we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly.
This tends to not work. Paying people to care often means paying people to pretend to care. This often goes bad places.
Furthermore, the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing and we shifted "jobs" (gender based work) around to make family life still function while freeing up men to go do paid work in order to benefit all involved parties. Until around 300 years ago, most people were literally and directly working to put food on the table. Men hunted or raised crops. Women had vegetable gardens and did the cooking. Women did the sewing to provide clothing. Etc. Money was generally in short supply.
I write at times about such things on my blog. I hope we can find better solutions than what we are doing now. But your position is not really all that well thought out or researched. Reactionary stuff of this sort is not helpful. It tends to just entrench the problem.
"the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing"
Thank you for this much needed shift in perspective. It should be obvious: mothers' work has been on the critical path for humanity, and other work has shifted around to accommodate it. This is such a forehead slapping observation.
You might enjoy the book More Work for Mother. (I don't know why this is being downvoted, but the book is about the history of how domestic labor was shifted off men to women to free men up to get paid jobs.)
This tends to not work. Paying people to care often means paying people to pretend to care. This often goes bad places.
Furthermore, the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing and we shifted "jobs" (gender based work) around to make family life still function while freeing up men to go do paid work in order to benefit all involved parties. Until around 300 years ago, most people were literally and directly working to put food on the table. Men hunted or raised crops. Women had vegetable gardens and did the cooking. Women did the sewing to provide clothing. Etc. Money was generally in short supply.
I write at times about such things on my blog. I hope we can find better solutions than what we are doing now. But your position is not really all that well thought out or researched. Reactionary stuff of this sort is not helpful. It tends to just entrench the problem.