The author is taking extreme, survival level realities from developing countries (like girls in parts of Western Asia doing four times the domestic labor) and slapping them next to first world, middle-class Western society problems (like corporate women not having time to play with Chat gpt).
Also, "Just give your kid more chores so they don't watch Nick Fuentes" is an aggressively reductive non sequitur.
It's true that women in different socioeconomic circumstances experience different versions of inequality. But it is also true that they both experience it. As an American woman, I can only speak for us, but girls here are also raised to do more domestic work than their brothers - To be caregivers, to take more responsibility for their younger siblings, to help their mothers around the house, whereas often "boys' chores" are taking out the trash and cutting the grass. This is a real experience that many adult women had as young girls, and so we can recognize it in other cultures as well.
Perhaps the reason that you can't see the relation of girls in developing countries doing more domestic labor to corporate women in developed countries ALSO doing more domestic labor is because you've never experienced it yourself (I'm assuming from the name Mikey that you're a man).
This author does an excellent job when she writes "Girls are learning, from early childhood, that their time is not fully their own. It belongs to the family. It belongs to whoever needs feeding, minding, managing. Boys, by contrast, often grow up in homes where their time is treated as sovereign." So yes, by the time these girls become corporate women, they often do not have the time to "play" with chatGPT the way their male corporate partners do.
Love this - as a “Jazz Mum” who has for years kept wondering where all the girls have slowly disappeared to (nearly equal numbers at the start). Some of it definitely a lack of role models & the slightly nerdish culture of much jazz education.
But I’ve been seeking research on the ‘idle hours’ required to just relax and play around with say an instrument, computer programming, other hobbies that are important for curiosity, skill-building and that just require ‘noodling’ time…. I would love to see more data on when the differences kick in, and precisely what forms of care are the most common in taking the girls time up, particularly in so called ‘developed’ countries. Any more details on that?
Excellent thoughts. The decline in father support for sons learning to cook, etc., is dismaying — it mirrors much of the reactionary commentary from right-wing and fundamentalist groups across multiple religions.
Excellent piece! Well done. I have been watching your conversations on care over the years and am always in passionate agreement with your assessments. Your analysis here on unstructured time is spot on. As they say “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” and for our youngsters that devil resides in the online spaces that contort their views on almost everything including manhood and care.
Snapping and nodding and fist pumping to every word of this.
The author is taking extreme, survival level realities from developing countries (like girls in parts of Western Asia doing four times the domestic labor) and slapping them next to first world, middle-class Western society problems (like corporate women not having time to play with Chat gpt).
Also, "Just give your kid more chores so they don't watch Nick Fuentes" is an aggressively reductive non sequitur.
It's true that women in different socioeconomic circumstances experience different versions of inequality. But it is also true that they both experience it. As an American woman, I can only speak for us, but girls here are also raised to do more domestic work than their brothers - To be caregivers, to take more responsibility for their younger siblings, to help their mothers around the house, whereas often "boys' chores" are taking out the trash and cutting the grass. This is a real experience that many adult women had as young girls, and so we can recognize it in other cultures as well.
Perhaps the reason that you can't see the relation of girls in developing countries doing more domestic labor to corporate women in developed countries ALSO doing more domestic labor is because you've never experienced it yourself (I'm assuming from the name Mikey that you're a man).
This author does an excellent job when she writes "Girls are learning, from early childhood, that their time is not fully their own. It belongs to the family. It belongs to whoever needs feeding, minding, managing. Boys, by contrast, often grow up in homes where their time is treated as sovereign." So yes, by the time these girls become corporate women, they often do not have the time to "play" with chatGPT the way their male corporate partners do.
Love this - as a “Jazz Mum” who has for years kept wondering where all the girls have slowly disappeared to (nearly equal numbers at the start). Some of it definitely a lack of role models & the slightly nerdish culture of much jazz education.
But I’ve been seeking research on the ‘idle hours’ required to just relax and play around with say an instrument, computer programming, other hobbies that are important for curiosity, skill-building and that just require ‘noodling’ time…. I would love to see more data on when the differences kick in, and precisely what forms of care are the most common in taking the girls time up, particularly in so called ‘developed’ countries. Any more details on that?
Excellent thoughts. The decline in father support for sons learning to cook, etc., is dismaying — it mirrors much of the reactionary commentary from right-wing and fundamentalist groups across multiple religions.
Excellent piece! Well done. I have been watching your conversations on care over the years and am always in passionate agreement with your assessments. Your analysis here on unstructured time is spot on. As they say “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” and for our youngsters that devil resides in the online spaces that contort their views on almost everything including manhood and care.