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> If both partners work then [...] more vehicles needed

I was thinking about the logistics of this the other day since one of our cars is down, I'm WFH with a SAHM and I hate the expense of having to maintain two cars. Maybe this is the time to downgrade to one (which will be followed by mandatory RTO, knowing my luck).

Being a housewife is Work. It's a full-time unpaid job that frequently involves bringing things to the home from outside of it. She's not my dog; if I took our only car to work, my wife doesn't just sit around awaiting my return or stop needing to go places. The kids still need to be brought to/from school (in California, this is at irregular times on irregular days for maximum exclusion). Sometimes they need to go to the doctor. Sometimes she needs to go to the doctor. Groceries need procurement.

She could take the bus, maybe. Then it's a discussion of which partner's role is critical enough to necessitate exclusive use of the car. Both sides are valid. Being a trailblazer doesn't mean shit if nobody's maintaining your path.

In past instances, I've left the car to her and just taken Uber to ad-hoc onsite work, but this is very unreliable (and expensive for short hops).

If you live in an American suburb, you need multiple vehicles regardless of employment status.

It depends. Lots of families need two cars -- but some just prefer it. And as with housing (and everything else), families can often make due with something smaller, older, etc. because it's cheaper.

There is this "modern" expectation of a lifestyle, but most of those things aren't _necessary_. There are lots of families which need two incomes to maintain the necessary stuff, but it's not the majority and few of them are reading HN.

and your second income is taxed at your marginal rate, to pay for a $1 of child care you need around $1.33 to $1.50 in income. Put another way, avoiding $1 in expenses is like earning up to $1.5 at work.

But the real issue is what the article points out, that this often leaves the stay at home parent “trapped” and dependent on the working spouse. What do you do when you’ve been out of the workforce 20+ years, kids out of the house (no child support), and you need to support yourself now?

I work, my wife is a homemaker with our kids. I love the fact that her work is not taxed. If she had a job, that labor would be taxed, and then the person who we would pay to watch our children would have their income taxed as well. Government would double-dip (triple-dip?) if my wife was working.

If the earner dies: life insurance

If the earner leaves: alimony

It's not like we haven't solved these problems before. Yes, we could improve legislation around this but the basic idea is that if you have a contract with a partner where one of you earns the income and the other does the work at home then part of that contract is to recompense the person who is not working if the one who is fails to live up to their side of the bargain for whatever reason.

Everyone's situation is different. I got 1 kid. I pay around $110/mo for childcare. No car. I pay around $100/mo for transport. I assume the kid's mum pays the same for transport. We're separated now, but she has a career because her CV isn't just housewifery.

I really can't get behind the money-saving arguments about food etc. (mostly in other comments even though my post is here.)

I mean, I buy meals during the day because I'm rich and lazy. Nothing's stopping me from storing leftover dinner in the fridge and taking it into work the next day.

But if I wanted unrealistic comparisons between food costs and employment, why not child care too: I save so much money and time by having my kid fed at daycare instead of having to feed him myself.

> Division of labor is the cornerstone of an advanced industrial society that makes everything possible.

I agree.

It would be absolutely crazy to split the workforce down the middle (housewife vs. everything else). It would be like if half the workforce was bakers or dentists.

The point is that a stay at home parent has more value than a single profession because two "labour units", if we must think of things this way to make it clear, are made less effective by having to practice their profession as well as maintain their home and raise their children. The argument in favour of a stay at home parent is that two working parents are made so ineffective that they are <50% capable as they were before forming a household so instead of 2 you now have less than 1 and in order to fix this one of them takes on all of the work of maintaining a household and raising the children while the other focuses their energies on their profession outside the home. This results in at least 1 full unit of labour but it may actually be greater than the average since the individual working outside the home may now be performing at a higher level since they don't even have to maintain the homemaking that a single person does. On top of that they gain the benefits of being in a stable relationship with a spouse and children and on top of that their relationship to both may be even better than other couples where both work. The person managing the household may even have a small participation in the labour force as mentioned in the article so you can add that to the total.