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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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Her take is that I'm already working hard to support us and she's obviously biologically/psychologically better-suited to making babies and cleaning the house. Why would she expect that of me?

Except for the babies part, sounds like a just-so-story that is perhaps applicable to some couples but is not generally applicable and probably not majority. The higher-IQ shape-rotator is better at most of the activities involved in organizing and cleaning the house than the wordcel. To the extent it is true that males have better spatial IQ or are successful males from the male longer right high-Q tail, they are also better at cleaning the house (unless they are from low-IQ tail that goes lower than women, but who brags about that?).

If dad is better compensated at work, stay-at-home mom has kinda the comparative advantage at division of labor, doing larger share of housework as she is staying-at-home. However, it is arrangement very specific to time and place and income distributions, and the evospych explanations are not super believable. The arrangement "the ancients" were most psychologically suited for according to their revealed preferences was "servants do it" when they were rich enough to obtain servants -- this evohistorical imperative would guide that wife should enough to earn income if you can get more servants, with preference for work she can do working at home watching over the servants and kids (until you have enough reliable servants who can take care of kids full time).

It is worth noting that in the specific context of current day and time 21st century West, men who claim they are not "psychologically suited" to pick after themselves are overrepresented among undesirable demographics. Making it a rule that everyone in the house participates in homemaking is a good way to countersignal membership in the conscientious, desirable parts of Western culture, including teaching the sons that Mom (and any sisters) are not their servants.

Except for the babies part, sounds like a just-so-story that is perhaps applicable to some couples but is not generally applicable and probably not majority. The higher-IQ shape-rotator is better at most of the activities involved in organizing and cleaning the house than the wordcel. To the extent it is true that males have better spatial IQ or are successful males from the male longer right high-Q tail, they are also better at cleaning the house (unless they are from low-IQ tail that goes lower than women, but who brags about that?).

Shape-rotator vs wordcel is not the relevant comparison here. You can make a living as either one (e.g. engineer vs lawyer, or truck driver vs used car salesman) and while women are almost never shape-rotators, all the top wordcels are men as well.

The biggest difference is thing-oriented vs people-oriented. Remember, "Kinder, Küche, Kirche". Keeping house by cooking and cleaning is only about a third of what a housewife is supposed to do. She is also supposed to raise the children, which is something women are much more suited to as they are naturally much more soft and nurturing. And she is expected to be in charge of managing the family's social life, which is again very likely her comparative advantage because women are much more people-oriented than men.

Men who will effortlessly memorize every detail of the Roman empire will struggle to remember their friends' birthdays. Housewives are the social glue that holds communities together. They are the ones who send greetings, schedule visits, organize parties, matchmake singles. Little wonder we are so atomized, with their numbers thinning.