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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Solidly millennial here (35) and I can only think of one person in my orbit that is a SAHM.

The men I know pull their weight within their relationships and with the kids, and both sides of the couple have jobs that are fairly equal (I would say most of us are at about $400k HHI.)

I worked my tail off for my career and my husband and I earn about the same. Why would I give that up? I couldn't be with someone who expected me to downshift my career or step away from the workforce... which is fine... because there are plenty of people with different outlooks on the situation and are better suited for each other.

Solidly millennial male (41) here, and opposite for me. Most in my circle have SAHW. Of the two that don’t: one wife works a couple of shifts at the hospital a week. The incremental money is important to that household. The second wife has some high GS job where she still makes less than 20% what her husband makes. The husband doesn’t get it from a *financial aspect*, but he shrugs his shoulders as that was the deal they made.

I think this is really an assortative mating issue. People who want a a SAH arrangement sort into those circles much earlier and date from that perspective because SAH is correlated with other identities people find important. FWIW, my wife told me on our second date that she would work if the family needed it, but she felt it was her calling to be a mother and we’ve been fortunate enough to live that out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see I am late to the convo, but how are they going to be equal partners when they watched their boomer dads do nothing?

Boomer Dads are the worst. Which is funny since they’re basically the same as the guys in the Greatest Generation who were, by definition, the best. I guess your relative worth to society depends a lot on whether you get the chance to kill Nazis.

My husband and I both had boomer dads. Mine was amazing - super involved, very loving, etc. My husband's is awful - verbally abusive, useless, and just rude. Luckily we both like my dad more and that's who my husband strives to be. I don't understand saying things like all boomer dads suck. Maybe it makes you feel better to think there's a reason all your husband suck? Because mine doesn't. And many of my friend's don't.

Anonymous wrote:Back in the day even highly intelligent women became teachers, secretaries, nurses, or other flexible professions. Now we are all attorneys, bankers, doctors. But we still marry our highly intelligent male counterparts who are in the same fields. It is not tenable. The demands of those professions need to be relaxed for everyone, male and female. I don’t think it is going to happen for a couple of decades until us Millennials are firmly in charge. There are outliers for sure, but I do see many Millennial men who are very active in their homes and families. Both the drudge work and the fun stuff.