tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post2544580133455467086..comments2024-03-27T08:39:28.807-06:00Comments on Wash Park Prophet: How Many American Women Are Homemakers?Andrew Oh-Willekehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537151821869153861noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post-7330615174490022012014-11-20T08:23:36.932-07:002014-11-20T08:23:36.932-07:00* If you want to look at "suffering" the...* If you want to look at "suffering" the first place to look is women who are not currently married or cohabiting who have children for whom they have primary parental responsibilities. <br /><br />Some women end up this way because they didn't married (although most cohabited with the father of their children for a while) and their relationships fell apart; some women end up this way because they divorce.<br /><br />Either way, breaking up very often leads to serious poverty for mothers and children until a new cohabiting relationship is established.<br /><br />* Our society also, I think, too strongly encourages poor women to work despite the fact that the economic benefit of doing so net of child care costs is modest, when caring for their own children, especially when they are very young, would provide society with a greater benefit than, for example, having a woman with infants working a McDonald's and paying for child care while doing so (perhaps with public subsidies).<br /><br />* Improved workplace opportunities for women, accompanied by stagnating workplace opportunities for men without college educations, combined, have profoundly increased divorce rates and discouraged marriage. Empirically, couples where the woman makes more than the man in income, and especially couples where the man is unemployed, are dramatically less stable than couples where a man is employed and has a larger income than the woman. But, two income households in which women have wider access to employment, have also made American families more affluent and freed up more resources for families.<br /><br />Also, by virtue of technology and smaller families, there is simply less housework to be done today than there once was.andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172964121659914379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14162253.post-54122510653319110742014-11-11T13:51:11.981-07:002014-11-11T13:51:11.981-07:00Thank you Prophet, interesting analysis. Now do y...Thank you Prophet, interesting analysis. Now do you think the U.S. has suffered because more women work and do not stay home to care for their husbands and children? Is that too hard a question to quantify?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com