American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

My wife currently stays home with the kids, although that might change down the road. She doesn't have any trust fund or inheritance either, of course.

However, although I'm earning the money, it's 100% a shared resource. It goes into a shared account. I'm pretty sure that's a legal necessity since we're married, but it's how we'd choose to do it anyway. There's no division between my finances and hers.

We married each other to be a team together forever, but even if we separated, our finances would be divided in half between us. If we'd wanted to fend for ourselves, we wouldn't have gotten married, and certainly wouldn't have had kids.

She feels sorry for me having to go to work every day, but it's a logical division of labor because I have much higher earning prospects.

I say this because I want to understand your definition; are we a traditional household in your view?

Because I would want my kids to be able to get out of an abusive partnership if they needed to. See the history of domestic abuse.

> Why would you plan to form a family while keeping your options open/having one foot out the door?

Everyone should have options open for basic sustenance. Death, abuse, job b loss, etc. As they say in engineering, two is one and one is none.

I watch my friends raise young children, and to be blunt it largely looks miserable to me. You effectively are babysitting children activities 24x7. Basically running a tiny daycare.

The families and adults seem to simply exist as caretakers for their child's lives.

I ascribe to "the kid is just now part of your general life" for 90% of your adult activities. Could be working in the shop, outdoor chores, cleaning the house, fixing the car, shopping, whatever. The point is the kid primarily exists in your life and does whatever it is you are doing, not the other way around.

Yeah, some things are impossible to do with a kid of course. But not nearly as many as currently believed for most children. If properly socialized, kids can exist non-disruptively in plenty of situations. And the danger to them in a lot of spots is wildly exaggerated. I brought my 5 year old into warehouses and lumberyards with a bit of instruction and teaching them to pay attention. They pretty quickly adapt.

If I have another kid I'd plan on not modifying my life a whole lot. The kid will simply come with to most things and liberal use of babysitting and such will happen. I have friends who are terrified to even leave their toddlers with babysitters these days for a few hours - it's absurd.

Kids imo do best in a balanced life where the get to learn by watching and doing. Not catering to their every whim and desire and shielding them from every possible danger.

There are certainly some age ranges (infant through ~3 or 4 years old or so) that are much more difficult, but after that parents seem to prefer life on hard mode these days for some reason. Paranoia and peer pressure from my standpoint drives most of it.

My older (25 now!) son would have been a miserable experience for me if every single day was a "rainy weekend" style thing where we're stuck inside playing children's games and the like with near constant 24x7 attention and direct interaction at his level. I'd have gone insane. Having him "around" most of the time while I did things with an hour or two of direct "kid time" engagement was totally sustainable, and he seems to have gotten a lot of enrichment from most of it. Note that wasn't staring at screens though - it was physically and actively doing stuff. And part of learning as a parent and a child of a parent is the parent making mistakes. Shit happens, just correct for it moving forward. So long as no major injuries occur life moves on and typically everyone is better off for it.

In the context of the original comment by pkaler, and subsequent replies from basswood, mschuster91, purplerabbit, and nradov, I understood "trad household structures" to be one where the man in a husband/wife relationship sells his labor to someone else and the woman does not.

So yes, but, I would note that there is probably a difference (for the purposes of this conversation) between the following:

A couple that earns median income per year and still chooses to have only one income earning spouse specifically so the other spouse can spend more time with the kids, whilst making significant sacrifices in other aspects of life such as school district, kids' activities, vacations, material goods, etc.

And a couple where one earns significantly above median income and can afford to have only one income earning spouse without making significant sacrifices.

In the context of the entire chain of comments, I would assume purplerabbit was referring to the first type of couple, who choose to forego many of life's luxuries in favor of child rearing, and that is the type of "household structure" that nradov was saying is not popular, except "when women have no other options" (i.e. women's rights allowing them to be financially independent).

>However, although I'm earning the money, it's 100% a shared resource. It goes into a shared account. I'm pretty sure that's a legal necessity since we're married, but it's how we'd choose to do it anyway. There's no division between my finances and hers.

There isn't in my marriage either, but I would still advise my wife to maintain her ability to earn income in case I were to go crazy, lose my job, or some other risk. And I would advise my daughter of the same.