" Since 1965, mothers at every level of the economy have tripled the hours they spend working outside the home. Fathers now spend much more time playing and talking with their children than they did in past decades, but men’s domestic labor—cooking, cleaning, and readying the kids for school—has not kept pace, meaning women are still working the “second shift”"
This is a fine example of how to misuse statistics for ideological reasons. Without absolute numbers, this is completely meaningless - women tripled their time working outside of the home - from what? How much are they working now, and how much are fathers working? Why is the time spent on household chores even relevant? It's relevant who contributes how much to the survival of the family, not in what way they contribute.
The message of the article is simply that "men who don't earn a lot of money are not good enough", not very surprising.
I thought the point was the opposite of that. Something along the lines of : "in the psst men worked and provided money to their wife and children. If they didn't they were morally suspect. Now, in communities where there is no hope of work, men should spend some of their time on the non-paid work required to raise children."
It never says how much the men work, just that they are poor.
Another choice quote: "responsible women and feckless men in the poor and working classes" - how are the women more responsible than the men? Don't they know who they are having kids with? And women seem to get something out of having kids, they are not just the victims of men recklessly impregnating them.
I didn't quite understand why they don't want to marry, either. The argument is "because the mates are low quality", but at the same time they seem to expect all the services usually given in marriage - doing housework, providing, raising kids...
I just don't trust that article very much to really provide the relevant data.
The article is written under the assumption - an assumption enshrined in American family law - that women are helpless and must be provided for by a man. Women lack agency and thus it is unreasonable to expect them to behave responsibly.
This is the law of the land throughout the Anglo-Saxon world (though thankfully not outside of it).
All is rather remarkable when one thinks about it. Women have the ability to jettison any child they do not want (either by killing it [!] or by post birth adoption), yet men of course are not afforded this right.
This is a fine example of how to misuse statistics for ideological reasons. Without absolute numbers, this is completely meaningless - women tripled their time working outside of the home - from what? How much are they working now, and how much are fathers working? Why is the time spent on household chores even relevant? It's relevant who contributes how much to the survival of the family, not in what way they contribute.
The message of the article is simply that "men who don't earn a lot of money are not good enough", not very surprising.