Earlier quoted context omitted.
If both partners work then: - many more meals must be ordered in or eaten out instead of prepared from scratch - transportation cost increases, more vehicles needed which means more gas more insurance more repairs or more transit fare and now both people sacrifice possibly hours of their day to commuting - childcare services must be paid for and transportation arranged for them - the choice of housing now has the add…
and your second income is taxed at your marginal rate, to pay for a $1 of child care you need around $1.33 to $1.50 in income. Put another way, avoiding $1 in expenses is like earning up to $1.5 at work. But the real issue is what the article points out, that this often leaves the stay at home parent “trapped” and dependent on the working spouse. What do you do when you’ve been out of the workforce 20+ years, kids ou…
If the earner leaves: alimony
It's not like we haven't solved these problems before. Yes, we could improve legislation around this but the basic idea is that if you have a contract with a partner where one of you earns the income and the other does the work at home then part of that contract is to recompense the person who is not working if the one who is fails to live up to their side of the bargain for whatever reason.