Reply to Fair division of household responsibilities vs. income

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What many of these responses seem to miss is that there is a fundamental difference between doing a household chore like washing dishes and doing a child-focused "chore" like feeding a baby, reading books to a toddler, helping an elementary kid with homework, overseeing a kid while they help with dinner, etc.

You can outsource a household chore and it has no impact on your relationship with your kids. If you bring someone in to cook and clean, offer them fair wages and treat them respectfully, this should not impact your relationship with your kids one way or the other.

If you bring someone in to do all your child-focused chores, even the ones that occur after you are done workin for the day, you are robbing your kids of important relationship-building with you. I'm not saying it's not okay to ever have a nanny help with feeding or teaching or spending time with kids. Of course they can, and especially with multiple kids, doing so might enable you to spend more quality time with your kids.

But the idea that just because someone is making a certain income, they should be able to outsource ALL parenting-related tasks? That's a really f***ed up view of parenting. The idea that making the money that pays for a child to be fed, clothed, comforted, taught, etc., exempts you from every actually doing those things in person? It makes you little more than a sperm (or egg) donor and benefactor. Parenting is much more about doing than paying. Paying is a baseline requirement for being a parent, but it is not "parenting." If you don't do any actual parenting, you aren't really a parent. You're just a paycheck.[/quote]

The people who put their kids in daycare all day ARE outsourcing being parents already.   Or most of it.

If you really believed what you just posted you would advocate for lower paid spouse to quit work entirely when kids are young and be a full time sah parent for a few years.  You can't have it both ways--claim you want to be a parent then stick the kid in daycare when it's not an absolute financial necessity for both parents to work.   And for these high income people it's not.  Typically they are.just insanely greedy or the lower income spouse is on an ego trip.[/quote]

I'm the PP and I did SAHM when my kid was little and still only work PT. That's what worked for me and we're lucky we could afford it.

My DH still does a lot of child-related "chores" because he's a parent and that's parenting. And he did them when I SAHMed too. I obviously do more than he does because I don't work a full-time job so obviously I'm doing more childcare and household stuff. But on days he works from home, he does drop off and often also packs lunch (while I get breakfast and get DC ready for the day) and in the evenings we divide and conquer between dinner and parenting tasks. At that point in the day he's spent a full day working but... so have I. Just because my work is split between a paid job 9-2 and then childcare 2-6 does not mean I did less or should be solely responsible for our evening routine.

Parents parent. It doesn't matter if you make 50k or 500k. Yes people will negotiate different divisions of workload depending on work schedules, preferences, abilities, etc. But the idea that if one partner makes a lot more than the other, they can just skip out on all the parenting stuff is ridiculous. If you don't want to be a parent, don't. But if you have kids, you should expect that you will be spending time taking care of them.[/quote]

Really.  So military people in active duty and deployment should not have children.  Foreign service officers posted on assignments without their families should not have children.  Single moms should have their children taken away since the father is not around.

Got any more "logic" on this topic?[/quote]

I mean, in all of those cases I think if you know that's going to be the issue going in, you should really think hard about whether this is the time for kids. I do think the kids of active duty military have it very tough unless the home front parent has a really good support system. Even then, those people get home leave and when they do, I'm guessing they change diapers and help with homework and stuff. If they don't, I have no problem saying they should not have had children.

Same with FS officers. I actually know a bunch of these and if you understood the rates of divorce and alcoholism in that field, you might also suggest someone in the FS really think hard about having kids, especially if they are in an area where assignment to an embassy where they can't take kids is likely. The FS officers I know with happy home lives all made career sacrifices to make that happen.

A single mom is obviously doing tons of parenting. She has no choice but to hire childcare while she works, but she is of course spending tons of time with her kids outside that. After the early years, kids are in school anyway.

The question was whether you can outsource ALL parenting responsibilities if you have enough money, and my argument is that if you do, you aren't really a parent. If you don't want to spend time with children and do mundane things like change diapers and help with homework, DO NOT BECOME A PARENT.[/quote]

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