Millennial men pitched themselves as equal partners. What happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are millennials (men or women) having kids at all if all they are going to do is fight over who has to take care of them? Really! Why do you have kids? This thread makes me so sad for all these kids.

Your reading comprehension is less than desirable. It is about childcare plus household management and for most of us, plus having dual-income marriages. All three need to be balanced in order to work. Even if one person has a job and the other doesn't to take care of the children means that household stuff is still needing to be balanced. The balance is not childcare + house and working. If two people work and their childcare is outsourced to daycare, then childcare and house need to be taken care of by both outside of working hours.

I would love to work my 8.5 hours and then be with my kid in the morning and afternoon until bed 100% but that means that the cooking, laundry, cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, etc. all needs to be done 100% by my partner. And then we each have individual time and married time from after kid bedtime - our own bedtimes. What most people are complaining about is the situation where a working mom is doing 90% of the childcare before and after work plus 50% of the housework (or more).

Strongly disagree with this and I think this is a major flaw in modern parenting in liberal circles. The children should be involved in most of this. You can most certainly spend time with your kids while they also help clean, prepare dinner, tidy up etc. You don’t need to entertain your kids like so many modern parents do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying that millennial men pitched this whole concept is a little disingenuous. They're responding to the culture the same that women do. Just because we stopped teaching girls how to manage households doesn't mean we started teaching men how to do it. It just means that now both men and women don't know how to do it and we're all reinventing the wheel in our nuclear bubbles. Hence why household management and and childrearing is experienced as burdensome even though childhood mortality has been statistically eradicated. Unless we go back to valuing the family unit and valorizing care of children as a societal good, birth rates will continue to plummet.

You've got to be kidding. Childrearing is experienced as burdensome because parenting has become vastly more intensive. My childhood, including that I was babysitting multiple toddlers/babies in middle school, would be considered abusive now for both me and the kids I was sitting for. Adding to that, the returns to having an all-consuming job have gone up, too. The issue is not that I don't know how to "manage a household", it's that it's objectively difficult to both provide the kind of parenting that's now expected and to work, particularly if you want to want to have a career, aren't independently wealthy, and want to get started on having kids young enough that you're unlikely to experience age -related fertility challenges.

I agree with everything you've said but I dont think it contradicts the point I made about household management. Many people really dont know how to manage a household -- it's not taught. And it's a source of marital tension for many even if it's not for you. And while you babysat, as you've pointed out kids today don't experience that and are totally segregated from the various stages of childhood and how to care for them. So it's not like today's kids will have it any easier in that regard.


The uncomfortable reality is that intensive childrearing arises out of two correlated conditions: late-in life parents and 1-2 kids. If you have kids when you're old (relatively speaking) and only have 1-2, they become precious in a way that is exhausting for the parents and detrimental to the process of individuation in the child. I'm facing this too.


The obvious elephant in the room is the early educational and professional tracks we have our kids on--particularly girls bc their window of maximal physical desirability and fertility is both earlier and shorter than males. It sucks, but I don't make the rules. Putting them on the same paced career track in order to compete for jobs with males was always just going to result in a different set of trade offs.

Childfree is the way to be.

If you're professionally ambitious--which every 2nd wave feminism activist was. It was never about women's equality. It was always a class ideology. If your daughters wanted to get married and have kids before finishing graduate school, much less college, your fears and disappointment would be class-based. That they are being a traitor to the upper-middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very privileged conversation. If this is the kind of thing that families with top flight professionals with HHI of $300k+ are going through, what the hell are the nannies, housekeepers, and contractors who work for these people experiencing in their own roles as mothers, fathers, and spouses?

It's not privileged, it's introspective. While their are major material differences, I'd argue there's a better chance that the nannies and housekeepers kids will experience tons of real-life examples of tangible work and childcare and use those experiences for future employment and family formation. Will the kids of the rich be able to replicate the network of contractors required to maintain a household that their parents utilized?

Yes, the working classes are the real winners here. Pity the children of the UMC!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are millennials (men or women) having kids at all if all they are going to do is fight over who has to take care of them? Really! Why do you have kids? This thread makes me so sad for all these kids.

Your reading comprehension is less than desirable. It is about childcare plus household management and for most of us, plus having dual-income marriages. All three need to be balanced in order to work. Even if one person has a job and the other doesn't to take care of the children means that household stuff is still needing to be balanced. The balance is not childcare + house and working. If two people work and their childcare is outsourced to daycare, then childcare and house need to be taken care of by both outside of working hours.

I would love to work my 8.5 hours and then be with my kid in the morning and afternoon until bed 100% but that means that the cooking, laundry, cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, etc. all needs to be done 100% by my partner. And then we each have individual time and married time from after kid bedtime - our own bedtimes. What most people are complaining about is the situation where a working mom is doing 90% of the childcare before and after work plus 50% of the housework (or more).

Strongly disagree with this and I think this is a major flaw in modern parenting in liberal circles. The children should be involved in most of this. You can most certainly spend time with your kids while they also help clean, prepare dinner, tidy up etc. You don’t need to entertain your kids like so many modern parents do.

omfg of course But I was replying to the poster who said "fighting over who takes care of them" meaning we are seemingly trying to pawn the kids off, no we arent. Im not trying to clean toilets while my kid is in the bath. That makes me stressed. Of course, my son helps with dinner. He vacuums and mops. He makes his bed. We put away clothes together. We walk the dog together. He sets the table. Helps with unloading the dishwasher. Etc.
But having a child help WHILE DOING HOUSEHOLD CHORES MEANS YOU ARE DOING BOTH. This arrangement only works when both parents are doing both and there is give and take. The main thing missing from most lopsided partnerships is an all-hands-in-at-all-times approach because there is always something to do even when that something is each of you having personal time or exercise time, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying that millennial men pitched this whole concept is a little disingenuous. They're responding to the culture the same that women do. Just because we stopped teaching girls how to manage households doesn't mean we started teaching men how to do it. It just means that now both men and women don't know how to do it and we're all reinventing the wheel in our nuclear bubbles. Hence why household management and and childrearing is experienced as burdensome even though childhood mortality has been statistically eradicated. Unless we go back to valuing the family unit and valorizing care of children as a societal good, birth rates will continue to plummet.

You've got to be kidding. Childrearing is experienced as burdensome because parenting has become vastly more intensive. My childhood, including that I was babysitting multiple toddlers/babies in middle school, would be considered abusive now for both me and the kids I was sitting for. Adding to that, the returns to having an all-consuming job have gone up, too. The issue is not that I don't know how to "manage a household", it's that it's objectively difficult to both provide the kind of parenting that's now expected and to work, particularly if you want to want to have a career, aren't independently wealthy, and want to get started on having kids young enough that you're unlikely to experience age -related fertility challenges.

I agree with everything you've said but I dont think it contradicts the point I made about household management. Many people really dont know how to manage a household -- it's not taught. And it's a source of marital tension for many even if it's not for you. And while you babysat, as you've pointed out kids today don't experience that and are totally segregated from the various stages of childhood and how to care for them. So it's not like today's kids will have it any easier in that regard.


The uncomfortable reality is that intensive childrearing arises out of two correlated conditions: late-in life parents and 1-2 kids. If you have kids when you're old (relatively speaking) and only have 1-2, they become precious in a way that is exhausting for the parents and detrimental to the process of individuation in the child. I'm facing this too.


The obvious elephant in the room is the early educational and professional tracks we have our kids on--particularly girls bc their window of maximal physical desirability and fertility is both earlier and shorter than males. It sucks, but I don't make the rules. Putting them on the same paced career track in order to compete for jobs with males was always just going to result in a different set of trade offs.

But the issue is not knowledge for 'managing a household', it's very real constraints around hours in a day and how you can raise your kids. If I let my kids be independent the way I know they can handle, we'd be getting the cops called on us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very privileged conversation. If this is the kind of thing that families with top flight professionals with HHI of $300k+ are going through, what the hell are the nannies, housekeepers, and contractors who work for these people experiencing in their own roles as mothers, fathers, and spouses?

It's not privileged, it's introspective. While their are major material differences, I'd argue there's a better chance that the nannies and housekeepers kids will experience tons of real-life examples of tangible work and childcare and use those experiences for future employment and family formation. Will the kids of the rich be able to replicate the network of contractors required to maintain a household that their parents utilized?

Yes, the working classes are the real winners here. Pity the children of the UMC!

Pointing out that other people have problems that are materially different from your own is a fantastic technique for avoiding the problems in your own life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying that millennial men pitched this whole concept is a little disingenuous. They're responding to the culture the same that women do. Just because we stopped teaching girls how to manage households doesn't mean we started teaching men how to do it. It just means that now both men and women don't know how to do it and we're all reinventing the wheel in our nuclear bubbles. Hence why household management and and childrearing is experienced as burdensome even though childhood mortality has been statistically eradicated. Unless we go back to valuing the family unit and valorizing care of children as a societal good, birth rates will continue to plummet.

You've got to be kidding. Childrearing is experienced as burdensome because parenting has become vastly more intensive. My childhood, including that I was babysitting multiple toddlers/babies in middle school, would be considered abusive now for both me and the kids I was sitting for. Adding to that, the returns to having an all-consuming job have gone up, too. The issue is not that I don't know how to "manage a household", it's that it's objectively difficult to both provide the kind of parenting that's now expected and to work, particularly if you want to want to have a career, aren't independently wealthy, and want to get started on having kids young enough that you're unlikely to experience age -related fertility challenges.

I agree with everything you've said but I dont think it contradicts the point I made about household management. Many people really dont know how to manage a household -- it's not taught. And it's a source of marital tension for many even if it's not for you. And while you babysat, as you've pointed out kids today don't experience that and are totally segregated from the various stages of childhood and how to care for them. So it's not like today's kids will have it any easier in that regard.


The uncomfortable reality is that intensive childrearing arises out of two correlated conditions: late-in life parents and 1-2 kids. If you have kids when you're old (relatively speaking) and only have 1-2, they become precious in a way that is exhausting for the parents and detrimental to the process of individuation in the child. I'm facing this too.


The obvious elephant in the room is the early educational and professional tracks we have our kids on--particularly girls bc their window of maximal physical desirability and fertility is both earlier and shorter than males. It sucks, but I don't make the rules. Putting them on the same paced career track in order to compete for jobs with males was always just going to result in a different set of trade offs.

But the issue is not knowledge for 'managing a household', it's very real constraints around hours in a day and how you can raise your kids. If I let my kids be independent the way I know they can handle, we'd be getting the cops called on us.

So true. I have to pay for aftercare for my 11 yr old. I was a latchkey kid.

[Anonymous]

Everyone:

If you are reading this thread, or especially if you responded to it, you really need to consider this article / thread on “most young men are single. Most young men are not.”

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1115034.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying that millennial men pitched this whole concept is a little disingenuous. They're responding to the culture the same that women do. Just because we stopped teaching girls how to manage households doesn't mean we started teaching men how to do it. It just means that now both men and women don't know how to do it and we're all reinventing the wheel in our nuclear bubbles. Hence why household management and and childrearing is experienced as burdensome even though childhood mortality has been statistically eradicated. Unless we go back to valuing the family unit and valorizing care of children as a societal good, birth rates will continue to plummet.

You've got to be kidding. Childrearing is experienced as burdensome because parenting has become vastly more intensive. My childhood, including that I was babysitting multiple toddlers/babies in middle school, would be considered abusive now for both me and the kids I was sitting for. Adding to that, the returns to having an all-consuming job have gone up, too. The issue is not that I don't know how to "manage a household", it's that it's objectively difficult to both provide the kind of parenting that's now expected and to work, particularly if you want to want to have a career, aren't independently wealthy, and want to get started on having kids young enough that you're unlikely to experience age -related fertility challenges.

I agree with everything you've said but I dont think it contradicts the point I made about household management. Many people really dont know how to manage a household -- it's not taught. And it's a source of marital tension for many even if it's not for you. And while you babysat, as you've pointed out kids today don't experience that and are totally segregated from the various stages of childhood and how to care for them. So it's not like today's kids will have it any easier in that regard.


The uncomfortable reality is that intensive childrearing arises out of two correlated conditions: late-in life parents and 1-2 kids. If you have kids when you're old (relatively speaking) and only have 1-2, they become precious in a way that is exhausting for the parents and detrimental to the process of individuation in the child. I'm facing this too.


The obvious elephant in the room is the early educational and professional tracks we have our kids on--particularly girls bc their window of maximal physical desirability and fertility is both earlier and shorter than males. It sucks, but I don't make the rules. Putting them on the same paced career track in order to compete for jobs with males was always just going to result in a different set of trade offs.

I agree. You are both right. The combination of individualism, intensive parenting, lack of time and skill to run a household and greedy jobs are a toxic stew. And how’s that working out for us?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying that millennial men pitched this whole concept is a little disingenuous. They're responding to the culture the same that women do. Just because we stopped teaching girls how to manage households doesn't mean we started teaching men how to do it. It just means that now both men and women don't know how to do it and we're all reinventing the wheel in our nuclear bubbles. Hence why household management and and childrearing is experienced as burdensome even though childhood mortality has been statistically eradicated. Unless we go back to valuing the family unit and valorizing care of children as a societal good, birth rates will continue to plummet.

You've got to be kidding. Childrearing is experienced as burdensome because parenting has become vastly more intensive. My childhood, including that I was babysitting multiple toddlers/babies in middle school, would be considered abusive now for both me and the kids I was sitting for. Adding to that, the returns to having an all-consuming job have gone up, too. The issue is not that I don't know how to "manage a household", it's that it's objectively difficult to both provide the kind of parenting that's now expected and to work, particularly if you want to want to have a career, aren't independently wealthy, and want to get started on having kids young enough that you're unlikely to experience age -related fertility challenges.

I agree with everything you've said but I dont think it contradicts the point I made about household management. Many people really dont know how to manage a household -- it's not taught. And it's a source of marital tension for many even if it's not for you. And while you babysat, as you've pointed out kids today don't experience that and are totally segregated from the various stages of childhood and how to care for them. So it's not like today's kids will have it any easier in that regard.


The uncomfortable reality is that intensive childrearing arises out of two correlated conditions: late-in life parents and 1-2 kids. If you have kids when you're old (relatively speaking) and only have 1-2, they become precious in a way that is exhausting for the parents and detrimental to the process of individuation in the child. I'm facing this too.


The obvious elephant in the room is the early educational and professional tracks we have our kids on--particularly girls bc their window of maximal physical desirability and fertility is both earlier and shorter than males. It sucks, but I don't make the rules. Putting them on the same paced career track in order to compete for jobs with males was always just going to result in a different set of trade offs.

But the issue is not knowledge for 'managing a household', it's very real constraints around hours in a day and how you can raise your kids. If I let my kids be independent the way I know they can handle, we'd be getting the cops called on us.

I don't disagree with you! How did we get here? I've put forth one explanation that, while not the entire answer, is a big part of it. Unless and until women start having kids earlier and stop outsourcing the care of babies and children, this is the kind of culture we can expect to live in--one in which the ever shifting nat'l zeitgeist has larger say. It very well could be that one of the trade offs to women establishing careers before having families is that our kids can't have the kind of childhoods we want for them bc even if our families are nuclear, we can't exit the realities of the larger culture. To that end, I don't think millennials realize that they are on the tail end of a radical sociological shift and that taking a stock of the results would be pragmatic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone:

If you are reading this thread, or especially if you responded to it, you really need to consider this article / thread on “most young men are single. Most young men are not.”

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1115034.page

The thread is actually "most young men are single. Most young *women* are not." (I haven't read that thread, but PP's typo really confused me!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying that millennial men pitched this whole concept is a little disingenuous. They're responding to the culture the same that women do. Just because we stopped teaching girls how to manage households doesn't mean we started teaching men how to do it. It just means that now both men and women don't know how to do it and we're all reinventing the wheel in our nuclear bubbles. Hence why household management and and childrearing is experienced as burdensome even though childhood mortality has been statistically eradicated. Unless we go back to valuing the family unit and valorizing care of children as a societal good, birth rates will continue to plummet.

You've got to be kidding. Childrearing is experienced as burdensome because parenting has become vastly more intensive. My childhood, including that I was babysitting multiple toddlers/babies in middle school, would be considered abusive now for both me and the kids I was sitting for. Adding to that, the returns to having an all-consuming job have gone up, too. The issue is not that I don't know how to "manage a household", it's that it's objectively difficult to both provide the kind of parenting that's now expected and to work, particularly if you want to want to have a career, aren't independently wealthy, and want to get started on having kids young enough that you're unlikely to experience age -related fertility challenges.

I agree with everything you've said but I dont think it contradicts the point I made about household management. Many people really dont know how to manage a household -- it's not taught. And it's a source of marital tension for many even if it's not for you. And while you babysat, as you've pointed out kids today don't experience that and are totally segregated from the various stages of childhood and how to care for them. So it's not like today's kids will have it any easier in that regard.


The uncomfortable reality is that intensive childrearing arises out of two correlated conditions: late-in life parents and 1-2 kids. If you have kids when you're old (relatively speaking) and only have 1-2, they become precious in a way that is exhausting for the parents and detrimental to the process of individuation in the child. I'm facing this too.


The obvious elephant in the room is the early educational and professional tracks we have our kids on--particularly girls bc their window of maximal physical desirability and fertility is both earlier and shorter than males. It sucks, but I don't make the rules. Putting them on the same paced career track in order to compete for jobs with males was always just going to result in a different set of trade offs.

But the issue is not knowledge for 'managing a household', it's very real constraints around hours in a day and how you can raise your kids. If I let my kids be independent the way I know they can handle, we'd be getting the cops called on us.

I don't disagree with you! How did we get here? I've put forth one explanation that, while not the entire answer, is a big part of it. Unless and until women start having kids earlier and stop outsourcing the care of babies and children, this is the kind of culture we can expect to live in--one in which the ever shifting nat'l zeitgeist has larger say. It very well could be that one of the trade offs to women establishing careers before having families is that our kids can't have the kind of childhoods we want for them bc even if our families are nuclear, we can't exit the realities of the larger culture. To that end, I don't think millennials realize that they are on the tail end of a radical sociological shift and that taking a stock of the results would be pragmatic.

Fertility is plummetting everywhere, despite huge variations in culture around female careers and "outsourcing" child care. I think that the intensive parenting culture probably is in part a product of smaller families, but that doesn't exactly lend itself to a solution. It's also a product of increased returns to intensive parenting -- the stakes to educational attainment have gotten higher and the whole system more competitive.

But this is all very different from 'women don't know how to manage households.'

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are millennials (men or women) having kids at all if all they are going to do is fight over who has to take care of them? Really! Why do you have kids? This thread makes me so sad for all these kids.

Your reading comprehension is less than desirable. It is about childcare plus household management and for most of us, plus having dual-income marriages. All three need to be balanced in order to work. Even if one person has a job and the other doesn't to take care of the children means that household stuff is still needing to be balanced. The balance is not childcare + house and working. If two people work and their childcare is outsourced to daycare, then childcare and house need to be taken care of by both outside of working hours.

I would love to work my 8.5 hours and then be with my kid in the morning and afternoon until bed 100% but that means that the cooking, laundry, cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, etc. all needs to be done 100% by my partner. And then we each have individual time and married time from after kid bedtime - our own bedtimes. What most people are complaining about is the situation where a working mom is doing 90% of the childcare before and after work plus 50% of the housework (or more).

Strongly disagree with this and I think this is a major flaw in modern parenting in liberal circles. The children should be involved in most of this. You can most certainly spend time with your kids while they also help clean, prepare dinner, tidy up etc. You don’t need to entertain your kids like so many modern parents do.

But that gets back to the "why have kids in the first place?!" I had kids because I wanted to play with them, teach them, spend time with them. I want to entertain them.

And yes, I think this is a very modern view on parenting and it's why so many of us are failing. Our parents and grandparents had better work life balances and quality of life because they didn't entertain and play with kids.

[Anonymous]

In UMC white-collar households everything is outsourced for various reasons. In the household I grew up, my dad did 100% of repairs & renovations (built the house I grew up) and I never stepped foot in a daycare. One set of grandparents was daycare. I grew up in my parents’ hometown, which is where all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were born & raised too. Lots of social, cultural & economic trends since then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a very privileged conversation. If this is the kind of thing that families with top flight professionals with HHI of $300k+ are going through, what the hell are the nannies, housekeepers, and contractors who work for these people experiencing in their own roles as mothers, fathers, and spouses?

They are doing shift work, don’t have young kids or are married to someone who does shift work.