Reply to Fair division of household responsibilities vs. income

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[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]

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