OT: How much baggage will you accept?

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=njtosd]

You realize you can’t own people, right?[/quote]

Of course, I do.

But theoretically, if I paid everything for the kids and the household expenses, and the salary for the homemaker, then I would expect that she takes care of the home as an employee.

If she wants to be part of the family, she would have to pay for 1/2 the expenses out of her salary. Anything that she cannot afford, she would be excluded from.

If I buy a multi-million dollar house and she can only afford 1/3 of her $100k, then she will be confined to her employee section of the house.

We will have good accounting to show the share of contribution from each parent.

We want to be clear and neat so that there’s no misunderstanding and ruffled feelings which have no place in a employer/employee relationship.

[NotCranky]

OMG! Brian gets it!

[FlyerInHi]

For most people today, it’s easiest to find someone you want to have kids with and agree to pay 1/2 of everthing. Each person’s responsibility to get his/her own money.

[NotCranky]

[quote=FlyerInHi]For most people today, it’s easiest to find someone you want to have kids with and agree to pay 1/2 of everthing. Each person’s responsibility to get his/her own money.[/quote]

I haven’t met these people, who are they?

[FlyerInHi]

The 21st century is the sharing economy. Leave it to the Airbnb and über folks to figure it out.

[njtosd]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=njtosd]

You realize you can’t own people, right?[/quote]

Of course, I do.

But theoretically, if I paid everything for the kids and the household expenses, and the salary for the homemaker, then I would expect that she takes care of the home as an employee.

If she wants to be part of the family, she would have to pay for 1/2 the expenses out of her salary. Anything that she cannot afford, she would be excluded from.

If I buy a multi-million dollar house and she can only afford 1/3 of her $100k, then she will be confined to her employee section of the house.

We will have good accounting to show the share of contribution from each parent.

We want to be clear and neat so that there’s no misunderstanding and ruffled feelings which have no place in a employer/employee relationship.[/quote]

You have missed two important elements of the analysis (at least). Quality of egg – eggs from women that you would deem acceptable with high sat scores, no genetic issues, etc. can cost as much as $50,000 or more. Assume at least 3 months of opportunities to fertilize such a high quality source – $150,000. For men who have low sperm counts, it could take a year ….hope you have deep pockets. . (Analogy here to IVF – patients pay whether success is achieved or not; multiple tries are very expensive). Multiply that by two or three kids – you’re probably out of your price range. Ivy League sperm is $1200 by the way, but that wouldn’t matter where you “owned” the result.

Also I assume, after having listened to you, you would want above average child care – something like Maria Von Trapp , etc. – another expense. I think you probably should hope for the traditional arrangement. Or if you want to own something, buy a cat (you don’t seem like a dog person).

[CA renter]

[quote=UCGal]CAR –
I still have trouble understanding how you can impute that the SAME task is worth pay if it’s done by a stay at home parent than if it’s done by a single person or someone who works outside the home. You imply it’s not worth pay if the task is done by someone who works for salary outside the home.

Yes – there is more cleaning, laundry, and childcare when there are kids involved. But earlier in this thread you claimed wage equivalency for paying bills, investing, etc… And you’d agree that even people who work for a salary outside the home have *some* cleaning, cooking, laundry to accomplish. And as I said – bills don’t pay themselves.

FWIW – a friend uses a nanny. Her nanny is there for 9 hours a day, 4 days a week. (She works her 5th day from home.) Her nanny does more than just childcare. She cleans/straightens, she runs laundry, she drives the kids to activities, she cooks and feeds the kids breakfast and lunch…. That would probably be a better wage equivalency.

To try to divide it up in separate people who perform services is not reality. People can multitask and do all the time… performing several different job duties in the course of a day. To try and say that it’s a 24/7 job isn’t fair either. As a working parent – you’re still doing home based work (domestic/childcare/etc) when you’re not at work… Trust me – I did it. Weekends were spent doing yard work, housework, laundry. Weeknights were spent cooking/cleanup after, working on homework with the kids, driving kids to activities, coaching teams, etc.

You can convince yourself that a SAHP would take $100k/year plus to replace – but that’s not reality and it is ignoring the reality of working parents who still manage to get a lot of the household/child stuff done after work hours.[/quote]

No, I still think you’re not getting what I’m trying to convey here, and neither is anyone else, so I’m obviously not being clear enough for some reason. Please look at the links I’ve provided above to get a better idea about what I’m trying to convey.

The point is that the work that has been traditionally done by women (unpaid labor) has value, even monetary value. And this can be calculated in a variety of ways — the links I’ve posted explain it better. It doesn’t matter if the person doing the work is a SAHP, a resident wage-earner, or an unrelated third party who does it for wages; it still has value and it is work that is every bit as legitimate and valuable to society as wage-earning.

Yes, you could use the wages of your friend’s nanny to approximate the value of this work; I’ve never said otherwise. But you would also have to factor in the quality of care/cleaning, in addition to considering the longevity factor. I’ve known quite a few people who’ve had nannies, and few of them have lasted longer than 6-12 months. Every now and then, you’ll get a well-paid nanny who might stick around for a few years, but that’s the exception. Kids can handle a new nanny every 6-12 months, even though they might not like it, but it’s not the same as getting a new parent every few months. And parents will generally do a lot more work than nannies will, and do it better. You’d still have to add the value of the other work that the parent(s) do to what a nanny will do, as most nannies do only very *light* housekeeping, if that, and they can’t handle all of the family’s business (childrens’ education, medical, family’s legal, financial, contractor work, etc.), either. You’d also have to price a nanny who will be available 24/7, even at a moment’s notice.

As a frame of reference, our teenaged babysitter made $15/hour when our kids were young. For this, she only took care of the three kids — no infants, and one or no toddlers. We would usually buy pizza to be delivered (plus cut up fruit/veggies, already prepared), and all she would do was do a very basic cleanup when they were finished eating, and tidy up a bit when the kids were in bed — just putting away what they had taken out. Nothing at all like I do, as I would have to go around and clean everything after we got home. That alone would cost over $30K for a babysitter who works only 40 hours/week, who did nothing other than basic childcare, and who would be far less involved than a parent.

The point of this conversation is to refute the notion that SAHPs are “not working” or not providing for their families. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[CA renter]

[quote=bearishgurl]I want to add that it doesn’t cost that much for a parent to take a $30K yr FT job, say 6-14 miles from home if they have “reasonable” child care expenses (<$800 mo). It's still worth it due to being in line for eventual raises/promotions. We will assume the worker doesn’t have a student loan to pay because they are only a HS grad or certificate holder (obtained “free” from ROP) and are a 24-yr old parent. Their spouse or parent pays the rent/mortgage and they drive an older paid-for vehicle but can ride the bus directly to work for $72 month if they have someone else to pick up kid(s) or a relative to keep kid(s) a little longer in the afternoon. No weekly gas fill-ups are necessary:

http://www.sdmts.com/fares.asp#bus

CAR mentioned clothing and lunch for workers being expensive and that may be so for attorneys but is NOT SO for 90% of worker bees. In actually, for women, the lined skirts we regularly drycleaned in yesteryear (weren’t allowed to wear pants to work) have now been replaced by black Dickies, (a little more expensive) Dockers and a cheap ($5-$10) top or shirt (no jacket). The expensive haircut has been replaced by a pony tail or bun. I’ve seen this new “uniform” even in high-rise law offices for at least the last 12 years and law offices tend to have better-dressed employees than other businesses and corporations. Even gubment workers don’t dress very well anymore … at least not the “clerk-helping-the-public” variety (which are 90% of gov worker-bees).

Got a new ~$30K job?? Here’s an economical place where you can buy 5 pairs of pants in dark colors on the cheap. They are clean, permanently pressed, and comfortable for San Diego:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/dickies-and-athletic-chula-vista?osq=Dickies+Outlet

Situated right in front of the TANF office and State EDD (Unemployment Dept), it’s the same place that school uniforms are sold.

Having taken my lunch 99.9% of my workdays for decades, I can attest to how cheap it is to make your lunch at home. I can assure you that there is a frig to keep it in in every workplace and likely a microwave as well. I made my lunches for between .25 and .80 day (that’s “cents”). Yes, there was protein in it, sometimes it was leftovers and I often put it together the night before. 80% of my co-workers took their lunch everyday as well. If you finish your lunch quickly and want to use the rest of your lunch hour for errands, you can do that if you drove to work.

I realize groceries are higher now but you get the drift. It’s MUCH CHEAPER to pack your own lunch than to buy lunch every day and always has been. I worked less than 2.5 miles from the Navy Commissary, which was on the way home. I could shop there once weekly, stand in a 20+ minute line to check out and still be home by 6:30 pm with groceries for the whole family for a week+! Also, you don’t buy $3 – $5 coffees at work or on the way to work. You bring your own travel mug from home with coffee in it and then chip in the monthly coffee fund on your floor to whoever brought in a coffeemaker if your employer does not provide it free (some do).

Except for daycare for kid(s), a worker-parent can take all of their earnings home and work themselves into raises and a better job. It doesn’t matter if they even went to college or not. It’s all relative because a young worker who didn’t spend anything for higher education and their parents’ couldn’t afford to help them can still work FT. It’s just not a $50K – $100K job … at least in their early years. (There’s no guarantee that a college grad will even land a $50K job, anyway.) The workers who opted for a FT job instead of college are gaining valuable work experience while most of their demographic is in college (full or part-time) and thus can’t work FT. BUT … they don’t have student loans and they have at least four more years FT work experience than their college-bound peers.

Who hires these young HS and ROP grads? Retail sales and mgmt, restaurants (incl mgmt), insurance companies, gubment offices, collection agencies, banks, auto dealerships, shipyards, auto service centers, non-profit agencies, construction companies, factories, medical offices, etc.

I see these kids going to work every day to support their own kid(s). The whole argument about it being “too expensive” for an unemployed parent to take a FT job (I’ve read it here and elsewhere on the internet) is wa-a-a-y overblown, imho. The public aid agencies and family court judges don’t see it that way. They feel that EVERY PARENT, regardless of gender, has a personal responsibility to financially support their kids. The “village” is in place to support these young parents’ lower daycare expenses as they start out working FT and their wages are insufficient to pay the full amount.

“Cost shifting” was brought up here that “somebody has to pay for it” in regards to public school and publicly funded daycare agencies, etc and therefore that’s another excuse for a parent not to seek FT employment. The reality is that publicly funded child daycare IS “free” to the people who need it most. Public school IS “free” to all residents. Even if you are a property owner who doesn’t pay more than $8-$9K year in property taxes, if you have more than one kid in public school simultaneously, ONE of your kids is attending for “free.” It’s “free” to you because your kids’ “tuition” is being redistributed to the many thousands of property owners paying property taxes who do not currently use the public schools. If a parent chooses to purchase all of their kids’ textbooks themselves and homeschool (or pay for private school), that is their choice. These parents are voluntarily running up their own household expenses all the while their kids are eligible by law for a “free” public K-12 education. In the case of YMCA and scouting daycare discounts and camperships, these agencies’ donors are paying for an income-qualified child to have the experience. Taxpayers don’t subsidize these programs.

I feel that the arguments about why a parent can’t work FT or work at all to support their kids are smokescreens. I suspect that those making this argument are in one of these 3 situations: a) they simply have enough household income to live on indefinitely and so their contribution to their family’s monthly income is not needed; b) they currently have enough household income to live on for the near, foreseeable future and if additional income should later be needed, they’ll cross that bridge when they get there; and/or c) they ARE making money every month, but it is passive income and doesn’t require them to leave home or placate an employer (i.e. investment mgmt).

[end of rant][/quote]

BG, I’ve calculated it out for friends using their actual income and expenses. Even for college educated women, many of them are only netting ~30 cents on the dollar of wages earned, or less. For a woman making lower wages, their incomes are often negative. For this, my friends were absent from home for 10-12 hours/day, their husbands and children felt neglected, the moms were totally stressed-out, dinners were almost always restaurant or take-out, the housework was piled up around them, and everyone was miserable. Not worth it.

Clearly, very intelligent, educated women are making different choices than you did. I highly doubt they are doing so because they don’t know any better. These are very well-thought-out, calculated decisions on the part of these families. If you came to different conclusions for your family, then it’s good that you made the decisions that worked best for you.

[bearishgurl]

Yes, it was the right decision, CAR. I now have a pension and a generous healthcare allowance until I die. I also have another small pension and investments. I divorced in CA (a community property state) and thus everything we owned got split down the middle. I am thankful we made good investments, had no debt but mortgage debt and lived well below our means. I am very thankful for all the decisions we/I made in the past.

I hope none of your “well-educated” friends who opted to throw their degrees away to stay at home have to try to dredge up their (now dated) degree they haven’t used in years and actually try to sell it to a prospective employer in attempt to survive. Especially if they wait until they are 50-ish to do so.

I don’t believe your “highly educated friends” would only keep 30 cents on the dollar of their wages if they worked FT. Especially those who were making $100K+ before they decided to quit and stay home. That seems very low to me. Without identifying anyone, can you furnish a breakdown of their former salaries and expenses which caused them to keep only .30 on the dollar?

It doesn’t cost that much to work. Even an attorney can buy dress suits at a consignment shop for pennies on the dollar. I have kid(s) in SF who buy (expensive-when-new) designer duds and shoes/boots in those places regularly. Believe it or not, attorneys actually ride the bus and trolley to work (at $72 mo), brown bag their lunches most days and have their own “coffee station” in their offices. That is just an example of a full-time San Diego area professional’s lifestyle. Yes, many have minor kids. Like everyone else, their children also have relatives, day camp, horse camp, overnight camp, home daycare, pre-K, spouse on a slightly different schedule and so on. They make it work to continue their chosen careers without interruption.

[CA renter]

[quote=bearishgurl]Yes, it was the right decision, CAR. I now have a pension and a generous healthcare allowance until I die. I also have another small pension and investments. I divorced in CA (a community property state) and thus everything we owned got split down the middle. I am thankful we made good investments, had no debt but mortgage debt and lived well below our means. I am very thankful for all the decisions we/I made in the past.

I hope none of your “well-educated” friends who opted to throw their degrees away to stay at home have to try to dredge up their (now dated) degree they haven’t used in years and actually try to sell it to a prospective employer in attempt to survive. Especially if they wait until they are 50-ish to do so.

I don’t believe your “highly educated friends” would only keep 30 cents on the dollar of their wages if they worked FT. Especially those who were making $100K+ before they decided to quit and stay home. That seems very low to me. Without identifying anyone, can you furnish a breakdown of their former salaries and expenses which caused them to keep only .30 on the dollar?

It doesn’t cost that much to work. Even an attorney can buy dress suits at a consignment shop for pennies on the dollar. I have kid(s) in SF who buy (expensive-when-new) designer duds and shoes/boots in those places regularly. Believe it or not, attorneys actually ride the bus and trolley to work (at $72 mo), brown bag their lunches most days and have their own “coffee station” in their offices. That is just an example of a full-time San Diego area professional’s lifestyle. Yes, many have minor kids. Like everyone else, their children also have relatives, day camp, horse camp, overnight camp, home daycare, pre-K, spouse on a slightly different schedule and so on. They make it work to continue their chosen careers without interruption.[/quote]

You really need to read this book, BG.

And while it’s great that you would brown-bag it and ride the bus everyday to work, while keeping your kid in after-school care, most professionals don’t do that.

Again, what you chose for yourself is NOT what’s best for everyone else…whether about housing, career decisions, child-rearing, etc.

Edited to add some quick, back-of-the-envelope numbers. Please double check my numbers, as I did this quickly.

If a woman has a gross income of $45,000…

TAXES (using 2014 tables):

-Federal: $5842.50
-State: $1770.19
-SS: $2790.00
-Medicare: $652.50

Total taxes: $11055.19/12 = $921.27/month

Childcare (3 kids)

, with one infant, one toddler, and preschool…and this is one of the less expensive options, as most professionals would want a “better”/more prestigious preschool option (using North County Coastal numbers…weekly expense X 50 weeks/12 to get a monthly number, allowing for 2-week vacation)

Childcare: $3,118.05/month

Transportation Expenses

-accelerated car purchase expenses, assuming commute is doubled as a result of wage-earning. Being very conservative here, if a SAH spouse can get 16 years out of a car, but doubles the commute if wage-earning, then that care will only last 8 years. If they buy a $20,000 car (not even taking into account interest, sales tax, registration expenses, and higher insurance costs, etc.), The monthly cost of the 16-year car is $104.17, and the 8-year car is $208.34…for a monthly difference of $104.17. The real number would likely be much higher than this, but some commutes might be shorter, and a car might not last 16 years, even with the lower miles, so think it would be a wash, more or less.

$104.12/month

-Accelerated repair/maintenance, assuming approximately $300/yr costs. This is probably low, but leaving room for additional repair costs on a car that is older, irrespective of the reduced mileage.

$25.00/month

-Gas, assuming average commute for a SAH being 500 miles/month, doubling to 1000 miles for the wage-earner (average mileage for most working people). If car gets 20 MPG, 25 gallons for the SAHP, and 50 gallons for the wage-earner (abbreviated WE from here on out). At a cost of $4.00/gallon, which is about the average around here over the past 7-8 years, the SAHP pays $100/month, and the WE pays $200/month, for a difference of…

$100.00/month

-Insurance, registration, sales tax, etc. would all be higher for the WE, but I’m going to let these costs slide for reasons stated above. Again, I’m trying to give your side the benefit of the doubt here.

$0.00

Food Expenses

While you might have managed to brown bag it every day for decades, most working people spend extra money on food when they work outside of the home. Perhaps these are choices, but we have to deal with reality, so will use what people do in the real world. Don’t forget, it’s not only lunches, but breakfasts and dinners. I have no doubt that the vast majority of working people eat out more often than SAHPs. Not only that, but they are less likely to shop when things are on sale because they will shop whenever and wherever they get the opportunity to do so. But I’ll give you the upper hand here and make it only $75/month more for a family of five, even though I know that is exceedingly low.

$75.00/month

Clothing

Yes, some people can dress casually, but many SAHPs dress even worse. For example, I wear an old pair of tennis shoes which I replace maybe once every 5 or 6 years, then I have very cheap flip-flops. I usually go barefoot or just wear socks around the house. My clothes are old, stained, and torn. My lovely DH doesn’t mind too much. Whereas I spend *maybe* $200/year on shoes/clothing for myself (and that would be very much on the high end and include “unmentionables”), I would have to spend quite a bit more to work in an office where I could earn $45,000/year. I am not including any additional costs for laundry/professional cleaning. Again, this number is definitely giving you the benefit of the doubt, and I will include any extra cosmetics, hair care, nails, etc. in this number. $200/yr/12=

$16.67/month

The total cost for wage-earning for this person is $4360.11/month. If her gross income is $45,000 (and this assumes that she has a job at that salary that will enable her to leave “early” to pick up her kids by 6:00 p.m.), her gross monthly income is $3750.00. In other words, she would be working for a NEGATIVE income of $610.11/month!

Now, you might say that this is only an issue while the children are very young, before they all qualify for “free” public schooling, but if a woman spaces a child every 18 months, she would have *at least* two years during which it would make absolutely no economical sense to work outside of the home. Even after the kids could attend “free” school (and I use the term “free” with tongue planted firmly in cheek, as the value of the work done doesn’t go away, it just gets cost-shifted), if a woman were to work full-time, after-school costs would be ~$800.00/month (assuming their prices are listed based on sibling discount, so am using what I believe are the discounted numbers). This does NOT include camps, etc. for when students are out of school, and it doesn’t include mornings.

http://www.ecke.ymca.org/programs/youth-programs/character-builders-prog.html

………..

So, even if we subtract out the childcare costs for young children and substitute the lower costs of after-school childcare, the spouse who is lucky enough to earn $45,000 in San Diego County (not as easy as one might think outside of mobile phones and biotech), will be netting a monthly income of $1707.94. For this, she will have to sacrifice all of her time with her family, along with adding all the stress of working, commuting, and trying to peacefully divide the household chores with the other spouse who is likely also working full-time, with all that that entails.

Now do you understand why so many families have chosen to opt-out of this “feminist utopia”?

[CA renter]

And THAT is why the notion that SAHPs “don’t work,” or that they provide no economic benefits to the family (much less emotional, or higher quality-of-life for the family as this person would be far more likely to do more things for the family than they could if wage-earning), is so utterly ridiculous.

[CA renter]

Link for childcare expenses for young children:

http://www.crs.ymca.org/child-care/cost-of-child-care.html

[CA renter]

[quote=Blogstar]You didn’t get in trouble with me for arguing over how much house work is worth. It’s your frequent insistence, perhaps barely weakening now , that
women are better than men and always have been. We have been around on this 3 or 4 times since this blog started and it’s always the same. I find it impossible to think that men are better than women or the other way around…so I don’t whine about it.

Men are not “coming around’ finally any more than male rabbits or female kangaroos are.That’s a huge condescending insult. Culture changes more rapidly in humans and probably faster now than ever. We are animals and it is impossible that G-d made one sex better than the other.

Neither you or I had parents who were reasonably good couples cooperating in making functioning home and then supporting each other after, out of loyalty continued love and friendship or any other reasons .They were not mr,. and ms. UCGAL by a long stretch. We had no one show us to be grateful to one another and trust that it’s pretty easy to be o.k. with our partners. Whatever we saw was the opposite. Lots of crippled perception and insecurity from that gets transferred to our world view with the opposite sex /male female relations can come from that. It just fits the definition of how people get long term hurt from dysfunctional families. KEV might be in the same boat but that’s for him to say.

Apologizing for psychoanalyzing you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your energy and bias and stubbornness on this comes from that.[/quote]

Where, exactly, have I said the bolded part?

And it IS true that men have come around over the past couple of decades; every bit of sociological research out there will show you this. That’s not a criticism, it’s a compliment.

Edited to add:

While I think my family life was likely better than yours by a long shot (though we certainly share some experiences as wards of the state), I would agree that my perceptions have been colored by my experiences, as well as the experiences of many other families I’ve known…including my husband’s experience with his family, and my mother’s experience with her family, and my father’s experience with his family, etc., etc.

As a manager in the corporate world, I had to interview women in their 50s and 60s who had been abandoned by their husbands (who often left for women about the age, or even younger than their own children) after decades of raising many children and devoting their lives to their families. Sorry if you disagree, but that is flat-out wrong. The stories I’ve heard were completely devastating. After my parents divorced, my mother rented out rooms to make ends meet, and most of her renters were other divorced people (men and women) who had all kinds of similar experiences that have most definitely colored my perceptions.

In addition to this, and largely because of my experiences, I had studied family formation trends and their effects on the economy. I have thousands of pages of studies, books, etc. that back what I am saying here.

FWIW, I married my husband largely because he, too, had experienced the same things in his family. We have vowed to change the course of our family histories, and have been fortunate enough to have found our “soul mates.” Though we had to work through some very rough patches, especially in the beginning, we are stronger for it. There is nobody in the world who I respect or love more…nobody even comes close. I was also blessed to have a wonderful father, though he was a rather miserable husband because he was pretty emotionally stunted (an understatement), especially when it came to romantic relationships.

So, should we ignore everything that we have experienced and researched in order to wear the mask of political correctness, or should we be honest about what we have seen?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=CA renter][quote=bearishgurl]Yes, it was the right decision, CAR. I now have a pension and a generous healthcare allowance until I die. I also have another small pension and investments. I divorced in CA (a community property state) and thus everything we owned got split down the middle. I am thankful we made good investments, had no debt but mortgage debt and lived well below our means. I am very thankful for all the decisions we/I made in the past.

I hope none of your “well-educated” friends who opted to throw their degrees away to stay at home have to try to dredge up their (now dated) degree they haven’t used in years and actually try to sell it to a prospective employer in attempt to survive. Especially if they wait until they are 50-ish to do so.

I don’t believe your “highly educated friends” would only keep 30 cents on the dollar of their wages if they worked FT. Especially those who were making $100K+ before they decided to quit and stay home. That seems very low to me. Without identifying anyone, can you furnish a breakdown of their former salaries and expenses which caused them to keep only .30 on the dollar?

It doesn’t cost that much to work. Even an attorney can buy dress suits at a consignment shop for pennies on the dollar. I have kid(s) in SF who buy (expensive-when-new) designer duds and shoes/boots in those places regularly. Believe it or not, attorneys actually ride the bus and trolley to work (at $72 mo), brown bag their lunches most days and have their own “coffee station” in their offices. That is just an example of a full-time San Diego area professional’s lifestyle. Yes, many have minor kids. Like everyone else, their children also have relatives, day camp, horse camp, overnight camp, home daycare, pre-K, spouse on a slightly different schedule and so on. They make it work to continue their chosen careers without interruption.[/quote]

You really need to read this book, BG.

And while it’s great that you would brown-bag it and ride the bus everyday to work, while keeping your kid in after-school care, most professionals don’t do that.

Again, what you chose for yourself is NOT what’s best for everyone else…whether about housing, career decisions, child-rearing, etc.[/quote]

Actually, most “professionals” do. My kids’ daycares and after-school care centers were full of “professional parents” picking their kids up.

My kid is currently going to college out of county with two kids they have known since they were in pre-K together! Both have/had “professional” parents (one is now retired). My kid’s dad is a “professional.”

FWIW, I never rode the bus to work. I drove every day because I did errands on my lunches and after work. And I never lived very far from work. I don’t know if I would drive today, however, because parking cost has increased 1000% in some cases. If my employer didn’t pay for parking, I would probably take the trolley.

So CAR, I take it then that your “friends” (who purportedly only netted .30 on each dollar of their wage) commuted long distances alone in a vehicle and bought their lunches every day? If so, those expenses add exponentially to the cost of showing up for a FT job 4-5 days per week … especially a job paying <$50K. That choice plus the daily frustration of commuting long distances is a function of deciding to live too far from work (or work centers) ... another unwise decision if the parent(s) expect to be able to consistently keep earning a decent salary month after month and year after year.

[svelte]

[quote=CA renter][quote=svelte]CAR, I’m gonna guess that you are a stay at home mom.

I think that would explain your skewed perspective. Stay-at-home moms tend to cling to older traditional concepts as you’ve described. But that doesn’t match reality.

Either that or you’re black – and I’ll explain why I say that below, where I’ll back up my position with factual data not generalizations and stereotypes.

[quote=CA renter]… most women would argue that having a husband who makes a decent living is necessary for a good marriage, as well. There are always exceptions, of course, but that doesn’t change the rule.
[/quote]

This is simply not true. Most women would NOT argue that a hubby who makes a good living is necessary for a good marriage. See attached data.

Your statement is only true of the subset of women who are black. It is not true of American women in general, and is especially not true of white American women.

[img_assist|nid=19270|title=Pew Data A|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=335|height=554]
[img_assist|nid=19271|title=Pew Data B|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=612|height=494][/quote]

Scaredy addressed where you’re wrong on this (thanks, scaredy). Even when looking at your own graphs, it clearly shows that having a husband who earns a decent income is very important to most women. It’s also interesting to note that they apparently didn’t include physical attractiveness in the study you’ve linked. You can see from what they *did* include that the spouse’s income is more highly valued by women than by men (women value it at least twice as much as men in the white population). If they had included physical attractiveness, I’m sure that men would have rated that very highly, while women would have rated it at a much lower level (relative to men).

Here is the quote that scaredy was referring to:

“Changing Spousal Roles. In the past 50 years, women have reached near parity with men as a share of the workforce and have begun to outpace men in educational attainment. About six-in-ten wives work today, nearly double the share in 1960. There’s an unresolved tension in the public’s response to these changes. More than six-in-ten (62%) survey respondents endorse the modern marriage in which the husband and wife both work and both take care of the household and children; this is up from 48% in 1977. Even so, the public hasn’t entirely discarded the traditional male breadwinner template for marriage. Some 67% of survey respondents say that in order to be ready for marriage, it’s very important for a man to be able to support his family financially; just 33% say the same about a woman.“

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/11/18/the-decline-of-marriage-and-rise-of-new-families/2/#ii-overview

[/quote]

Well obviously that’s not true because people lie…isn’t that the argument you and scaredy used to shoot down the stats I found? 🙂

And I don’t think you two really understand how to read stats. The stats I provide broke it down by male and female….yours lumped male and female together.

Therefore, the stats you provided are invalid: We were discussing what women looked for in a husband, not what a male thought he needed to provide.

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