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Kind of a bizarre interpretation of that information. "Economic" doesn't mean they really enjoy driving around in their minivan to fast food places to drop shit off on people's porches, or punching a clock. It means they work because they have to. Saying "nearly 1 in 5 stay at home parents are now men" doesn't mean what you think it does. The number is actually 18%, which means 82% are women, and that is of the stay at home parents, not of the of the married population. Of the married population, only about 1% are "stay at home dads", and even that is misleading because it's "not in the paid labor force", and 25% just lost their job and haven't found another, 35% are ill or disabled, and another 22% are "in school/retired/other". They also have a 33% higher divorce rate than couples where both work, or the man is the sole or primary breadwinner.I don't disagree with a lot of this. But desiring to have children and desiring to be a stay at home parent are 2 completely different things.
The % of women that prefer to be stay at home parents has been lurching back and forth dramatically over the last few decades. The % has been as low as 24% and as high as over 50%. But it's the reasons for the decision that are really telling. By far the biggest reason women give in favor of being a stay at home parent is economic. 'I've always wanted to be a stay at home Mom-It's my reason for living' is way down the list. The closer the cost of childcare gets to the second highest income in the family, the better having a stay at home parent looks. And interestingly, more men are now stay at home parents. Nearly 1 in 5 stay at home parents are now men.
58% of college students are now women. And women are getting better grades in college than men overall. It's likely that the % of married women outearning their husbands will continue to grow. So it will be increasingly likely that economically at least, it will make more sense for the man to be the stay at home parent if that's the route the families choose.
It's unlikely Mrs. Harrison Butker would get a job offer that pays significantly more than the $4 million a year her husband gets to kick field goals. But if she did, I wonder how quickly Harrison would embrace his role of husband and stay at home father.
As I said earlier, if men really want stay at home wives and mothers, they will need to make that choice better than the alternatives. And those alternatives are pretty much the same as mens now. I think the next 4-5 decades are going to be a time for men to either check their ego's and swallow their pride, or join one of the many and growing incel factions.
"Stay at home dads" isn't going to catch on for the same reason people who do have to hire a nanny don't hire dudes.
"Men need to check their egos and swallow their pride or join the incels" is so far off the mark that it's almost comical. How is it even possible for someone to have thought "incels" were men who just refuse to sleep with women who make more than them? Women of course are the ones who would need to "swallow their pride" and start marrying more broke bums for your prediction to come to fruition, since that is for whom economic viability is a major factor in marriage decisions.
Instead, in the same time that women have been encouraged or required to work more, to the extent that single women in many metropolitan areas make more than their male counterparts, what we've actually seen happen isn't a huge spike in marriages where women are the sole or primary breadwinner(still only at about 15%), what's happened instead is the marriage rate plummet and the out of wedlock births skyrocket.
Women marry across and up. They marry up more than they marry across, and they marry across more than they marry down, by pretty large margins. What this artificial push for women to make more than men accomplishes, through preferences for "women owned businesses" and hiring quotas, is it just shrinks their number of economically viable husbands, lowers marriage rates and increases out of wedlock births. It's the same trajectory that has already worked wonders in the black community when they incentivized not having a dad in the house, and have sent those marriage rates from higher than the white population down to like 33%, with a 75% out of wedlock birth rate within a few generations.