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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28384 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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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?

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