[DoreenMichele]

I'm a former homemaker.

What the woman gets is nothing but a personal life. It's not necessarily a problem if she has married well, they plan well for her financial comfort after he is gone and they remain together "until death do us part."

It's primarily a problem if they divorce and now she needs to somehow launch a career from scratch. Those years spent raising kids don't tend to readily translate to a good resume and high salary.

[oh_sigh]

There are a whole slew of activities that you cannot do if you're providing full-time childcare, especially for, say, under 5 year olds who aren't in school yet.

[ta8645]

There are a whole slew of activities you can not do when working a full time job, either.

But in any case, when you have children, you are choosing the family life. Which means some things will no longer be an option. But that is true for every decision we make in life.

There is no way to have everything in life, even through the magic of taxation and government "universal" programs.

[googlryas]

Except, you aren't necessarily choosing that if you have adequate, dependable childcare arrangements, like a universal early childcare .

It's only, essentially, poor people who have to give up on their pursuits if they also want to raise a kid.

[DoreenMichele]

You can say the same thing about working full-time at any job. But you want to list a few for me so we can actually discuss this instead of you just dismissing my opinion as if 'nuh-uh' is a meaningful rebuttal?

[googlryas]

Well, I've done both, and I've found parenting harder. I guess that's just my take.

Were you raising children or just "homemaking", which doesn't necessarily imply childcare?

You really can't think of any activities/interest people pursue that you can't do while toting a 2 year old with you? That's something I didn't think would require enumerating.

[DoreenMichele]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128205

[googlryas]

Well, that seems extremely reckless, but good job on not crashing and severely injuring your children I guess. Maybe we're thinking of different types of mountain biking.

And this is also a reason why listing specifics is a fools errand(which makes me a fool), because in the multitude there will always be someone who said "actually I did that and everything turned out fine".

I smoked crack while pregnant, and my kid went to Harvard. See, no issues there.

[DoreenMichele]

Oh, so, nothing satisfies you. I didn't say I was mountain biking. I was cycling on a mountain bike in city conditions because I only owned a mountain bike and I was happy to get some exercise that way.

But you want to insist I cannot be content with my life or if I am, I clearly must somehow be behaving badly.

You also cannot safely mountain climb while imbibing alcohol and any number of other things. Not everyone feels the need to do "reckless" things in order to feel content.

[asow92]

Are you proposing that we can do these activities if we have government subsidized childcare and don't work? How does that add up exactly?