My wife gets the dismissive smile and nod from career women whenever she answers their obligatory "what do you do for a living" question.
This makes her feel bad for raising our children.
This only lasts until I point out that these career women get the awesome privilege that men have enjoyed for hundreds of years: slaving away for some overseer, pushing paper in a cube and staring blankly at fluorescent lights, having distant relationships with your own offspring, and dealing with office politics for 30 years, then dropping dead.
Families also get the added benefit of having their children raised by a rotating crew of $10/hr wage slaves at some cut-rate daycare from infancy, in exchange for about what a 2nd house would cost, because dad isn't likely to want to stay home either.
The neighborhood also "benefits" by being an absolute ghost town during work hours, so people who are doing the work of raising children are left bereft of any sort of neighborhood support (remember when you could just let kids run wild outdoors, or your mom stopping next door for coffee?).
The fulfillment angle of no-parent society is pretty slim I think.
Raising kids is about the only fulfilling thing left in the world that anyone you know is likely to do. Families with no full time parent (mom or dad, mind you) is a bizarre and frightening development.
wow. if that's the world you live in, why have any children? :(
seriously, do you think that maybe different people are made happy by different things? i know men and women who have no interest in having a romantic relationship, let alone raising a family. do they occupy some horrible THX1148-style monochrome existence for fulfilling their lives by doing things?
My wife gets the dismissive smile and nod from career women whenever she answers their obligatory "what do you do for a living" question.
This makes her feel bad for raising our children.
This only lasts until I point out that these career women get the awesome privilege that men have enjoyed for hundreds of years: slaving away for some overseer, pushing paper in a cube and staring blankly at fluorescent lights, having distant relationships with your own offspring, and dealing with office politics for 30 years, then dropping dead.
Families also get the added benefit of having their children raised by a rotating crew of $10/hr wage slaves at some cut-rate daycare from infancy, in exchange for about what a 2nd house would cost, because dad isn't likely to want to stay home either.
The neighborhood also "benefits" by being an absolute ghost town during work hours, so people who are doing the work of raising children are left bereft of any sort of neighborhood support (remember when you could just let kids run wild outdoors, or your mom stopping next door for coffee?).
The fulfillment angle of no-parent society is pretty slim I think.
Raising kids is about the only fulfilling thing left in the world that anyone you know is likely to do. Families with no full time parent (mom or dad, mind you) is a bizarre and frightening development.