Reply to American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage (Wall Street Journal)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some of you are really jaded. You act like no women has ever been happily married to a non-jerk before. That's really sad.

I'm not saying everyone wants a husband and children, but my husband and children enrich my life in so many ways and I would be very lonely and sad without them. Yes it's more "work" too - but I honestly don't know what I would do with all of my free time instead. No hobby takes that much time![/quote]

This place is an echo chamber of unhappy women. It serves basically the same function as an incel message board in reverse; it highlights the negative experiences of some people and encourages people reading it to identify with those negative experiences. It is, very often, pretty much removed from reality. Look at the conversation on housework and childcare. On average, women in households with children do more of those things than men, it's true. Men do, on average, about 16.5 hours per week of housework and childcare and women do around 31. Men, in turn, do paid work for 38.4 hours per week, to women's 21.6. The result is that men's combination of paid and unpaid work is slightly higher than women's, but overall it's essentially even. 
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/03/14/chapter-6-time-in-work-and-leisure-patterns-by-gender-and-family-structure/ which draws on the American Time Used Study

That's not the story you get here though. The story you get here both ignores the fact that men, on average, are doing housework and childcare (a couple hours a day on average) and that they're doing paid work enough more than women to more than offset the extra unpaid labor at home.[/quote]

The basis of this thread is a WSj article that looks at national trends and provides supporting data.

It's not like this was just somebody randomly opining on the topic.

Also, the reason the article exists is because the relationship between men working and earning and childcare/household contributions is breaking down[/quote]

How does the man getting paid more “offset” the woman’s unpaid labor? unless he is paying her a wage or giving her additional share of the joint assets? This kind of thinking is exactly why women don’t want to get married or have kids. [/quote]

I think you meant to respond to me, I spoke about time use data. It "offsets" in terms of time spent during an average week is what I meant. I'm talking about men working more hours, not men getting paid more. Overall, men and women spend similar amounts of time on "work" both paid and unpaid. That was my point.

I do think this kind of approach to household income is missing the point though. Both spouses share all income earned by anyone who is working and they share all benefits from anyone who is doing housework. I do school drop-off so that my spouse can work, why on earth would I get paid a wage for that when I already have the benefit of any income earned during that time?[/quote]

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