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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28449 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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I would add that a disturbing number of the so-called "solutions" suggested in that thread involved imposing additional burdens on women that they would never tolerate themselves. These people would never tolerate a society where men were the ones required to make all the sacrifices. Suppose the tradeoff was that the woman bears all the physical risk of bearing the child, and in exchange the man gives up his career, financial independence, and political rights to become a full-time caregiver? And they should also be more willing to date low status women as well. You don't want to support five kids in the salary of an obese trailer trash hairdresser? Well, your only other option is to live with your parents and push a cash register until they're old enough that you need to stay home and change their diapers. If that were the necessary tradeoff for solving the "fertility crisis", I imagine that fertility rates would suddenly seem unimportant.

These people would never tolerate a society where men were the ones required to make all the sacrifices.

Wait... we don't? By nearly every metric we have (life expectancy, workplace fatalities, military draft, family court nonsense) that is exactly the world we live in. Women have choices, men have responsibilities. I've watched men attempt to make the argument that men should have choices too and fail. Can't blame them for going the other route and insisting that gasp women should also have responsibilities.

All I'm asking is if you're willing to make the tradeoff yourself. Would you, personally, prefer to take the status of the woman in this arrangement? Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them? At the very least, it would eliminate the risk of any workplace fatalities, and no family court would award the woman primary custody in this situation.

Honestly that sounds like a dream, lots of leisure time, surrounded by little people who love me, no work stress. Of course, in the real world women dislike outearning their husbands and hate being the sole breadwinner, so perhaps a better question would be to ask if WhiningCoil would be willing to do this if he were a woman, or if women's marital preferences were different.

Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them?

This has been the primary motivation for me to continue working a sometimes-hard job instead of downsizing into an easier but lower paying one, to give my future self the optionality to fatfire and stay at home with a squadron of kids.

When that day comes, if married, I might keep working anyway to satisfy the future wife’s hypergamous/what-have-you-done-for-me-lately/it’s-not-enough-for-me-to-live-well-my-husband-has-to-suffer instincts, but at least having the financial optionality to fatfire and SAHD would be clutch.

Would you, personally, prefer to take the status of the woman in this arrangement? Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them?

I find this mindset fascinating, of asking a question like this in an apparent expectation that the answer would be obviously no. It would be pretty difficult for me to find a man in my life who would say no to such a deal; in fact, it would be the rare man who wouldn't consider this the relationship equivalent of winning the lottery, in terms of how good a deal they would see it as.

I agree, Rov_Scam seems to have forgotten to include any tradeoffs that would make such a situation as undesirable as the reverse seems to be for many women. Consider the following:

  • in this scenario the man is implicitly offered a stable long-term relationship when many (younger) men don't have one, and a significant number don't have any relationship but would want one

  • having many children means having lots of sex, and men appear to value sex more than women and have lower bars for attractiveness

  • men are physically stronger and have accordingly less to fear from domestic violence

  • men are more valued on the job market and would accordingly have an easier time returning to supporting themselves if the deal doesn't work out

  • the cost of bearing the children is still on the woman

Bullets 1 and 2 don't apply, since the implicit comparison is to marrying her without the unusual features stipulated.

I didn't think of 3 or 4. So only 5 seems to be of much weight.

men are more valued on the job market and would accordingly have an easier time returning to supporting themselves if the deal doesn't work out

This is the kind of thing that seems to be repeated often but for which there's basically no actual evidence.

In any case, one thing that's clear to me, at least about the men I'm familiar with, is that you could negate all such advantages, real or imagined, and even tack on a few extra disadvantages (of which there already are plenty which also haven't been mentioned here, but IMHO trying to go through some laundry list of stuff and weigh them properly is a fool's game whose conclusions depend entirely on the biases of the writer and none on the actual reality of the situation), and it would still look like a far better deal than what they're getting right now.

Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them?

Do you think this is some kind of a dunk? Every father I know, including myself, wishes they could do exactly that.

Would you, personally, prefer to take the status of the woman in this arrangement? Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them?

I literally fantasize about this.

Probably! Staying home with your family is awesome. And past a certain point, the kids keep each other entertained. I work from home and it feels like the best of both worlds, taking lunch breaks to read The Hobbit to my daughter. I'd much rather do more of that and less pointless stitching together of web libraries for more money than I probably deserve.

I would add that a disturbing number of the so-called "solutions" suggested in that thread involved imposing additional burdens on women that they would never tolerate themselves.

The only societally acceptable solutions are those which only put more burden on men or less on women. That is why the problem will not be solved.

I agree this is directionally true, at least in feeling. How true is it if we do the math? One counter example was women falling out of the workforce during Covid. Although that was decentralized decision making.

The question you posed is much more interesting than the actual topic.

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