[capital_omega]

Of course, this should not be a surprise. If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart. “We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.”

This is an important note. Despite the "family values" posturing of the American right wing, the "socialist" Europeans are actually far more pro-family than the conservatives who dominate (even now, having a sizeable minority of the Democratic party) in American politics.

[ja30278]

This is contradicted elsewhere in the article by the observation that families who could afford more childcare were _not_ necessarily happier.

[Robin_Message]

But things like paternity leave, maternity leave, requiring employers to consider flexible working -- these kind of things Europe is doing are far more family friendly than the republican party.

The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford.

No reason it has to be the mother though. And the actual family values line is in conflict with Republican views on work. This conflict is partly historic (Protestant work ethic), but partly an interesting indictment of the hypocrisy of the religious rights' support for the Republican party. Their focus on only a few moral issues does a great disservice to the actual morality of the nation. They say mothers should stay home, but support a party who's economic policies make that impossible.

[hugh3]

But things like paternity leave, maternity leave, requiring employers to consider flexible working -- these kind of things Europe is doing are far more family friendly than the republican party.

Everything has consequences elsewhere. Make paid maternity/paternity leave compulsory and you make it riskier for employers to hire. So you increase the probability that your father gets three months off after you're born, but you also increase the probability that your father is a long-term unemployed bozo living in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris.

The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford.

I agree.

No reason it has to be the mother though.

It doesn't have to be, but this seems to be the natural way things go if left to their own devices. Most human societies have the other taking on the vast majority of childcare duties -- it seems to be part of the way our minds are put together that mothers want to do a lot more childcare than fathers do.

[euccastro]

So you increase the probability that your father gets three months off after you're born, but you also increase the probability that your father is a long-term unemployed bozo living in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris.

Employers wouldn't hire more than they need anyway. Even if that was the case, the flip side would be job insecurity. You can theorize all you want about these tradeoffs, but the experience shows that these measures do work in Europe, and more so in Scandinavian countries. Never have I seen so many child carts as in Iceland, and despite the crash their unemployment is 8% and going down.

[pbhjpbhj]

>No reason it has to be the mother though.

Breastfeeding.

I don't lactate.

Now that our youngest is >1yo (as with his elder brother) then we're back to sharing labour and child care + chores 50-50 (in a way that's probably not open to most people). We've chosen this lifestyle and are below the official poverty line in our country because of it.

However, the little one is still not completely weaned and so needs contact with his mother at times during normal working hours.

Yes it's possible to pump and bottle-feed but breastfeeding is more than just nourishment.

[jtheory]

Nature does tend to push the mother into the stay-at-home role, which is why I'm very much in favor of programs to support greater integration of kids into the workplace to try and balance things more towards fairness -- childcare at work (you take your coffee break, the mother takes her breast-feeding break) is one solution. Allowing mothers to work mostly remotely while still breast-feeding is another.

Here in France the approach is well-funded child care that's available for very young babies -- this is a boon to mothers maintaining their careers, but it's certainly bad for breast-feeding more than a couple of months.

[euccastro]

In the context of the article that perception can be explained by the fact that they were missing out on more of the childless life goodies. Also, being able to afford more childcare doesn't imply having more time to spend with their children.

[capital_omega]

This has more to do with higher parental expectations, coming out of the general climate of economic insecurity in the United States. Upper-middle-class parents can hire maids to do some of the chores, but raising children is still exhausting in a society where young people have to be in the right track from preschool in order to have a decent shot at getting anywhere in life.

I don't think the type-A helicopter parents who insist on their children matriculating to elite pre-schools/boarding schools/colleges are that way because they expect their child to be the next Mozart. Obviously, there are some parents like that, but they exist in every society. Most of the parents who drive their children so relentlessly to be overachievers are that way because they realize what happens, in this country, to those who fall off of the elite track.