any attempt to judge parenting deserves that. So, the objective to one side I'll do my best to answer what I think was the heart of the OP, what I think and what I'd want to pass to my daughter (no gender bias - I only have a girl!).

I took as much time as we could afford, and when I say afford I mean at a cost, the mortgage is paid more slowly, much more slowly, we buy second hand, and where needed just do without extras. At the moment I work P/T, a 2 day then 3 day week, the other 4 or 5 days in a week I look after Munchkin. I took a year off in total and have been back at work since Munchkin was about 10 months old, I didn't want to go back and missed her incredibly, I still do but it stings less now. The time I'm at home with her feels so precious, it's honestly worth more to me than the bricks and mortar, it's the TIME, time to go at her pace, to let her walk and see things, to stop everything and watch ants, to let her try to put on socks or get herself into the car seat. I never seem to get that time on work days when we have to be out the house by 8.10am, then I feel forced to rush her, hurry her and even the final walk 4 doors down to the childminder is different (no watching snails!). But, that said, once she gets there being at a childminder has changed her life, she knows all the kids in the park and I remember posting here with pride when 2 11yr old lads stuck up for her when their friend said she wouldn't manage to climb the slide 'SHE'LL do it, that's Freya!'. They other kids taught her 'Ring o ring o roses', to want to count, to blame someone else, to compare scabs, just be a kid. I chose a childminder rather than nursery because it's like a home and it FELT like that's where a toddler should be (not reasoning), if there was any reasoning it was that this childminders kids all liked her and that it was a mixed rather than set age group - both of which I think has paid off.

On my days off the time thing is huge, I have the time and in turn having enough of it has made me much more laid back. I don't try to make every second count, I can sit back at the park and let her be, let her get on with it and find her own way or (more often) make her own friends. I take her to play sessions but again feel no need to be on top of her. Then there are other times, making stuff together, going swimming or to a funfair - even shopping. With no pushchair we have to cooperate all the time, holding hands, chatting, and when she was first walking stopping to stand carefully on every metal bit! I carry her on my back alot and now she talks we natter and sing our way round everything.

There probably is a 'best way' but I doubt I know it. What I'm more sure of is that children should be enjoyed and parents are allowed to be themselves with their kids, put themself into it, for some that may mean working FT, for others not working at all but I seriously doubt that is half as important as each Mum or Dad's own pleasure in the newbie to their clan. That's what I'll tell Freya - be yourself and love every second of it.

Last of all, when I was making more own decisions, before the fact as is the way, one thing trumped it for me - come 4 yrs old Munchkin will be full time in school, these are the only years we can have this way as I would not want to keep her out of school.