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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> We are privileged enough that we can survive on one income, however, were that not the case we'd be looking at paying $12/k a year for each child in childcare, on top of other baby-rearing costs.

This seems like a bit of a puzzle here. Staying home means you lose one income. But going to work costs you almost that entire income if you have a couple of children for childcare costs, and on top of that you also never see your children. So why not stay home? Same money plus better life for all three of you.

Is it so you can stay in the industry and in the future when they go to school you have kept your high paying job?

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It's not as straightforward. The stay-at-home-parent leaves the workforce which is good for the first pre-school years cost-wise, but getting back into the workforce after those "lost" years (bad term, as they're not lost -- there's true value in them to society, it's just not paid work) is inheritently difficult.

Overall lifetime income is impacted by this decision.

This is the substantive metric for the gender wage gap as that gap is measured in the overall lifetime income, not the per-wage of equivalent positions as it's inaccurately reported.

Women generally leave the workforce to care for children, lose their prestige/position and when re-entering have to start at the beginning or lower position/wage and try to catch-up.

Better childcare options would improve this immeasurably, or less stigma around both parents sharing the childcare time equitably would as well. In some countries this is the case, and it is having a measurable impact on childbirth rates.

This exactly.

My wife and I have one child. For the first six months, the child was home with her (the typical maternity period in this country)

For the second six months, she worked and the child was in daycare. It was a really good daycare, and the minder was damn near angelic. But it was also kind of horrible. Many nights I had put the child to bed before she was home from work. We wondered what the hell the point of having a kid you get to see on the weekends is.

After paying for childcare, she had relatively little to show for her job. We were also a lot more likely to do expensive things like eat out, etc. due to exhaustion. Part time work was not an option for either of us.

We eventually decided to have one parent stay home. It was her, because she made less money (perhaps because of a self-reinforcing bias that mothers are more likely to stay home, and thus are paid less?). Realistically speaking, it wasn't "I want to take a few years off work" but rather "I am throwing my _entire career_ in to the dumpster for this". Because in most fields that have decent jobs, you just _can't_ leave for 3-5 years and hop back in where you left off. It doesn't happen.

Paradoxically, because she's home with the kid this makes us more likely to consider having a second, because childcare is a sunk cost. If there were inexpensive childcare and better part-time options we'd be more likely to stick with one. I suspect this explains why Nordic countries have low birth rates and high labour participation rates from mothers. That's not a bad thing though - ultimately the world should be working to get the fertility rate below 2 children per women, especially in the developed world.

We fell in to the two-income trap in the 1970's and it's been getting worse ever since. Combined with the death of decent-paying blue collar jobs (though programming is quick becoming blue collar) it will result in similar decisions.

My mom stopped working when I was born. My dad didn’t earn a large income but was extremely cautious with money. You can save a lot of money by never eating out, not flying, and so on. There are people who nickel and dime everything but make terrible financial decisions in aggregate (eg getting a great deal on something you don’t need.)

Interestingly I have multiple male friends now who have children and work from home, and whose wives are the ones who leave to go to an office. I imagine there are quite a few people that would fit under that category reading this thread now. This was an option none of our parents had even a hint of being possible.

Ultimately you have to decide what you really want to do and how you are going to do it. The macroeconomic limitations exist. In the long term they may become even more constrained than they are now. There are only so many resources to go around. The worst that you can do is end up in a situation where you aren’t doing what you want and can’t justify it.

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