I was raised to have a job and a career. It was not a matter of religion or capitalism, it was just “all people work” and “you’ll go to the best high school, best university and then have a career”. My parents worked. My grandparents worked. I was raised more by nurseries, kindergartens and schools than by my family, so “everybody earns money at a job” is the default for me.
Yet, partly by chance, partly by laziness, partly through feeling of insecurity I never got a job. I studied, got married, had a kid, studied some more, had another kid. More or less then I decided to create a real family, one I never had as a child. I decided to consciously raise the children, and realized that this requires more time and effort than I could afford if I had any kind of steady job. So, even though I was getting “unemployable” by approaching 30 and never working a single day in my life, I ditched the one offer I had.
It’s relatively easy to be a homemaker with a husband who earns more money, but for me it’s difficult psychologically. After all, my childhood and adolescence were about learning enough to get a great job and not about housekeeping (when I moved out at 20 I couldn’t turn the washing machine on). I get that, in a way, I am doing the most stereotypical thing a woman can do, but for me it’s the other way round.
So maybe this is one more reason why people think they have to have a job—they were raised to think so.
I studied, got married, had a kid, studied some more, had another kid.
That is about what my wife did. The difference being that we planned it that way from the beginning. Esp. if you have more than two children, a large extended family and a house one being the ‘family manager’ and one the high income provider is much more efficient than two work half and half due to the concave income per effort curves (same as with physics: a mix of air of two different temperatures cannot hold the same amount of water as the air prior to mixing: mist/fog). I don’t know why people don’t get this. Must be some misunderstanding of the principle of equality. Sure it is important to make sure that no dependency arrises from the power of income. But with children the primary child care giver at least has a legal or moral lever—but see http://marriedmansexlife.com/2012/01/sahms-and-moral-hazard/
My experience was two parents as high income providers and state facilities as children carers. The same plan was my default. This made me easily realize the lack of parents-related memories and how I did not want the same for my kids. If I was faced with a default “both parents are healf-heartedly working and raising children”, full time homemaking would have been a much more difficult choice.
From a more philosophical point of view, I blame second wave of feminism for this situation and hope the third one will help women sort carrier and family balance out. FYI: grossly simplyfying things, the second wave of feminism, in the ’60s and ‘70s, promoted the image of women being able to do (and work) the same things as men did, depreciating in fact stereotypical (natural?) female roles. The third wave (since the ’90s) is supposed to bring the message that women can do whatever they choose—be it manly work or womanly homemaking and caring for their appearance—unlike tomboyish stereotypical feminists.
The third wave (since the ’90s) is supposed to bring the message that women can do whatever they choose—be it manly work or womanly homemaking and caring for their appearance—unlike tomboyish stereotypical feminists.
This third wave (which I don’t see be really there at least here in Germany) will not be complete before the tasks associated with traditional females roles will be valued as highly as they should. Raising, parenting and educating children for modern society is demanding. Only some countries honor the traditional occupations of child care worker, nursery-school teacher and elementary school teacher as high as they should (Japan for example). Same for the caregiver occupations.
I once proposed a quota of the number of men in these occupations. To reach these quotas the salary might be raised to incentivise more men to enter into these professions (which in many cases benefits the cared for people by providing more social variaty). Once the quota is reached these jobs should be valued sufficiently highly to drop the quota.
This quota idea is a really interesting one. I like how it uses side effects (more men lured by higher pay) to get to the real goal (higher status of job). This should be done more often!
Right now know only 2 men working as kindergarten teachers (or, more specifially, one of them is working and I lost contact with the other one when he entered the job market), and it makes even me uneasy to see the first one at my son’s kindergarten. On one hand I feel “yay for equality” but on the other hand I can’t stop thinking “what’s wrong with this guy?”
I was raised to have a job and a career. It was not a matter of religion or capitalism, it was just “all people work” and “you’ll go to the best high school, best university and then have a career”. My parents worked. My grandparents worked. I was raised more by nurseries, kindergartens and schools than by my family, so “everybody earns money at a job” is the default for me.
Yet, partly by chance, partly by laziness, partly through feeling of insecurity I never got a job. I studied, got married, had a kid, studied some more, had another kid. More or less then I decided to create a real family, one I never had as a child. I decided to consciously raise the children, and realized that this requires more time and effort than I could afford if I had any kind of steady job. So, even though I was getting “unemployable” by approaching 30 and never working a single day in my life, I ditched the one offer I had.
It’s relatively easy to be a homemaker with a husband who earns more money, but for me it’s difficult psychologically. After all, my childhood and adolescence were about learning enough to get a great job and not about housekeeping (when I moved out at 20 I couldn’t turn the washing machine on). I get that, in a way, I am doing the most stereotypical thing a woman can do, but for me it’s the other way round.
So maybe this is one more reason why people think they have to have a job—they were raised to think so.
That is about what my wife did. The difference being that we planned it that way from the beginning. Esp. if you have more than two children, a large extended family and a house one being the ‘family manager’ and one the high income provider is much more efficient than two work half and half due to the concave income per effort curves (same as with physics: a mix of air of two different temperatures cannot hold the same amount of water as the air prior to mixing: mist/fog). I don’t know why people don’t get this. Must be some misunderstanding of the principle of equality. Sure it is important to make sure that no dependency arrises from the power of income. But with children the primary child care giver at least has a legal or moral lever—but see http://marriedmansexlife.com/2012/01/sahms-and-moral-hazard/
My experience was two parents as high income providers and state facilities as children carers. The same plan was my default. This made me easily realize the lack of parents-related memories and how I did not want the same for my kids. If I was faced with a default “both parents are healf-heartedly working and raising children”, full time homemaking would have been a much more difficult choice.
From a more philosophical point of view, I blame second wave of feminism for this situation and hope the third one will help women sort carrier and family balance out. FYI: grossly simplyfying things, the second wave of feminism, in the ’60s and ‘70s, promoted the image of women being able to do (and work) the same things as men did, depreciating in fact stereotypical (natural?) female roles. The third wave (since the ’90s) is supposed to bring the message that women can do whatever they choose—be it manly work or womanly homemaking and caring for their appearance—unlike tomboyish stereotypical feminists.
This third wave (which I don’t see be really there at least here in Germany) will not be complete before the tasks associated with traditional females roles will be valued as highly as they should. Raising, parenting and educating children for modern society is demanding. Only some countries honor the traditional occupations of child care worker, nursery-school teacher and elementary school teacher as high as they should (Japan for example). Same for the caregiver occupations.
I once proposed a quota of the number of men in these occupations. To reach these quotas the salary might be raised to incentivise more men to enter into these professions (which in many cases benefits the cared for people by providing more social variaty). Once the quota is reached these jobs should be valued sufficiently highly to drop the quota.
This quota idea is a really interesting one. I like how it uses side effects (more men lured by higher pay) to get to the real goal (higher status of job). This should be done more often!
Right now know only 2 men working as kindergarten teachers (or, more specifially, one of them is working and I lost contact with the other one when he entered the job market), and it makes even me uneasy to see the first one at my son’s kindergarten. On one hand I feel “yay for equality” but on the other hand I can’t stop thinking “what’s wrong with this guy?”