zlacker

Indeed, this only occurs with unions and rising wages, where a single income from a secure job can support a family while a parent stays home to perform childrearing. Are we there? When will we get there? These are important questions to ask if this is a dependency to improving household financials to encourage the outcome in this context (a stay at home parent).

If jobs are tenuous or insecure, long term financial obligations will not be made (the cost to raise a child in 2023 dollars is $330k, not including childcare or college). If jobs do not pay enough, people will need to put their kids in childcare (which will have to be subsidized) or they will forgo having children [1] [2].

[1] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/07/29/fewer-adults-ha...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/reasons...

>>toomuc+(OP)
Regulation, my man. Doesn't require fitting into the existing framework that was invented to as a stopgap for dangerous factory working conditions. The barrier is people's preconceived notions on what work day, weeks, and lives have to look like.

>>evantb+h8
Can you expound on this? What regulation? What "preconceived notions on what work day, weeks, and lives have to look like"? Unions and higher wages enable people to afford families, and I am an aggressive proponent of a 4 day work week at 100% pay considering productivity gains over the last half century, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

>>toomuc+fh
There are infinite ways to do this and we could riff all day on it. The simplest as I see it would simply be giving individuals with young children the autonomy to dictate their work schedules, allowing them the option to make up the hours later, or even choose not to. In a way this already happens informally in nicer companies.