I agree that we'd all be happier, and society would be healthier, if we backed off the wealth porn and hyper-consumption and learned to slow down and become more mindful. But that's not the reason why a lot of women return to work after having kids.
If your husband is making more than ~$150k/year as a W2 employee, he probably has a "greedy job". If you opt out of the workforce, holding on to this job becomes incredibly high stakes, especially in the post-2008 employment environment where layoffs are frequent and companies go from market leaders to turnaround cases in half a decade.
So where does that leave the SAHM? If the job says "jump", the husband says "how high?" If that means a move across the country every 2-3 years away from the support network you worked so hard to build? So be it. If that means that husband is constantly in meetings from 7a - 7p, you're doing all the parenting alone, even if it's been a bad day and you're overstimulated and at the end of your rope.
Motherhood is wonderful, but it's also physically and mentally taxing, to different degrees for all of us, based on how we're wired. Living in a situation where you can never get a predictable break is crushing. You stop dreaming and planning, because there's always a 50/50 chance that your dreams and plans get rugpulled every time.
You're effectively in a throuple with your husband's job. And this is MOST corporate jobs if you're a "high performer" who is trying to avoid layoffs. It's up or out.
TL;DR: if you want to go this route, the man has to approach it with just as much intention as the woman. A SAHM + a husband with a greedy job is a recipe for burnout, depression and resentment.
In addition to this is the fact that not everybody has a husband who makes more then them. My husband makes about half my hourly wage. We tried having me work full time and him staying home. It lasted 18 months and he was just so done by the end. It was so hard for him to be alone at home with our daughter all day. Now we both work part time and she goes to daycare part time. I would love to be home with her more but that doesn't seem to be realistic for us right now.
Same, actually! My husband and I both do part time work and do a nannyshare a couple hours a week. Now that my oldest is a toddler instead of a tiny baby I’m much more comfortable with it.
“If you want to go this route, the man has to approach it with just as much intention”- yes absolutely. My husband and I approached our careers with intentionality, and it worked out well for us, but only because of the addition of faith. There is no way to perfectly plan these things out ahead of time. You have to lead with the one thing necessary- the highest Good.
Here's the callous and unfeeling reply from a poor person: If a job that makes 150k a year asks too much, why not just apply for a job that makes 100k a year, lower down the food chain?
Maybe you live in an extremely HCOL area, but where I live, (suburbs of modarately large city in the midwest. So basically as average as it gets if you don't live in a coastal area) you can get a 3bd 1bath house and support a few kids on 50k a year if both people work full time at the Walmart and grandma babysits without falling into the actual grinding sort of poverty. You don't even have to do overtime. No, that's not available to everyone; many of the grandmas also have to work and can't babysit nowadays, but it exists. Soooo... having twice as much and only one person working seems pretty doable.
Like, if you can get a 9-5 for one person that makes more than 50k and isn't too demanding, you're basically on track for the good life, and if you can make a little more, you might even go on vacation somewhere by plane, which is a cool rich people thing that most of us non-college folks don't do. (Camping is cheap and fun, so no regrets here, just one of those things that rich people always talk about "giving up.") If you're willing to live rural and commute half an hour to work, you can even give each kid their own bedroom and still have a big, happy family.
I mean, that's doable if your husband is an apprentice to journeyman plumber or works a higher-skill machine at a manufacturing plant, so college-educated people shouldn't have much trouble. They have to pay student loans, of course, but those can't be more expensive than the mortgage, otherwise going to college would be a stupid thing to do.
First, if both mother and father are making >$200k, they almost certainly work in an expensive city. That means the choice is almost certainly not mom going back to work or mom staying at home and the family taking fewer, cheaper vacations and buying fewer luxuries. The choice is very likely between mom going back to work or mom stays at home, the family moves somewhere they can then afford, then dad spends 2-3 hours commuting every day and is effectively not part of the family 5 days a week and mom ~never meaningfully talks to adults.
Second, very few women have a career with the kind of flexibility of academia and writing. A woman's options are usually go back to work and be with her kids less than she'd like or stay home and 15 years later do... My mother was a nurse, so had the flexibility to be able to go back and get the same job she used to have. But most jobs aren't like that! For most professional women I'd venture the primary constraint isn't can't spend money like we could as DINKs but blocking myself from any real hope of the kind of fulfilling work I'm interested in and good at.
I agree that being less stuck in current ways of conceptualizing things might open things up a bit. But it's definitely true that you block yourself off from a huge proportion of work options in your 40s, 50s, and 60s if you exit the workforce from ~30 to ~45.
Yeah this is an interesting point and an interesting cultural moment. I'd disagree a bit with what you're implying about the cause and meaning of the differences between the US and Europe. It has to be true that a good portion of the difference is just history and wealth. European cities were all laid out pre-car and pre-modern incomes. And cities simply couldn't sprawl so so so easily in Europe like they did in the US and the rest of the Anglo-colonial world. And the US is somewhere between a bit and way wealthier than even than Western European countries, even after adjusting for the fact that post-tax income looks falsely low in Europe because they pay for a number of services through taxation rather than privately like Americans. So a meaningful percentage of the difference surely comes from the fact that there are simply fewer Europeans who can afford a single family home. But I agree there are cultural differences that play a role as well.
There is a bit of a chicken and egg problem with your point about saying no to external expectations. In general I couldn't agree more. At the same time, most people don't actually want to raise kids downtown. Most people don't even want to live downtown! I know I wouldn't want to have my family in an apartment downtown! We live in Portland, OR, and live pretty close to the center of town, but still in the denser, inner ring neighborhoods that are mostly still single family homes. But if we had to choose between at least a little space of our own with a garden and small yard for the dogs versus the nearby amenities and denser potential community that come from living in the denser part of town, we'd choose the space. Even now I'm sometimes jealous of the folks living further out with more greenery and space. I'm literally never jealous of people living downtown!
To your point, how much of that is just a cycle of culture passed down from a settler people and then the white boomers running away to the suburbs and exurbs? Surely that's some of it. But if you look comparatively, it sure looks like that's just what a ton of people want. The US, Canada, and Australia are all super duper sprawly. I work in AI and have worked with *tons* of immigrants from south and east Asia. I don't know a single one where it wasn't a major part of the immigration vision to have enough money to move to a suburban single family home once they had a family.
Maybe my real point is you're coming off a bit sanctimonious and condescending. I read you as making negative moral judgments of folks who don't want to raise their family in an apartment or row home near downtown, and don't if they can afford it. I totally agree that we've ended up pretty impoverished of community. But the answer can't be condescending to people who want the space most of us can afford in the richest nation in history and hoping people change their minds. It seems to me the answer has to be trying to imagine new ways to build communities of choice that accommodate how people like to live now that we're not forced into dense communities through poverty or socially dense communities through fear of eternal torture.
I'll start where I agree with you. Hard agree that it's super annoying that so many upper quintile liberals won't acknowledge tradeoffs they're making where they're doing things to create opportunities for themselves or their kids that in principle, systemically, they don't think are the right thing. Also for sure there are a depressing high number of people (of all political stripes) who would be incredibly offended if you called them out on it but are die hard, drink the kool aid, keep-up-with-the-jones types. And when there are strains of that in your cultural context it's super frustrating.
But it sounds to me like you maybe don't have kids? Assuming that's right, it seems quite lame to me to cast stones. I've lived a version of this. The house we could afford in Portland is in the cachement of the worst elementary school in the state (by testing). We considered sending our daughter there for a combination of principle (the school needs parents like us!), convenience (it's blocks away), and figuring we went to mediocre elementary schools and we're fine. When we went to orientation, the principal couched it in terms of equity but almost literally said that there is so much fighting and behavioral problems that if your kid didn't cause trouble they'd be ignore.
So we sent her to a solid but not excellently ranked charter for kindergarten. There she was in a 30 kid classroom, stared out the window much of the day, and cried through aftercare. She learned ~nothing. That was the year COVID hit and she went from literally zero reading skills beyond letter identification to reading first level books quite easily in just a couple weeks of us teaching her while in between work meetings. We tried another charter where she also learned very little and spent most of her time tutoring other kids while falling behind herself or being annoyed that her classmates made things so hard by being constantly disruptive. She's in private school now.
I used to be more sanctimonious too. Then I realized I'm not willing to sacrifice my children to abstract principles...
This was wonderful. I have such a good life in so many ways but I have trouble making peace with choices. I chose to be a stay at home mother and that choice is why I am not going to ever live in a spacious home, which is something I wanted since I was a kid. (I don’t know why some people crave open space and solitude, only that I am one of those people.) Living in a high cost area (by necessity, not preference), I do find that most of my fantasies basically boil down to having a boatload more money.
I will say that being a stay at home mother is an issue of much more than salary. Working is a chance to be recognized for your efforts with money. I would do anything for my kids but I really could have passed on the class parties and PTA board positions with no salary involved (which, ironically, many working moms were even more active in but that’s a whole other essay). It also lets you contribute to social security - including SSDI. It provides the cushion against one spouse’s job loss. For better or worse, it makes divorce more financially realistic if marriage isn’t working - especially if you are not in a community property state. And it teaches your kids that their mother exists as more than a caregiver.
I wouldn’t trade my time at home with little kids for anything. In retrospect, though, I’d have worked harder to figure out a way back to the workforce when they were in school, despite the many practical reasons it never really seemed to make sense.
This is so real. I think as a woman it’s really important to find ways to be recognized in concrete ways for your strengths and skills outside the domestic sphere. When I was pregnant with my first I was strongly considering finishing my MA and then being a full time SAHM, but my experience with PPD made me realize that I’d go insane if I didn’t have something outside the home. I just wish so much that there were more opportunities for flexible work out there. Timothy P. Carney’s book Family Unfriendly makes a really strong case that employers making part time / remote option / flexible hour jobs available just for mothers is the biggest thing we can do to support a pro-family feminism.
Interestingly, the dearth of part time work also limits work opportunities for people with disabilities.
However, there are lots of part time jobs out there, but they are typically more low-skill, low-pay jobs. I think it's dishonest not to address that the issue with part-time work is that there are few part-time high-skill, high-pay jobs. If people need to work part time, they can, but if work is only a want, they aren't willing to take the jobs. This is very much a class thing.
Well, the thing is, it’s still pretty hard to live a life in which you never (or almost never) spend any money beyond the bare necessities. You can tell yourself quite truthfully that you’re living that way because you want to prioritize motherhood (which I did for a season) or because you would prefer to be a writer than to get a random retail or restaurant job since the corporate world feels you’re too old (which is where I am now.)
I had one really good year last year (viral article) and it was FANTASTIC to purchase a lot of things I really wanted: new vacuum, new food processor, dental work, car repair, a cheapy seasonal pool). Now that party is over. This makes me kinda sad, actually. I can live without a fancy wardrobe and a bunch of tchotchkes. I wish I could afford to trade in my 20-year-old car for one that’s maybe five years old.
I feel you. I've been writing this everywhere but: my husband and I considered going to one income after the birth of our first baby earlier this year. We looked at our budget and cut out the restaurants, subscriptions we have, and our few hundred bucks of "fun money" (we haven't really traveled much in a couple years so no big savings there). But in order to make the math work, most of the difference had to come from savings: retirement, 529, house down payment. These are luxuries I suppose? But in a very different category than friggen labubus.
For the moment at least, I'm still gainfully employed. Part-time, flexibly scheduled, meaningful work remains elusive. And in the meantime, I take note of all the things we're able to afford that would be much harder to justify on a single income: allergy meds for our pittie, Vegan dairy replacements (because we're figuring out if my daughter has an allergy), a decent air purifier for baby's bedroom.
This is great! I agree and your final paragraph is exactly what I was trying to say about a 'fifth wave' of feminism that is centered around embracing the value of care work - as I wrote, "The fifth wave is also about rejecting the transactional, late-capitalist logic that the only valuable work is paid work." It's interesting to think about the process of adapting oneself to a better model of living.
I love this so much and have saved it so I can revisit, but I do find it interesting that many of the comments are still rooted in the material challenges of lifestyle change, as opposed to the importance of changing one's attitudes in ways that align with our ideal life or goals (which is what I take to be your point). Maybe this is because I have largely had to mentally adjust to having a lot less materially than I did growing up in order to stay home with my kids (husband makes less than 70K, we live in a suburb of a large metropolitan area, and we already own a house - i.e. we don't think about saving money because we can't.) In other words, you're affirming something I already do. But it's even better with some academic erudition to back it up!
Haha yeah the really controversial claim is the one that I take for granted in this piece- i.e. CHH’s argument that lots of relatively wealthy people are depriving themselves of their ideal family situation because they’re too attached to a particular lifestyle. I’m with you- I do understand, but I find it hard to be sympathetic when I’ve raised a baby on WIC.
Her claim is one that seems completely obvious. I think part of the problem is that relatively wealthy people don't even necessarily see that they're relatively wealthy... you can live on very little if you try.
Thank you for saying this--I was reading the article and comments and thinking "Good gracious, people with two salaries of 200k a year! I can't even imagine what that's like!" because we are the same--single income household making less than (or right around) 70k a year. My husband is a teacher for a charter school. We just bought our first house (we moved states to afford this). But we live pretty frugally, partially because we've learned to habituate ourselves to not spending money on entertainment. We cloth diaper, we have no subscriptions other than like 1 magazine we get, I make almost all of our food from scratch, etc. We have gradually worked our way to where we are now (obviously adding kids adds more expense, and few of us have the luxury of adding income as we add kids!) and it's been a journey. We do not eat out now, basically ever. Our leisure activities are reading, crafting, gardening, going outside with our kids in nature. It is sometimes hard to feel like our standard of living is lower than what we grew up with, but at the same time, I'm thankful that we've gotten the chance to practice this contentment and work to detach ourselves from the materialism of the world.
Also, to clarify--we have a beautiful house, and lots of nice things. We aren't living in a gross apartment in the middle of the city (anymore haha)! But we have prioritized over a long period of time to save up and buy things that will (hopefully) last us and I feel like it is a continual battle to remind myself to be content with those (very nice!) things we have.
This sounds so very similar to our lifestyle. Any six-figure income sounds wild to me! Standards of living can be very high even when you're not eating out every day - your lifestyle sounds charming.
I also think people are probably in a lot of debt to afford their lifestyles. And I'm not even begrudging them that; I think for many, if they want to have a particular lifestyle (even though they don't need it), that might be the only option, dangerous as it can be.
People don’t cut others out of their lives because of the things they say. They cut them out of their lives because they are unsupportive and attacking. The subjects they use to attack are never the point. I guarantee that they didn’t say “have you thought about going back to college once” and the person overreacted. It’s probably a frequent topic of conversation used to embarrass or guilt the person
I got laid off recently and have been thinking about this a lot as I piece together what I want to do next and how much we need to get by and whether/to what degree I can do work that aligns with my values. I’ve been surprised by how many of my peers seem to confuse “well we have to eat/keep a roof over our heads” with we have to have 300k/yr tech jobs.
It’s been shocking to me too how nearly EVERYONE feels like they’re barely making it. When I wish I had x amount more money I remind myself that I would still feel, if I had it, like I was barely scraping by
I love the idea that we can change what we like and dislike. I'm working hard to buy less but it's a hard habit to change. Also I'm getting so frustrated with clothes lately. I find mine get full of holes and stained so quickly. The things I find at the thrift store tend to wear out so fast. Not sure what the best route is for finding clothes that will last..
I feel the same way. The only brands that have never betrayed me on quality are Christy Dawn and ImBodhi, both of which are made ethically in America. Blazers and jackets I like to buy secondhand, bc usually if they’ve made it onto the secondhand market they’re pretty well made to begin with.
> The sensible thing to do is not then to try and have everything we want, but to unify our lives around what we want most, which includes managing the desires which conflict with that goal and habituating ourselves to a life where we are not in danger of being ruined by them.
Good wisdom there, and when we do it in conjunction with others it can grow into much more than anyone would have otherwise individually had.
I truly loved this essay! Our society has turned what were “wants” for past generations, into “needs.” We’ve been so trained to want all the time that it’s hard to see what we truly need. Coupled with inflation and social media, it does make it challenging for the mother to justify staying home and not making an income.
I’ve always worked from home in some capacity, and it’s always seemed necessary, even though at this point I really don’t have to. The question, at the end of the day, is what constitutes a really great quality of life for our family? What matters most?
(A) You provide an answer to the ancient question "What can you do with a philosophy degree?"
(B) You write "According to her, the world we yearn for is not [..., but] This world, essentially, but with an extra 300k a year." But of course, that wording isn't quite right. If everybody had an extra 300k a year, none of them would be able to hire servants and thus they wouldn't have more leisure. What every one of us wants is for *us* to have an extra 300k a year but *everybody else* makes the same as now.
(C) You write "The end result of unrestrained consumptiveness is misery, both for a society and for the individual human being." But of course competitive consumerism happens only in modern, capitalist societies. The underlying, intrinsic drive is to maximize one's social status, and that is absolutely universal. But in most societies, that is sought by tweaking how one interacts with others, including backbiting, sucking up, and sabotaging others when it would be useful. Small scale societies are notorious for envy -- see the anecdote about the angel, the Russian peasant, and the neighbor's cow. Just think of your high school...
But in modern, urbanized society, pole-axing others (necessarily one at a time) is an inefficient way to raise one's social rank, one is forced by the social system to become more economically productive and then plowing that pay/profit into status-raising conspicuous consumption. A shiny new car can raise you above a thousand people in your metro area simultaneously! Social status remains a zero-sum game, but all the people running the rat race generate material prosperity. (Everybody complains about consumerism as evil but nobody wants to reduce their level of consumption to what was typical in 1920!) So society advances, as we consider it.
I was just about to send this to a local mom’s groupchat because of how incredible it is and on point I feel like it is for my community but wanted to follow you before I forgot. Then I realized that we’re in the same community (our sons do CGS together!) you’re an incredibly talented writer Esther and I so look forward to reading more of your work!
Asking people to subsidize their motherhood journey by stopping buying labubu dolls feels a bit like finance articles saying 'save and become a millionaire by cutting out Avo toasts and Starbucks coffee'. I think the magnitude might be off in both cases. Even those who are frugal and not rampant consumerists would find that it's the essentials- like a decent house in a good school district, saving up for kids' college education, health insurance and other health expenses- that necessitate both parents keep working.
I agree that we'd all be happier, and society would be healthier, if we backed off the wealth porn and hyper-consumption and learned to slow down and become more mindful. But that's not the reason why a lot of women return to work after having kids.
If your husband is making more than ~$150k/year as a W2 employee, he probably has a "greedy job". If you opt out of the workforce, holding on to this job becomes incredibly high stakes, especially in the post-2008 employment environment where layoffs are frequent and companies go from market leaders to turnaround cases in half a decade.
So where does that leave the SAHM? If the job says "jump", the husband says "how high?" If that means a move across the country every 2-3 years away from the support network you worked so hard to build? So be it. If that means that husband is constantly in meetings from 7a - 7p, you're doing all the parenting alone, even if it's been a bad day and you're overstimulated and at the end of your rope.
Motherhood is wonderful, but it's also physically and mentally taxing, to different degrees for all of us, based on how we're wired. Living in a situation where you can never get a predictable break is crushing. You stop dreaming and planning, because there's always a 50/50 chance that your dreams and plans get rugpulled every time.
You're effectively in a throuple with your husband's job. And this is MOST corporate jobs if you're a "high performer" who is trying to avoid layoffs. It's up or out.
TL;DR: if you want to go this route, the man has to approach it with just as much intention as the woman. A SAHM + a husband with a greedy job is a recipe for burnout, depression and resentment.
In addition to this is the fact that not everybody has a husband who makes more then them. My husband makes about half my hourly wage. We tried having me work full time and him staying home. It lasted 18 months and he was just so done by the end. It was so hard for him to be alone at home with our daughter all day. Now we both work part time and she goes to daycare part time. I would love to be home with her more but that doesn't seem to be realistic for us right now.
Same, actually! My husband and I both do part time work and do a nannyshare a couple hours a week. Now that my oldest is a toddler instead of a tiny baby I’m much more comfortable with it.
“If you want to go this route, the man has to approach it with just as much intention”- yes absolutely. My husband and I approached our careers with intentionality, and it worked out well for us, but only because of the addition of faith. There is no way to perfectly plan these things out ahead of time. You have to lead with the one thing necessary- the highest Good.
Here's the callous and unfeeling reply from a poor person: If a job that makes 150k a year asks too much, why not just apply for a job that makes 100k a year, lower down the food chain?
Maybe you live in an extremely HCOL area, but where I live, (suburbs of modarately large city in the midwest. So basically as average as it gets if you don't live in a coastal area) you can get a 3bd 1bath house and support a few kids on 50k a year if both people work full time at the Walmart and grandma babysits without falling into the actual grinding sort of poverty. You don't even have to do overtime. No, that's not available to everyone; many of the grandmas also have to work and can't babysit nowadays, but it exists. Soooo... having twice as much and only one person working seems pretty doable.
Like, if you can get a 9-5 for one person that makes more than 50k and isn't too demanding, you're basically on track for the good life, and if you can make a little more, you might even go on vacation somewhere by plane, which is a cool rich people thing that most of us non-college folks don't do. (Camping is cheap and fun, so no regrets here, just one of those things that rich people always talk about "giving up.") If you're willing to live rural and commute half an hour to work, you can even give each kid their own bedroom and still have a big, happy family.
I mean, that's doable if your husband is an apprentice to journeyman plumber or works a higher-skill machine at a manufacturing plant, so college-educated people shouldn't have much trouble. They have to pay student loans, of course, but those can't be more expensive than the mortgage, otherwise going to college would be a stupid thing to do.
oh gosh, I just replied to a really old comment because I've had this post saved for a while. Feel free to disregard, haha
Money Talks and money walks from millionaire to debtor and I've been rich and I've been poor and I can tell you which is better
I think there are a couple blind spots here.
First, if both mother and father are making >$200k, they almost certainly work in an expensive city. That means the choice is almost certainly not mom going back to work or mom staying at home and the family taking fewer, cheaper vacations and buying fewer luxuries. The choice is very likely between mom going back to work or mom stays at home, the family moves somewhere they can then afford, then dad spends 2-3 hours commuting every day and is effectively not part of the family 5 days a week and mom ~never meaningfully talks to adults.
Second, very few women have a career with the kind of flexibility of academia and writing. A woman's options are usually go back to work and be with her kids less than she'd like or stay home and 15 years later do... My mother was a nurse, so had the flexibility to be able to go back and get the same job she used to have. But most jobs aren't like that! For most professional women I'd venture the primary constraint isn't can't spend money like we could as DINKs but blocking myself from any real hope of the kind of fulfilling work I'm interested in and good at.
I agree that being less stuck in current ways of conceptualizing things might open things up a bit. But it's definitely true that you block yourself off from a huge proportion of work options in your 40s, 50s, and 60s if you exit the workforce from ~30 to ~45.
Yeah this is an interesting point and an interesting cultural moment. I'd disagree a bit with what you're implying about the cause and meaning of the differences between the US and Europe. It has to be true that a good portion of the difference is just history and wealth. European cities were all laid out pre-car and pre-modern incomes. And cities simply couldn't sprawl so so so easily in Europe like they did in the US and the rest of the Anglo-colonial world. And the US is somewhere between a bit and way wealthier than even than Western European countries, even after adjusting for the fact that post-tax income looks falsely low in Europe because they pay for a number of services through taxation rather than privately like Americans. So a meaningful percentage of the difference surely comes from the fact that there are simply fewer Europeans who can afford a single family home. But I agree there are cultural differences that play a role as well.
There is a bit of a chicken and egg problem with your point about saying no to external expectations. In general I couldn't agree more. At the same time, most people don't actually want to raise kids downtown. Most people don't even want to live downtown! I know I wouldn't want to have my family in an apartment downtown! We live in Portland, OR, and live pretty close to the center of town, but still in the denser, inner ring neighborhoods that are mostly still single family homes. But if we had to choose between at least a little space of our own with a garden and small yard for the dogs versus the nearby amenities and denser potential community that come from living in the denser part of town, we'd choose the space. Even now I'm sometimes jealous of the folks living further out with more greenery and space. I'm literally never jealous of people living downtown!
To your point, how much of that is just a cycle of culture passed down from a settler people and then the white boomers running away to the suburbs and exurbs? Surely that's some of it. But if you look comparatively, it sure looks like that's just what a ton of people want. The US, Canada, and Australia are all super duper sprawly. I work in AI and have worked with *tons* of immigrants from south and east Asia. I don't know a single one where it wasn't a major part of the immigration vision to have enough money to move to a suburban single family home once they had a family.
Maybe my real point is you're coming off a bit sanctimonious and condescending. I read you as making negative moral judgments of folks who don't want to raise their family in an apartment or row home near downtown, and don't if they can afford it. I totally agree that we've ended up pretty impoverished of community. But the answer can't be condescending to people who want the space most of us can afford in the richest nation in history and hoping people change their minds. It seems to me the answer has to be trying to imagine new ways to build communities of choice that accommodate how people like to live now that we're not forced into dense communities through poverty or socially dense communities through fear of eternal torture.
I'll start where I agree with you. Hard agree that it's super annoying that so many upper quintile liberals won't acknowledge tradeoffs they're making where they're doing things to create opportunities for themselves or their kids that in principle, systemically, they don't think are the right thing. Also for sure there are a depressing high number of people (of all political stripes) who would be incredibly offended if you called them out on it but are die hard, drink the kool aid, keep-up-with-the-jones types. And when there are strains of that in your cultural context it's super frustrating.
But it sounds to me like you maybe don't have kids? Assuming that's right, it seems quite lame to me to cast stones. I've lived a version of this. The house we could afford in Portland is in the cachement of the worst elementary school in the state (by testing). We considered sending our daughter there for a combination of principle (the school needs parents like us!), convenience (it's blocks away), and figuring we went to mediocre elementary schools and we're fine. When we went to orientation, the principal couched it in terms of equity but almost literally said that there is so much fighting and behavioral problems that if your kid didn't cause trouble they'd be ignore.
So we sent her to a solid but not excellently ranked charter for kindergarten. There she was in a 30 kid classroom, stared out the window much of the day, and cried through aftercare. She learned ~nothing. That was the year COVID hit and she went from literally zero reading skills beyond letter identification to reading first level books quite easily in just a couple weeks of us teaching her while in between work meetings. We tried another charter where she also learned very little and spent most of her time tutoring other kids while falling behind herself or being annoyed that her classmates made things so hard by being constantly disruptive. She's in private school now.
I used to be more sanctimonious too. Then I realized I'm not willing to sacrifice my children to abstract principles...
This was wonderful. I have such a good life in so many ways but I have trouble making peace with choices. I chose to be a stay at home mother and that choice is why I am not going to ever live in a spacious home, which is something I wanted since I was a kid. (I don’t know why some people crave open space and solitude, only that I am one of those people.) Living in a high cost area (by necessity, not preference), I do find that most of my fantasies basically boil down to having a boatload more money.
I will say that being a stay at home mother is an issue of much more than salary. Working is a chance to be recognized for your efforts with money. I would do anything for my kids but I really could have passed on the class parties and PTA board positions with no salary involved (which, ironically, many working moms were even more active in but that’s a whole other essay). It also lets you contribute to social security - including SSDI. It provides the cushion against one spouse’s job loss. For better or worse, it makes divorce more financially realistic if marriage isn’t working - especially if you are not in a community property state. And it teaches your kids that their mother exists as more than a caregiver.
I wouldn’t trade my time at home with little kids for anything. In retrospect, though, I’d have worked harder to figure out a way back to the workforce when they were in school, despite the many practical reasons it never really seemed to make sense.
This is so real. I think as a woman it’s really important to find ways to be recognized in concrete ways for your strengths and skills outside the domestic sphere. When I was pregnant with my first I was strongly considering finishing my MA and then being a full time SAHM, but my experience with PPD made me realize that I’d go insane if I didn’t have something outside the home. I just wish so much that there were more opportunities for flexible work out there. Timothy P. Carney’s book Family Unfriendly makes a really strong case that employers making part time / remote option / flexible hour jobs available just for mothers is the biggest thing we can do to support a pro-family feminism.
Interestingly, the dearth of part time work also limits work opportunities for people with disabilities.
However, there are lots of part time jobs out there, but they are typically more low-skill, low-pay jobs. I think it's dishonest not to address that the issue with part-time work is that there are few part-time high-skill, high-pay jobs. If people need to work part time, they can, but if work is only a want, they aren't willing to take the jobs. This is very much a class thing.
if you don't like my peaches stop shaking my tree
Well, the thing is, it’s still pretty hard to live a life in which you never (or almost never) spend any money beyond the bare necessities. You can tell yourself quite truthfully that you’re living that way because you want to prioritize motherhood (which I did for a season) or because you would prefer to be a writer than to get a random retail or restaurant job since the corporate world feels you’re too old (which is where I am now.)
I had one really good year last year (viral article) and it was FANTASTIC to purchase a lot of things I really wanted: new vacuum, new food processor, dental work, car repair, a cheapy seasonal pool). Now that party is over. This makes me kinda sad, actually. I can live without a fancy wardrobe and a bunch of tchotchkes. I wish I could afford to trade in my 20-year-old car for one that’s maybe five years old.
I'm totally with you! To be clear, I do not think of paying for car repairs and dental work as some kind of weak-willed capitulation to consumerism.
I feel you. I've been writing this everywhere but: my husband and I considered going to one income after the birth of our first baby earlier this year. We looked at our budget and cut out the restaurants, subscriptions we have, and our few hundred bucks of "fun money" (we haven't really traveled much in a couple years so no big savings there). But in order to make the math work, most of the difference had to come from savings: retirement, 529, house down payment. These are luxuries I suppose? But in a very different category than friggen labubus.
For the moment at least, I'm still gainfully employed. Part-time, flexibly scheduled, meaningful work remains elusive. And in the meantime, I take note of all the things we're able to afford that would be much harder to justify on a single income: allergy meds for our pittie, Vegan dairy replacements (because we're figuring out if my daughter has an allergy), a decent air purifier for baby's bedroom.
At some point I’m going to need to google labubus and find out what that is :)
Stay pure as long as you can
This is great! I agree and your final paragraph is exactly what I was trying to say about a 'fifth wave' of feminism that is centered around embracing the value of care work - as I wrote, "The fifth wave is also about rejecting the transactional, late-capitalist logic that the only valuable work is paid work." It's interesting to think about the process of adapting oneself to a better model of living.
That means so much to me! Thank you!
I love this so much and have saved it so I can revisit, but I do find it interesting that many of the comments are still rooted in the material challenges of lifestyle change, as opposed to the importance of changing one's attitudes in ways that align with our ideal life or goals (which is what I take to be your point). Maybe this is because I have largely had to mentally adjust to having a lot less materially than I did growing up in order to stay home with my kids (husband makes less than 70K, we live in a suburb of a large metropolitan area, and we already own a house - i.e. we don't think about saving money because we can't.) In other words, you're affirming something I already do. But it's even better with some academic erudition to back it up!
Haha yeah the really controversial claim is the one that I take for granted in this piece- i.e. CHH’s argument that lots of relatively wealthy people are depriving themselves of their ideal family situation because they’re too attached to a particular lifestyle. I’m with you- I do understand, but I find it hard to be sympathetic when I’ve raised a baby on WIC.
Her claim is one that seems completely obvious. I think part of the problem is that relatively wealthy people don't even necessarily see that they're relatively wealthy... you can live on very little if you try.
Thank you for saying this--I was reading the article and comments and thinking "Good gracious, people with two salaries of 200k a year! I can't even imagine what that's like!" because we are the same--single income household making less than (or right around) 70k a year. My husband is a teacher for a charter school. We just bought our first house (we moved states to afford this). But we live pretty frugally, partially because we've learned to habituate ourselves to not spending money on entertainment. We cloth diaper, we have no subscriptions other than like 1 magazine we get, I make almost all of our food from scratch, etc. We have gradually worked our way to where we are now (obviously adding kids adds more expense, and few of us have the luxury of adding income as we add kids!) and it's been a journey. We do not eat out now, basically ever. Our leisure activities are reading, crafting, gardening, going outside with our kids in nature. It is sometimes hard to feel like our standard of living is lower than what we grew up with, but at the same time, I'm thankful that we've gotten the chance to practice this contentment and work to detach ourselves from the materialism of the world.
Also, to clarify--we have a beautiful house, and lots of nice things. We aren't living in a gross apartment in the middle of the city (anymore haha)! But we have prioritized over a long period of time to save up and buy things that will (hopefully) last us and I feel like it is a continual battle to remind myself to be content with those (very nice!) things we have.
This sounds so very similar to our lifestyle. Any six-figure income sounds wild to me! Standards of living can be very high even when you're not eating out every day - your lifestyle sounds charming.
I also think people are probably in a lot of debt to afford their lifestyles. And I'm not even begrudging them that; I think for many, if they want to have a particular lifestyle (even though they don't need it), that might be the only option, dangerous as it can be.
People don’t cut others out of their lives because of the things they say. They cut them out of their lives because they are unsupportive and attacking. The subjects they use to attack are never the point. I guarantee that they didn’t say “have you thought about going back to college once” and the person overreacted. It’s probably a frequent topic of conversation used to embarrass or guilt the person
I got laid off recently and have been thinking about this a lot as I piece together what I want to do next and how much we need to get by and whether/to what degree I can do work that aligns with my values. I’ve been surprised by how many of my peers seem to confuse “well we have to eat/keep a roof over our heads” with we have to have 300k/yr tech jobs.
It’s been shocking to me too how nearly EVERYONE feels like they’re barely making it. When I wish I had x amount more money I remind myself that I would still feel, if I had it, like I was barely scraping by
Such a great essay
Thank you!!!!!
Came here to say this. Full of treasure!
I love the idea that we can change what we like and dislike. I'm working hard to buy less but it's a hard habit to change. Also I'm getting so frustrated with clothes lately. I find mine get full of holes and stained so quickly. The things I find at the thrift store tend to wear out so fast. Not sure what the best route is for finding clothes that will last..
I feel the same way. The only brands that have never betrayed me on quality are Christy Dawn and ImBodhi, both of which are made ethically in America. Blazers and jackets I like to buy secondhand, bc usually if they’ve made it onto the secondhand market they’re pretty well made to begin with.
I'll have to look those up. Not sure if I can get them in Canada. I've definitely been hunting for better made clothing!
> The sensible thing to do is not then to try and have everything we want, but to unify our lives around what we want most, which includes managing the desires which conflict with that goal and habituating ourselves to a life where we are not in danger of being ruined by them.
Good wisdom there, and when we do it in conjunction with others it can grow into much more than anyone would have otherwise individually had.
This is great! I'd never heard of virtue ethics before!
I truly loved this essay! Our society has turned what were “wants” for past generations, into “needs.” We’ve been so trained to want all the time that it’s hard to see what we truly need. Coupled with inflation and social media, it does make it challenging for the mother to justify staying home and not making an income.
I’ve always worked from home in some capacity, and it’s always seemed necessary, even though at this point I really don’t have to. The question, at the end of the day, is what constitutes a really great quality of life for our family? What matters most?
A fun column!
(A) You provide an answer to the ancient question "What can you do with a philosophy degree?"
(B) You write "According to her, the world we yearn for is not [..., but] This world, essentially, but with an extra 300k a year." But of course, that wording isn't quite right. If everybody had an extra 300k a year, none of them would be able to hire servants and thus they wouldn't have more leisure. What every one of us wants is for *us* to have an extra 300k a year but *everybody else* makes the same as now.
(C) You write "The end result of unrestrained consumptiveness is misery, both for a society and for the individual human being." But of course competitive consumerism happens only in modern, capitalist societies. The underlying, intrinsic drive is to maximize one's social status, and that is absolutely universal. But in most societies, that is sought by tweaking how one interacts with others, including backbiting, sucking up, and sabotaging others when it would be useful. Small scale societies are notorious for envy -- see the anecdote about the angel, the Russian peasant, and the neighbor's cow. Just think of your high school...
But in modern, urbanized society, pole-axing others (necessarily one at a time) is an inefficient way to raise one's social rank, one is forced by the social system to become more economically productive and then plowing that pay/profit into status-raising conspicuous consumption. A shiny new car can raise you above a thousand people in your metro area simultaneously! Social status remains a zero-sum game, but all the people running the rat race generate material prosperity. (Everybody complains about consumerism as evil but nobody wants to reduce their level of consumption to what was typical in 1920!) So society advances, as we consider it.
I was just about to send this to a local mom’s groupchat because of how incredible it is and on point I feel like it is for my community but wanted to follow you before I forgot. Then I realized that we’re in the same community (our sons do CGS together!) you’re an incredibly talented writer Esther and I so look forward to reading more of your work!
Asking people to subsidize their motherhood journey by stopping buying labubu dolls feels a bit like finance articles saying 'save and become a millionaire by cutting out Avo toasts and Starbucks coffee'. I think the magnitude might be off in both cases. Even those who are frugal and not rampant consumerists would find that it's the essentials- like a decent house in a good school district, saving up for kids' college education, health insurance and other health expenses- that necessitate both parents keep working.