I believe that the real position on stay at home moms, among lots of people, including some conservatives, is the nuclear family. I don't know of anyone who think women are inferior, in any regard.Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
I believe that the real position on stay at home moms, among lots of people, including some conservatives, is the nuclear family. I don't know of anyone who think women are inferior, in any regard.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
If the argument is that a mother spending some time with her kids has value, I don't argue. Personally (personally, gah I didn't say everyone had to do it), I think the ideal situation is a mother working part-time (like really a 20 hour week) while having young kids (and maybe not working at all in the first couple of years).
I see how much some women miss adult interaction and responsibilities and use of their skilils (my own mother as a SAHM did! terribly!! we were always aware of how much she missed it - this was a woman with a highly technical masters degree for heavens sake, mothering was not enough), not to mention a little spending money of their own and keeping up their skills in case the marriage does end and for if they want to work full time once the kids are grown. But I also think FULL time work and parenting is incredibly difficult. That ideal however is very hard to acheive in this society (though steps could be taken to make this a lot easier - Germany for instance has a lot of laws protecting and enabling part-time work). My point was merely that many things besides money making have value: just the little selfish things like cooking healthy food and exercising, and then the wider more social things: maintaining friendships, reading, keeping up on politics, volunteering, recycling, composting etc. etc.. And so some real work life balance across the board would be welcome (real overtime laws etc.). I'll ask Misses Romney what she thinks of that :P.
Trees don't grow on money
I have enough vacation time. What I don't have is any use for a government that would force an employer to give me more (or less) regardless of the merits of my work.
I don't have much use for a government that presumes to tell me, an adult citizen, how I am allowed to enter into contracts for my time and services with other freely willing parties.
and the power of the corpocracy continues. Well, as long as we're free - free to work with no sick pay, no vacation days, no pension, high-cost health insurance - if any - and extra working hours on demand, and free to train our overseas replacement.
But, no problem, because we're freeeee!
We're free to be worked to the death, or else not work at all and let some man support us I guess. Work will set you free! Any kind of work life balance though can not be had at any price you could afford! Incidently since vacations are not mandatory (but generally conventional) couldn't you see them going away entirely in maybe a decade or so? (the way of pensions and the 40 hour week)
Trees don't grow on money
Or to work for yourself, or to unionize with your fellow workers to negotiate for better employment terms, or to seek out a better employer, or ...
Your only options aren't "to be worked to death, or else not work at all" - a false choice set up to eliminate an entire universe of middle ground options...
Most people want a job so badly that they'll take what they can get these days, and so terrified of loosing that job that they won't rock the boat in any way if they can avoid it.
The real question is how we are defining freedom. Here the minimum vacation is determined in labor law, but people -- individual workers -- are free to work how ever they like. Their employer can't demand it, but they can choose to not take their holidays. I pretty much see that as freedom in both directions.
I also think it's ok for a group of people to choose to utilize their government over unions for this effort. They are free to, right?
But in this case "using their government" means "voting to use force to impose your will on another person", whereas unlike governments, unions have no sanctioned ability to use force to impose their desires on others. So the two cases are very different.
except that, practically speaking, a union can make it very difficult for a person to work without joining the union (or such is the case with many trades), and therefore also impacting people's freedom (even if they don't have any sanctioned ability).
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