Not everyone is meant to be a stay-at-home mom |
If any single belief unites much of today’s disjointed right, center and reasonable left, it is this: Americans need to get married more and have more children. People with college degrees are delaying those milestones into their 30s, which, as I have written before, is a serious problem.
People without college degrees, meanwhile, are increasingly opting out of marriage and family altogether, which is an even bigger one.
Meanwhile, influential voices on the “new” or “trad” right favor a family model in which men are breadwinners, women devote themselves fully to homemaking and maternity, and day care is considered unnecessary and harmful.
But the goal of more marriage and children is inherently in tension with the goal of less flexibility around childcare. Indeed, the popular denigration of day care for toddlers and preschoolers, and the attendant lionization of mothers who do not work outside the home, work against the growth and flourishing of American families in at least two ways.
Most families can't afford a one-income ideal
First, the “dad goes to work while mom stays home” setup is – and, save for a brief period after World War II, largely always has been – economically out of reach for most young couples, including many who might eventually adopt that........