
Decline of the Dad Job - hunglee2
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/decline-of-the-dad-job/
======
rrggrr
Tip of iceberg. I'm a divorced father of two sons and lucky enough to have a
position that gives me some (not a lot) of flexibility in work schedule. The
Courts, as many divorced fathers will say, haven't heard the news about the
ever increasing decline in the 'Dad Job'. In my state thousands of men are in
jail for non-payment of child support because the 'Dad Job' isn't available in
this state.

Progress toward the agnostic treatment of men and women in raising children,
providing for the household, and making a home is still far behind the reality
in most (not all) Courts, despite claims to the contrary. It took most of my
net worth to ensure my presence in my kids lives would be regular and
meaningful and to ensure child support reflected my former wife's multi-
million dollar net worth.

Perhaps a level playing field is emerging as the 'Dad Job' declines, I don't
know. Its of little benefit to the tens of thousands of men in the United
States whose reality is of no concern to anyone.

~~~
jcoffland
I'm sure this situation is very real for you but you exaggerate a little. Most
men do not end up in jail for failing to make child support payments. Child
support enforcement is a long drawn out process.

Edit: But I could be wrong. I found several anecdotal articles about this
subject on the NY Times and elsewhere. Here's a more informative article on
the topic [http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/child-support-
an...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/child-support-and-
incarceration.aspx)

~~~
rrggrr
I didn't say most men. I said thousands in my state. And, the problem is worse
than you know. For every man jailed for non-payment of support there are
(anecdotally) probably 50 or so desperately struggling to meet their support
obligations AND find time to have an impactful presence in their children's
lives. I can tell you from personal experience and those of my friends that
these struggles are met with indifference by the Courts and Legislators.
Worse, the struggle is used as leverage by non-support paying spouses to
control and alienate. Until you live it its impossible to understand how
inequitable the process is.

~~~
jcoffland
So what's your solution? Let the fathers off the hook?

~~~
SophosQ
I don't think anyone here has such intentions. I'd refrain from using
excluded-middle fallacies at HN.

------
divbit
I think you hit the nail on the head with this sentence: "A few of years ago,
Gallup found that what most people wanted, all over the world, was a secure
full-time job. That, after all, is the way most people get enough money to
live on."

But then backtrack here and miss the point "A lot of us, men and women, grew
up thinking of male full-time jobs as real jobs. It’s no wonder that many find
the decline of the dad job so unsettling."

I don't think it's 'realness', whatever that means, that matters. It is the
benefits like healthcare, ability to afford a place to live, education, and
further the social and mental health benefit of working in proximity with
people with similar interests and abilities.

~~~
XorNot
I'd add that "healthcare" as a benefit is a very American concern. In most
real countries, that's taken care of separate to our jobs.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes! This "health insurance is a job benefit" is an artifact of labor
competition in the US during WW2. In Switzerland, where health insurance is
mandatory, your employer specifically isn't allowed to purchase it for
you...you have to go into the same market as everyone else (which is more
fair, and doesn't impair labor mobility).

~~~
ajmurmann
There is another huge issue with the employer playing for health care right
now. On econtalk[1] Mark Warshawsky suggested that the current regulations and
tax incentives lead to rising health care cost that also leads to a stagnating
take home salary for lower end workers. Legally everyone at a company must get
access to the same health care benefits. Since health care benefits are paid
for in pre-tax money high earners who are already well off benefit quite a bit
from better health care. Someone who pays very little taxes and can barely pay
the rent probably would rather take some more cash home. However, most
companies are more focused on "attracting top talent" so more gold plated
health care plans emerge. According to the author most of the wage increases
for low pay workers has just been eaten up by increased health care cost.
That's supposedly were the income gap is coming from to a larger degree. If
everyone got to pick their own insurance on a fair market this would look very
different.

[1]
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/mark_warshawsky.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/mark_warshawsky.html)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Gold plated plans are not really the problem in driving up health care costs,
that has more to do with private operation if what is essentially a public
service with a natural monopoly (you can't shop around in emergencies, and you
probably wouldn't look for the best price if you wanted the best care
instead). And really, are you going to say no to that cat scan because it has
a small chance of finding anything?

The big problem with employer provided insurance is that they suck a lot of
healthy people out of the individual market. We already know richer people are
healthier, and they are likely to be enrolled in group plans. So what is left
in the individual market are necessarily less healthy on average, so the
premiums suck.

For us, it's that our insurance is tied to our jobs, so we can't think of
leaving or even "taking a break" if we can afford it!

------
lukasm
> The male employment rate fell below 80 percent and stayed there.

so there is 14% decline in a group of people from 16-64. It's missing:

\- Universities, training, gap years etc.

\- People that have retired early

\- Permtractors (some portion of them have a company in a different location,
like Isle of Man and do work in, say, London)

\- Disability benefits and eligibility

~~~
toyg
All those factors existed before.

~~~
_delirium
Not all the factors are the same. It used to be legal in all states to leave
school at age 16, which is part of why the traditional workforce participation
statistic is for ages 16-64. But that only remains true in 16 states; 34
states have raised the minimum school-leaving age, yet the workforce-
participation statistics are still calculated for age 16-64. Naturally you
would expect lower workforce participation among people aged 16-18 when it's
illegal for them to drop out of school and get a job instead.

It's also now more de-facto expected than it used to be that you attend at
least some university (2 years of community college if not a 4-year
university), so workforce participation rates for people aged 18-20 are
declining for non-mysterious reasons. Although that's at least something you
can legally choose not to do.

------
aidenn0
I'm starting to feel more and more that the ability of median wealth families
to live in a home (apartment, or house, rented, or owned) as a nuclear family
was just a blip in the post-war, manufacturing-heavy US.

For most of human existence, multiple generations and cousins &ct. living
together was fairly common, and it's rapidly looking like we may have to go
back to that. You already see this for the working-poor in coastal California;
I don't know if this trend continues inland as housing becomes less expensive.

------
dilap
here in sf many people are out on the streets. families are out on the beaches
& hills of hawaii. we have _got to make it_ , as a culture, possible for
anyone willing to play along at a reasonable level to have a good life.

we are failing at this, and it is tragic, and it is not a world any of is
should be happy to be in.

we have immense, mind-blowing wealth as a culture and as a nation. we need to
do better.

~~~
stevenmays
You can't "make it" or legislate that everyone gets to live in San Francisco
or in a house by the beach if they work a minimum wage job. That's how you get
into the unafforable mess. Most cities with unaffordable housing, like NYC and
SF, have rent controls and zoning issues artificially increasing demand and
tightening supply simultaneously.

~~~
paulddraper
Exactly. High rent is an economic signal, saying "build more housing" or "move
away".

You have to listen to it, not fight it.

~~~
dilap
but non-city areas are cultural wastelands. theyve been hollowed out. does it
really have to be the case that nice cities by the sea can only be the
playground of the elite and the workaholic childless?

~~~
knz
Many mid size urban areas (often away from the coasts) are having a small
renaissance and have a thriving local culture.

Rural areas aren't a cultural wasteland either. Urbanization had been a
consistent pattern for centuries now - decreasing economic opportunity isn't
anything new to rural areas.

~~~
dilap
for sure i exaggerate. but still: look at hemingway, for example. he could
work and live in new orleans, easily, with plenty of time left over to write.

can you do that anymore? i dont think so. we've lost something.

~~~
ghaff
New Orleans isn't the best example. Costs have gone back up somewhat post-
Katrina but 1BR rents are still close to $1K/month depending on location. New
Orleans isn't a particularly expensive city, especially outside a few premium
uptown locations.

~~~
dilap
$1K a month is still essentially 100% of your income at minimum wage.

But yeah, it's not as crazy as SF for sure.

------
TorKlingberg
Using total employment rate (16-64) is disingenuous. Much of the drop is more
people going to university, or just finishing high school before working. For
women that effect is hidden by the decline in homemakers.

------
Animats
For a US perspective, see "When Factory Jobs Vanish, Men Become Less Desirable
Partners" in The Atlantic.[1]

[1]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/manufac...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/manufacturing-
marriage-family/518280/)

------
ryanmarsh
I keep wondering what kind of jobs are going to be there for my kids and what
I need to be teaching them. My oldest daughter wants to have a beauty business
instead of go to college. I think she might be better off that way. I mean,
the day when women would rather gossip to a machine while getting their hair
cut by it is a long way off.

I'm not so sure what to do for my other kids though.

~~~
ryandrake
> I mean, the day when women would rather gossip to a machine while getting
> their hair cut by it is a long way off.

It might be a while before it happens, but it will happen. I believe that the
answer to "when will my job be done by a robot" is "sooner than you think" for
all professions.

~~~
mafro
Even the guys whose job it is to program the robots?

~~~
sdiupIGPWEfh
Robots will be programming the robots. There will hopefully be a select few
humans at least _overseeing_ the robot programming robots.

------
erik998
The decline of these dad jobs will soon permeate itself into credit scoring as
well. I have always thought of individual credit scores being a reflection of
steady paycheck from a credit worthy employer and that individual's ability to
manage his/her debt. Will changes be needed to reflect upon an individual's
flexibility and capacity for attaining jobs in a gig economy as well as their
ability to manage debt? Or will one day credit scores just be a reflection of
someone's tenure at a company with a good NSCRO credit rating?

Additionally the use of jail to persuade child support payments can also
perpetuate this downward spiral. Credit account closures/declines in credit
lines for imprisoned cardholders can adversely affect credit scores and
employment opportunities. I understand paying child support is necessary but
garnishment and seizure of tax refunds should be enough.

Many people will need to begin to reconsider what is home/community. They will
need to avail themselves to the flexibility of labor markets. Doing so alone
is possible but if you have a family it is burdensome without some
governmental support. People once had that mindset... constant moving...
constant searching for new opportunities. It is tiresome but many more will
need to adapt to that mindset.

~~~
jcoffland
I have had intermittent income for over a decade as a contractor and my credit
score is excellent. Credit scores are based on making regular debt payments,
paying bills on time and a lack of tax leins.

~~~
jordanb
I think the OP's point is that credit scores may be conditioned to assume
regular income if a person has a good payment history. In doing so they are
failing to capture a new and growing dimension of risk: peoples incomes are
more precarious.

------
Mendenhall
It seems it has to do with what jobs women are filling. You dont see women
moving to construction trades and the like in any large number.

------
ryanmarsh
Female hypergamy has existed as a sexual strategy since the dawn of humanity.
Why would it suddenly cause all this change? I think you're getting the cart
before the horse. A lack of dependence on men has caused an increase in the
expression of hypergamy strategies not the other way around.

Female employment is the result of central bankers targeting full employment,
which lead to inflation, which has lead to globalization[1] to escape labor
cost inflation, which will again lead to inflation and of course automation is
the only answer. Capitalism rewards those with leverage and automation is the
ultimate leverage (beyond capital itself).

[1]: Political Apects of Full Employment, Michale Kalecki, Political Quartly
1943
[http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf](http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf)

~~~
yummyfajitas
As the paper I cite shows, what changed is that women are entering the
workforce and finding better jobs than men. I think we are saying the same
thing.

~~~
ryanmarsh
I follow you. I take issue with "Female hypergamy is probably the real issue
here.". That strategy isn't the problem. It's a constant in the equation. As
far as men are concerned it might as well be Planck's constant. From a purely
biological approach you should be more concerned about things that give the
opposite sex a more competitive edge not declare that they should cease to be
competitive.

~~~
dgudkov
The stability of the strategy can be the problem. If the strategy assumes
increased attractiveness of males with higher _relative_ income, then the
higher the female income becomes the fewer men fall into the higher _relative_
income category which boosts hypergamy even more. Therefore a constant
hypergamy strategy coupled with growing female income lead to increasingly
less effective dating market for both male and female sides of it. To resolve
the problem either the female income should decrease (which women don't want
to do), or the strategy should change (which women can't do). Otherwise we're
heading into a fundamental social crisis.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Oh people are going to be unhappy that's for sure. I'm looking forward to the
day when progressive minded people decide they liked things better the old
fashioned way.

------
flat6turbo
> _but you exaggerate a little_

this is why it will never get fixed. every story, no matter how bad, is met
with disbelief.

i, for one, am never getting married, precisely because i DO believe all these
stories, and in fact i extrapolate there to be many more, far worse stories,
that never get told. people don't like recounting these experiences, even
anonymously.

this isn't a judgment on marriage; it's a judgment on me. i couldn't deal with
a divorce and having my assets stripped from me.

thank you OP for joining the growing chorus of voices speaking out against how
truly awful this entire racket is.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
Err... You just took this to the opposite extreme. Not recognizing that men
have to face problems related to divorce doesn't mean you should throw the
institution of marriage out the window as a racket.

~~~
gozur88
Marriage _is_ a racket for men. All the advantages have been leached out over
the years, leaving only responsibilities and liabilities. There's a lot of
social inertia supporting the institution, but younger men are starting to
view the situation more pragmatically.

~~~
paulddraper
You might be right about marriage, but having kids has always been all
responsibility and liability. People keep having them though.

