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This article on About.com (thank you, Gmail linkage) is for folks who WANT to leave one parent home with the kids but who think they can't afford it.
The first thing they suggest is totaling up the cost of working-- that is, the amount of money the household spends on expenses DIRECTLY related to each person's job. However, they refer to this as "how much the second income is really contributing." Nevermind that if one person makes a wee bit more, but their expenses are a lot more, the higher-paid person would be a better choice to stay home. Anyways, carrying on with the logic:
Don't I remember this argument from "anti-feminist arguments 101"? The argument used to go that women really oughtn't to be working outside the home, because there were all these "hidden costs" like daycare and buying lunches and stuff, that wouldn't be there if those women would just stay home and mind their business and do their household accounting instead of getting all uppity with their education and stuff.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is really a gender-neutral argument and I'm just leaping to the conclusion that "second income" means "wife's income." Let's look at some of the expenses they cite before drawing a conclusion. I'll list all six items and you tell me if any of them seem to be aimed specifically at women, ok?
* Dry cleaning 5 items/wk - $1300/yr
* Day care - $400/month; $4800/yr
* Lunch take-out 5 days/wk (@$5-$10/day)- $1300 - $2600/yr
* 3 pair of pantyhose/wk - $468/yr
* Gasoline-$10 - $20/wk; $520 - 1040/yr
* Daily cup of coffee - $390/yr
I do think this list is a little skewed; for starters, that daycare item looks low. Maybe that's the one-kid version? (That's silly, because staying home with the kids gets more affordable when you have two or three!) I'm also wondering where this $10/week gasoline charge comes in, because I spend more than that on gas myself-- and I put less than 6k miles a year on my car.
So, uh, anyways-- why are we only cutting these from one person? If someone's going to stay home and it benefits the whole family to do so, is it fair (or smart) for the working partner to be eating $10 lunches and blowing all that money on dry cleaning and storebought coffee while the stay at home partner eats tuna fish out of recycled cottage cheese tubs?
...and by the way, what about haircuts? Most of the guys I've known who work in an image-conscious field get haircuts every 3-4 weeks; if you're going to a good stylist, isn't that equally as expensive as buying hundreds of pairs of pantyhose a year? Am I making this up, that we're listing girly expenses only?
But then, I don't guess the following article would have gone over nearly as well:
HOW TO AFFORD STAYING HOME WITH YOUR KIDS
STEP 1: Stop spending so damn much money on stupid shit, and that means both of you, not just the woman
STEP 2: ????
STEP 3: Profit!
The first thing they suggest is totaling up the cost of working-- that is, the amount of money the household spends on expenses DIRECTLY related to each person's job. However, they refer to this as "how much the second income is really contributing." Nevermind that if one person makes a wee bit more, but their expenses are a lot more, the higher-paid person would be a better choice to stay home. Anyways, carrying on with the logic:
Don't I remember this argument from "anti-feminist arguments 101"? The argument used to go that women really oughtn't to be working outside the home, because there were all these "hidden costs" like daycare and buying lunches and stuff, that wouldn't be there if those women would just stay home and mind their business and do their household accounting instead of getting all uppity with their education and stuff.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is really a gender-neutral argument and I'm just leaping to the conclusion that "second income" means "wife's income." Let's look at some of the expenses they cite before drawing a conclusion. I'll list all six items and you tell me if any of them seem to be aimed specifically at women, ok?
* Dry cleaning 5 items/wk - $1300/yr
* Day care - $400/month; $4800/yr
* Lunch take-out 5 days/wk (@$5-$10/day)- $1300 - $2600/yr
* 3 pair of pantyhose/wk - $468/yr
* Gasoline-$10 - $20/wk; $520 - 1040/yr
* Daily cup of coffee - $390/yr
I do think this list is a little skewed; for starters, that daycare item looks low. Maybe that's the one-kid version? (That's silly, because staying home with the kids gets more affordable when you have two or three!) I'm also wondering where this $10/week gasoline charge comes in, because I spend more than that on gas myself-- and I put less than 6k miles a year on my car.
So, uh, anyways-- why are we only cutting these from one person? If someone's going to stay home and it benefits the whole family to do so, is it fair (or smart) for the working partner to be eating $10 lunches and blowing all that money on dry cleaning and storebought coffee while the stay at home partner eats tuna fish out of recycled cottage cheese tubs?
...and by the way, what about haircuts? Most of the guys I've known who work in an image-conscious field get haircuts every 3-4 weeks; if you're going to a good stylist, isn't that equally as expensive as buying hundreds of pairs of pantyhose a year? Am I making this up, that we're listing girly expenses only?
But then, I don't guess the following article would have gone over nearly as well:
HOW TO AFFORD STAYING HOME WITH YOUR KIDS
STEP 1: Stop spending so damn much money on stupid shit, and that means both of you, not just the woman
STEP 2: ????
STEP 3: Profit!
