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My Family’s Slave

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Family’s Slave

#381

Post by prawn »

atourgates wrote: post #210
prawn wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find the following book interesting - my wife recommends it to many people. It's by Australian political writer Annabel Crabb. The Wife Drought - Why women need wives, and men need lives https://penguin.com.au/books/the-wife-drought-9780857984289 "'I need a wife' -- It’s a common joke among women juggling work and family. But it’s not actually a joke. Having a spouse who takes care of things at home is a Go…

In the US - the number of stay at home dads is definitely growing (doubling between 1989 and 2012), but even in 2012, only 21% of those are voluntarily staying at home to take care of kids, while the majority are either disabled, or can't find work for another reason. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-...

Can't remember where, but I saw a stat recently implying that (on average) even when the unemployed father was the primary carer of children, the working mother still put in more time doing domestic chores, etc.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#382

Post by golergka »

snowwrestler wrote: post #377
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…

> An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. Just ask your mom. My mom grew up during the Cold War. I haven't asked her specifically but I'm pretty sure she would just be confused by your comment. Women in the Soviet Union didn't get compensated either for domestic duties, like spending an hour standing in line to buy food staples.

Welcome to HN, where all ills of modern society are labelled 'capitalism'.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#383

Post by anovikov »

creepydata wrote: post #317
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…

>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with…

I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace.

Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it is almost a crime against children, because they will grow dirt poor and view this crap as normal.

Background: i earned just $45K a year after tax one year in my life, 10 years ago. I had no children back then. I still spent $60K eating out some of my savings, having to cut on anything including some food, and it felt so crappy i don't advise anyone to repeat my experience.

Sure, $102K isn't too much either. But it puts you into a totally different league anyway. I can imagine how to survive on $102K with a kid in a cheap place, if your house is fully paid and you are an introvert, but not $55K.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#384

Post by justinpombrio »

weberc2 wrote: post #339
toadi wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, my girlfriend is the same. She tried working as an employee and even self-employed. But finally, she's happy being a housewife. My mother and even friends frown upon me. Like I push her to be a housewife. Actually, I supported her working and even helped her to be self-employed. But she's most happy being a housewife. I think people just want to have a big home, 2 cars annually 2 holidays and that costs a l…

My wife has always had traditionally-feminine work preferences, but she's felt a lot of shame from her more left-leaning friends and coworkers (we're both moderate liberals). Similarly, my office is very liberal, and I often feel a bit judged if I mention that my wife cooked my lunch or otherwise mention that my wife's hobbies are traditionally feminine. Ironically, our conservative friends and family have never said…

> Ironically, our conservative friends and family have never said a word about whether she works or tends home; they're very laissez-faire about the matter.

The fair comparison would be to see how they reacted if your roles were reversed: if she worked and you made her lunch.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#385

Post by hyperdunc »

throwaway66494 wrote: post #216

My family adopted my female cousin nearly 30 years ago from Guatemala. The country was in civil war at the time so bringing her to the U.S. was in her best interest. Unfortunately my mother and aunt (sisters of her birth father) kept her so locked down that she is effectively a slave. My aunt hasn't worked in decades because my little sister has always signed every paycheck over to my aunt. After working for nearly 2…

Rhetorical questions (that you've probably already asked yourself many times):

Why are you letting this happen and what do you fear will happen if you do something about it?

Re: My Family’s Slave

#386

Post by KhanMahGretsch »

weberc2 wrote: post #339
toadi wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, my girlfriend is the same. She tried working as an employee and even self-employed. But finally, she's happy being a housewife. My mother and even friends frown upon me. Like I push her to be a housewife. Actually, I supported her working and even helped her to be self-employed. But she's most happy being a housewife. I think people just want to have a big home, 2 cars annually 2 holidays and that costs a l…

My wife has always had traditionally-feminine work preferences, but she's felt a lot of shame from her more left-leaning friends and coworkers (we're both moderate liberals). Similarly, my office is very liberal, and I often feel a bit judged if I mention that my wife cooked my lunch or otherwise mention that my wife's hobbies are traditionally feminine. Ironically, our conservative friends and family have never said…

"Living well is the best revenge"

Re: My Family’s Slave

#387

Post by int_19h »

taneq wrote: post #371
weberc2 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has always had traditionally-feminine work preferences, but she's felt a lot of shame from her more left-leaning friends and coworkers (we're both moderate liberals). Similarly, my office is very liberal, and I often feel a bit judged if I mention that my wife cooked my lunch or otherwise mention that my wife's hobbies are traditionally feminine. Ironically, our conservative friends and family have never said…

It's more than symbolic that the left has dropped the 'liberal' appelation for the more militant 'progressive.' It's no longer about respecting individuals, now it's about enforcing a particular strict ideology (as you've found).

The left is not a hivemind. There are people who self-identify as liberals but not progressives, and there are people who self-identify as progressives but not liberals, and there's those who mix and match.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#388

Post by clay_to_n »

Banthum wrote: post #370
Renaud wrote: post #188

Here in HK I sponsor the visa of a Domestic Helper from the Philippines. Her situation is obviously better that Lola but the cards are really stacked against them. They are literally second-class citizens: their visa doesn't entitle them to any hope of becoming full-time residents, regardless of how many decades of their life they spent in the service of others. The whole Domestic Helper's contact is a sham: there is…

It's one of those situations where it only feels horrifying because you're seeing it. Assuming these helpers aren't being tricked into taking the work, they are choosing it. Which means that whatever alternatives they face in their homeland (and out of sight of the wealthy intelligentsia) are even worse. What would be terrible is if this opportunity was cut off to assuage the consciences of the wealthy, whether by pr…

> Assuming these helpers aren't being tricked into taking the work, they are choosing it. Which means that whatever alternatives they face in their homeland (and out of sight of the wealthy intelligentsia) are even worse.

I don't think this is correct. In Tizon's case, and in many cases, the "choice" of the helper is taken away. In this example, by moving to the US (with lies that she would be able to visit her family back in the Philippines). That can also happen on a smaller scale when a helper moves in with a family, and can be slowly cut off from their life outside. There are probably countless cases where the helper would return to their old life if they had the choice, but that agency is taken away from them.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#389

Post by int_19h »

snowwrestler wrote: post #379
rayiner wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-Industrial agrarian societies have quite a different structure. A "housewife" is defined by a wife performing domestic labor supporting a husband who in turn participates in the market economy. That's not how it works on a farm, where the husband and wife both work on the farm.

And who owned the farm? In many such societies, only the husband--meaning the wife's work was still uncompensated. The problem of uncompensated labor by women does not break down neatly on the borders of economic concepts like captitalism, agrarian, industrial, etc.

For more on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

Re: My Family’s Slave

#390

Post by skybrian »

anovikov wrote: post #383
creepydata wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with…

I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it i…

These numbers aren't adding up for me. How much did you pay in rent? $1500 a month (which seems reasonable for 10 years ago) comes to 18k a year.

Median household income in the U.S. is $56k a year, meaning half of all families get less than that.

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