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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

> Kearney says she's not advocating that children live in a household filled with marital tension or where parents are unhappy or mistreating each other.

Then what is the proposed solution? Pointing out the problem is the easy part. But if you want more people to be married, and if they're currently choosing not to get married, then you need to either force them to get married against their will (institutionalized shotgun marriages) or incentivize them to get married by offering benefits to married couples. The former produces miserable, abusive marriages and traumatized children. And as for the latter, as a country we're already utterly incapable of allocating funding for the aid of childrearing--where's the guaranteed maternity/paternity leave? where's the socialized childcare?--so pardon me if I don't quite see that solution as politically feasible.

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You don't need a solution when you point out a problem.

I've found this attitude in a lot of people. I think it's designed to shut down ideas that they don't like. At least that tends to happen.

Describing a problem builds awareness. It's the first step to a solution. Insisting on a solution is just another way of ignoring a problem.

Agree - a problem without a solution is still a problem

True, but a problem with no solution is not a solvable problem either.

And everything has problems.

> Then what is the proposed solution? Pointing out the problem is the easy part.

This is not a position paper. This paper is a finding of fact.

Demanding that they must advocate something is an anathema to proper science.

And, saying that "pointing out the problem is the easy part" indicates to me you're not in the sciences. It's laughable, even.

solving problems is just as important as finding them. the parent comment may be unfair for dismissing the finding of a problem as the easy part, but they are absolutely right in asking how do we solve this.

so let's be more constructive and explore possible solutions to this problem as well, and not just argue about the problem itself.

i do agree that the political landscape in the US makes addressing this problem difficult. the only option i see is to develop grassroots support for this issue by changing peoples opinions on the need to support parenting and having children.

A good first step would be to first remove economic disincentives such as tax penalties and reductions in benefits.

Or.. remove benefits.

Or you just take away the reason most men don’t want to get married (atleast without a prenup). Get rid of alimony, no child support if the father declines when the mother is pregnant before 3 months, get rid of no fault divorce, cheating by the dependent spouse means that spouse automatically forfeits their share of the money.

The solution is to grow people in pods and raise them in barracks-creches. Our legacy biology will only continue to diverge from our environment over time.

Just rewatched the matrix, if we accomplish what you say, we are right on track to match the timeline of 2200.

The other option, which was the one traditionally used, is strong social pressure favoring marriage and stigmas against divorce. We can recognize that it's an unfortunate reality that will occur, while still not normalizing or glorifying it.

I think this is the incorrect other option.

The other option we are seeing now is women in general will greatly reduce or stop having children.

Couple this in with two members of a family required to work to afford housing and healthcare the entire entire traditionalist appeal is going to fall apart due to complete unworkability.

First step is to realise that it's not marriage itself that's helping the kids. The marriage is just the symptom of something else.

I think at the very least we should end all welfare causing perverse inventives in the family and see where the system settles.

But im afraid pandora's box has been opened and i don't see a way to fix this that doesn't involve alot of people losing rights/individualism (which im opposed too).

Even the problem is misidentified. Marriage is only a proxy for the things that are important. That’s important to identifying a solution as you get boneheaded solutions like ‘give men more power over women so they can’t leave marriages’. Rather than the entirely sensible ones you mention.

That adults grow up, realise that they now have a responsibility to each other and to their child.

If that is not possible, then the solution is not to have children, which is a 100% fair choice.

The people that have the most kids are exactly the ones who have difficulty managing this, in my experience.

The ones who have no difficulty managing themselves often just opt out entirely.

You don't get it, maternity leave and socialized childcare is the devil talking. The downfall of society is because the liberal agenda to brainwash our our women and kids, the former with feminism making them think they can do things other then be homemakers, and the latter because those families with working women have to send their kids to childcare where they're taught collectivism, normalized sexual deviancy, and to disrespect their parents. /s

Ok, this is one end of the sarcastic stereotype, but the other end is that:

No one needs to take responsibility anymore, live life to the full, have sex with 200 people, take drugs and experiment, and eventually at 40 try and have a child with IVF because at that point that’s your only shot. If you don’t like who you had it with after 5 years, just leave them, it’s fine. Oh and then pass off your children’s moral social education to bad schools.

That’s also not a good plan. Neither is the one you talked about, but society definitely needs to find a golden middle ground, because something is really bad right now. The progressive liberal path really doesn’t work in the long run.

People might not feel that way if you didn't belittle homemakers (or do we need movements to let people know they can do things other than be doctors/lawyers/whatever profession you view as high status?)

A more equitable solution than socialized childcare that recognizes that homemaker is a valuable job that lots of women (50% of those with children) would prefer to do would be to increase the refundable child tax credit. Then you could use that money for hired childcare or to "hire yourself" as a caretaker according to your preference (obviously men could also be the homemaker if that's what the couple wants).

At the end of the day I'd say even talking about homemakers doesn't matter as much as you think.

People in general like the addition economic freedom from making more money. Even starting at WWII women started working in huge numbers in the US and that number has increased ever since. The sending the money back in tax credits barely works in a single income house because the otherside in the massive increase of available workers in the US is the massive inflation of assets. When one person works solely to afford a house, the other person can't take a break to have a child. Now add in the out of control costs of healthcare tied to your job no one in the younger generation is going to want to have a child.

Maybe, but anecdotally, despite the zeitgeist of the last 10 years claiming otherwise, my wife and I both raised in middle class suburbs of different parts of red-state Arizona both internalized the message growing up that girls not working was an anachronism that only Mormons/Catholics still stuck to (and that it was "oppressive" or weird). It's so ingrained in the middle/upper middle class that people can't even see it. e.g. this article from Yale[0]:

> Despite efforts to promote gender equality in occupations and professions, many women still choose to stay at home or work part-time. In the United States, for example, a 2015 Gallup survey found that more than half of women with children under age 18 would prefer to stay at home over working outside the home. Also, nearly 40 percent of women without children under age 18 indicated that they preferred the homemaker role.

Let the phrasing sink in. Despite efforts, women still prefer that role. It's quite clear from context that their preference is wrong.

As far as economics goes, people wildly overstate how unachievable it is. Having a stay-at-home parent is not something reserved for the 1%, and in fact many poorer people do it for economic reasons. People have been taught not to want it, so they don't try to figure out how to make it work.

[0] https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/more-women-stay-...

And conversely why is there no counter for men being stay at home rather than women? Other than a few month around the time of childbirth there is little reason for the woman to be the stay at home partner.... this is why I doubt the motivation behind the people saying "oh its just women's preference" since surely some sizable portion of men would also like to have this option.

There has been some progress in that area over the last 30 years; the percent of stay-at-home dads has ~doubled, and now 18% of stay-at-home parents are dads, up from 11% 30 years ago[0]. There are certainly people pushing to normalize SAHDs in addition to calling for gender parity with paternity leave.

That said, women are still almost 2x likely to prefer homemaking[1] even with the social engineering, and I suspect women's preferences are stronger than men's (e.g. I think it would be nice to be a SAHD, and I'd prefer it over outside work, but we probably wouldn't be together if my wife weren't the SAHM). So as a man you have to be prepared to accept that that's how the world is. Someone has to bring in money, and it'll probably be you.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/03/almost-1-...

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer...

Other than a few month around the time of childbirth there is little reason for the woman to be the stay at home partner.

i think breastfeeding is still a significant factor for the first year at least. working while breastfeeding can be a challenge.

> A more equitable solution than socialized childcare that recognizes that homemaker is a valuable job

It isn't a valuable job, economically speaking. It's an anachronism and essentially a luxury for couples where one parent makes enough to support the entire household. Not only this, but it essentially puts all of the pressure on the working parent to economically hold up the household

The cases where it economically makes sense are practically nonexistent in 2023

It's viable and modern enough that over 25% of women do it [0]. And there's a wide spectrum of people who make that choice. There's a large amount of parents that take on that role because their alternatives (e.g. retail jobs or gig work) would leave them in a worse position after paying for childcare, but no one's claiming retail work is not economically viable. Though if I had to make a judgement, I'd say raising your children full-time is more valuable work than e.g. Instacart or Starbucks, which are both luxuries.

Honestly I don't know how you could even make an economic statement about it that doesn't boil down to a tautology unless you're also willing to say e.g. teachers aren't an economically valuable job.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/03/almost-1-...

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