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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm sure this point has been made, but modern marriage is not necessarily a bad deal for women.

Modern motherhood is an absolute nightmare for women and somehow marriage makes it worse. The expectations for mothers have reached this critical point where it is now pretty much impossible to meet parenting standards unless you are wealthy enough to outsource significant parts of it to well-paid professionals, and even then it's hard.

We've created this fiction where parental duties are shared equitably but (1) they are definitely not, women are still doing the vast majority of childcare as well as household tasks in families, and (2) we've actually increased the volume of parental duties a ton in the last 30 years or so to the point where even if a man does half of what his mom did when he was a child, it will not be half of what is actually expected at this point.

We also have a huge crisis in childcare, and don't forget the similar crises brewing in elder care as Boomers age.

This is why the birth rate among non-immigrant populations is plummeting. What is expected is simply not possible, and women are increasingly tired of being the scapegoats for all of this. When women become parents these days it's just because they really, really want to be, which only makes it more acutely miserable when you're told repeatedly who crap you are at it even while breaking your back trying to do it well.[/quote]

There is a huge amount of truth to this. One of the culprits is the extreme views on what parents should do among the UMC. It is no longer the case that kids spend many unsupervised hours just playing. There are so many extracurriculars, scheduled playtimes, camps, etc. etc. That doesn't even take into account how much more is consumed by and for children compared to decades ago. A big part of this is that parents work more, so they feel the need to schedule their kids more. A big part is that parents feel like kids need to be competitive with other kids to succeed. And a big part of it is social pressure to keep up with the Joneses in terms of what you provide. The counterintuitive result is, I believe, families that are less happy, including the kids.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Both parents do not have to work full time -- you just have to be comfortable with less money. Kids don't need a lot of what we buy for them -- in terms of goods or activities. [/quote]

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