It's kismet you wrote about this, because I just read a study on the topic the other day, and it supports your thesis at the end there, regarding marriages falling on hard times. It's pretty robust and looked at almost 20,000 individuals over a long period.
Here's what it found:
- Men are slightly more happy marrying younger wives -- no surprise. And slightly less happy marrying older wives.
- But here's what might be surprising: women are ALSO slightly more happy marrying younger husbands, and slightly less happy marrying older husbands. By virtually exactly the same amount.
- These differences in initial marital satisfaction for age gap relationships are not that large, but are statistically significant, and there is essentially no difference between men and women: both are happier when their spouse is younger, and less happy if they're older.
- The gap where people with younger spouses start off happier disappears by years 6-8 in marital duration. All marriages have slow declines in satisfaction with duration of the marriage, but age-gap marriages decline faster than same-age marriages. That's true for BOTH the older spouse and the younger spouse. The lowest marital satisfaction scores are wives with spouses 7 or more years older, who have been married to them for ten years or more.
- To your point here, age-gap marriages experience steeper declines in satisfaction with "economic shocks" than same-age marriages. If someone loses a job or has an economic hit of some sort, same-age marriages are better at rolling with it, and there's a bigger hit to satisfaction with age-gap marriages. Same goes for health shocks but it wasn't always statistically significant.
The authors hypothesize that what this means is that really most people prefer a younger spouse, but also know that they're unlikely to get one unless they're willing to sort of make a "trade" by selecting a lower-value person than they'd be able to get if they stick with a same-age spouse. Because a higher value person won't want to marry someone older, so in game theoretic terms, choosing someone the same age is a better compromise.
Interestingly, they tried controlling for income, wealth, work hours, specialization of roles, and factors like that, to see if there was an effect here of people making "trades" of youth for money, and none of those things seemed to have an effect. Basically just people prefer younger spouses. Interesting that everyone thinks that it's only men, because that's not what this data shows.
I think you're absolutely right that most women simply don't have the option of finding a guy who WANTS to support her, who isn't way older, or more might take the option. Because it's not like young women don't have older men hitting on them 24-7. Like, they know they want them. That's not the same as wanting to support them (plus babies).
I also think one of the problems with a guy who is particularly focused on youth, like a guy in his 30s who REALLY wants to date a 20 year old and only a 20 year old....is that he will always be that way. It's not like he wants someone 12 years younger than him, what he wants is a 20 year old, no matter how old he is. In fact I'd say guys like that actually tend to get worse with time, and become even MORE obsessed with youth as their own slips away from them. So that might explain why those guys start off really happy with a younger wife, and by year 6 that boost in satisfaction is totally gone, and declines faster than the same-age couples. I think that marrying a guy who was obsessed with wanting a young wife actually puts a woman at MORE risk of being "traded in for a new model", because he's still going to want the same thing, maybe even more so, when he's 40 and 50 and 60, as he did at 30. It's one thing if he just happened to meet and fall in love with a 20 year old, but if that's what he was really focused on....I think most women intuitively know that's a danger sign that's not going to work out well for them over the long term, once they're no longer young.
Starting with your last point - I 100% agree - there is a reason women worry about guys who are focused on dating so much younger and it’s exactly what you highlight. You will get older and then you will no longer have the attributes they liked you for and women rationally worry about what that will mean for the future of the relationship. Of course it’s possible for someone to fall for someone younger - but if they’re only dating young and they specifically seek that out it’s a negative signal all else equal for a potential husband.
As for the study, that’s really interesting! I have to admit I’m a little surprised by the symmetry here. I wonder if women being so much more open to older partners is really just about the fertility timeline then - young women who want kids in their 20s are aware most guys their age won’t want that and so are open up to dating older to match on that desire.
The economic shocks point makes total sense to me - especially because the relationship may have been established with one person (normally the husband) being a financial provider for the other, and that dynamic can be somewhat integral to the relationship. So if he loses his job she may be unhappy being “forced” to work when that wasn’t the deal she signed up for when she married older, even if she can work and does have earning power.
And yes, it really is not that easy to be supported financially just for existing, at least not for every normal looking woman and certainly not generally without large concessions on other aspects.
I think women being ‘open’ to marrying older men is also shaped by their being forced to do so for thousands of years of marriage, per male power and preference.
Interesting! I suspect what's going on is women are weighting money more heavily than men (for sound evolutionary reasons), so while the best of all worlds might be a cute rich younger guy, IRL you have to pick one and you might as well go with rich--and richer people tend to be older because unless you're an heir to a fortune it takes time to rack up the money. Conversely, men will sacrifice money for youth. (And as you say, if he likes you at 20, he'll like the next girl even more at 20 when you're 30--look at Leo DiCaprio.)
As you also point out, there's a tradeoff. Pacino can date women 40 years younger because he's a legendary movie star. Tarantino can't go more than 15 younger because despite being rich and famous, he's also creepy and nerdy (and you'd better get a good pedicure). The average guy's not going more than 2-3 years in either direction.
But then why don't we see very high-mating-market-value women--models and such--going after younger men?
A few of them have...Demi Moore with Ashton Kutcher...Robin Wright, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Heidi Klum, Eva Mendez, Cameron Diaz, Mariah Carey...of course, I just had to look all those up and wouldn't have thoughr of them, but they're all with guys 10-15 years younger. I'm not sure we really HAD that many super rich on their own stars who were women in their 40s and 50s until the past couple decades.
Thanks! I don't follow celebrity culture so it was kind of a dumb thing to say. I remember the Keanu Reeves thing, but I figured there were others. There's also probably an assortative mating thing going on with celebrities, so having more wealthy women stars in the pool probably makes a wealthy older woman-hot younger man relationship more likely.
Still, maybe it's a little more socially determined than I thought. If I were a rationalist I'd say I went from 80% nature-20% nurture to 70% nature-30% nurture, but those numbers are always fake. Thanks!
I agree with Maxim’s comment, because I’m married to a lawyer who owns a multimillion dollar law firm, my 50% ownership of the asset and income is exponentially more valuable than the only slightly above average, median income I was earning before I had a child and was married. Both in terms of the time I have to raise my daughter and because my husband isn’t sharing in the “domestic work” he can bill at over $1k and hour. Me staying home to do the domestic work and not split the household duties does mean for us a loss of income but an increase of income in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in them I make for my partner to focus on work and money in both of our pockets. Money, savings, assets and investments that are exponentially more valuable than anything I could make as a median income earner. On top of that I can focus on “working full time” for people I love instead of frittering away the hours of my life trying to convince myself grinding away in an office is “empowering.” Also- it’s impossible for someone who has never birthed a child to understand how awful it is to feel like your paying all your income for the most important person/people in your life to be raised by strangers. The thought my daughter would spend 45 hours a week in daycare and afterschool getting mostly ignored by distant adults is sickening.
Yeah, I think if your partner is making that level of income it makes very little sense to work (unless your work is actually your passion). But that’s obviously not most people’s situation. Working while you’re childless and then, if conditions allow it, choosing to be a stay at home mom makes total sense to me. Never working at all and being supported by your husband throughout your 20s well before you have children seems more risky to me.
Sure. But getting credentials comes at a huge cost, with big debt and doesn’t necessarily translate into much higher earning power. A lot of people in academia and the government bureaucracy are credentialed and made only moderately more income than the median or at the median. They are “still vulnerable.” When I was working in my 20s I with a bachelors degree from a liberal arts school I was barely getting by and felt like I was barely holding on by my fingernails. I feel much less vulnerable now as a middle aged SAHM thanks to “equitable distribution of assets.”
Yes, but surely you realize you are not the average wife or SAHM - you’re a very wealthy wife and SAHM. Not everyone will end up in the top 1% and so you can’t generalize from your experience
I understand. I think the point I am trying to make is that being a woman who has a job doesn’t make you “invulnerable.” A woman with a job, especially a low paying or median income job is still vulnerable to the crushing pressure of the economy and the unpredictable whims of reality. Based on my experience working, it hardly made me “free” or “independent.” I was trapped by the reality I was only barely getting by, just treading water and exhausting myself and for what?
As someone who recently became a SAHM who is not super duper wealthy, at least not like you, I agree with the gist of what you’re saying. A common reason given to women to keep working after having a baby is that being out of the workforce will make them more vulnerable in the future. Of course this is true, but it ignores the costs of not staying home. The reality is that we are always vulnerable, and sometimes being ultra risk averse has more costs than benefits.
Agree with this, and I certainly wasn’t meaning to imply that no one should be a SAHM. I also don’t think going to college is the right option for everyone (male or female), particularly if you’re going to have to pay full price and go into significant debt. But I also don’t think it’s good advice to tell young women to *plan* as if they’ll never need to work or make money.
A decent college education will generally translate to being able to put a roof over your own head. Front desk receptionist, legal secretary, just being able to write complete sentences will let you get by. If he’s wealthy enough you know the child support will be solid that’s already enough to walk away from abuse or severe unhappiness. But if you’ve never had a job at all it will be harder both practically and emotionally. I think it’s far better for both partners to know that she has the option to leave and is choosing to stay. And if most of his wealth was built before the marriage and they agree she will stay home, financially dependent, there should be a prenup with a significant pay out in case of divorce (enough that she can build a new life) but this almost never happens.
Furthermore, I think we should discuss what these accreditations and skills actually are? If they include becoming hardcore Excel and spreadsheet jockeys, unfortunately it may be worth talking about something no one wants to mention, the lack of women in STEM. I think a huge cohort finds STEM jobs and office jobs in general repellent. What then? There are definitely some skills I only want to be forced to hone if a gun is put to my head.
My kids go to an in-home daycare with a wonderful woman who has taught all of them math and reading better than I could have. I don't really like the centers, but I certainly wouldn't be "sickened" by them. It's not harmful. Just different.
I'm glad you enjoy your life, it sounds like you two have a great relationship. But also, he could choose to end it at any time. Yes you will divide the assets and there is alimony and child support, but those things usually don't last forever and if you have never contributed to social security then you won't be getting anything from that. It's just good to have a backup plan, that's all. Hopefully you never need it.
Worth considering that this is exactly why the divorce legal system was set up how it is — where the woman gets half the assets — it’s to allow her to do this without too much worry.
Yes, and I think alimony is a good way to de-risk trad partnerships (unfortunately many trad men think it’s horribly unfair when it’s actually granted to an ex wife however, as with the drama over Stephen Crowders divorce, the demonization of McKenzie Scott etc). Also alimony is rarely granted automatically, rarely granted permanently, and actually just is rarely granted at all. If your partner is really rich, most of this won’t apply, but few men are that rich and trads act as though women ought not to bother gaining the skills and accreditations necessary to earn their own income which I think is almost always bad advice.
Agreed, it seems like both the red pill guys and modern feminists are ignorant of the purpose of alimony and asset splits, which is precisely to protect these kind of relationships. As for whether it's bad advice or not under the current system, I don't know.
Could be motivated ignorance--modern feminists don't like these kind of relationships, and the red pill guys don't want to admit there has to be something in it for the girl.
I've been turning this comment over for a while trying to figure out what irks me about the way you're framing things here, and I'm pretty sure it's a difference in how we're accounting for opportunity cost. At a glance, you seem to be implying that we should de-risk hypergamy, but I don't think that's what you're trying to say. On the other hand, you do seem to be in favor of it.
Reframing the discussion as being for, or against, de-risking (potentially incentivizing) hypergamous behavior makes it obvious what I got caught up on.
If we take for granted that breadwinners are ubiquitously getting more than they're giving up in traditional partnerships across the gamut, it feels like we're conceding too much to your argument. As you've pointed out, most breadwinners aren't living the lifestyle that's being described. Is it appropriate in such situations to incentivize, or de-risk, hypergamous mating strategies? How does it affect your evaluation if we recontextualize our hypothetical breadwinner as a median earner who values their freedom in non-economic terms, who does not derive much joy/satisfaction from their work, and who does not materially benefit from their 'economic independence' in their day-to-day existence?
As a 24/7 care provider for an elderly dementia patient with no weekends, holidays or vacations for the past five years, I feel reasonably qualified to speak to the restrictions of a SAHM lifestyle. But I've also been an underappreciated retail worker, I've bagged your groceries. The trouble, from my perspective, with your analysis, is that it seems to privilege breadwinners unfairly by failing to account for the associated costs of breadwinning.
Most breadwinners are employees, not bosses. When they enter into a traditional relationship, they're giving up security and freedom in present, rather than future terms. Their sacrifice is immediate and ongoing, but if we reframe this as 'economic independence' then we erase it from the expenses column. Why should the dependent in a traditional relationship not carry some future risk of vulnerability against the immediate cost of taking on a dependent? Your analysis invites the conclusion that breadwinners are clearly at an advantage in the classic paradigm, but that strikes me as saying more about how you're choosing to evaluate the risks and benefits more than objective truth.
If I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that men who are earning median incomes should not have to pay very much in alimony, because employment is itself a burden? Let me know if that's not what you are saying.
My counter argument is that a person who earns an income can continue to earn that income. A person with no job experience or skills has to start at zero. A judge will take all of this into account, how much the breadwinner makes, whether there was infidelity involved, etc. I think judges do feel similar to you because they almost always reward less than 50% (I think 40% minus spouses income is typical), and if the marriage was less than 20 years then you don't get it forever.
Having a job is not worse than not having income, if it was you wouldn't choose to bag groceries. The burden of work should be taken into account, as well as the burden of caring for a household. It's my understanding that this is the way the system works today (I'm sure it's not perfect).
I guess if you make the assumption that stay-at-home mothers and housewives have BOTH a lower standard of living AND less opportunity to develop human capital than their breadwinner counterparts, but I see no reason to think that this is this case.
Breadwinners are typically employees who are locked-down in their work, 45-65 hours a week. And let's get something straight here: Time spent in the wage slave paradigm is categorically different from time spent at home, tending to the responsibilities of adult life. Just ask any conventionally employed person whether they would rather be at work or at home with their kids, taking care of the house, beholden to nobody save their partner, with near impunity and unilateral freedom over how they handle those responsibilities.
If the dependent emerges from twenty years of this with the same human capital they started with, they certainly don't deserve to lay claim to 40% of their partner's future earnings for it.
Alimony is at worst a fundamentally broken concept, built on the idea that employment is a desirable state of freedom, and that dependents are so burdened that they are incapable of acting from their disadvantaged position. At best it's just outmoded and those things used to be true but aren't anymore.
That sounds like a situation where being a traditional breadwinner would be really unattractive either way. Like, if you don't like your job, and completely focusing on it does not even enable you to "develop your human capital", then why the heck wouldn't you want to find a less unfair way to split the nice homemaking and the bad breadwinning?
I think trad guys (of whom I am not one) tend to be sort of the mirror image of radfems--they only talk to other people who agree with them, and in conservative circles they have a fair number of yes-women telling them what they want to hear.
All of that is great, but for most people it still means poverty unless you get a job. And entering the job market at 45 with no skills or experience is awful. And you won't get as much from social security. And forcing men to actually pay the alimony is often difficult.
But if she’s choosing to get a career/work shouldn’t she then forfeit her right to half the assets, if that was created precisely for the purpose you state? Isn’t that having your cake and eating it too (by opting to work I mean)?!
The assets that were accumulated during the marriage probably won't be divided perfectly evenly, but the woman who chose not to work in order to take care of the household already gave up the ability to earn her own assets. If she later goes and gets a job, she is contributing to those assets, so why would she get less for contributing more?
Alimony depends on the specifics, but it is typical to be 40% of salary minus 50% of the other spouses pay. So if she gets a job, she will be entitled to less alimony in the case of divorce.
You come at the this from the default position of earning assets being the primary concern of women (and men). I don’t frame it as “she gave up her ability to earn assets by taking care of household”. I view it as both spouses decided to divvy up functions in the marriage, one working to earn for the household and the other managing the household. This framing is also agnostic as to the gender of which spouse is taking on which function, and if rationality prevails would see the one able to command a higher salary being the earner (not considering childbirth which not everyone can physically do).
So in a scenario where nobody opts to manage the household why should the lower earning spouse be expecting to receive half of anything from the higher earning spouse upon divorce?! I can’t square this.
Earning assets is the primary concern of people who don't have any. Once you can live in a certain level of comfort, it's unhealthy to prioritize wealth over other things. When you have nothing, wealth is a roof over your head and food in your belly, and yes, it is absolutely our primary concern.
In a scenario where both spouses earn money, they both contribute to gaining assets. You seem to be arguing that if one spouse works and one doesn't, the non-working spouse gets half of the assets. But if one spouse contributes 30% and the other 70%, then the 30% spouse should get 30% of the assets? I see the argument, but don't you think it's a little bizarre to give less to a person for contributing more? I also think it's a bit simplistic to remove the "manage the household" aspect just because both spouses work. One may work part time, which means they do more household work. The higher earner likely has to prioritize work so if one of them takes a day off to stay with a sick kid it's probably the lower earner. So if the 30% spouse does 70% of managing the household, how is that different than giving half the assets to each spouse when one works and one doesn't?
I think my framing is equating being the breadwinner with being the household manager in terms of contribution. So I’m calling it even. That’s why when it comes to dividing savings or assets it’s easy for me to make the leap and give half to the non-worker/household manager.
The scenario where one spouse works part time is more complicated because by working that spouse is bringing assets in, but is also creating expenses (childcare, etc). You’d have to net that out, but definitely don’t see why assets would automatically be 50/50; there has to be some deduction for the lower earning spouse creating expenses and complexity.
1. This is probably racist, sexist, etc., but I have noticed that many human females discover The Mommy Track about the time in their young adult life that they figure out that they will not exactly be rocketing up the corporate ladder, not to mention that the reality of white collar work is not so much SATC as much as it is The Office.
If they have options, then they can take them.
2. Contrary to the assertion that "All cats are female", about half are male tomcats.
Pretty much every cat I know was raised by a single mother, and most cats have no clue who their father might be. Maybe we can narrow it down to a couple of suspects, but that's it.
Regarding 1: Yes, I can see where you're coming from, and I don't think your comment is entirely sexist or racist, and it's good that women have options. However, I'm sensing that the attitude of becoming a mother that you describe here means that women are simply settling to become mothers because it's their last resort when faced with disappointment that their career is not going the way they anticipated. I think many women intuitively know they are not cut out for a corporate lifestyle (in whichever way you think it is), way before they have kids, and are ok with that because a more low-key job paired with a more intense focus on their husband and family represents the fulfillment of their more authentic selves. And honestly, wouldn't men in a similar situation feel a similar way? (even if they are not thinking about kids exactly, because they can't have kids and therefore don't have to face the physical labor of it?)
As for "the reality of white collar work being less SATC and more The Office," I don't think anyone would seriously claim that women ignore the reality that that line of work is not always glamorous. That's why options exist, so women can escape that grind if they want to (in my mind, that should be cause for a celebration of progress!) But if you think about the flip-side, blue-collar jobs are overly glamorized as well, as being some emblem of some lost era of America where you earned your keep only through getting your hands dirty. Nowadays, unfortunately, many of those jobs are going away as we have shifted into a knowledge and service-based economy, and people have to adapt somehow. And not everybody is cut out for a physically demanding job anyway, man or woman alike! The point is that people will find advantages and drawbacks in both white collar and blue collar work, but they still find the determination to stick both through anyway.
The age gap article made me laugh. As if all women are refusing to date men who are attractive, nice, wealthy, charming, etc. just because they are older.
FWIW I know many couples where the guy is anywhere from 5-15 years older. I don’t think it’s immediately obvious that they have “big” age gaps, because a lot of laptop worker millennials (engineers, tech workers, etc) could plausibly be 35 based on their appearance even if they are really +/- 10 years from that.
Yes, I also know many couples with that level of age gap - I think it’s only noticeable when the couple is young (20 and 30 is likely noticeable but 30 and 40 wouldn’t turn any heads). And I do think small to moderate age gaps make a lot of sense given maturity differences and different fertility timelines, this is why we see that pattern on average (I think the average is ~5 years).
It does seem like there should be a golden ticket of some sort to expand women's options for early families and late careers. I can't vouch for the exact number but ChatGPT gives $366,000 as the NPV of a newborn's future tax payments so there's got to be significant room for it
Yes, I do think that if parents (or maybe it should be women/primary caregivers as you suggest) were directly compensated for having kids many relevant incentives would change. I guess we’d also need women to get ok with being relatively junior for their age if they went that path and then later entered the workforce but I think that would be doable, especially if there were these very big financial incentives. I talk about some related policy ideas in this article, and Robin Hanson has talked about ways of allowing parents to sell the rights to a portion of their kids future taxes - problem with these solutions is making them politically feasible: https://www.allcatsarefemale.com/p/can-we-afford-to-buy-marginal-babies?r=ipqw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
That's a really great analysis, I love the recognition of the difficulty of paying an affordable price for the marginal child
I think the political appeal of these programs could be significantly improved if they are accurately framed as vital and almost specific economic investments. I think the average person experiences the concept as sounding like a social program for the people who have more kids
One of the more persuasive claims in favour of liberal feminism is that the economy benefits from female participation, whereas when fertility approaches rapid collapse levels each child begins to have far reaching future values on things like innovation rates. Culturally we may need to see children in the same frame as a career with specific economic value and renumeration
A degree of mother specific direction of payment may also be significant on valid feminist grounds. If the payments are weighted to erase expected effects of a child on the lifetime career earnings of mothers, the conversation between women becomes a different ball game
For a man, having a decent career and a stay-at-home wife and mother can be very nice. If the man comes on hard times and the relationship ends, the woman can face serious financial insecurity. But there is another common way (much more common?) that things can go wrong. If despite his best efforts, a man finds that his marriage is not working and must end (regardless of who initiates the divorce), he can then up with half his income spent on child support payments and a problematic relationship with his children. Even if his ex-wife does not actively work to set his children against him, far more routine contact with mom is inherently likely to lead to dad being an inconvenient afterthought. So the man experiences no partner, no children, and half his income gone. We can quickly tag the label "financial insecurity" on the woman's situation, but what of the man's? Loss of children who he likely has come to love, less ability to contribute financially to a new relationship, and loneliness and isolation. (When an advice columnist was asked what to do to get that darned ex-husband to make child support payments, one unintuitive answer was -- encourage or allow him to spend more time with the kids.)
I'm not saying that this legal set-up is some grave injustice -- in fact, it seems better than just about any alternative I can think of. Joint custody is much better when it works. But the cost to the man when things go wrong is very real, even if not measured in unpaid bills. I'm not sure what we should suggest to him as a comparable "backup" plan.
If you want security -- emotional or financial -- the obvious answer for both men and women is not to have children. I suspect the prospect of this fairly common post-divorce pattern is a leading reason why men are hesitant about having kids.
I agree with you all the way until your last paragraph.
The best answer is for both men and women to be aware of all the risks/issues that come with marriage/family building and still have the courage to do it. Not having children due to some sense of salvaging personal security is short sighted. Nobody in their deathbeds says they’re glad they had personal security over everything else in life. They typically recount how happy their kids and grandkids have made their lives.
I agree with your conclusions. My last paragraph doesn't reveal my values. Having kids is ultimately more important than having financial security. Human survival has depended on lots of people in financial insecurity (sometimes serious) having kids anyway because of a sex drive and no contraception. Once they show up, we do our best to take care of them. But our prudent brains often see it differently. Consider also this case: If you already have a child, you are deeply committed to their welfare, and realize that another child will dilute your financial resources, so better not do that and focus on the one child who is already here. Shrinking birth rates. When European countries have tried offering generous incentives for having kids, the main result where it worked at all was to have parents move up slightly the schedule for having the same number of kids they were planning to anyway.
The offering of monetary incentives to increase birth rates is the ultimate case of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It’s infuriating to watch country after country beat their head against the wall on this only because it’s politically incorrect to admit that it’s not the money that’s stopping people. It’s a cultural thing. Women will not have more children if you give them money or cheaper childcare. They’ll take your money and just have the same 1.3 kids they were going to have.
I agree to some extent but would not put the blame on women. Men are very often more reluctant than the women. I say another approach is to just let the population shrink and see what happens. The earth would do fine with a lot fewer people, and we can figure something out later.
I didn’t mean to blame women. I just used one example and since the angle of helping with childcare is one often taken.
Letting population shrink is ill advised as these trends are very hard to turn and the smaller the base population gets the harder it is to multiply up. Population math is ruthless. Look at the projections for South Korea. I believe it’s 96% drop in population over 4 generations.
It wasn't security, though, it was risk aversion. I figured half of all marriages end in divorce, the woman usually files so she gets to pick, I'm below average in social skills so the odds are against me, so why bother? Better to die alone without paying alimony than die alone and have to cover alimony and child support on top of everything.
Not that Regan's arguments are wrong either. Ultimately someone has to lose, or else both people lose something.
Can something be said for the general sentiment that staying in daycare for long periods of time is harmful for kids? It seems to me that women who are embracing a more trad-wife lifestyle and extension, a homeschooling lifestyle, have these outsized fears that their kids will be negatively influenced by being in the care of adults who aren’t their parents. Some fears that daycare workers won’t be skilled enough to comfort and protect children in serious emergencies are of course justified, but what is the difference between that and addressing the uneasiness that some women feel with knowing that at some point, they will not always be emotionally and physically tethered to their child and will have to let their children navigate the world at an appropriate distance from them? To me, there has to be an acknowledgement that it really does take a village to raise a child, to rephrase the cliche. Now, I may be biased because I don’t have kids, but do all parents really need to be around their kids every second of the day, anticipating how to fix every situation (except of course when their children are too young and immature to make smart decisions?)
And I think there is some degree of privilege in having that attitude, because those women who feel that way and who can also afford to evaluate a wide variety of daycares are probably going to agonize over every aspect of each one, no matter how small, while moms who are working poor or who live somewhere with very little options don’t have the time and the energy to do so (and yet, we criticize the latter and not the former.)
Absolutely. I've got 4 kids and I think the way that trads talk about child care like it's torture is really weird. What's funny is that working moms today spend more time around their children than housewives did 50+ years ago. Modern parents spend a ridiculous amount of time with their kids and all the evidence I have seen so far is that this smothering is harmful to the child's future wellbeing. Kids need to engage in risky behavior outside the home to develop healthy ways to make critical judgements.
Now, I have had my kid in a center before and while I don't think it's bad for them, I didn't really love the idea of leaving my kid there. I really like having an in-home daycare with a small number of kids and an adult who becomes a consistent presence in their life.
What evidence have you seen to show working moms spend more time around their children then housewives did 50+ years ago?! That’s news to me! Common sense dictates that it would be less, since working moms are just that, working outside the home!
I’ve also seen data suggesting this - the standards for being a “good and involved parent” seem to be the reason. I’ve linked some Pew data below - take a look at the chart called Parents child care time 1965-2011 (out of date but I think we can assume the trend has continued). It doesn’t split our working and non working moms and dads, but you can infer that working moms still probably spend more time than in the past since most moms work nowadays. Even crazier given parents also have less kids!
Every study I have seen on the issue shows parents spending more time with their kids at the same time that more women are entering the work force. The research of Suzanne M. Bianchi indicates that working mothers spend at least as much time as at-home mothers did in the 1970s, possibly more. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/changing-rhythms-american-family-life-1
So it's possible that what I said was a slight exaggeration, but what is undeniable is that both at-home mothers and working mothers are spending far more time with their children than previous generations. Fathers have shown an even bigger increase (which I think is good), to the point that the average father spends more time with his kids than the average mother in the 1960s and 1970s. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/
I can understand the intuitive reason why increased time with kids might not make a difference (I.e. it might mean you’re being a helicopter parent). But what about families with kids with higher support needs, like kids with developmental disabilities? For those parents, I would think that increased time is not an encroachment on their kids privacy but is a way to ensure their kids navigate the world safely, because they have may have challenging behaviors that may cause them to hurt others or themselves and so they obviously need parents to step in. Do we say that increased supervision is negative in this case?
Privacy isn't the issue here, it's that the more parents are around the more problems kids don't have to learn how to solve on their own. They don't take as many risks which means they don't learn to assess those risks themselves. If you don't get into trouble, you don't learn how to get yourself out of trouble. It's like how the movement to put soft materials in playgrounds led to an increase in broken bones. Kids didn't learn that falling hurts so they didn't worry as much about falling.
Kids with developmental disabilities obviously need more help, so I agree that increased time spent with them *could* be a good thing. But the opposite is also possible. Either way, the number of kids with developmental disabilities is small so it's a niche issue, and I'm not aware of any data specific to that niche.
A24 must be rubbing their hands at this. The pitch of a young, intelligent educated woman forgoing her career opportunities in order to live with a rich but mildly manipulative older guy, passing up on opportunities to advance herself independently until she no longer has a choice but to essentially become his pet even as he gets older and less wealthy is such obviously A24 thriller-style material (it’s essentially Babygirl in reverse) that I wouldn’t be surprised if a film like this already exists.
I mean, the whole reason Babygirl exists is because it's the only way the sort of left-leaning people who make films could possibly show the male-dominant kink relationships that sold so many books from Fifty Shades to ACOTAR to...insert romantasy here.
As is so often the case, Hollywood produces inversions of a less PC reality.
But since you can easily make the guy the bad guy here, it might work. If you have a friend in Hollywood, pitch it!
My friend's dad was a millwright, he made a pretty good living, and his wife ran the house. At 45 he had an affair and divorced her. She had to try entering the job market at 45 with no skills or experience. He paid alimony at first, but when he stopped paying she wasn't willing to take him back to court (it wouldn't last forever anyway). Today she gets very little from social security because she didn't contribute to it because she didn't work. It really sucks to have to think about these things, but I agree that women should have a backup plan. You just never know.
Yes, it’s all relative, none of us are invulnerable! As I said in the conclusion, it’s certainly not that I think no one should ever be a SAHM. But still, having a way to earn money yourself, at least if needed, does give you (and your family really) more options.
Well, that was pithy. I just want to bump this comment for the sake of highlighting what I consider to be the missing piece in this discussion.
Remunerative occupation is often felt as a risk/cost/sacrifice for the breadwinner, and any analysis that doesn't account for this is inadequate/incomplete.
Oh, it's better than nothing. Employers are exploitative and frequently cruel, but an income is an income. Particularly for the working class, who don't have the option to marry a rich guy and get a nice stream of alimony income, it can greatly increase a woman's options.
1) The traditional arrangement my wife and I have, gives us capacity to support the community and take on projects. My wife can volunteer at school and a non-profit. We have a side gig doing fertility awareness and NFP, which is not profitable but we like helping couples. I feel less guilty about the limits work places on my ability to engage in my community knowing my wife fills that capacity. She also has the time to just throw pottery and make fun, beautiful things.
2) My read of corporate culture is that if you're a competent person, they can find you meaningful work and you will thrive. My wife occasionally tells me how she'd be homeless without me, but I reply she would be an above average project manager in 6 months. The experience and certification stuff is much less important than motivation and common sense problem solving. Yes many jobs need specific skills, but many jobs are just running business specific processes that must be trained regardless of experience. A women out of the work force comes in with some disadvantage, but water finds its level.
I'm a little more cynical than you with regard to corporate culture. They like to lay you off at 45 to 55 when your health costs start to go up and then you can't find another job but still have to cover healthcare until 65 (and even then Medicare isn't perfect). Good luck paying child support (or for the kids), chump!
While I am well aware that corporates do dumb and evil things, a women entering the labor force from the sidelines does not have inflated salary expectations. My experience with men laid off mid to late career is that they expect to retain their salary and status despite the place that would value them most (due to company specific knowledge) already determining that it wasn't economically feasible.
Sometimes I need to play cold hearted economist. Corporates are not out for anyone in particular. They are out their trying to solve economic problems. Generally folks are biased to their own performance and value. I know several people whole went job hunting and came back with a new appreciation and effort in the job they currently hold. I'm many cases the difference between 5 years experience and 20 years experience is pay expectation and bad habits. I have and will hire both moms re-entering the work force and late career men, I just don't see much difference in qualification if both parties are competent and hard working. (In econ terms, there is diminishing returns to occupational experience especially excluding firm specific human capital)
I agree a lot of guys can't accept a demotion, and lots of people overestimate themselves. (Since turning 40 my assumption is I have to live as though I am going to be forced into early retirement--because it might happen!) And, ceteris paribus, the mom might be easier to work with and less trouble than some recently demoted executive!
I'm a little less agreed that most people will be able to find meaningful work and they will thrive. Simply put, as you say, they are out there trying to solve economic problems. That means minimizing wages (labor is a major expense after all) and other expenses like healthcare benefits. So it's not at all clear some mom re-entering the work force would find something that pays the bills. Furthermore, half of all people are below average. (OK, below the *median*...) Most people are not particularly competent even if hardworking. The best they can do might be some lower-level thing that doesn't pay all that well.
I'm assuming a fair bit of selection for the substack comment section. The level of competence among readers is much higher than the population. That said I agree on your point more broadly.
The time a breadwinner spends to earn is directly converted to nonfungible capital, which in turn pays for living costs. The dependent, meanwhile, is presumably living, rather than working. I refuse to group taking care of your own children or maintaining your own household under the same category as typical remunerative employment. Ask any nonmarried, conventionally employed person whether time spent on at-home chores and off-the-cuff responsibilities belongs in the same category as on-the-clock time.
There seems to be an assumption that the breadwinner has somehow gained an asymmetrical power advantage over the dependent spouse in terms of human capital and I am not sure, in modern times, why that should be true. Both individuals benefit more-or-less equally from the money spent, but there's a potential asymmetry in what that money extracted from each partner. In my experience, the breadwinner is often irreversibly sacrificing something like 40-60 (add 5 for commutes and forced, unpaid meal breaks) hours per week of their life to support dependent's mostly unfettered existence. If dependent does not choose to work on themselves in some way that increases their human capital during their at-home hours in which they are almost always unilaterally free to handle responsibilities as they see fit, then I do not see why breadwinner should owe any percentage of ongoing income to dependent upon dissolution.
That modern alimony assignment makes an attempt to account for discrepancies doesn't really satisfy my concerns.
It's kismet you wrote about this, because I just read a study on the topic the other day, and it supports your thesis at the end there, regarding marriages falling on hard times. It's pretty robust and looked at almost 20,000 individuals over a long period.
Here's what it found:
- Men are slightly more happy marrying younger wives -- no surprise. And slightly less happy marrying older wives.
- But here's what might be surprising: women are ALSO slightly more happy marrying younger husbands, and slightly less happy marrying older husbands. By virtually exactly the same amount.
- These differences in initial marital satisfaction for age gap relationships are not that large, but are statistically significant, and there is essentially no difference between men and women: both are happier when their spouse is younger, and less happy if they're older.
- The gap where people with younger spouses start off happier disappears by years 6-8 in marital duration. All marriages have slow declines in satisfaction with duration of the marriage, but age-gap marriages decline faster than same-age marriages. That's true for BOTH the older spouse and the younger spouse. The lowest marital satisfaction scores are wives with spouses 7 or more years older, who have been married to them for ten years or more.
- To your point here, age-gap marriages experience steeper declines in satisfaction with "economic shocks" than same-age marriages. If someone loses a job or has an economic hit of some sort, same-age marriages are better at rolling with it, and there's a bigger hit to satisfaction with age-gap marriages. Same goes for health shocks but it wasn't always statistically significant.
The authors hypothesize that what this means is that really most people prefer a younger spouse, but also know that they're unlikely to get one unless they're willing to sort of make a "trade" by selecting a lower-value person than they'd be able to get if they stick with a same-age spouse. Because a higher value person won't want to marry someone older, so in game theoretic terms, choosing someone the same age is a better compromise.
Interestingly, they tried controlling for income, wealth, work hours, specialization of roles, and factors like that, to see if there was an effect here of people making "trades" of youth for money, and none of those things seemed to have an effect. Basically just people prefer younger spouses. Interesting that everyone thinks that it's only men, because that's not what this data shows.
I think you're absolutely right that most women simply don't have the option of finding a guy who WANTS to support her, who isn't way older, or more might take the option. Because it's not like young women don't have older men hitting on them 24-7. Like, they know they want them. That's not the same as wanting to support them (plus babies).
I also think one of the problems with a guy who is particularly focused on youth, like a guy in his 30s who REALLY wants to date a 20 year old and only a 20 year old....is that he will always be that way. It's not like he wants someone 12 years younger than him, what he wants is a 20 year old, no matter how old he is. In fact I'd say guys like that actually tend to get worse with time, and become even MORE obsessed with youth as their own slips away from them. So that might explain why those guys start off really happy with a younger wife, and by year 6 that boost in satisfaction is totally gone, and declines faster than the same-age couples. I think that marrying a guy who was obsessed with wanting a young wife actually puts a woman at MORE risk of being "traded in for a new model", because he's still going to want the same thing, maybe even more so, when he's 40 and 50 and 60, as he did at 30. It's one thing if he just happened to meet and fall in love with a 20 year old, but if that's what he was really focused on....I think most women intuitively know that's a danger sign that's not going to work out well for them over the long term, once they're no longer young.
Here's the study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6785043/#S10
Starting with your last point - I 100% agree - there is a reason women worry about guys who are focused on dating so much younger and it’s exactly what you highlight. You will get older and then you will no longer have the attributes they liked you for and women rationally worry about what that will mean for the future of the relationship. Of course it’s possible for someone to fall for someone younger - but if they’re only dating young and they specifically seek that out it’s a negative signal all else equal for a potential husband.
As for the study, that’s really interesting! I have to admit I’m a little surprised by the symmetry here. I wonder if women being so much more open to older partners is really just about the fertility timeline then - young women who want kids in their 20s are aware most guys their age won’t want that and so are open up to dating older to match on that desire.
The economic shocks point makes total sense to me - especially because the relationship may have been established with one person (normally the husband) being a financial provider for the other, and that dynamic can be somewhat integral to the relationship. So if he loses his job she may be unhappy being “forced” to work when that wasn’t the deal she signed up for when she married older, even if she can work and does have earning power.
And yes, it really is not that easy to be supported financially just for existing, at least not for every normal looking woman and certainly not generally without large concessions on other aspects.
Yes I was surprised by that finding too. But for the most part the study seems to back up much of your thesis here.
I think women being ‘open’ to marrying older men is also shaped by their being forced to do so for thousands of years of marriage, per male power and preference.
Interesting! I suspect what's going on is women are weighting money more heavily than men (for sound evolutionary reasons), so while the best of all worlds might be a cute rich younger guy, IRL you have to pick one and you might as well go with rich--and richer people tend to be older because unless you're an heir to a fortune it takes time to rack up the money. Conversely, men will sacrifice money for youth. (And as you say, if he likes you at 20, he'll like the next girl even more at 20 when you're 30--look at Leo DiCaprio.)
As you also point out, there's a tradeoff. Pacino can date women 40 years younger because he's a legendary movie star. Tarantino can't go more than 15 younger because despite being rich and famous, he's also creepy and nerdy (and you'd better get a good pedicure). The average guy's not going more than 2-3 years in either direction.
But then why don't we see very high-mating-market-value women--models and such--going after younger men?
A few of them have...Demi Moore with Ashton Kutcher...Robin Wright, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Heidi Klum, Eva Mendez, Cameron Diaz, Mariah Carey...of course, I just had to look all those up and wouldn't have thoughr of them, but they're all with guys 10-15 years younger. I'm not sure we really HAD that many super rich on their own stars who were women in their 40s and 50s until the past couple decades.
Thanks! I don't follow celebrity culture so it was kind of a dumb thing to say. I remember the Keanu Reeves thing, but I figured there were others. There's also probably an assortative mating thing going on with celebrities, so having more wealthy women stars in the pool probably makes a wealthy older woman-hot younger man relationship more likely.
Still, maybe it's a little more socially determined than I thought. If I were a rationalist I'd say I went from 80% nature-20% nurture to 70% nature-30% nurture, but those numbers are always fake. Thanks!
I agree with Maxim’s comment, because I’m married to a lawyer who owns a multimillion dollar law firm, my 50% ownership of the asset and income is exponentially more valuable than the only slightly above average, median income I was earning before I had a child and was married. Both in terms of the time I have to raise my daughter and because my husband isn’t sharing in the “domestic work” he can bill at over $1k and hour. Me staying home to do the domestic work and not split the household duties does mean for us a loss of income but an increase of income in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in them I make for my partner to focus on work and money in both of our pockets. Money, savings, assets and investments that are exponentially more valuable than anything I could make as a median income earner. On top of that I can focus on “working full time” for people I love instead of frittering away the hours of my life trying to convince myself grinding away in an office is “empowering.” Also- it’s impossible for someone who has never birthed a child to understand how awful it is to feel like your paying all your income for the most important person/people in your life to be raised by strangers. The thought my daughter would spend 45 hours a week in daycare and afterschool getting mostly ignored by distant adults is sickening.
Yeah, I think if your partner is making that level of income it makes very little sense to work (unless your work is actually your passion). But that’s obviously not most people’s situation. Working while you’re childless and then, if conditions allow it, choosing to be a stay at home mom makes total sense to me. Never working at all and being supported by your husband throughout your 20s well before you have children seems more risky to me.
Sure. But getting credentials comes at a huge cost, with big debt and doesn’t necessarily translate into much higher earning power. A lot of people in academia and the government bureaucracy are credentialed and made only moderately more income than the median or at the median. They are “still vulnerable.” When I was working in my 20s I with a bachelors degree from a liberal arts school I was barely getting by and felt like I was barely holding on by my fingernails. I feel much less vulnerable now as a middle aged SAHM thanks to “equitable distribution of assets.”
Yes, but surely you realize you are not the average wife or SAHM - you’re a very wealthy wife and SAHM. Not everyone will end up in the top 1% and so you can’t generalize from your experience
I understand. I think the point I am trying to make is that being a woman who has a job doesn’t make you “invulnerable.” A woman with a job, especially a low paying or median income job is still vulnerable to the crushing pressure of the economy and the unpredictable whims of reality. Based on my experience working, it hardly made me “free” or “independent.” I was trapped by the reality I was only barely getting by, just treading water and exhausting myself and for what?
As someone who recently became a SAHM who is not super duper wealthy, at least not like you, I agree with the gist of what you’re saying. A common reason given to women to keep working after having a baby is that being out of the workforce will make them more vulnerable in the future. Of course this is true, but it ignores the costs of not staying home. The reality is that we are always vulnerable, and sometimes being ultra risk averse has more costs than benefits.
Agree with this, and I certainly wasn’t meaning to imply that no one should be a SAHM. I also don’t think going to college is the right option for everyone (male or female), particularly if you’re going to have to pay full price and go into significant debt. But I also don’t think it’s good advice to tell young women to *plan* as if they’ll never need to work or make money.
A decent college education will generally translate to being able to put a roof over your own head. Front desk receptionist, legal secretary, just being able to write complete sentences will let you get by. If he’s wealthy enough you know the child support will be solid that’s already enough to walk away from abuse or severe unhappiness. But if you’ve never had a job at all it will be harder both practically and emotionally. I think it’s far better for both partners to know that she has the option to leave and is choosing to stay. And if most of his wealth was built before the marriage and they agree she will stay home, financially dependent, there should be a prenup with a significant pay out in case of divorce (enough that she can build a new life) but this almost never happens.
Furthermore, I think we should discuss what these accreditations and skills actually are? If they include becoming hardcore Excel and spreadsheet jockeys, unfortunately it may be worth talking about something no one wants to mention, the lack of women in STEM. I think a huge cohort finds STEM jobs and office jobs in general repellent. What then? There are definitely some skills I only want to be forced to hone if a gun is put to my head.
My kids go to an in-home daycare with a wonderful woman who has taught all of them math and reading better than I could have. I don't really like the centers, but I certainly wouldn't be "sickened" by them. It's not harmful. Just different.
I'm glad you enjoy your life, it sounds like you two have a great relationship. But also, he could choose to end it at any time. Yes you will divide the assets and there is alimony and child support, but those things usually don't last forever and if you have never contributed to social security then you won't be getting anything from that. It's just good to have a backup plan, that's all. Hopefully you never need it.
Worth considering that this is exactly why the divorce legal system was set up how it is — where the woman gets half the assets — it’s to allow her to do this without too much worry.
Yes, and I think alimony is a good way to de-risk trad partnerships (unfortunately many trad men think it’s horribly unfair when it’s actually granted to an ex wife however, as with the drama over Stephen Crowders divorce, the demonization of McKenzie Scott etc). Also alimony is rarely granted automatically, rarely granted permanently, and actually just is rarely granted at all. If your partner is really rich, most of this won’t apply, but few men are that rich and trads act as though women ought not to bother gaining the skills and accreditations necessary to earn their own income which I think is almost always bad advice.
Agreed, it seems like both the red pill guys and modern feminists are ignorant of the purpose of alimony and asset splits, which is precisely to protect these kind of relationships. As for whether it's bad advice or not under the current system, I don't know.
Could be motivated ignorance--modern feminists don't like these kind of relationships, and the red pill guys don't want to admit there has to be something in it for the girl.
I've been turning this comment over for a while trying to figure out what irks me about the way you're framing things here, and I'm pretty sure it's a difference in how we're accounting for opportunity cost. At a glance, you seem to be implying that we should de-risk hypergamy, but I don't think that's what you're trying to say. On the other hand, you do seem to be in favor of it.
Reframing the discussion as being for, or against, de-risking (potentially incentivizing) hypergamous behavior makes it obvious what I got caught up on.
If we take for granted that breadwinners are ubiquitously getting more than they're giving up in traditional partnerships across the gamut, it feels like we're conceding too much to your argument. As you've pointed out, most breadwinners aren't living the lifestyle that's being described. Is it appropriate in such situations to incentivize, or de-risk, hypergamous mating strategies? How does it affect your evaluation if we recontextualize our hypothetical breadwinner as a median earner who values their freedom in non-economic terms, who does not derive much joy/satisfaction from their work, and who does not materially benefit from their 'economic independence' in their day-to-day existence?
As a 24/7 care provider for an elderly dementia patient with no weekends, holidays or vacations for the past five years, I feel reasonably qualified to speak to the restrictions of a SAHM lifestyle. But I've also been an underappreciated retail worker, I've bagged your groceries. The trouble, from my perspective, with your analysis, is that it seems to privilege breadwinners unfairly by failing to account for the associated costs of breadwinning.
Most breadwinners are employees, not bosses. When they enter into a traditional relationship, they're giving up security and freedom in present, rather than future terms. Their sacrifice is immediate and ongoing, but if we reframe this as 'economic independence' then we erase it from the expenses column. Why should the dependent in a traditional relationship not carry some future risk of vulnerability against the immediate cost of taking on a dependent? Your analysis invites the conclusion that breadwinners are clearly at an advantage in the classic paradigm, but that strikes me as saying more about how you're choosing to evaluate the risks and benefits more than objective truth.
If I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that men who are earning median incomes should not have to pay very much in alimony, because employment is itself a burden? Let me know if that's not what you are saying.
My counter argument is that a person who earns an income can continue to earn that income. A person with no job experience or skills has to start at zero. A judge will take all of this into account, how much the breadwinner makes, whether there was infidelity involved, etc. I think judges do feel similar to you because they almost always reward less than 50% (I think 40% minus spouses income is typical), and if the marriage was less than 20 years then you don't get it forever.
Having a job is not worse than not having income, if it was you wouldn't choose to bag groceries. The burden of work should be taken into account, as well as the burden of caring for a household. It's my understanding that this is the way the system works today (I'm sure it's not perfect).
I guess if you make the assumption that stay-at-home mothers and housewives have BOTH a lower standard of living AND less opportunity to develop human capital than their breadwinner counterparts, but I see no reason to think that this is this case.
Breadwinners are typically employees who are locked-down in their work, 45-65 hours a week. And let's get something straight here: Time spent in the wage slave paradigm is categorically different from time spent at home, tending to the responsibilities of adult life. Just ask any conventionally employed person whether they would rather be at work or at home with their kids, taking care of the house, beholden to nobody save their partner, with near impunity and unilateral freedom over how they handle those responsibilities.
If the dependent emerges from twenty years of this with the same human capital they started with, they certainly don't deserve to lay claim to 40% of their partner's future earnings for it.
Alimony is at worst a fundamentally broken concept, built on the idea that employment is a desirable state of freedom, and that dependents are so burdened that they are incapable of acting from their disadvantaged position. At best it's just outmoded and those things used to be true but aren't anymore.
That sounds like a situation where being a traditional breadwinner would be really unattractive either way. Like, if you don't like your job, and completely focusing on it does not even enable you to "develop your human capital", then why the heck wouldn't you want to find a less unfair way to split the nice homemaking and the bad breadwinning?
I think trad guys (of whom I am not one) tend to be sort of the mirror image of radfems--they only talk to other people who agree with them, and in conservative circles they have a fair number of yes-women telling them what they want to hear.
All of that is great, but for most people it still means poverty unless you get a job. And entering the job market at 45 with no skills or experience is awful. And you won't get as much from social security. And forcing men to actually pay the alimony is often difficult.
But if she’s choosing to get a career/work shouldn’t she then forfeit her right to half the assets, if that was created precisely for the purpose you state? Isn’t that having your cake and eating it too (by opting to work I mean)?!
The assets that were accumulated during the marriage probably won't be divided perfectly evenly, but the woman who chose not to work in order to take care of the household already gave up the ability to earn her own assets. If she later goes and gets a job, she is contributing to those assets, so why would she get less for contributing more?
Alimony depends on the specifics, but it is typical to be 40% of salary minus 50% of the other spouses pay. So if she gets a job, she will be entitled to less alimony in the case of divorce.
You come at the this from the default position of earning assets being the primary concern of women (and men). I don’t frame it as “she gave up her ability to earn assets by taking care of household”. I view it as both spouses decided to divvy up functions in the marriage, one working to earn for the household and the other managing the household. This framing is also agnostic as to the gender of which spouse is taking on which function, and if rationality prevails would see the one able to command a higher salary being the earner (not considering childbirth which not everyone can physically do).
So in a scenario where nobody opts to manage the household why should the lower earning spouse be expecting to receive half of anything from the higher earning spouse upon divorce?! I can’t square this.
Earning assets is the primary concern of people who don't have any. Once you can live in a certain level of comfort, it's unhealthy to prioritize wealth over other things. When you have nothing, wealth is a roof over your head and food in your belly, and yes, it is absolutely our primary concern.
In a scenario where both spouses earn money, they both contribute to gaining assets. You seem to be arguing that if one spouse works and one doesn't, the non-working spouse gets half of the assets. But if one spouse contributes 30% and the other 70%, then the 30% spouse should get 30% of the assets? I see the argument, but don't you think it's a little bizarre to give less to a person for contributing more? I also think it's a bit simplistic to remove the "manage the household" aspect just because both spouses work. One may work part time, which means they do more household work. The higher earner likely has to prioritize work so if one of them takes a day off to stay with a sick kid it's probably the lower earner. So if the 30% spouse does 70% of managing the household, how is that different than giving half the assets to each spouse when one works and one doesn't?
Thank you for your comments and knowledge here - exactly what I would’ve said and now I don’t have to type it all out!
I think my framing is equating being the breadwinner with being the household manager in terms of contribution. So I’m calling it even. That’s why when it comes to dividing savings or assets it’s easy for me to make the leap and give half to the non-worker/household manager.
The scenario where one spouse works part time is more complicated because by working that spouse is bringing assets in, but is also creating expenses (childcare, etc). You’d have to net that out, but definitely don’t see why assets would automatically be 50/50; there has to be some deduction for the lower earning spouse creating expenses and complexity.
1. This is probably racist, sexist, etc., but I have noticed that many human females discover The Mommy Track about the time in their young adult life that they figure out that they will not exactly be rocketing up the corporate ladder, not to mention that the reality of white collar work is not so much SATC as much as it is The Office.
If they have options, then they can take them.
2. Contrary to the assertion that "All cats are female", about half are male tomcats.
Pretty much every cat I know was raised by a single mother, and most cats have no clue who their father might be. Maybe we can narrow it down to a couple of suspects, but that's it.
Regarding 1: Yes, I can see where you're coming from, and I don't think your comment is entirely sexist or racist, and it's good that women have options. However, I'm sensing that the attitude of becoming a mother that you describe here means that women are simply settling to become mothers because it's their last resort when faced with disappointment that their career is not going the way they anticipated. I think many women intuitively know they are not cut out for a corporate lifestyle (in whichever way you think it is), way before they have kids, and are ok with that because a more low-key job paired with a more intense focus on their husband and family represents the fulfillment of their more authentic selves. And honestly, wouldn't men in a similar situation feel a similar way? (even if they are not thinking about kids exactly, because they can't have kids and therefore don't have to face the physical labor of it?)
As for "the reality of white collar work being less SATC and more The Office," I don't think anyone would seriously claim that women ignore the reality that that line of work is not always glamorous. That's why options exist, so women can escape that grind if they want to (in my mind, that should be cause for a celebration of progress!) But if you think about the flip-side, blue-collar jobs are overly glamorized as well, as being some emblem of some lost era of America where you earned your keep only through getting your hands dirty. Nowadays, unfortunately, many of those jobs are going away as we have shifted into a knowledge and service-based economy, and people have to adapt somehow. And not everybody is cut out for a physically demanding job anyway, man or woman alike! The point is that people will find advantages and drawbacks in both white collar and blue collar work, but they still find the determination to stick both through anyway.
This is a very good essay. Altogether too many trad types have a very facile understanding of marriage. It’s rather more complicated than they aver.
Thank you!! And agreed.
The age gap article made me laugh. As if all women are refusing to date men who are attractive, nice, wealthy, charming, etc. just because they are older.
FWIW I know many couples where the guy is anywhere from 5-15 years older. I don’t think it’s immediately obvious that they have “big” age gaps, because a lot of laptop worker millennials (engineers, tech workers, etc) could plausibly be 35 based on their appearance even if they are really +/- 10 years from that.
I know right! Thanks for the advice Grazie!
Yes, I also know many couples with that level of age gap - I think it’s only noticeable when the couple is young (20 and 30 is likely noticeable but 30 and 40 wouldn’t turn any heads). And I do think small to moderate age gaps make a lot of sense given maturity differences and different fertility timelines, this is why we see that pattern on average (I think the average is ~5 years).
It does seem like there should be a golden ticket of some sort to expand women's options for early families and late careers. I can't vouch for the exact number but ChatGPT gives $366,000 as the NPV of a newborn's future tax payments so there's got to be significant room for it
Yes, I do think that if parents (or maybe it should be women/primary caregivers as you suggest) were directly compensated for having kids many relevant incentives would change. I guess we’d also need women to get ok with being relatively junior for their age if they went that path and then later entered the workforce but I think that would be doable, especially if there were these very big financial incentives. I talk about some related policy ideas in this article, and Robin Hanson has talked about ways of allowing parents to sell the rights to a portion of their kids future taxes - problem with these solutions is making them politically feasible: https://www.allcatsarefemale.com/p/can-we-afford-to-buy-marginal-babies?r=ipqw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
That's a really great analysis, I love the recognition of the difficulty of paying an affordable price for the marginal child
I think the political appeal of these programs could be significantly improved if they are accurately framed as vital and almost specific economic investments. I think the average person experiences the concept as sounding like a social program for the people who have more kids
One of the more persuasive claims in favour of liberal feminism is that the economy benefits from female participation, whereas when fertility approaches rapid collapse levels each child begins to have far reaching future values on things like innovation rates. Culturally we may need to see children in the same frame as a career with specific economic value and renumeration
A degree of mother specific direction of payment may also be significant on valid feminist grounds. If the payments are weighted to erase expected effects of a child on the lifetime career earnings of mothers, the conversation between women becomes a different ball game
For a man, having a decent career and a stay-at-home wife and mother can be very nice. If the man comes on hard times and the relationship ends, the woman can face serious financial insecurity. But there is another common way (much more common?) that things can go wrong. If despite his best efforts, a man finds that his marriage is not working and must end (regardless of who initiates the divorce), he can then up with half his income spent on child support payments and a problematic relationship with his children. Even if his ex-wife does not actively work to set his children against him, far more routine contact with mom is inherently likely to lead to dad being an inconvenient afterthought. So the man experiences no partner, no children, and half his income gone. We can quickly tag the label "financial insecurity" on the woman's situation, but what of the man's? Loss of children who he likely has come to love, less ability to contribute financially to a new relationship, and loneliness and isolation. (When an advice columnist was asked what to do to get that darned ex-husband to make child support payments, one unintuitive answer was -- encourage or allow him to spend more time with the kids.)
I'm not saying that this legal set-up is some grave injustice -- in fact, it seems better than just about any alternative I can think of. Joint custody is much better when it works. But the cost to the man when things go wrong is very real, even if not measured in unpaid bills. I'm not sure what we should suggest to him as a comparable "backup" plan.
If you want security -- emotional or financial -- the obvious answer for both men and women is not to have children. I suspect the prospect of this fairly common post-divorce pattern is a leading reason why men are hesitant about having kids.
I agree with you all the way until your last paragraph.
The best answer is for both men and women to be aware of all the risks/issues that come with marriage/family building and still have the courage to do it. Not having children due to some sense of salvaging personal security is short sighted. Nobody in their deathbeds says they’re glad they had personal security over everything else in life. They typically recount how happy their kids and grandkids have made their lives.
I agree with your conclusions. My last paragraph doesn't reveal my values. Having kids is ultimately more important than having financial security. Human survival has depended on lots of people in financial insecurity (sometimes serious) having kids anyway because of a sex drive and no contraception. Once they show up, we do our best to take care of them. But our prudent brains often see it differently. Consider also this case: If you already have a child, you are deeply committed to their welfare, and realize that another child will dilute your financial resources, so better not do that and focus on the one child who is already here. Shrinking birth rates. When European countries have tried offering generous incentives for having kids, the main result where it worked at all was to have parents move up slightly the schedule for having the same number of kids they were planning to anyway.
Oh I understand you now and agree fully!
The offering of monetary incentives to increase birth rates is the ultimate case of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It’s infuriating to watch country after country beat their head against the wall on this only because it’s politically incorrect to admit that it’s not the money that’s stopping people. It’s a cultural thing. Women will not have more children if you give them money or cheaper childcare. They’ll take your money and just have the same 1.3 kids they were going to have.
I agree to some extent but would not put the blame on women. Men are very often more reluctant than the women. I say another approach is to just let the population shrink and see what happens. The earth would do fine with a lot fewer people, and we can figure something out later.
I didn’t mean to blame women. I just used one example and since the angle of helping with childcare is one often taken.
Letting population shrink is ill advised as these trends are very hard to turn and the smaller the base population gets the harder it is to multiply up. Population math is ruthless. Look at the projections for South Korea. I believe it’s 96% drop in population over 4 generations.
In the old days that resulted in your country being invaded by the country over the mountains that had lots of young men eager for conquest.
But now we have nukes, so maybe we can see what happens. I kind of wonder if this is what Japan is doing.
Yup, this is why I didn't do it.
It wasn't security, though, it was risk aversion. I figured half of all marriages end in divorce, the woman usually files so she gets to pick, I'm below average in social skills so the odds are against me, so why bother? Better to die alone without paying alimony than die alone and have to cover alimony and child support on top of everything.
Not that Regan's arguments are wrong either. Ultimately someone has to lose, or else both people lose something.
Can something be said for the general sentiment that staying in daycare for long periods of time is harmful for kids? It seems to me that women who are embracing a more trad-wife lifestyle and extension, a homeschooling lifestyle, have these outsized fears that their kids will be negatively influenced by being in the care of adults who aren’t their parents. Some fears that daycare workers won’t be skilled enough to comfort and protect children in serious emergencies are of course justified, but what is the difference between that and addressing the uneasiness that some women feel with knowing that at some point, they will not always be emotionally and physically tethered to their child and will have to let their children navigate the world at an appropriate distance from them? To me, there has to be an acknowledgement that it really does take a village to raise a child, to rephrase the cliche. Now, I may be biased because I don’t have kids, but do all parents really need to be around their kids every second of the day, anticipating how to fix every situation (except of course when their children are too young and immature to make smart decisions?)
And I think there is some degree of privilege in having that attitude, because those women who feel that way and who can also afford to evaluate a wide variety of daycares are probably going to agonize over every aspect of each one, no matter how small, while moms who are working poor or who live somewhere with very little options don’t have the time and the energy to do so (and yet, we criticize the latter and not the former.)
Absolutely. I've got 4 kids and I think the way that trads talk about child care like it's torture is really weird. What's funny is that working moms today spend more time around their children than housewives did 50+ years ago. Modern parents spend a ridiculous amount of time with their kids and all the evidence I have seen so far is that this smothering is harmful to the child's future wellbeing. Kids need to engage in risky behavior outside the home to develop healthy ways to make critical judgements.
Now, I have had my kid in a center before and while I don't think it's bad for them, I didn't really love the idea of leaving my kid there. I really like having an in-home daycare with a small number of kids and an adult who becomes a consistent presence in their life.
What evidence have you seen to show working moms spend more time around their children then housewives did 50+ years ago?! That’s news to me! Common sense dictates that it would be less, since working moms are just that, working outside the home!
I’ve also seen data suggesting this - the standards for being a “good and involved parent” seem to be the reason. I’ve linked some Pew data below - take a look at the chart called Parents child care time 1965-2011 (out of date but I think we can assume the trend has continued). It doesn’t split our working and non working moms and dads, but you can infer that working moms still probably spend more time than in the past since most moms work nowadays. Even crazier given parents also have less kids!
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/03/14/chapter-5-americans-time-at-paid-work-housework-child-care-1965-to-2011/
Every study I have seen on the issue shows parents spending more time with their kids at the same time that more women are entering the work force. The research of Suzanne M. Bianchi indicates that working mothers spend at least as much time as at-home mothers did in the 1970s, possibly more. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/changing-rhythms-american-family-life-1
So it's possible that what I said was a slight exaggeration, but what is undeniable is that both at-home mothers and working mothers are spending far more time with their children than previous generations. Fathers have shown an even bigger increase (which I think is good), to the point that the average father spends more time with his kids than the average mother in the 1960s and 1970s. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/
And to top it off, this study found that increased time with children has no affect on behaviors, emotions, or academics. It could even have a negative effect. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/it-doesnt-matter-how-much-time-parents-spend-their-kids-180954799/
I can understand the intuitive reason why increased time with kids might not make a difference (I.e. it might mean you’re being a helicopter parent). But what about families with kids with higher support needs, like kids with developmental disabilities? For those parents, I would think that increased time is not an encroachment on their kids privacy but is a way to ensure their kids navigate the world safely, because they have may have challenging behaviors that may cause them to hurt others or themselves and so they obviously need parents to step in. Do we say that increased supervision is negative in this case?
Privacy isn't the issue here, it's that the more parents are around the more problems kids don't have to learn how to solve on their own. They don't take as many risks which means they don't learn to assess those risks themselves. If you don't get into trouble, you don't learn how to get yourself out of trouble. It's like how the movement to put soft materials in playgrounds led to an increase in broken bones. Kids didn't learn that falling hurts so they didn't worry as much about falling.
Kids with developmental disabilities obviously need more help, so I agree that increased time spent with them *could* be a good thing. But the opposite is also possible. Either way, the number of kids with developmental disabilities is small so it's a niche issue, and I'm not aware of any data specific to that niche.
A24 must be rubbing their hands at this. The pitch of a young, intelligent educated woman forgoing her career opportunities in order to live with a rich but mildly manipulative older guy, passing up on opportunities to advance herself independently until she no longer has a choice but to essentially become his pet even as he gets older and less wealthy is such obviously A24 thriller-style material (it’s essentially Babygirl in reverse) that I wouldn’t be surprised if a film like this already exists.
I’d watch!
I mean, the whole reason Babygirl exists is because it's the only way the sort of left-leaning people who make films could possibly show the male-dominant kink relationships that sold so many books from Fifty Shades to ACOTAR to...insert romantasy here.
As is so often the case, Hollywood produces inversions of a less PC reality.
But since you can easily make the guy the bad guy here, it might work. If you have a friend in Hollywood, pitch it!
My friend's dad was a millwright, he made a pretty good living, and his wife ran the house. At 45 he had an affair and divorced her. She had to try entering the job market at 45 with no skills or experience. He paid alimony at first, but when he stopped paying she wasn't willing to take him back to court (it wouldn't last forever anyway). Today she gets very little from social security because she didn't contribute to it because she didn't work. It really sucks to have to think about these things, but I agree that women should have a backup plan. You just never know.
“The second woman might end up getting a “good deal”, but she’s also a lot more vulnerable.”
As JBP says, some games in life require you to go all in. Ergo, the games with the highest payoffs would obviously be expected to have risks.
I just can’t agree with the idea that working a job is some kind of shield against vulnerability and dependence.
Why not? Obviously it's not fool proof but I can't see how it doesn't make you less vulnerable or dependent
Yes, it’s all relative, none of us are invulnerable! As I said in the conclusion, it’s certainly not that I think no one should ever be a SAHM. But still, having a way to earn money yourself, at least if needed, does give you (and your family really) more options.
Well, that was pithy. I just want to bump this comment for the sake of highlighting what I consider to be the missing piece in this discussion.
Remunerative occupation is often felt as a risk/cost/sacrifice for the breadwinner, and any analysis that doesn't account for this is inadequate/incomplete.
Oh, it's better than nothing. Employers are exploitative and frequently cruel, but an income is an income. Particularly for the working class, who don't have the option to marry a rich guy and get a nice stream of alimony income, it can greatly increase a woman's options.
Two thoughts on this:
1) The traditional arrangement my wife and I have, gives us capacity to support the community and take on projects. My wife can volunteer at school and a non-profit. We have a side gig doing fertility awareness and NFP, which is not profitable but we like helping couples. I feel less guilty about the limits work places on my ability to engage in my community knowing my wife fills that capacity. She also has the time to just throw pottery and make fun, beautiful things.
2) My read of corporate culture is that if you're a competent person, they can find you meaningful work and you will thrive. My wife occasionally tells me how she'd be homeless without me, but I reply she would be an above average project manager in 6 months. The experience and certification stuff is much less important than motivation and common sense problem solving. Yes many jobs need specific skills, but many jobs are just running business specific processes that must be trained regardless of experience. A women out of the work force comes in with some disadvantage, but water finds its level.
I'm a little more cynical than you with regard to corporate culture. They like to lay you off at 45 to 55 when your health costs start to go up and then you can't find another job but still have to cover healthcare until 65 (and even then Medicare isn't perfect). Good luck paying child support (or for the kids), chump!
While I am well aware that corporates do dumb and evil things, a women entering the labor force from the sidelines does not have inflated salary expectations. My experience with men laid off mid to late career is that they expect to retain their salary and status despite the place that would value them most (due to company specific knowledge) already determining that it wasn't economically feasible.
Sometimes I need to play cold hearted economist. Corporates are not out for anyone in particular. They are out their trying to solve economic problems. Generally folks are biased to their own performance and value. I know several people whole went job hunting and came back with a new appreciation and effort in the job they currently hold. I'm many cases the difference between 5 years experience and 20 years experience is pay expectation and bad habits. I have and will hire both moms re-entering the work force and late career men, I just don't see much difference in qualification if both parties are competent and hard working. (In econ terms, there is diminishing returns to occupational experience especially excluding firm specific human capital)
I agree a lot of guys can't accept a demotion, and lots of people overestimate themselves. (Since turning 40 my assumption is I have to live as though I am going to be forced into early retirement--because it might happen!) And, ceteris paribus, the mom might be easier to work with and less trouble than some recently demoted executive!
I'm a little less agreed that most people will be able to find meaningful work and they will thrive. Simply put, as you say, they are out there trying to solve economic problems. That means minimizing wages (labor is a major expense after all) and other expenses like healthcare benefits. So it's not at all clear some mom re-entering the work force would find something that pays the bills. Furthermore, half of all people are below average. (OK, below the *median*...) Most people are not particularly competent even if hardworking. The best they can do might be some lower-level thing that doesn't pay all that well.
I'm assuming a fair bit of selection for the substack comment section. The level of competence among readers is much higher than the population. That said I agree on your point more broadly.
The time a breadwinner spends to earn is directly converted to nonfungible capital, which in turn pays for living costs. The dependent, meanwhile, is presumably living, rather than working. I refuse to group taking care of your own children or maintaining your own household under the same category as typical remunerative employment. Ask any nonmarried, conventionally employed person whether time spent on at-home chores and off-the-cuff responsibilities belongs in the same category as on-the-clock time.
There seems to be an assumption that the breadwinner has somehow gained an asymmetrical power advantage over the dependent spouse in terms of human capital and I am not sure, in modern times, why that should be true. Both individuals benefit more-or-less equally from the money spent, but there's a potential asymmetry in what that money extracted from each partner. In my experience, the breadwinner is often irreversibly sacrificing something like 40-60 (add 5 for commutes and forced, unpaid meal breaks) hours per week of their life to support dependent's mostly unfettered existence. If dependent does not choose to work on themselves in some way that increases their human capital during their at-home hours in which they are almost always unilaterally free to handle responsibilities as they see fit, then I do not see why breadwinner should owe any percentage of ongoing income to dependent upon dissolution.
That modern alimony assignment makes an attempt to account for discrepancies doesn't really satisfy my concerns.
As a dude who’s spent some time homeless, couldn’t help but laugh at “vulnerable to male kindness”