Amid the debate of whether financial 50-50 is fair and Conducive for a happy long term marriage of till death do us apart.
A part of that question is a raging international debate – should housewives and mothers be paid for their unpaid labour and childcare services?
Meanwhile countries like Russia announced to pay women to birth Russian children.
How do you relate both the costs – one is charging female partners for marriage while other is paying them for same things ie birthing, domestic labour and childcare?
How do you put a cost to every activity, most of which is non financial?
Since financial contract = fixed labour + fixed time. So employee, repair guy and maid can deny overtime and extra work or ask for additional charges or switch clients/companies. In marriages, only so many divorces and breakups can be managed in a lifetime.
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Everyone is going to have a different situation. Some people desire the traditional family and have the means to make it happen. Others will want to maintain a sense of financial stability. As time progresses, the needs and desires of the family change. Maybe both partners have access to great jobs. Maybe one loses their job and its just easier to be a sahp over getting an entree level job and expensive childcare. When quality 9-5 daycare is 20-25 thousand, it sometimes makes better sense to just keep your kid at home.
But I gotta say, framing taking care of your children as “unpaid labor and childcare services” sounds like you shouldnt be having kids at all. Raising your kids isnt the same as being exploited by Amazon. If you are in a good relationship and have a healthy attitude towards it, then childcare from their own parent shouldnt be seen as a labor violation.
Also since we are on the topic, housewives deserve pay but stay at home fathers dont?
Women’s job would have to be exempt first of all. Also this is somewhat accomplished with child tax credits. At one point it was $9k credit with two kids…
also with only one income your more likely to get things like ROTH ira benefits, pay little tax etc… its baked in
>A part of that question is a raging international debate – should housewives and mothers be paid for their unpaid labour and childcare services?
paid by whom?
I’ve been with my husband since I was 18 and he was 28 years old. My husband owns a business and I’m a SAHM. In the 19 years we’ve been together, I’ve earned exactly $0. We wanted a traditional relationship and he makes more than enough for that to happen.
I’m on call 24/7/365 but I don’t expect to get paid and I don’t want an "allowance" because that’s kind of humiliating. I have access to all of "our" money, but I respect that I don’t earn any of it and I treat it as "his" money. I understand how incredibly fortunate I am to be in my situation! I get to raise my children, prepare all of our meals, take care of my own house… Me being home lets us all live our best lives!
I don’t believe in that "if housewives got paid they would make $300,000!" Still, I believe having mothers home, raising their children, and taking care of the house is the best outcome for everyone. I also understand that it simply isn’t possible for most families. Everything is so expensive already and now prices are deliberately being inflated across the US so it’s even harder for a parent to stay home. In the US, some states don’t value education or the welfare of mothers and their children, so they certainly would never do anything to help mothers or strengthen families.
modern world should almost exclusively be 50-50… that one person paying for everything trope was a reality when the economics were different, once women entered the work force enmasse it nearly doubled the supply pool of labor, which drove worker’s compensation way down (relative to costs of things)… one person should not be paying for everything these days, it doesn’t make sense mathematically anymore
When my first wife was a SAHM, all of the money went into a shared bank account. We were a partnership and I trusted her completely.
She proceeded to lie, cheat, steal, develop a drug habit, and with secret credit cards maxxed out. Once she burned every possible bridge, I was left broke and raising our two preteens.
Why? She wanted to. Simple as that. She never gave up on being a rebellious teen, and just replaced Daddy with me. She was good for a few years, and then all hell broke loose.
I’m not sure how other countries operate with tax credits and social services, but in the US they factor the cost of raising and caring for a child in your tax liability and the social services that are available. I mean you could argue that these are not enough and things should be changed with them, but they do already exist. Maybe something like stay at home parents count as dependents that would give a similar tax credit as child care does, or (not likely to happen) a change in qualification standards for social service programs, and so on. The problem in the US is you end up having to weigh the cost of child care vs the added income of both parents working. I will say that given declining birth rates this debate is not likely to end anytime soon and may result in some sort of UBI allowance for stay at home parents that could equate to the annual salary of someone at minimum wage.
When people get married, you have to think of them as a financial unit, like a company. If one person decides to work and the other stays at home, they are making the decision to live off of one salary. That’s also why getting married is such a huge commitment – your spouse might have worked before getting married and then they decide to stop working after getting married. You’re agreeing to support them no matter what – whether they stop working, get sick or disabled, etc.
In many countries, the assets are required to be split 50/50 in the case of divorce. This makes logical sense when you think of the couple as one financial unit. It doesn’t matter who earned the money at the job – they earned the money as a couple and they have to split it as a couple. A very common take on Reddit is "I lost half my money in the divorce!". No, that was money you shared with another person and when you split, you got your half.
In the modern world, many women want to work. Working can give you a sense of purpose and a way to make an impact. Even if you don’t want to work, it’s often required to have two salaries to support two adults and however many children you have. So if both adults are working full-time, it makes sense that the household duties would also need to be split 50/50. If one person is working part-time, maybe the couple decides to have that person take one more of the household duties but that’s up to the couple to decide.
To get to your question, I don’t think that unpaid labor needs to be compensated by the government. These decisions are made at the household level and are hard to quantify. I think that’s what it comes down to for me, it’s just too hard to put a dollar amount to something like home duties where there is no oversight. Unfortunately a system where a woman works outside the home but hires a nanny makes it easier to put a dollar amount on childcare. Nannies have set hours and a set amount of hourly pay, and this can be legally enforced.
It makes sense to me to have governmental benefits in terms of tax breaks, subsidized childcare, or even a one-time monetary benefit to help new parents. This is a way of supporting parents, without trying to put a dollar amount on unpaid labor.
The default should be 50/50. No one is entitled to be a stay at home mom, its not 1920 anymore where women were not welcome in the workforce. Now there are more women going to college than men. Women can get any job a man can, there are tons of diversity schemes to get women into traditionally male fields. There’s really no excuse anymore, this is the best time in all of human history to be a woman in the workforce.
If a couple wants to be traditional and the guy can afford it then thats their call. But stay at home mom should absolutely not be subsidised by taxpayers, thats a ludicrous notion. Taking care of your own child is not unpaid labor, thats your OWN child that you CHOSE to have. If their husband can’t subsidise them then they can’t afford to be a stay at home mom, its as simple as that.
Division of labor is almost always more efficient overall than having everyone do half of every task. That’s why we have professions rather than having everyone build their own house, fix their own roof, work on their own stretch of road. So if everyone in the relationship is a competent adult, it’s better to divide labor. The one who is likely to earn more (e.g. engineer vs. daycare teacher) earns, while the one who cares more about housework / is most bothered by the house being messy, does the housework.
If only because it’s very hard to get a half-time job with suitable benefits.
So should a single person be paid for doing their house chores, too?
You’re a family. If one partner works and the other doesn’t you’re still creating a home together and working together for each other’s benefit. The working one’s money goes directly to the benefit of the household for what is materially needed, just as the one who doesn’t work is maintaining the day to day household needs.
This just feels like more rhetoric to just keep us against each other rather than keeping our politicians in line and accountable.
50/50 sounds good on paper but it’s basically impossible. There is no way people can be 50/50 pregnant, there’s no way to do 50/50 child rearing when schools only call the mom, or only moms are handling buying groceries, meal planning and the majority of watching the kids on weekends.
Both partners deserve equal access to money brought into the home they are contributing to.
Maybe because we are older, we combine everything. Bills, money, chores, we share it all. Been married more than twenty five years now, never had any problems. Over the years I sometimes had a higher income, sometimes hers was higher. Made no difference. She was a stay home mom for a bit, and I stayed home with the kids for a bit as well.
As long as we live in a capitalist society that measures people’s value only by how much they are paid—yes, domestic workers should be paid for their labor. Absolutely. Marriage SHOULD be treated like a business partnership. Unfortunately the US law still considers stay-at-home parents to be “dependents” not partners. But if you got to Bill the Patriarchy and add up all the administrative, financial, executive, psychological, and educational labor provided by the “default” parent, and that’s not even counting things like cooking or cleaning, then that parent deserves a 6 figure salary. Lifeguards get paid even when people aren’t drowning. Parents of small children are similarly on duty 24/7/365. Of spouses file joint tax returns then all unpaid spouses should still contribute to spousal IRAs. Being paid for labor is the only way to pay into social security, social security disability, and pensions—those are more protections that unpaid domestic workers miss out on.
50-50 sounds like a nightmare honestly. Like you’re keeping score all the time. If I got a huge paycheck from overtime hours while my gf had the flu and missed work, I’m picking up the rent that month. I have extra cash and I don’t mind doing that.
If I make enough money that my gf/wife can stay home. My view on it is "I don’t have an income, WE have an income" we are partners and therefore my success is your success, your success is my success.
That said I’m not going to partner up with a bum. Split labor means just that. If I’m the only one working I would expect most domestic duties to fall on her with obvious nuance to be settled between us.
The 50-50 arrangement eventually breaks down when one person starts earning significantly more. And paying a wife a salary is silly.
My wife and I have it setup so that all income goes to a joint account. That joint account pays for all family bills. Each month $250 is transferred in my private bank account and $250 is transferred to my wife’s bank account. That money is what we spend on ourselves. This works out great because I don’t care what she saves up for and she doesn’t care what I save up for. This is the case even though I make nearly 3 times what my wife makes.
I also know of other couples where one partner cannot have access to any joint accounts because buying things is better than having money in the bank. If I was in that situation I would not have the arrangement I have.
Who is paying these wives and mothers in this hypothetical, I legitimately don’t understand. Their husbands? I guess if he is the only one working, in a send, he is “paying” her.
Or should society pay them? Because that seems wildly unfair
Our marriage isn’t that transactional.
I’m a little worried for your future if you’re working out a formula of 50/50 minutes childcare and birthing expenses.
We’re a family unit. We make what we make. Our bills get paid and needs met, and the rest goes into long term savings.
Having children is a luxury, and something that is purely done out of the parent’s desire. If they choose to have a child, they implicitly chose to accept the costs. Why should we be subsidizing people’s luxuries?
In my experience what this turns into is almost always toxic.
You’ve got a man paying most of the bills and a woman paying some to none. The man then over values that work while expecting the woman to make up the difference because he’s lazy and ungrateful.
Or
You’ve got a man paying for everything, and a woman reading all about "unpaid labor" and doing insane calculations that they are "CEO of the House" and should be making 500k a year.
Here’s the simple truth, it’s 2025, men and women should pay 50/50 and work in the house 50/50. Take the income from both, pay someone else to do the stupid chores, and do something more fun with your time, and you know, empty the god damn dishwasher if it’s full.
I think expenses should either be joined or based on proportional income, and domestic labour should be distributed/participated in based on free time – ie, both partners should have equal amounts of free leisure time in a day/week. Baring in mind that people working in the home are still performing valuable labour, and deserve leisure time and access to funds of their own.
I mean, that’s great to pay mother to make kids and raise then…. then the kids are grown and what ? while your husband has a create career and is on the top of it because YOU raised the kids, wash his clothes and so on, … he can just find a younger girl, he still have his network, carreer, money, he still have more kids and clean socks with her, while you’re there with no kid or job ?
Helping families is one thing, and a good one. paying MOTHERS to sacrifices themselves is not the ethic progressive thing it seems to be.
I think that this is placing focus on the wrong thing.
It’s creating a kind of conflict between men and women about unpaid labor in the home, in order to distract from the fact that the government isn’t ensuring that every person in their country(man, woman, and child) has enough resources to take care of themselves and to survive.
There is no reason to have men and women fighting amongst ourselves over scraps when there are systemic problems and there should be system-wide solutions.