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My Family’s Slave

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Family’s Slave

#291

Post by pervycreeper »

achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

>it's usually uncompensated too

In Western society, the act of marriage confers (often vastly) increased wealth and status to the lower status partner, and it is usually women who prefer to "marry up". Furthermore, it is also vastly more fulfilling and satisfying to care for one's own children than one's mistress's children. No two roles could be more different, frankly.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#292

Post by lacampbell »

matz1 wrote: post #223
lacampbell wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they were not. Slavery is a universal wrong.

Right or wrong is relative. Including slavery.

Wow that's super progressive. I'm not one for cultural relativism though, I'm afraid. I'm quite the reactionary, unenlightened provincial bore, with my outmoded beliefs like "slavery is unjustifiable".

Re: My Family’s Slave

#293

Post by MockObject »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #270
Mz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen career women kind of jokingly say "I need a wife." I was struck by the fact that Alex's mother, whom some people here are vilifying, managed to have a serious career like a man because she had Lola at home to do all the "women's work." This is mostly being overlooked in discussion and I didn't know how to bring it up myself. I appreciate you remarking upon it.

As a male, I'd personally prefer to live a life filled with traditional housewife work. Kids are fun, and I'd like raising them. I like cooking. Cleaning is pretty fun. More than that, though, employment sucks. If you keep me fed, clothed, and with an internet connection, I'd be happy as a clam, even spending eight hours a day doing nothing but housework. I sometimes wonder if there are others who feel this way, espe…

It's because women's lib effectively doubled the labor force, halving wages. Now only the top 3% can afford a house-spouse.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#294

Post by [deleted] »

achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

[deleted]

Re: My Family’s Slave

#295

Post by Mz »

MockObject wrote: post #293
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a male, I'd personally prefer to live a life filled with traditional housewife work. Kids are fun, and I'd like raising them. I like cooking. Cleaning is pretty fun. More than that, though, employment sucks. If you keep me fed, clothed, and with an internet connection, I'd be happy as a clam, even spending eight hours a day doing nothing but housework. I sometimes wonder if there are others who feel this way, espe…

It's because women's lib effectively doubled the labor force, halving wages. Now only the top 3% can afford a house-spouse.

You might look into the insane stuff that has happened to housing. That is possibly a better explanation for why it now takes two incomes to try to keep a roof over our heads.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#296

Post by lacampbell »

77pt77 wrote: post #182
lacampbell wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. Just ask your mom. Are you insinuating that in a traditional nuclear family, where a father provides all the money for housing, food, clothing and sundry - the mothers house work constitutes "uncompensated labour"? And that this is the basis of capitalism? What's your humane socialist alternative? Collectivising the childre…

> What's your humane socialist alternative? Collectivising the children and raising them in a commune? This was tried in the kibbutz and is almost unanimous that it failed completely.

I'm aware of that.

People often make indirect little attacks against capitalism here as some kind of socialist dog whistle. I want to call them out, and asking what concrete things they propose. Anything they can put to words has likely already been tried and ended in disaster - people advocating for misery need to be exposed for what they are.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#297

Post by wyclif »

pfooti wrote: post #236
achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

So, her name wasn't actually Lola. It was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. Lola was literally her slave name. There's a lot to talk about in the article, and I'm not super-excited about digging deep into that here on hn, but I think it's worthwhile to point out her real name.

"Lola" was not her "slave name."

"Lola" is an affectionate nickname that means "grandma" in Filipino.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#298

Post by wyclif »

Camillo wrote: post #258
achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

Women actually control the majority of discretionary spending, and not because they make more money. The fact that there is no contract does not mean the work is not compensated.

Yes, women control most of the discretionary spending in the Philippines as well.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#299

Post by yakult »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #281
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a male, I'd personally prefer to live a life filled with traditional housewife work. Kids are fun, and I'd like raising them. I like cooking. Cleaning is pretty fun. More than that, though, employment sucks. If you keep me fed, clothed, and with an internet connection, I'd be happy as a clam, even spending eight hours a day doing nothing but housework. I sometimes wonder if there are others who feel this way, espe…

It often feels like two income households are counter productive. Sure, we make more money, but it feels like 2x the dollars chasing 1.5x the pie out in the world. And then you have to pay for childcare. As for the household work, I was just telling someone today how much I miss being able to work all the time. I love my kids and they come first, but it's a sacrifice to for me not to work 12+ hour days.

As with almost all optimization problems, applying twice the resources (in this case, work hours) won't bring you back twice the (net) bacon, due to diminishing returns.

However, I think on net it is still more economically productive, at least in a large portion of cases.

It's unlikely that housework and childcare would optimally take up a full 50% of our entire reservoir of workable-hours, especially in the age of household appliances and childcare centres.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#300

Post by achou »

Mz wrote: post #289
achou wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing" Thank you for this much needed shift in perspective. It should be obvious: mothers' work has been on the critical path for humanity , and other work has shifted around to accommodate it. This is such a forehead slapping observation.

You might enjoy the book More Work for Mother. (I don't know why this is being downvoted, but the book is about the history of how domestic labor was shifted off men to women to free men up to get paid jobs.) http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-history-...

Thanks, will check it out.
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