Totally agree. My family has pretty much followed these tenets and while it's hard, it's worked for us. The downside is I married late; the good side is I fully completed my education and training and was able to command a strong part-time wage, with flexible hours. I recently returned to full-time work - my kids were 10, 12, and 12. Our family's needs started to shift and I was able to quickly enter the full-time workforce with a flexible job with decent pay. However, it is still extremely difficult. I can see society's problems so much more clearly now - with two full-time working parents, any kind of community involvement is extremely difficult, school requirements push up against family norms, and there is less time for enrichment as a family because the running of the household takes so much time. I would really like to return to part-time work, but jobs in my field were severely affected by recent budget cuts, and so employment in my sector is uncertain. Also, our cars are 15 years old, we will likely need to replace the roof at some point, and the kids' needs are much more expensive. No one gets everything, but I do feel that communities as well as families really suffer when families are so stretched. I think that moving towards shorter workweeks, with credit for caregiving and community service (so paid work for 20-30 hours with another 10-20 in caregiving or community service), would help families so much. I think fundamentally we have to decide whether families should be dependent on their own resources (which privileges families with higher paying jobs, family money or other support from grandparents - and which puts families with disabled member in an exceptionally tight spot) or whether we are all in this together as a community. With Medicaid and Food stamps at risk (neither of which we need at this time), I think that we are putting lots of stress on families, which likely to reduce family size, the quality of parenting, and community investment. Investing in each other on a voluntary basis and through taxes is pretty much the best thing we can do and I am just so sad that so much of this is at risk.
This is excellent and articulates many things that I’ve vaguely felt in response to gender pay gap discussions but haven’t been able to put into words. And personally, I left my part time, very flexible remote job when my son was 8 months old because even with those “ideal” circumstances, I felt I couldn’t do both things well. I don’t know how people “do it all,” but I’ve decided I no longer want to try lol
I also think the technology issue obscures the fact that age just … matters. I’m 38 now and pregnant with my first. The truth is that I can feel that my body is more tired and less flexible than it was 5 or 10 years ago. I’m perfectly healthy - it’s just a fact of life. So just because technically you can have kids later doesn’t mean doing so has no effect. I will do my best for my child, but there is no possibility that I will have the energy to bring to parenting that my younger friends did. Just because something is possible doesn’t make it ideal.
Yes, I had my first child at 29 and my fourth child at 39, and I certainly feel the difference. It is true that you are older and wiser in your late 30s, and I knew how to pace myself better in my fourth pregnancy than my first. However, in my late 20s I didn’t need all that much pacing, since I had a lot of energy 🤣
Great piece, as usual, Ivana. Your third piece of advice to the hypothetical dual Ivy couple is one I have thought about, albeit in another domain. I've wondered whether a focus on financial independence is a way to reach more men in the working parent / caring for children discourse. As in, reaching "your number" helps men to turn off the provider brain and become more helpful and focused at home. I was talking to a friend who I used to work with at a large law firm who got super burnt out (he had a 350+ billable month. yikes). He's now focused on hitting an invested assets number so he can be present to his wife and hopefully future children.
Thanks Ben, so glad you like it. I am familiar with the FIRE movement, and I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. In general, I think kids do best with a fully involved dad and mom, so I think it’s great for those who can swing it to work for a “number” and then dial back from a super demanding job.
There’s a lot of nuance here: I’m sort of dubious about some of the FIRE movement’s emphasis on work being mainly for the money and that there is a “number” to reach. I personally would not have wanted to work for 20 years solely in order to retire. This is obviously a generalization, but that is sort of my general vibe from that community. To the extent that I have concerns, those would be it.
But anyway, that’s a long winded way of saving I’m totally in favor of saving up so you can spend more time with your family: I just am worried about the idea of bifurcating your life into “work for money” and “no work”, even though I’m sure there are many in the FIRE movement that don’t do that.
I'm very grateful to be free from employment and able to do as I please all day long with the people that I love most. Yes, that involves a lot of hard work for most of my waking (and some of my sleeping) hours, but it's the most intrinsically motivated work I've ever done. I'm really living.
It's too bad there isn't a way to quantity that sense of freedom and fulfillment. All else equal, more money is nice. But all else is too hard to measure. So we're stuck using the easy-to-measure money as a proxy for everything nice. Then we teach to the test, as it were, and optimize for the proxy. But as Goodhart says, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. If you ask people how happy they are, married mothers are the happiest demographic even though we're not the biggest earning.
As you said, equal wages for equal work is good to pursue as a society, but equal work is not good to force onto mothers who have revealed preferences for something we find more fulfilling.
as long as everyone accepts men getting to combine their personal and professional ambitions at the expense of women’s, I don’t see fertility rates changing much, no matter how much IVF is available
If a woman is in a marriage where she believes her husband’s professional ambitions come at her personal expense it is time to have a number of serious conversations about how to change that. That is not good, and families need to make sure they are having open and respectful conversations about that issue.
On fighting right and number 2, I have also seen the reverse, where the stay at home parent views the working spouse’s commute and time at the job as basically time off, or as something that they (the SAHP) is making a sacrifice for, so the breadwinning parent is expected to take over chores and parenting duties after getting home from work so that the SAHP can have a break.
I think this is so contextual as to what is going on …. If the working spouse is basically giving her or his all at their job, and coming home exhausted that is a very different dynamic and conversation than if the working spouse had a long lunch, etc. Plus, of course, what’s going on at home (e.g. are there twin babies?) No one size fits all.
I agree with Ivana here, that the context really matters. For what it's worth, my own marriage is a bit like you're describing, and I generally agree that it colors our evening and morning hours: I am more on the front line of handling the kids and chores in those hours, in recognition of the fact that my wife has the harder "day job". If my day job was sweating over a gas range cooking for a high-pressure restaurant (or squaring off against a team of high-powered corporate lawyers in court) all day, it might be a different story.
I was struck by how inequitable the "I quit" storyline linked from Above the Law was: a Biglaw associate mother of two young kids, where she was evidently responsible for: the 4am "put kids back to sleep" night shift; dressing, feeding, dropping off the kids; picking up the kids (even though she was late); cooking them dinner; and then they had a negotiation over who had to bathe and put them to bed and... she lost (???) and had to handle all that too. Yeah that sounds miserable. It actually sounds like she'd had an even easier time raising the kids solo, since the only thing her husband did all day was to waste her time arguing his way out of doing bedtime.
Yes: if the breadwinner is a police officer who comes off shifts absolutely exhausted, I think it’s fair for families to decide she/he gets to come home and unwind and go to bed. Hopefully though, the next morning she/he can spend serious time with the kids before starting the next shift to give the homemaker a little respite.
I agree on the Above the Law story … it’s been a long time but I think she did say in response to that kind of criticism that her husband was a very engaged dad! It wouldn’t surprise me though if even before she quit they had both realized (or intuited) that they couldn’t both work super demanding jobs and been prioritizing his work over hers …. I’ve seen that happen in other couples where one of the two parents is basically “quiet quitting” for a while until she or he can’t take it anymore and just quits.
Yeah, to be fair, I'm sure the day that pushed her over the edge, or at least the one that she chose to illustrate her plight, would be an unusually bad day. And from my few brushes with corporate law, it's not at all hard for me to believe that even carefully divvying up the parenting and household responsibilities would leave an overwhelming combination of work and family demands if both parents are in BigLaw.
Totally agree. My family has pretty much followed these tenets and while it's hard, it's worked for us. The downside is I married late; the good side is I fully completed my education and training and was able to command a strong part-time wage, with flexible hours. I recently returned to full-time work - my kids were 10, 12, and 12. Our family's needs started to shift and I was able to quickly enter the full-time workforce with a flexible job with decent pay. However, it is still extremely difficult. I can see society's problems so much more clearly now - with two full-time working parents, any kind of community involvement is extremely difficult, school requirements push up against family norms, and there is less time for enrichment as a family because the running of the household takes so much time. I would really like to return to part-time work, but jobs in my field were severely affected by recent budget cuts, and so employment in my sector is uncertain. Also, our cars are 15 years old, we will likely need to replace the roof at some point, and the kids' needs are much more expensive. No one gets everything, but I do feel that communities as well as families really suffer when families are so stretched. I think that moving towards shorter workweeks, with credit for caregiving and community service (so paid work for 20-30 hours with another 10-20 in caregiving or community service), would help families so much. I think fundamentally we have to decide whether families should be dependent on their own resources (which privileges families with higher paying jobs, family money or other support from grandparents - and which puts families with disabled member in an exceptionally tight spot) or whether we are all in this together as a community. With Medicaid and Food stamps at risk (neither of which we need at this time), I think that we are putting lots of stress on families, which likely to reduce family size, the quality of parenting, and community investment. Investing in each other on a voluntary basis and through taxes is pretty much the best thing we can do and I am just so sad that so much of this is at risk.
Thank you for sharing your story! I agree it is tough for both families and communities when no one has any margin to help each other out.
This is excellent and articulates many things that I’ve vaguely felt in response to gender pay gap discussions but haven’t been able to put into words. And personally, I left my part time, very flexible remote job when my son was 8 months old because even with those “ideal” circumstances, I felt I couldn’t do both things well. I don’t know how people “do it all,” but I’ve decided I no longer want to try lol
I’m so glad it was helpful to you!
I also think the technology issue obscures the fact that age just … matters. I’m 38 now and pregnant with my first. The truth is that I can feel that my body is more tired and less flexible than it was 5 or 10 years ago. I’m perfectly healthy - it’s just a fact of life. So just because technically you can have kids later doesn’t mean doing so has no effect. I will do my best for my child, but there is no possibility that I will have the energy to bring to parenting that my younger friends did. Just because something is possible doesn’t make it ideal.
Yes, I had my first child at 29 and my fourth child at 39, and I certainly feel the difference. It is true that you are older and wiser in your late 30s, and I knew how to pace myself better in my fourth pregnancy than my first. However, in my late 20s I didn’t need all that much pacing, since I had a lot of energy 🤣
Great piece, as usual, Ivana. Your third piece of advice to the hypothetical dual Ivy couple is one I have thought about, albeit in another domain. I've wondered whether a focus on financial independence is a way to reach more men in the working parent / caring for children discourse. As in, reaching "your number" helps men to turn off the provider brain and become more helpful and focused at home. I was talking to a friend who I used to work with at a large law firm who got super burnt out (he had a 350+ billable month. yikes). He's now focused on hitting an invested assets number so he can be present to his wife and hopefully future children.
Thanks Ben, so glad you like it. I am familiar with the FIRE movement, and I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. In general, I think kids do best with a fully involved dad and mom, so I think it’s great for those who can swing it to work for a “number” and then dial back from a super demanding job.
There’s a lot of nuance here: I’m sort of dubious about some of the FIRE movement’s emphasis on work being mainly for the money and that there is a “number” to reach. I personally would not have wanted to work for 20 years solely in order to retire. This is obviously a generalization, but that is sort of my general vibe from that community. To the extent that I have concerns, those would be it.
But anyway, that’s a long winded way of saving I’m totally in favor of saving up so you can spend more time with your family: I just am worried about the idea of bifurcating your life into “work for money” and “no work”, even though I’m sure there are many in the FIRE movement that don’t do that.
There's also that pestilent Evangelist and Doctor Luke with his aggravating memoir excoriating the rich.
Yes, isn’t that one extra challenging?
I'm very grateful to be free from employment and able to do as I please all day long with the people that I love most. Yes, that involves a lot of hard work for most of my waking (and some of my sleeping) hours, but it's the most intrinsically motivated work I've ever done. I'm really living.
It's too bad there isn't a way to quantity that sense of freedom and fulfillment. All else equal, more money is nice. But all else is too hard to measure. So we're stuck using the easy-to-measure money as a proxy for everything nice. Then we teach to the test, as it were, and optimize for the proxy. But as Goodhart says, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. If you ask people how happy they are, married mothers are the happiest demographic even though we're not the biggest earning.
As you said, equal wages for equal work is good to pursue as a society, but equal work is not good to force onto mothers who have revealed preferences for something we find more fulfilling.
One of your best, Ivana.
Thanks Haley! So glad you like it.
as long as everyone accepts men getting to combine their personal and professional ambitions at the expense of women’s, I don’t see fertility rates changing much, no matter how much IVF is available
If a woman is in a marriage where she believes her husband’s professional ambitions come at her personal expense it is time to have a number of serious conversations about how to change that. That is not good, and families need to make sure they are having open and respectful conversations about that issue.
It’s a shame that there aren’t people with common sense to educate the younger generations. You can’t have it all.
On fighting right and number 2, I have also seen the reverse, where the stay at home parent views the working spouse’s commute and time at the job as basically time off, or as something that they (the SAHP) is making a sacrifice for, so the breadwinning parent is expected to take over chores and parenting duties after getting home from work so that the SAHP can have a break.
I think this is so contextual as to what is going on …. If the working spouse is basically giving her or his all at their job, and coming home exhausted that is a very different dynamic and conversation than if the working spouse had a long lunch, etc. Plus, of course, what’s going on at home (e.g. are there twin babies?) No one size fits all.
I agree with Ivana here, that the context really matters. For what it's worth, my own marriage is a bit like you're describing, and I generally agree that it colors our evening and morning hours: I am more on the front line of handling the kids and chores in those hours, in recognition of the fact that my wife has the harder "day job". If my day job was sweating over a gas range cooking for a high-pressure restaurant (or squaring off against a team of high-powered corporate lawyers in court) all day, it might be a different story.
I was struck by how inequitable the "I quit" storyline linked from Above the Law was: a Biglaw associate mother of two young kids, where she was evidently responsible for: the 4am "put kids back to sleep" night shift; dressing, feeding, dropping off the kids; picking up the kids (even though she was late); cooking them dinner; and then they had a negotiation over who had to bathe and put them to bed and... she lost (???) and had to handle all that too. Yeah that sounds miserable. It actually sounds like she'd had an even easier time raising the kids solo, since the only thing her husband did all day was to waste her time arguing his way out of doing bedtime.
Yes: if the breadwinner is a police officer who comes off shifts absolutely exhausted, I think it’s fair for families to decide she/he gets to come home and unwind and go to bed. Hopefully though, the next morning she/he can spend serious time with the kids before starting the next shift to give the homemaker a little respite.
I agree on the Above the Law story … it’s been a long time but I think she did say in response to that kind of criticism that her husband was a very engaged dad! It wouldn’t surprise me though if even before she quit they had both realized (or intuited) that they couldn’t both work super demanding jobs and been prioritizing his work over hers …. I’ve seen that happen in other couples where one of the two parents is basically “quiet quitting” for a while until she or he can’t take it anymore and just quits.
Yeah, to be fair, I'm sure the day that pushed her over the edge, or at least the one that she chose to illustrate her plight, would be an unusually bad day. And from my few brushes with corporate law, it's not at all hard for me to believe that even carefully divvying up the parenting and household responsibilities would leave an overwhelming combination of work and family demands if both parents are in BigLaw.