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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28431 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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you could do her job perfectly well

While it's true that he could almost certainly do all the actual tasks, it's very likely that he couldn't do it happily, without becoming bored and alienated, which is actually quite rare and valuable. Assuming, of course, that his description is accurate.

Have you read the recent ACX post about Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids? I want to have a top level post about it, but haven't thought of anything interesting to say for that. I enjoy Scott's honesty about being an introverted professional writer with twin babies and a wife who's probably something like him, and very much not a Christian twenty-something who's happy about vacuuming. His wife is apparently staying with the kids, but he feels guilty (presumably she's overwhelmed, not happily keeping a clean house and warm meals), and hires a nanny. Even with the nanny and wife at home, they are still overwhelmed.

Scott:

I was curious enough about this that I emailed Bryan and asked him how much time he spent on childcare when his kids were toddlers. He said about two hours a day for him, one hour for his wife. Relatives and nannies picked up the rest.

Which is just such a funny exchange.

Neither Scott nor Caplan sound like they could successfully do the non childbearing parts of Mrs. TitaniumButterfly's work.

Have you read the recent ACX post about Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids? I want to have a top level post about it, but haven't thought of anything interesting to say for that. I enjoy Scott's honesty about being an introverted professional writer with twin babies and a wife who's probably something like him, and very much not a Christian twenty-something who's happy about vacuuming. His wife is apparently staying with the kids, but he feels guilty (presumably she's overwhelmed, not happily keeping a clean house and warm meals), and hires a nanny. Even with the nanny and wife at home, they are still overwhelmed.

Yeah. I read it and my reaction was pretty much the same kind of loss-for-words exasperation I feel when my wife tells me that I cannot possibly have expectations of her, don't I know she has excuses? Why, Scott, you have a stay-at-home wife, two kids, a nanny, several friendly families living in the same block, and then you feel a need to also hire two babysitters on top of all that? Yeah, taking care of kids is exhausting. No shit, Scott - did you think getting kids at age 40 wouldn't be taxing? Two of them at the same time to boot. And still, his complaints in the face of that many resources thrown at the problem smells of...I don't know what to call it without throwing out schoolyard insults like "sissy" or "pussy". Methinks Scott complaineth overmuch. Or maybe I'm just jealous of his "privilege", be that wealth or whatnot, regardless of whether it's earned or otherwise.

Man, I work full-time and then I parent all the rest of the time except for maybe about two hours after getting my daughter to sleep. If Scott's numbers are correct, then I put in more parenting time than his stay-at-home wife. Which isn't to say that I'm the better man; far from it, my life is a mess. But seriously. They're doing something very wrong if the two of them can't hack it without hiring an entire fireteam of helpers.

Have you read the recent ACX post about Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids? I want to have a top level post about it, but haven't thought of anything interesting to say for that. I enjoy Scott's honesty about being an introverted professional writer with twin babies and a wife who's probably something like him, and very much not a Christian twenty-something who's happy about vacuuming. His wife is apparently staying with the kids, but he feels guilty (presumably she's overwhelmed, not happily keeping a clean house and warm meals), and hires a nanny. Even with the nanny and wife at home, they are still overwhelmed.

That was truly ridiculous. Scott makes enough money that his wife can afford to stay at home and be a homemaker, plus he works from home himself so he is available to help out when necessary, and he still feels the need to hire her a nanny. What exactly is she bringing to the marriage besides her uterus? It can't be pussy, because Scott is asexual. At this rate, he would have been better off just paying a surrogate and going at it as a single father.

Many people don't have such a transactional view of marriage, and are happy to do their best to make each other comfortable and happy. It makes a lot of sense to me to have boring household chores be delegated to someone else rather than waste your life doing them if you can afford to do so.

Somewhat afield from the example, but I actually think that my peers among the PMC hire too-few domestic servants, and that hiring more would be obviously correct. The only reason for someone making north of $300k a year to do their own laundry and do their own dishes, if they don't enjoy it personally, is out of some misguided self-conceit as middle class or a discomfort with interacting with the proletariat. Both they and the people they hire would be better off.

I'm reading The Original Preppy Handbook from 1980 right now, and one of the certified summer activities for rich young girls was to hire on as a "mother's helper" for another rich family summering in the Hamptons or the Vineyard. Where did things like that go? Obviously beneficial arrangement for all involved.

Where did things like that go?

Since they disallowed banging the babysitter everyone thinks it’s pointless.

Such a shame, without that dynamic we wouldn't have one of the most brutal scenes in film history: when the wife arrives home in Mystic Pizza having just missed her husband taking the babysitter's virginity, and innocently comments that he "forgot to pay her before she leaves."

'm reading The Original Preppy Handbook from 1980 right now, and one of the certified summer activities for rich young girls was to hire on as a "mother's helper" for another rich family summering in the Hamptons or the Vineyard. Where did things like that go? Obviously beneficial arrangement for all involved.

FWIW, this was also a common activity for poor girls in rural Germany as late as the 1950s.

It's an obviously good activity to engage in!

But I find it particularly striking in the context of rich American girls bound to be third generation at Harvard or Vassar, to get a summer job as domestic help raising kids.

I don't suppose you think he wants the child to have a mother?

While it's true that he could almost certainly do all the actual tasks, it's very likely that he couldn't do it happily, without becoming bored and alienated, which is actually quite rare and valuable. Assuming, of course, that his description is accurate.

I spend a lot of time around hippies where the women are into archaic revival stuff. They love to pick fruit and can it, do sewing and quilts, cook every meal at home, make candles, split firewood, stoke the fire in the wood stove, let a man slaughter but then pluck and butcher chickens, tend hens for eggs, pick up raw milk, worry 100x too much about recycling, run a homebrew kit, etc

(Ironically, the only thing that they don't bring back is washboard laundry. Washing machines are totally cool with hippies)

Anyway, housewifery was actually really fucking hard? Pretty sure the average modern man would have a nervous breakdown if they had to be a 17th century housewife.

It's a lot easier than it used to be but the level that women think on if they own housewifing is certainly something I feel like a tourist in and would be shitty at no matter how much a feminist dad I wanted to be.

Anyway, housewifery was actually really fucking hard? Pretty sure the average modern man would have a nervous breakdown if they had to be a 17th century housewife.

I suppose average modern anybody who has not the habit doing it and everyone's life truly would depend on it. Agriculture tasks that requires upper body strength are equally* hard and nervewracking, which is what the men would have been doing. On the other hand, house that would do well enough would employ servants.

Also, near all the the stuff you list sounds secondary. I remember reading that majority of 17th century woman's time would have gone to clothes and textiles, and not the "fun crafts" parts like quilting. Spinning is boring, and you'd have to do it for all textiles in the household.

  • ETA: figure of speech, not sure if 100% equal.

Anyway, housewifery was actually really fucking hard? Pretty sure the average modern man would have a nervous breakdown if they had to be a 17th century housewife.

It was. Let's assume you're still a farmer's wife with livestock and a gaggle of children to care for. The big changes are:

  • no homespun clothes: you don't have to spend every idle moment spinning and your winter making cloth and sewing by hand
  • no washboard laundry: this one you've mentioned yourself
  • indoor plumbing: if you want (have to) wash your gaggle of kids and at least your own feet, you don't have to carry all this water from the well and heat it first
  • no mandatory food preservation: you can still grow every vegetable and fruit and pickle/dry/can them yourself, but you don't have to. You can let your husband grow only cash crops and buy everything else
  • no mandatory cow: again, it's easier to buy milk and cheese from a creamery than to have your own cow
  • no mandatory breadmaking: if your husband needs some fresh bread for breakfast and lunch, you have to get up early enough to stoke the oven and bake it before he's up. Every day, because it doesn't keep like wonderbread

I know some women who are like that as well, and can see the appeal. You can use the greywater from the washing machine for the orchard, if you're into that kind of thing.

Those are mostly creative, social kinds of hobbies that are fun to do with children once they aren't absolute babies. I was homeschooled, and basically did 4-H instead of middle school, so we were always keeping animals, sewing, quilting, making fancy leather projects, and so on. My family uses a wood stove for heat, and we have a dead fruit tree that at some point we need to chop and split for firewood, which we plan to do ourselves. My housemate used to do home-brew stuff, and it looked like fun, I would definitely consider it.

But also, those are things men also participate in, more than cleaning, probably because they're more interesting than cleaning. It's extremely hard to keep things clean in a truly equal house with children, where nobody is extremely conscientious. My parents' house is very bad in that way, but many home crafts have been made there.

You can use the greywater from the washing machine for the orchard, if you're into that kind of thing.

I love reducing waste, but a few nitpicks: you probably only want to use the rinse water, and you still want to be careful about what kind of detergent you use, and you're only going to get enough waste water from the family clothes washer to cover a tree or two, so do have additional irrigation plans for anything large enough to call an orchard.

(my parents weren't "into" that, but they were frugal and we lived in a desert, so my dad would often switch the washer drain from a sewer line to a hose-out-on-the-lawn for a load's final rinse cycle)

That's true, a lot of archaic household tasks require true skill and specialization such that they're legitimately complimentary to men's work; I don't mean to diss actual traditional housekeeping. The problem is that we're living in the 21st century, and you can't meaningfully specialize into vacuuming and Crock-Pot operation.

Maybe I'm especially retarded but if I was house husband I'd probably outsource so much of the food and cleaning because I'd lose my mind trying to plan the day/week and stick to it and go to pieces if something came up that threw it off. And I'd also feel like none of this shit fills my cup and I'd be miserable.

To say nothing of how much worse it would be if I added kids to take care of.

My husband has done it, and finds it harder than most jobs, emotionally. We buy a lot of half prepared food from Costco. Out house is not clean.

Sure, it's possible that women have some temperamental lean towards homemaking, but I haven't seen any rigorous establishment of that premise. By my informal observation, you don't see a broad movement of stay-at-home dads complaining about having to be around their kids and do chores all day, and in any case the actual complexity of the work (and thus its associated status) is still low.

Sure, it's possible that women have some temperamental lean towards homemaking

They don't, necessarily. But if TitaniumButterfly says he found one who does, and is excited to get a vacuum for Christmas, I guess I'll go with that story for her, specifically. I do not personally know any women like that. I've known several with mothers who drilled the necessity of housekeeping into them and are neurotic and angry but effective about household things, but that isn't the same thing.

you don't see a broad movement of stay-at-home dads complaining about having to be around their kids and do chores all day

Yeah, because people would tell them to get a job and put their kids in childcare. Which is also what they mostly say to women who complain about it. Or get a nanny, in some social circles.

in any case the actual complexity of the work (and thus its associated status) is still low.

In the sense that she's doing the job of one and a half nannies plus a maid, that is correct, that is lower social status than running a business.

But plenty of higher status people would suck doing lower status work. It is complementary but unequal.

I meant the stay-at-home dad comment to mean more that men don't seem to be particularly unsuited to housekeeping, certainly not to a similar extent that (trads say) women are unsuited for work outside the home.

But plenty of higher status people would suck doing lower status work. It is complementary but unequal.

I'm still not convinced that their roles are really complementary, and my impression is that it used to be less unequal. When everyone's a farmer/hunter-gatherer, the relative complexity of work within and outside the home is far closer than when your society is built on white-collar work.

I meant the stay-at-home dad comment to mean more that men don't seem to be particularly unsuited to housekeeping, certainly not to a similar extent that (trads say) women are unsuited for work outside the home.

I suppose. The main problem for stay a dad at home with a young infant and the mother away is that (depending on the baby) they might need a lot of soothing, and breasts are way better soothing implements than bottles or pacifiers, it can be very frustrating for all concerned. The father is unhappy that it's hard to sooth the baby, the baby is unhappy that there are sometimes breasts and sometimes not, and the mother in unhappy because she's either pumping at work or giving up on food snuggle times.

Of the churchgoing families with babies I know, some have stay at home moms, some have the dads at home (but maybe feel a bit shy about it, and won't actually say "stay-at-home-dad"), and some have the mom and dad working complementary shifts (I assume this is hard for rest). All have rather messy houses, none vacuum twice a day and are happy about that. Marie Condo now has a messy house, because cleaning dozens of times a day was not bringing her joy.

I'm still not convinced that their roles are really complementary, and my impression is that it used to be less unequal.

It doesn't necessarily stay complementary once the children are older than three or so, and, yeah, I don't really understand women who aren't homeschooling staying as housewives once their youngest is in elementary school, unless they are literally running a home business. I don't think that stay at home dads of older children is a thing at all, unless they're doing some kind of seasonal or creative work, in which case they would say they're doing that, not cleaning the house.

I do find cleaning a single house as a primary job description to be a bit demeaning, but not looking after very young children or homeschooling.

Marie Condo now has a messy house, because cleaning dozens of times a day was not bringing her joy

Ahaha great throwaway line. That whole industry of self-help women who write books on how awesome they are and then promptly fall apart makes me very sad.

That whole industry of self-help women people who write books on how awesome they are and then promptly fall apart makes me very sad.

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