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It's not a given that there is anything men can do to adapt, I know there have been some bad eggs but the deal in the past was the man spends his labor to provide everything a woman needs to have children, it is definitely possible that there is just literally nothing men can do to adapt. But I don't quite buy that it's the economic power equalization and nothing social that is convincing women to make these decisions. There is a popular and powerful subculture that has defined the traditional child bearing lifestyle as toxic and is constantly warning women away from it. It is very possible that this is bad advice and women are taking it.
Also the question of what is meant by adaptation?
I've seen plenty of men adapt to maximize their chances of casual sex in the current environment and thereby get laid a bunch, but the alternate adaptation path that leads to actually reproducing seems a bit nebulous and confusing at this point.
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The social is downstream of the economic. In the past there was little prospect of women being able to support themselves, and so they had an economic dependence on men. This economic dependence resulted in social memes that encouraged and promoted women being reliant on men by way of justification for the status quo. As women have become more economically independent social memes have proliferated that encourage that same independence. If men want to adapt they'll need to accept a more equitable division of the labor of maintaining a household and raising a child.
In the choice between a life where one has a 24/7/365 job (raising a child) and is entirely reliant on another person (housewife) vs an 8/5 job where one is the master of their own destiny it is no surprise many choose the latter.
The social and the economic defy such simple modeling. What is the good life is socially mediated, if that conception includes kids I can't really say the woman is getting the worse deal, if it doesn't then it is a bad deal. Seeing as women can't really directly compare the two experiences they need to rely on the stories society tells to inform them, and society does not seem to be trying very hard to sell parenthood.
The group that does this, or at least advertises they'd be willing to do this, is having significantly less children than the group that doesn't put any effort into advertising this. And, frankly, the meme that men aren't pulling their weight in domestic tasks doesn't ring true to me at all, it seems like just an empty grievance from centuries past that only persists because of the women are wonderful effect. Men seem to be pulling their weight and the domestic tasks besides the ones directly involved with caring for the baby take only a handful of hours a week to maintain. I would know, I personally do nearly all of them each week while working from home just during calls. If your best idea about why women aren't having babies is that men aren't washing the dishes frequently enough then you have no ideas about why women aren't having babies.
I mean the advent of work from home is relatively recent and has the potential to increase fertility among educated people. Even if directly caring for the child is not time consuming you still have to be physically away from work to do it.
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Fair enough. What I mean to convey is the idea that our economic conditions to some extent determine which social narratives we find compelling. The idea is that ~everyone is presented with competing social narratives that explain their present (or future) life situation. What narratives we find compelling is, in part, a product of our actual experience. As the actual facts about individuals experience shift, so too do their decisions about what narratives are convincing explanations. Historically the nature of labor made it easy to accept the social narrative that regarded men as the productive worker and women as the child carer or homemaker. As economic conditions have shifted, so too have the narratives women (and men!) have found compelling.
I think this fact is due to other causal factors than this attitude, but fair enough.
Can you back up this "seems" with data? According to Gallup both men and women agree that women generally shoulder more of the burden with respect to domestic duties and child care.
I am a little confused. In another comment you say you are "working on" becoming a father, or pumping out babies. Do you currently have children? My impression (admittedly from my brother rather than personal experience) is that babies take much more than "a handful of hours a weeK" in care.
Even in that link when it gets broken down to both earn similar amounts there really isn't that big of a gap. The show it reducing both with newer generations and with both people earning similar amounts but not combined, both combined probably gives "both equally" a plurality. it's already 50% for "care for child on a daily basis" just with equal incomes. This is actually surprisingly egalitarian.
I do not, I'm referring to all domestic tasks besides the direct child rearing. Perhaps we're confusing terms, a lot of the discussion that does happen about domestic work refers to things like cleaning, laundering, cooking, and shopping. There actually isn't really that much public discussion at all about the proportion or types of time spent directly caring for the kids. Likely because no one really wants to be spending time doing the dishes but people have more complicated relationships with the time they spend directly caring for a kid. Which is at the same time some of the most meaningful time and frequently consisting of unpleasantness. It's the kind of thing divorced parents frequently fight viciously for more of.
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No, especially with more than one child to handle.
I'm talking specifically if you're serious about being a housewife, not a part-timer who sends the kids off 6 hours a day to be handled by radical progressives.
If breastfeeding, that baby will wake you up 3-4 times a night or maybe just one after being sleep-trained.
Think special force bootcamp but do this over and over again for a decade if you're serious about having kids.
Then you're handling that baby, changing it, breastfeeding it during the day, and your other child(ren) are doing whatever they want in some other part of the home, and you end up having to clean up the same spot several times a day.
You can be very good at instructing/training kids, but you most likely won't have them tidy all the stuff they mess with before 5 yo.
Then you probably want to have your children wear clean clothes every day, that's a lot of laundry.
There is no day off in that career, and vacations can actually be more stressful (no you cannot just stuff your kids in a separate hotel room).
I don't disagree with those who say that men do less than women in the household.
Yet, I still have to deal with lack of sleep (to a lesser extent), family-related stress but I also have to remain competitive in the workplace.
I don't disagree with the assessment but I do think that it's easier for women to deal with that kind of life.
It seems to me in general that they get more out of being around little babies (or even little animals) than men do, or even organizing/arranging the house.
Their hormonal systems allow them to adapt to rapid changes in their body from pregnancy to breastfeeding back to pregnancy.
Their psychology is more prosocial, they are better at understanding and managing others' emotions, which is essential for small children.
On the other hand, the world of business discourages emotional display, as the men who created it see it as a nuisance in the way of getting things done.
The issue is that the people who complain about the unfairness of the burden placed on women are also the ones that have destroyed the social systems that made that burden lighter.
If HR departments were gutted and Western corporations were more sexist like Japanese ones or Western ones 100 years ago, how many women would find that they would rather have their water cooler gossip session at home around children?
I don't think we're in all that much disagreement, I did specify the non child rearing aspects like laundry. I think a lot of the gender expectation stuff starts breaking down around the direct child care aspects which is why I'm questioning what extra exactly men are really supposed to be offering here.
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