
Do Millennial Men Want Stay-At-Home Wives? - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/sunday/do-millennial-men-want-stay-at-home-wives.html
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TillE
Oh thank goodness, the article opens with explaining the utter uselessness of
the term "millennial". I (32) have next to nothing in common with someone who
was born when I was graduating high school. It's an absurd category.

Anyway, it's still silly to take this particular question as a proxy for views
on gender equality. I think there's an obvious desire for it to be
economically feasible for one partner to be able to take time off to raise
children in their early years. It's usually not possible anymore.

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gnicholas
Absolutely. What happened to Generation Y? If Gen X cuts off at 1980, wouldn't
Gen Y be from 1980 to early/mid '90s? Millenials are kids who don't remember
dial-up, and perhaps even wired ethernet.

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throwaway2016a
I'm considered a millennial and I was born in 1985. The most common I've heard
is it is anyone who turned 18 on or after 2000.

Also, I very definitely remember dial-up... and cassette tapes, and VHS, and
walkmans, diskmans, CRT monitors, playing outside, etc :)

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friedman23
Born in 93, is playing outside really not common anymore or are you just
joking?

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throwaway2016a
I am half joking on that one. But yes, I get the distinct feeling playing
outside is becoming increasingly less common.

And when kids do play outside their parents hover over them and they can't
explore or take risks.

Speaking purely from the perspective of someone in the US. I know other
countries are very different.

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dllthomas
I hover over my kid when he plays outside... but then, he's 18 months old.

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keebEz
As incomes rise in the US (mostly in high productivity sectors), child care
costs increase even though the productivity of child care stays stagnant. As a
result, per dollar spent, the quality of child care has been getting worse. On
top of that, the best nannies/day cares/schools are being bided up by more
market forces in those sectors. As a result, the point at which increasing
family income by a secondary earner is no longer net positive (especially when
considering tax implications.. someplace where unpaid household labor majorly
wins).

Improved educational attainment may have just made Millennials act more
economically 'rational' than their previous versions.

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pwthornton
Those who in high productivity sectors make more than enough to warrant
working instead of staying at home. My wife is in this category. And you need
to think of this more than a simple one year ROI.

Leaving the workforce for 5-7 years (or more) can shave hundreds of thousands
or millions off of lifetime earnings. You are talking about leaving the
workforce in prime of your career and not getting experience and promotions
for several years. My daughter is 2.5, and my wife has been promoted twice
since she was born. Leaving the workforce from the ages of 30 to 37 could be
fairly catastrophic to one's lifetime earnings.

We live in the Washington, DC area, with the highest childcare costs in the
U.S., and the long-term financial impact of her not working would be
staggering, even if working versus not working was a complete push while we
had pre-school age kids.

There are reasons why a spouse may want to stay at home to raise kids, but
rarely does it make long-term financial sense.

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gech
What do you say to people who decry the concentration of high incomes in our
governments capital?

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pwthornton
If your area has a low concentration of good paying jobs, it's probably a
structural and cultural issue that could be worked on.

Washington, DC is the capital of the wealthiest country on Earth and it has a
massive concentration of high quality higher education. Why wouldn't the
economy be strong here?

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ksenzee
As a working mom with a stay-at-home husband, I don't love the wording of the
question. There's no way to tell which respondents think women shouldn't work,
and which ones simply value the work of stay-at-home parents. I know they've
asked the same question with the same wording for decades, but I'd still like
to see what results they got with a gender-neutral statement like "It is much
better for everyone involved if one spouse works outside the home and the
other takes care of the home and family."

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killjoywashere
I would say the Dutch (as is often the case) probably have it about right:
married women with kids frequently work about 20 hours a week and the man
works a 40 hours that actually ends up being closer to 50-60 hours away from
the family (Figure commutes alone easily adds 5).

Anecdotally, my wife couldn't stand to stay at home, but it's also physically
impossible to work full time and cover the kids' schedules, groceries, etc.

It doesn't have to be the woman either. We have friends where the woman works
and the husband stays home. But they also adopted, so she _never_ stayed home
to recover, breastfeed, etc.

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tmccrmck
What kinds of jobs allow 20 hours/week?

I can't remember ever seeing a single software development job (which wasn't
contracting) where the employer advertised less than 40 hour weeks.

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kchoudhu
Europe has a much stronger culture of respecting part time work than the US.

I was surprised to hear that my parttime friends in Europe had benefits
equivalent to their fulltime colleagues.

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autokad
i hate how this article confuses 'wanting a stay at home wife' with gender
equality. so according to this article, having this preference must mean they
are not in favor of gender equality.

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superioritycplx
NYT becoming more and more like BuzzFeed.

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metaphorm
actually becoming more and more like Fox News, except "liberal" instead of
"conservative".

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gozur88
That was always the case.

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bryanlarsen
The New York Times has endorsed Republican presidential candidates in the
past.

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gozur88
Hahahaha, yeah. Last time: Eisenhower in 1956.

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missizii
I'm a homeschooling SAHM (was a software engineer for 6 years, have a MS in
CS) expecting our 4 child, born in 1982. This is not surprising to me, I know
many women choosing being at home over a lucrative & promising career. Both my
parents are MDs, and I was raised by nannies. Here's the thing about nannies -
you don't know a situation is really bad until it's too late. Also, the second
shift is a very real, exhausting phenomenon. Lots of smart women with smart
early wave feminist moms have looked at our own childhoods and said, "I'd
rather be significantly poorer and spend the time with my kids. I missed my
mom when I was a kid and it hurt. I don't want the stress of working a full
day followed afterschool pickup followed by homework and extracurriculars
followed by dinner and cleaning." Not shockingly, I married a guy who agrees
with me on this.

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univalent
I guess I'm in this category. My wife quit her job when we had our second kid.
It was our decision. She's planning on going back to work when the younger one
turns 4. Parent > Paid Caregiver for taking care of a child. Could be either
parent.

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dllthomas
> Parent > Paid Caregiver for taking care of a child. Could be either parent.

Maybe ideally, or commonly, or on average, but that really depends on the
parent(s) and the potential paid caregiver under consideration.

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kchoudhu
Women have expectations now (for the better imho) that simply weren't there 50
or 60 years ago. I know the career sacrifice that my wife would have to make
to stay at home and raise our kids would shatter her sense of wellbeing, so I
_want_ her to get back into the workforce when she is able: in the long term,
a happy, fulfilled wife is going to make for a happier marriage, and I am all
about a peaceful life at home.

It also means that at any given time, either of us could support the family in
case of disruption (e.g. I start a major project that takes a few years to
generate revenue, or she decides to take time off active research to write a
book). I value the flexibility that having both spouses work brings our
family.

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alphonsegaston
I imagine that gay millennial men don't, but who knows, it could work.

Leaving that aside, I want a co-equal partner, but that doesn't necessarily
exclude someone who stays at home for any number of reasons. I think gender
equality should also be pursued by undoing the devaluation of what has been
historically considered "women's work" (caring for loved ones, housework,
etc).

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dikdik
I fall in this category and I would love to be a stay at home husband, not
sure about wanting kids though. I'd do all the domestic duties happily and
work on my own projects with my freetime, what a dream that would be!

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wehadfun
From a financial stand point unless a parent makes significantly more than the
cost of child care it makes since for them to stay at home.

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norea-armozel
I was thinking the same thing at least from the point of view of someone who
came from a state where the job market has been shrinking or at least not
growing in pace with the population. I don't think I knew anyone around my age
or a little older who were married where only one spouse was working. It
seemed back home almost everyone worked full time if they could and possibly
an additional part-time job to cover costs especially if they had children.

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up_and_up
I have one. Her choice though as we homeschool 3 kids.

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finnh
If she wanted to work, would you stay home to homeschool, or would you stop
homeschooling?

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up_and_up
It depends, likely she would work part-time and we could continue
homeschooling. But if she wanted to go FT, then yeah we would need to send the
kids to school/daycare.

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finnh
Thanks for the reply. I know for some people homeschooling is non-negotiable,
so was curious to know your approach. My aunt in Alaska homeschooled her kids,
but mostly "because the local school wasn't very good."

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throwaway2016a
I'm an older millennial (barely even in the group). My wife has a career and
so do I. Plus we have a small child. It would certainly be easier if one of us
stayed home (not necessarily her). But I think it would be even better if we
could both have a healthy work life balance.

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srssays
My girlfriend has a minimum wage job in retail. She doesn't particularly enjoy
it. But I guess she can take comfort in the knowledge that she is
participating in a "gender revolution". Not like those traitorous stay-at-home
wives.

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uptownhr
Millennial Men wants to be Stay at Home Husbands!

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jplayer01
I do.

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ldiracdelta
Me too. And have. And am happy.

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bjourne
Perhaps because it has become harder for families to afford so it is now seen
as a luxury? And people want luxuries...

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dllthomas
Sometimes my wife and I joke that we could use a stay-at-home wife...

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hashmymustache
What's the comparative divorce rate between families with stay at home dads vs
stay at home moms?

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monocasa
I don't.

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Udo
It's interesting how you get downvoted with "I don't" while the comment saying
"I do" gets upvoted. It seems this crowd doesn't just see this as a matter of
opinion but would rather silence one view - namely the view of men who don't
want their wives to be stay-at-home moms. This lends quite a bit of
credibility to the hypothesis that millennials strongly prefer traditional
gender roles.

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superioritycplx
If the Millennial Men have kids and want the best for them, then, yeah. Hard
to argue that a mother is better than a baby sitter.

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nkrisc
The men could just as easily be the one staying home.

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trey-jones
"just as easily" is not exactly true. Sure mom can pump and leave breastmilk
(an inconvenience, some might say!), but there is at least one good reason
that moms are moms, at least for the first year. Hard to argue with biology.

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sudosteph
If a woman is only staying at home for the first year of an infant's life, I
really wouldn't call that a "Stay-at-home-wife". That's more of an extended
maternity leave. I've always seen "Stay-at-home" wife/mom used to describe
women who choose to stay home long-term, usually in place of a full-time
career.

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kapauldo
While we should treat genders equally with respect, we should not pretend
genders are interchangeable. Men are not good moms, for us and all species.
Women have a much harder choice than men with work, and we should not pretend
they don't.

