I am two years younger than Helen and from the UK-no one particularly cared what other people's mothers did for a living. The problem is that there is a class dynamic going on here-Helen comes from a fairly well-heeled background(private school, Oxford), and both of Katie's parents were academics. They are fairly unrepresentative. Throughout history, women in the lower classes worked. And, in both the US and UK the vast majority of women aren't feminists, at least according to the Fawcett Society, though the vast majority believe in gender equality. Most people are pragmatists in politics, not ideologues. Most people did not and do not go to college, and so haven't had the luxury of time, dedicated to learning any particular ideology. They aren't feminists for the same reason they aren't Marxists. "Feminist" has the same sorts of connotation for a certain sort of bourgeois section of society that "Christian" did in the 19th century, ie, "I am good person with the right opinions". I also find it weird that you have three childless 40-somethings who haven't yet worked out that to parents, their children are the most important thing in their life, generally speaking, not their careers-that goes for either sex. I love the show, I like Helen, but this feels like student-level politics. There is a foreshortening of the political landscape going on here, caused by class and education, and is unrepresentative of lives of the majority of people.
The only person I've heard express the views Katie summarized was a friend of mine from grad school who also had two parents with PhDs. My friend was way more extreme: She said it was "wrong" that Everybody Loves Raymond portrayed a stay-at-home mom. I figured I shouldn't tell her that my own mom was a SAHM who homeschooled. (That was my first lesson about shutting up to avoid making enemies over trivia in academia.)
I give Katie credit for being a lot more reflective than my former friend. It's interesting that that perspective was so pervasive in certain feminist niches, while rubes like me were completely unaware of it until we went for graduate degrees.
There has always been a degree of contempt for it amongst feminists-but they can't seem to make up their mind: they call it emotional "labour" but, at the same time, act like it's a cop-out. And, personally, I think that for women like them-competitive women in industries where they can be competitive- they are hostile to it because they know that if most women didn't have to work in the early years of their childhood, that many, many women would choose to do that. And, horror of horrors it might be a behavioural sex difference on average.
Lol...only someone who's never taken care of kids and home could call SAHM work "emotional" labour. Instead of just "labour".
I think some of it's behavioral, but a lot is biological. Brest feeding is cheaper. And trying to work pumping and storing milk into a work schedule is a pain in the ass. And child care is expensive as hell.
Even ignore pay differences, roll that all up and it often just makes sense for the mother to be the stay at home parent.
Once the kids get older it's less clear. But by then routines are established etc etc.
The thing that people like Helen are incapable of understanding is that most people don’t have ultra-high-status careers writing for large magazines, most people even among the middle class have careers that are pretty “meh” working for giant faceless corporations doing stuff that can often seem like BS. When my wife had our first she still worked (while a nanny took care of our baby) but every day she would come home complaining about the absolutely soul-crushing meetings she has to sit through where she was thinking the whole time “I could be snuggling my 6-month-old right now.”
I also think you can’t really know until you’re in it. I entertained the possibility I would really love it and decide to quit my job and become full time but, I did not do that because it turns out while I think I’m a good parent I much prefer to work Also and hire Childcare help.
I would suggest it is uncontroversial to say that parents find their children more important than their work, which is something Helen either doesn't get or won't.
I still don’t know what ‘standard of living’ is meant to mean here. It can’t mean in the traditional income sense economists would use. Maybe its homes are much nicer with a senior focal point but that’s very idealistic. I don’t know, I just was trying to understand the point.
My mum was a SAHM. The woman could build anything (and still can), sew anything and is just overall the most practical yet creative person I know.
My job is technically viewed as a good one, I get paid relatively well and don’t produce a thing of value. I’m around plenty of insanely bright useless people as well.
I am currently taking a carpentry course so I can become as one third “accomplished”as my mum.
She did all this with three kids and I can’t even keep a plant alive.
The Fawcett Society couldn't take in the findings of it own study, so it described Britain as an island of "shy feminists". Rather than the more parsimonious, most women are non ideological and there are vast sectors of work where women aren't in direct competition with men, and where physical differences aren't not so easily ignored. I really do think that most women who describe them self as feminist don't realise most women don't, that most women like masculinity. They think that women who are not feminists are dupes, they downplay the role that industrialisation has played in emancipating everyone, they will downplay any problems that affect men specifically, eg, "Why women bear the real burden of male suicide"etc. And, there is a real nasty logical implication-if women are oppressed because of gender and not sex, then that means if the backwards women of Iran or Saudi had only the intelligence and willpower of their Western sisters, they'd be as free. The corollary never occurs: if men in the West thought like Iranian men, then perhaps the West would look more like Iran. Also, the way Katie and Helen talk about women who have children is as if it's chore rather than a positive choice, and that the 50's housewife was a commonality for the majority of women, which it never was. Most women in my family worked, they had large families and it was the grandparents job to babysit.
I wasn't offended by Katie and Helen's discussion. I do think a lot of people who choose not to have kids see kids as a chore. And it's hard to explain why I don't, because there are indeed a massive number of chores involved (most of which my friends can't see the half of), and the specific reasons parents love their kids are so primal and biological that I personally struggle to communicate them in a rational way. Loving your kids isn't rational, it's just what happens. I understand why I probably look like a weirdo to people who don't participate in this irrational way of life.
No, I wasn't offended either. I just think because they are over-represented in culture and media that they assume more people think like they do than is the case. You can see that going down with the analysis of the US election. Again, another contradiction is that men don't love their children as much as the child's mother does. Loving them in a different way doesn't mean loving them less.Culture does a lot more heavy-lifting than is actually the case. Men and women are interchangeable, it's patriarchy that means women are more important in lives of very small children, rather than the fact we are mammals and the woman has a physical link to the child that no other person in the world has.
I had very similar experiences when in grad school. It was the first time that I realized, oh, being working class means my worldview is fundamentally different from these people, whose privilege meant they'd always invalidate many things I see as self evident.
As I have mentioned before my wife was definitely raised with these values and lived them...and...was never more happy than when she left her work/career in her mid 30s as I was making lots of money to stay home.
I am sure 14-30 year old her would have been horrified, but she is much happier.
It's pretty obvious any time the topic of kids or child rearing comes up they just don't get it.
I mean, I understand. It's really hard to imagine something you've never experienced. But they almost become parody levels of laughable when they try.
And, coming from a blue collar family, I found the comments on working or stay at home mothers.....amusing. Working families don't have mothers that work because of equality and independence and feminist ideals. They do it to pay the electric bill.
And when the mothers stay home, they aren't usually making a statement on the ideal gender roles in society or moral assertions to return to traditional values. They do it because child care is fucking expensive. So much so, that it's more affordable for someone to stay home. And it just so happens that mothers, by the dictates of biology, are the most directly connected to care. And that men tend to get higher paying working class jobs by virtue of the highest paying jobs requiring heavy manual labor and high risk.
So it just makes sense.
Yeah, there's a lot more that goes on. Humans re complex. yada yada. But there are some really concrete, pragmatic decisions being made by not stupid, not idealistic people.
Yes and there is a major glossing over of the biological response of moms when their babies are born. The desire to be with your babies and not leave them with someone else is VERY INTENSE. I know so many moms who cried as they left their baby to go to work. Even if we had better maternal leave (let’s say a year), it would still be hard. I would cry leaving my preschooler at his co-op preschool (I paid the difference to not volunteer) to go to work, because I wanted to stay with him and volunteer like the other mothers. It’s the missing out. 😭
I think when we get right down to it, no one really cares what is or is not "a behavioural sex difference on average" in an objective sense. We may or may not get to the bottom of that question. There is some increased interest in looking at those questions, let's see how that pans out.
What people really care about is living a life that's full, and ideally that they have chosen. Something roughly like that. What you might call human flourishing.
We were discussing dignity on the open thread. It is a dignified thing to be a SAHM. But it is also a dignified thing to be Helen Lewis. It's not appropriate to force Helen to stay at home, or even to claim that she has some innate drive to stay at home. I don't think she does actually. Some women say they do not and who am I to disagree. The worry feminists have is that they will be forced to stay at home by men going on about innate differences, and that is a reasonable worry because this is something that did happen.
You bring up wealth and that's obviously crucial. It's a complicated issue. My background is extremely similar to Helen's, however I've also experienced some poverty. I'm currently burrowing my way back into the elite class, if we are being frank about what I am doing. What's more, I'm being materially helped in this by a number of undeniably careerist women (mostly mothers) as well as some men (some of whom had to wait for children). So I'm not going to turn around and claim they are delusional or whatever. I'm just not doing it; it's too ungrateful. I would agree that Helen's ideology doesn't quite stack up as generally applicable, but I do think these ideas make sense in terms of the lives such women lead, and given a particular historical context. So I'm not sure it's just "student level politics".
I think about 50% of women are currently going to University in the UK, and they are doing better than the men. That is a fact. I'd say about 50% of people in elite professions are women, or soon will be. They do want to do this work as far as I can tell. In my neck of the woods there is very generous maternity and indeed paternity provision, and men are morally required to help more in the home. Feminist ideology has driven that, so that it has achieved its objectives. That is all stuff that is happening that we need to sort through as well.
I accept the validity of many or all of your points, but feminist ideology does reflect part of human reality too. Maybe it's just for cognitive and cultural elites. But I don't really see being a member of this class as a source of shame; it is not a hereditary position actually, in my experience raw results are what matter. Not feminism, not DEI, just getting it done. A good number of women I know are driven to access feelings of meaning and purpose in their work, as well as wanting children. Maybe they feel that way because they are simply very bright. Could be true.
I don't have a way of sorting it all out in 200 words, but I think a fully adult, non-student politics needs to account for all these many perspectives at once. It's a tall order.
I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to suggest that women being more interested in-particularly-small children than men might have a biological basis. The fact the conversation involves so many qualifiers, proves how hostile feminists are to it. I said most women DID work, it’s only those who could afford to get by one income who did not. I didn’t say Lewis should stay home, I said she was complacent, and judging by my replies, I am not the only one. And your point about university represents that complacency: women are doing better than men in a ways that if the tables were turned, it would be called “institutional sexism”. There is no interest in fixing that problem, despite women not being more intelligent than men. It’s interesting how that’s just seen as a bi-product of female conscientiousness. It’s interesting what is seen as natural and not, dependent on how “edifying”’it is.
Well, actually I'm not sure that "feminists" (which is such a broad church as to mean nothing) would actually deny that women like babies. I've never met anyone who denies that. What they seem to be doing is demanding some sort of compensation or restitution for that inherent situation so that they are not at a career disadvantage. The question is whether that's reasonable of them.
As for the rest of what you say here, it would seem a bit more pedestrian and standard so we can talk about that another time. To be fair, the rules weren't changed, it just turns out the girls are better at playing this particular game.
Actually, where I am the men do still perform significantly better as a matter of fact, although slightly fewer get in. It is not loudly advertised but it's true. You could put that down to the tails of the distribution, or fondness for risk taking, or whatever.
Before too long we'll all be paying more attention to male educational needs, possibly in ways we ought to have all along. I think the phase of insisting there are no differences in the distribution of traits between men and women will pass. The trans debate might be accelerating this process actually.
Again, I didn’t say feminists didn’t like babies, I said it wasn’t controversial that women are better with small children. Also most women would think of considering of looking after their own children as “labour” absurd. And, let’s extend the logic, women typically marry up in terms of income, there is a wage gap and so most of the tax burden is paid by men and more benefits are available to women. So, on both a societal and intrapersonal level you can argue women are remunerated for that labour-you earn 40k and your husband earns 50k, he is subsidising you. Nobody actually thinks like that and most women, I would suggest, think the argument is frivolously bourgeois. What would be more reasonable would be to force business to
accommodate women more, eg businesses over certain size must provide crèche services and tailored programmes to allow women to graduate back into the workforce. All done with the carrot and stick taxation, so women can have children earlier, if they choose: we could do without the current population crash. You are right about trans-accelerationism but that’s because the bourgeois institutions are starting to believe in things again the masses never stopped believing in the first place.
Yep, pretty annoyed by Lewis’ career and trad wife discourse—I wanted to snap at her and the childless hosts that they don’t know shit about why some people prefer family life to shitty careers.
The biggest lie is that public life is inherently more satisfying or significant than private life and family and domesticity.
I did not interpret the discussion at all as saying it's odd for people to prefer staying at home with the kids vs working. They were pointing out that how the "tradwife" influencers are living has nothing in common with how the average woman lived in 1910 or whatever period they are pretending to live by the values of.
I think a lot of people are misinterpreting what she was saying. She’s absolutely not saying what you’ve stated. She’s saying in cultures where women can only stay at home their is a desire to have jobs and indeed many families need two incomes but that after that transition and the difficulties of having both worlds many people hark back to a idealised vision of the past.
Okay! I get cranky too easily because the professional middle class (of which I am a member) absolutely denigrates women who aren’t career oriented. I don’t think she understands the trad wife thing but I might be biased!
She is absolutely saying what I have stated. I am from the UK and have been familiar with her for years. There never was a culture where women stayed at home and didn't work below a class threshold. Lewis is a privately educated Oxford graduate, women from her background could stay at home, working class women didn't! Also, as much as I loathe Jordan Peterson, he exposed Lewis' major blind-spot, in that Lewis legitimately thinks the emancipation of women came primarily down feminists from her background and not the industrialisation which created the conditions for the feminism to exist in the first place. Even Karl Marx makes the observation that capitalism gave women an economic freedom because industry began to remove the physical labour of work.
I too am from the U.K. and have been familiar with her for years. So snap.
both my grand-mothers stayed at home and didn’t ‘work’ except in the household sense. And they were large working class families - one married to a postman, one a widow of a railway worker
Until the arrival of nuclear families the story of working class women in industrial environs was work until marriage while living in their parents home and then motherhood without further external employment. It is only with the arrival of smaller families and the opening up of professional classes (as opposed to blue collar work such as nursing, Secretary, shop worker) that women could have careers where both motherhood and a 9-5 were possible. My own mother had to leave her job as a nurse in the late 1960s when becoming pregnant, only to return to the workforce as a social worker in the 1980s when her two children were of the ages to look after themselves. That halfway stage between the generation of options (children / no career vs both) marked the change in society at this time. Her own mother would never have been able to return to the workforce because being pregnant was a near 20 year cycle in the era of 7-8 children and then childcare and housework took up all energies.
My grandmother had 5 children and worked in the very working-class central belt of Scotland. But what you are talking about is not in keeping with what Lewis was talking about. Lewis' jumping off point was women effectively being nothing but housewives, a la trad-wife model. This is middle-class women getting married and NOT working. It is very American, and seems like a suburban middle-class thing in Britain. If your contention is that women in pre-industrial Britain didn't work after their children were infants, I don't know what to tell you.
Absolutely nailed it. I too love the show, but this one was wanting. Too many luxury beliefs from non real-world participants. I am 64 yrs old and my grandmothers and their sisters taught school, were domestics, and postal employees. They were strong, fiercely independent women who would have mopped the floor with today's influencer-ersatz-feminists. And as for the waning of the IDW...their raison d'etre was chiefly to push back against radical leftist madness. They were always a loose confederation with more of a common enemy than a common cause. With DEI and wokeness on the wane, of course they have fractured and quieted. Just like the way our alliance with the Soviet Union dissolved once Hitler was dead. Seems to me like some peddling of sour grapes from the Atlantic writer.
They are, indeed, real world participants. Maybe their surroundings are quite different from yours, but a lot of people live that life. Not sure why that is so controversial here.
It's disappointing to me when smart people say things like " almost nowhere in America or Britain can you live on one income in the way you could 50 years ago." This claim is very common and based on a statistical argument which I think has severe flaws, but it would take great space to explain them. I'll content myself with an anecdote: My income is at the 84th percetile of personal income in the US, and it is enough to support a pretty comfortable lifestyle for a family of six. This suggests that 1) at least 15% of Americans can support a spouse and four children on one income, and 2) significantly more than 15% of Americans can support a spouse and, say, two children.
I think it is true that my income would be stretched very thin for my family if I lived in a major US city or one of the expensive coastal areas of this country. But those vast open spaces that Helen talks about at the top of the show are full of small and midsized towns where life is at least as good, and I would argue much better, than it was 50 years ago.
A lot of people who talk about whether you *can* support a family on one income mean they want to be able to do it without feeling a budgetary pinch. And that's actually a different question with a different answer.
Yeah, and if you set your level of desired consumption based on coworkers and peers in two-income families, then you're always going to feel deprived.
There's another wrinkle here, which is risk management. Two people making $40k is safer than one making $80k, because you're less likely to suddenly end up at zero. If you have only one household income then it's much more important to have substantial savings and to reduce the non-negotiable monthly expenses as much as possible. Which, again, means less consumption.
I think it's very easy for people who don't live in a major city to underestimate the costs of living in a major city. I make $95K, which sounds like a lot on paper, but it's $20K less than the metro area median. It's recommended to earn at least $250K to be a homebuyer here. And rent is like a minimum of $2K/month for a 1 bed, regardless of how far into the outskirts I look... going further outside the city gets more space for the price, but there's nothing cheaper/smaller.
Very true although certain cities are way more expensive than others obviously. We more than doubled our real salaries by moving from Seattle to Phoenix. We now pay 1000$ less per month to own a very nice new four bedroom house -with a swimming pool and neighborhood parks and nature trails less than a block away - than we did renting a two bedroom condo in Seattle.
I believe it! I used to live in the Midwest, and when I moved here, it was shocking how much more expensive everything is. The amount I was paying for my own 1-bed apartment in a nice neighborhood, with downtown a ~30-minute walk or very short drive away in the Midwest essentially would only get me a shared bedroom with multiple roommates in the same bedroom here (and I'm too old for that shit now, lol). What my 1-bed here costs would rent me a whole house back in the Midwest! (Though I know the Midwest has also gotten more expensive since I moved.)
But at the same time, I am happier and healthier here than I was there, so I keep paying the sunshine tax.
Helen does caveat her statement by saying that if a couple were to afford children on one income, they would have to make significant financial sacrifices. What constitutes an unreasonable financial sacrifice is a matter of opinion. Sure, you can't afford to have children, and buy anything else you might want, and afford to live on one income, but that's setting the bar a little too high, don't you think? We have access to all kinds of things that weren't even possible 50 years ago, and you can't simply take that for granted when arguing that things are worse than they used to be.
So l looked again and I’m in the 90th percentile for the city I live in. That makes a big difference obviously. The big thing with us is that if my wife worked, she would have to earn enough for daycare, which would end up being another rent payment on her own and we would just benefit from whatever came in on top of that. She’s never worked though since we’ve been married so the odds of her finding a job that good are not in our favor. I think she’s basically just waiting until our kids are old enough to be in school for a full time shift.
I don't think it's that simple to compare Britain to the USA. Population, area, per capita GDP & debt are very different. We are not the same. I think those vast open spaces small/mid-sized towns are much rarer in Britain.
The complicating factor is that there wouldn’t be so many people in the top earning percentiles if there weren’t so many people living in the big expensive cities. It’s their presence there that allows the economy to be so productive, but then the competition for scarce space in those cities eats up a big chunk of their income.
In a sense all this is weird: if we could all move to middle America and save so much money, why don’t we? It’s called the “spatial impossibility theorem.” Basically, cities shouldn’t exist because they cost so much more. But they do exist, so they must play some crucial role in the economy.
I agree. I think there are multiple senses in which the big cities are subsiding the rest of the country, and I don't think we can all move to the Midwest and start a family.
But the next marginal person absolutely can. It's also true that many people could stay in the big cities and start a family, they would just need to make more lifestyle sacrifices than someone in middle America.
I think her impression comes from the U.K. economy where wages are lower and the norm for people of very average incomes is that a household needs two incomes.
But anyway I don’t think you acknowledge your own exceptionalism in generating a very high income in a rural / small town area. Most of that top 15% are going to be in much more expensive areas than you and people in the bottom 80% are much less rich than you.
The area I live (a mid-sized Midwestern city) had a median income petty close to the national median, so my logic largely applies here.
It's also worth noting that the median personal income statistic includes teenagers and people who work part-time, both of which groups will be expected to make less money than somebody trying to support a family, and they will drag down the median.
It doesn't have anything to do with that. It has to do with your suggestion that I'm comparing myself to higher income people in more urban areas where the cost of living is higher.
So you’re a very well off person in a region where most people aren’t so fortunate. Indeed going from your figures you’re likely earning twice what the average person does in your area. Or effectively….. drum roll… two,wages.
My point isn't that *most* people can support a family on one income (although that may be true). It's that *a lot* of people can.
The evidence I've provided suggests that at least a fifth of American adults (which would be 50 million people) can support a family on their current income. Bear in mind that the US is pretty dynamic, so even if you don't make 80th percentile wages now, there's a good chance you can reach that point over time.
The larger point of Helen's statement on the podcast was that tradwife content is unrealistic because it suggests that it's feasible for two-parent households to have one working adult. For at least 50 million Americans, it is feasible.
I find any kind of ASMR or whispering close to the mic enormously grating. I had to set the volume super low for the clips of the one woman cooking, it was like a cheese grater on my brain.
Also, maybe I'm "taking the bait" by getting mad about it, (since I'm sure pissing people off is half of how this lady gets engagement, hence the outfits and stupid names), but if you spend literal hours hand-making spaghettios for your kids just because they begged, what sort of message does that send to them? That's not being a parent to your children, that's being their butler. This is all assuming any of this happened, which it didn't. The kids didn't ask, and I doubt the woman even made the food. She probably had a paid chef make it, and just shooed the chef away at various points throughout the process so she could pose with the dough and tomatoes. I know a lot of annoying crunchy conservative parents, and you know what they'd actually say if their kid asked for spaghettios? "No, those have gluten/sugar/whatever and will make you unhealthy, eat this expensive sweet potato penne instead." I doubt the lady even raises the kids, she probably has nannies.
There's this episode of Normal Gossip about this horrible German momfluencer who tricks Americans into being her combination nannies-and-personal-photographers with the offer of living abroad in Germany for "free." The nannies are underpaid and often quit after a few months. The influencer's house was absolutely disgusting, except for one immaculate spot where she filmed her content, and which the children were forbidden from touching. The nannies did literally all of the parenting, the mom just spent all day on social media or at various influencer, wellness, and sponsorship events. These people are FAKE. They're not "tradwives," they're regular old girlbosses who curate their online images to appeal to reactionary conservatives who hate women's lib and want to fantasize about "returning" to the "good ol' days."
I hated that voice clip so much. I turned the volume down to the absolute lowest setting and took out one headphone, just so I could listen to hear when it was over. Completely horrifying.
It made my eye start twitching and then I had this uncontrollable urge to throw the phone. On the other hand, I've only ever come across the parody version of those videos and they're pretty great.
Yeah I think they think they sound nonchalant and cool, like what they're doing is so common that they can't be bothered to get excited about it, but they come off as annoying pretentious boring a*holes.
Isn’t she just trying to sound like an AI voice? As a 60 something who remembers when the Valley Girl accent took over in the 90s I sure hope this doesn’t catch on.
I think there is an automatic tool that does this, removing breaths and “um” and similar. I have started to notice it on lots of podcasts, nobody seems to ever have to think about their answers.
Jesse and Helen both sorta gasped when Katie confirmed that Jana "doesn't have her own money", but that could be a little vague/misleading. My wife also doesn't have her own money. Neither do I. Our finances are co-mingled to such an extent that I don't think either of us could point to any single asset and say "mine". Even accounts that are in one name (like retirement), we both legally control and we are each other's main beneficiary. It makes gift-giving a bit awkward and maybe anticlimactic but otherwise works pretty well for us. Also gives both of us security in case something happens to one of us. I imagine lots of married couples do this?
We are also co-mingled, but my husband and I do each have a personal checking account for our own monthly fun money as well as a little pot of savings for ourselves that's only in our own names. I spend enough time on Mumsnet to see the difficulties women can get into when they become a SAHM, stop making pension and NI contributions, and everything is either joint or in their husband's name - far worse if they aren't married - and the relationship then breaks down.
My wife and I are trying to figure out christmas gifts and yeah... the shared accounts does make it a bit difficult, but I am happy this is how we do it.
In addition to confusing Thoreau with Emerson, I wonder if Helen Lewis was also mixing up the name of the Fonda/Hepburn/Fonda movie "On Golden Pond" with the name of Thoreau's book, which is "Walden", not "Walden Pond" or "On Walden Pond".
There's a dislike of Pete Buttigieg among people on the left, call them Blue Skyers and the now woke Gawkers. Threats to do another "Dem Exit" if he gets involved in 2028 primary.
They say he's a whyte straight acting totally slick talking fake corporate stooge who killed babies in the army and goes on Fox News and podcasts trying to make himself look good by talking to people and doing too articulate interviews. Not at all the "right" kind of gay man.
Years ago on this podcast I believe, there was discussion of progressive backlash to Buttigieg. One sentiment was that Buttigieg is "gay but not queer". This to me is the best insight into what these people mean by the word "queer".
Ahhhhh, you're taking me back to 2019, when one of the lefty outlets (new TNR or Slate, I forget) published an opinion piece making fun of him for supposedly only having had sex with his husband. It was like the far right morality police but for gay men. So cringe.
So cringe. I hope that Pete and Chastain can take some time for their family, they have 2 adopted? Kids right? Mayor Pete was my guy originally, until he had to toe the Trans activist line. Chastain talked about all the theater kids he worked with who just wanted to love their authentic life or something. Probably gay kids like you both!
Reminds me of that butthead James Somerton who said that only the "boring" gay people survived the AIDS crisis and that's why they cared about marriage rights and military service in the 2000s. People in his mileau acted all shocked and appalled he said that, but his position is a logical extrapolation on how identitarians often scorn what they call "respectability politics." Their views on gender also jibe with their overall attitude that being gay is not about being homosexual, but about vibes and aesthetics; hence their belief that lesbians are attracted to "femme people" and not "female people."
I’m not a politico at all, but anytime I hear Pete speak I think he seems like a smart, grounded, moral, competent, responsible person who I’d be happy to vote for.
He was the first Democrat running for president who sent on Fox News to talk. And has that skill for fast think on your feet rhetoric but from a placed rooted in values.
I was a Pete primary voter and had one of his campaign flyers on my fridge for a long time. The three biggest words were "Freedom," "Democracy," and "Security." He has a real talent for articulating left-of-center views in language that is understood across the political spectrum.
If he were 6'2" and married to a woman, I think he'd be president today.
A friend of mine from South Bend has been a fan of his since his first run for office. I like that people who know his work (not just his TV appearances) think he's the real deal.
He's about the only politician who I feel like even comes close to approaching the liberal wet dream ideal of smart, competent, fast on their feet thinkers in The West Wing or The Diplomat.
The reaction of much of the online left to Mayor Pete was one of my turning points away from identifying as progressive. I couldn't believe the level of vitriol directed at someone who ostensibly agreed with these people on 80-90% of major policy choices. All because he wears khakis and doesn't suck dicks at bathhouses with or without his husband.
Pete Buttigieg is an exceptionally talented political rhetorician, with a real talent for articulating Democratic policy in ways that people across the political spectrum can understand. That's why he's the one they always send to Fox News!
I think a lot of the online left were jealous of Pete Buttigieg and had to label him a boring nerd who sold out to McKinsey in order to disguise the fact that they were still bitter about having the exact same cerebral tendencies as him, but not reaching his heights of likability and success. They resent that he became successful in the mainstream rather than depressed and chasing a hopeless cause. Probably ties into elite overproduction - some people make it, others don’t and think they deserve it too so they can’t stand other people’s happiness. I mean, on paper this guy has everything. Gay and happily married, highly educated, military veteran, multi-lingual, well-off, gainfully employed, famous, conventionally good-looking, well-liked enough to win elections. It’s jealousy.
Except that Kamala is an inarticulate political loser with no real political skills and Pete Buttigieg managed to win enough people over, as the mayor of a small-to-mid-size city, that he became the first openly gay man to win a state in the Democratic primary. Pete is "white gay Kamala" in the same way that Barack Obama is "black Mike O'Malley."
It’s a liquor invented by a Swedish immigrant to Chicago not found much outside the Chicago area. It has the flavor profile of shoe polish, or as John Hodgman once said, “tastes like pencil shavings and heartbreak.”
Not into ASMR? For me it’s funny, because I find it creepy until the back of my neck starts tingling and I slide into ASMR heaven. It’s such a weird phenomenon.
There is very much a Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess vibe for many of these influencers. While I would eat those spaghetti-os or Twinkies from scratch or whatever she's feeding Garage Door, Rapid City and Slim Jim Dandy, it's staged and strange, and the voice is disconcerting. I guess it works for some people.
It's funny to me that wealthy people today are the ones who choose to have eight children and churn their own butter. (Or at least, pretend to for the camera.) What ordinary people of the past had to do--bake bread, knit socks, ferment pickles, etc., are now hobbies for the rich.
After seeing the opulence of Versailles, I totally got the charm of her petite hameau. If those were my surroundings and I had the money, I'd make a fake village to escape to also
This is completely true. It's a flex to have the time to do all that stuff instead of being a wage slave at a corporate job. And it means you have a rich husband. I admit that I sometimes smugly give homemade jams and chutneys to my city friends who have much better careers than me, but are single and don't have time to do stuff like that.
I just went to find out what was happening with Jesse Singal's account on bluesky and found a notice requiring me to sign in!
I must say I found the fact that Musk requires an account to view twitter as the most galling thing he did. Honestly it was insane before he took over, and insane afterwards.
I don't want to participate in these platforms. I want to spectate. Sign in!? WTF. No way.
It wouldn't be a holiday special without Helen Lewis. She is BARpod's non-denominational equivalent to Santa Claus.
Agreed, Helen is the best. Don't tell Mike Pesca, but she's my favorite BARPod guest.
Culture War Krampus
Love it when Helen has Katie and Jesse join the show.
I am two years younger than Helen and from the UK-no one particularly cared what other people's mothers did for a living. The problem is that there is a class dynamic going on here-Helen comes from a fairly well-heeled background(private school, Oxford), and both of Katie's parents were academics. They are fairly unrepresentative. Throughout history, women in the lower classes worked. And, in both the US and UK the vast majority of women aren't feminists, at least according to the Fawcett Society, though the vast majority believe in gender equality. Most people are pragmatists in politics, not ideologues. Most people did not and do not go to college, and so haven't had the luxury of time, dedicated to learning any particular ideology. They aren't feminists for the same reason they aren't Marxists. "Feminist" has the same sorts of connotation for a certain sort of bourgeois section of society that "Christian" did in the 19th century, ie, "I am good person with the right opinions". I also find it weird that you have three childless 40-somethings who haven't yet worked out that to parents, their children are the most important thing in their life, generally speaking, not their careers-that goes for either sex. I love the show, I like Helen, but this feels like student-level politics. There is a foreshortening of the political landscape going on here, caused by class and education, and is unrepresentative of lives of the majority of people.
The only person I've heard express the views Katie summarized was a friend of mine from grad school who also had two parents with PhDs. My friend was way more extreme: She said it was "wrong" that Everybody Loves Raymond portrayed a stay-at-home mom. I figured I shouldn't tell her that my own mom was a SAHM who homeschooled. (That was my first lesson about shutting up to avoid making enemies over trivia in academia.)
I give Katie credit for being a lot more reflective than my former friend. It's interesting that that perspective was so pervasive in certain feminist niches, while rubes like me were completely unaware of it until we went for graduate degrees.
My mom was a SAHM, and I was too, when my kids were little.
I knew it wasn’t prestigious, but I didn’t give a shit.
Having one person take point on the home front tends to raise the standard of living for the whole family.
There has always been a degree of contempt for it amongst feminists-but they can't seem to make up their mind: they call it emotional "labour" but, at the same time, act like it's a cop-out. And, personally, I think that for women like them-competitive women in industries where they can be competitive- they are hostile to it because they know that if most women didn't have to work in the early years of their childhood, that many, many women would choose to do that. And, horror of horrors it might be a behavioural sex difference on average.
Lol...only someone who's never taken care of kids and home could call SAHM work "emotional" labour. Instead of just "labour".
I think some of it's behavioral, but a lot is biological. Brest feeding is cheaper. And trying to work pumping and storing milk into a work schedule is a pain in the ass. And child care is expensive as hell.
Even ignore pay differences, roll that all up and it often just makes sense for the mother to be the stay at home parent.
Once the kids get older it's less clear. But by then routines are established etc etc.
The thing that people like Helen are incapable of understanding is that most people don’t have ultra-high-status careers writing for large magazines, most people even among the middle class have careers that are pretty “meh” working for giant faceless corporations doing stuff that can often seem like BS. When my wife had our first she still worked (while a nanny took care of our baby) but every day she would come home complaining about the absolutely soul-crushing meetings she has to sit through where she was thinking the whole time “I could be snuggling my 6-month-old right now.”
Honestly impressive - I find parenting way more taxing than work.
I think personality is a big part of the equation. What people most enjoy and have a knack for really varies.
100%
I also think you can’t really know until you’re in it. I entertained the possibility I would really love it and decide to quit my job and become full time but, I did not do that because it turns out while I think I’m a good parent I much prefer to work Also and hire Childcare help.
True, but there averages. I don’t think it’s ludicrous to suggest that women are better with particularly small children than men.
I would suggest it is uncontroversial to say that parents find their children more important than their work, which is something Helen either doesn't get or won't.
I'd rather stay home and take care of the kids myself. But I'm the primary earner, so that option isn't there for us.
Big fan of yours Molly but could you expand on that last sentence?
I still don’t know what ‘standard of living’ is meant to mean here. It can’t mean in the traditional income sense economists would use. Maybe its homes are much nicer with a senior focal point but that’s very idealistic. I don’t know, I just was trying to understand the point.
My mum was a SAHM. The woman could build anything (and still can), sew anything and is just overall the most practical yet creative person I know.
My job is technically viewed as a good one, I get paid relatively well and don’t produce a thing of value. I’m around plenty of insanely bright useless people as well.
I am currently taking a carpentry course so I can become as one third “accomplished”as my mum.
She did all this with three kids and I can’t even keep a plant alive.
The Fawcett Society couldn't take in the findings of it own study, so it described Britain as an island of "shy feminists". Rather than the more parsimonious, most women are non ideological and there are vast sectors of work where women aren't in direct competition with men, and where physical differences aren't not so easily ignored. I really do think that most women who describe them self as feminist don't realise most women don't, that most women like masculinity. They think that women who are not feminists are dupes, they downplay the role that industrialisation has played in emancipating everyone, they will downplay any problems that affect men specifically, eg, "Why women bear the real burden of male suicide"etc. And, there is a real nasty logical implication-if women are oppressed because of gender and not sex, then that means if the backwards women of Iran or Saudi had only the intelligence and willpower of their Western sisters, they'd be as free. The corollary never occurs: if men in the West thought like Iranian men, then perhaps the West would look more like Iran. Also, the way Katie and Helen talk about women who have children is as if it's chore rather than a positive choice, and that the 50's housewife was a commonality for the majority of women, which it never was. Most women in my family worked, they had large families and it was the grandparents job to babysit.
I wasn't offended by Katie and Helen's discussion. I do think a lot of people who choose not to have kids see kids as a chore. And it's hard to explain why I don't, because there are indeed a massive number of chores involved (most of which my friends can't see the half of), and the specific reasons parents love their kids are so primal and biological that I personally struggle to communicate them in a rational way. Loving your kids isn't rational, it's just what happens. I understand why I probably look like a weirdo to people who don't participate in this irrational way of life.
No, I wasn't offended either. I just think because they are over-represented in culture and media that they assume more people think like they do than is the case. You can see that going down with the analysis of the US election. Again, another contradiction is that men don't love their children as much as the child's mother does. Loving them in a different way doesn't mean loving them less.Culture does a lot more heavy-lifting than is actually the case. Men and women are interchangeable, it's patriarchy that means women are more important in lives of very small children, rather than the fact we are mammals and the woman has a physical link to the child that no other person in the world has.
I had very similar experiences when in grad school. It was the first time that I realized, oh, being working class means my worldview is fundamentally different from these people, whose privilege meant they'd always invalidate many things I see as self evident.
As I have mentioned before my wife was definitely raised with these values and lived them...and...was never more happy than when she left her work/career in her mid 30s as I was making lots of money to stay home.
I am sure 14-30 year old her would have been horrified, but she is much happier.
It's pretty obvious any time the topic of kids or child rearing comes up they just don't get it.
I mean, I understand. It's really hard to imagine something you've never experienced. But they almost become parody levels of laughable when they try.
And, coming from a blue collar family, I found the comments on working or stay at home mothers.....amusing. Working families don't have mothers that work because of equality and independence and feminist ideals. They do it to pay the electric bill.
And when the mothers stay home, they aren't usually making a statement on the ideal gender roles in society or moral assertions to return to traditional values. They do it because child care is fucking expensive. So much so, that it's more affordable for someone to stay home. And it just so happens that mothers, by the dictates of biology, are the most directly connected to care. And that men tend to get higher paying working class jobs by virtue of the highest paying jobs requiring heavy manual labor and high risk.
So it just makes sense.
Yeah, there's a lot more that goes on. Humans re complex. yada yada. But there are some really concrete, pragmatic decisions being made by not stupid, not idealistic people.
Yes and there is a major glossing over of the biological response of moms when their babies are born. The desire to be with your babies and not leave them with someone else is VERY INTENSE. I know so many moms who cried as they left their baby to go to work. Even if we had better maternal leave (let’s say a year), it would still be hard. I would cry leaving my preschooler at his co-op preschool (I paid the difference to not volunteer) to go to work, because I wanted to stay with him and volunteer like the other mothers. It’s the missing out. 😭
I think when we get right down to it, no one really cares what is or is not "a behavioural sex difference on average" in an objective sense. We may or may not get to the bottom of that question. There is some increased interest in looking at those questions, let's see how that pans out.
What people really care about is living a life that's full, and ideally that they have chosen. Something roughly like that. What you might call human flourishing.
We were discussing dignity on the open thread. It is a dignified thing to be a SAHM. But it is also a dignified thing to be Helen Lewis. It's not appropriate to force Helen to stay at home, or even to claim that she has some innate drive to stay at home. I don't think she does actually. Some women say they do not and who am I to disagree. The worry feminists have is that they will be forced to stay at home by men going on about innate differences, and that is a reasonable worry because this is something that did happen.
You bring up wealth and that's obviously crucial. It's a complicated issue. My background is extremely similar to Helen's, however I've also experienced some poverty. I'm currently burrowing my way back into the elite class, if we are being frank about what I am doing. What's more, I'm being materially helped in this by a number of undeniably careerist women (mostly mothers) as well as some men (some of whom had to wait for children). So I'm not going to turn around and claim they are delusional or whatever. I'm just not doing it; it's too ungrateful. I would agree that Helen's ideology doesn't quite stack up as generally applicable, but I do think these ideas make sense in terms of the lives such women lead, and given a particular historical context. So I'm not sure it's just "student level politics".
I think about 50% of women are currently going to University in the UK, and they are doing better than the men. That is a fact. I'd say about 50% of people in elite professions are women, or soon will be. They do want to do this work as far as I can tell. In my neck of the woods there is very generous maternity and indeed paternity provision, and men are morally required to help more in the home. Feminist ideology has driven that, so that it has achieved its objectives. That is all stuff that is happening that we need to sort through as well.
I accept the validity of many or all of your points, but feminist ideology does reflect part of human reality too. Maybe it's just for cognitive and cultural elites. But I don't really see being a member of this class as a source of shame; it is not a hereditary position actually, in my experience raw results are what matter. Not feminism, not DEI, just getting it done. A good number of women I know are driven to access feelings of meaning and purpose in their work, as well as wanting children. Maybe they feel that way because they are simply very bright. Could be true.
I don't have a way of sorting it all out in 200 words, but I think a fully adult, non-student politics needs to account for all these many perspectives at once. It's a tall order.
I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to suggest that women being more interested in-particularly-small children than men might have a biological basis. The fact the conversation involves so many qualifiers, proves how hostile feminists are to it. I said most women DID work, it’s only those who could afford to get by one income who did not. I didn’t say Lewis should stay home, I said she was complacent, and judging by my replies, I am not the only one. And your point about university represents that complacency: women are doing better than men in a ways that if the tables were turned, it would be called “institutional sexism”. There is no interest in fixing that problem, despite women not being more intelligent than men. It’s interesting how that’s just seen as a bi-product of female conscientiousness. It’s interesting what is seen as natural and not, dependent on how “edifying”’it is.
Well, actually I'm not sure that "feminists" (which is such a broad church as to mean nothing) would actually deny that women like babies. I've never met anyone who denies that. What they seem to be doing is demanding some sort of compensation or restitution for that inherent situation so that they are not at a career disadvantage. The question is whether that's reasonable of them.
As for the rest of what you say here, it would seem a bit more pedestrian and standard so we can talk about that another time. To be fair, the rules weren't changed, it just turns out the girls are better at playing this particular game.
Actually, where I am the men do still perform significantly better as a matter of fact, although slightly fewer get in. It is not loudly advertised but it's true. You could put that down to the tails of the distribution, or fondness for risk taking, or whatever.
Before too long we'll all be paying more attention to male educational needs, possibly in ways we ought to have all along. I think the phase of insisting there are no differences in the distribution of traits between men and women will pass. The trans debate might be accelerating this process actually.
Again, I didn’t say feminists didn’t like babies, I said it wasn’t controversial that women are better with small children. Also most women would think of considering of looking after their own children as “labour” absurd. And, let’s extend the logic, women typically marry up in terms of income, there is a wage gap and so most of the tax burden is paid by men and more benefits are available to women. So, on both a societal and intrapersonal level you can argue women are remunerated for that labour-you earn 40k and your husband earns 50k, he is subsidising you. Nobody actually thinks like that and most women, I would suggest, think the argument is frivolously bourgeois. What would be more reasonable would be to force business to
accommodate women more, eg businesses over certain size must provide crèche services and tailored programmes to allow women to graduate back into the workforce. All done with the carrot and stick taxation, so women can have children earlier, if they choose: we could do without the current population crash. You are right about trans-accelerationism but that’s because the bourgeois institutions are starting to believe in things again the masses never stopped believing in the first place.
Maybe it will be clearest if you outline your solutions to the problems you see.
I don't really claim to have solutions, rather I have criticism of others' reality claims.
Yep, pretty annoyed by Lewis’ career and trad wife discourse—I wanted to snap at her and the childless hosts that they don’t know shit about why some people prefer family life to shitty careers.
The biggest lie is that public life is inherently more satisfying or significant than private life and family and domesticity.
Helen Lewis really showed her ass—I’m over her!
I did not interpret the discussion at all as saying it's odd for people to prefer staying at home with the kids vs working. They were pointing out that how the "tradwife" influencers are living has nothing in common with how the average woman lived in 1910 or whatever period they are pretending to live by the values of.
I didn't say they thought it was odd, I said thought they were complacent, which they were.
I wasn't responding to your post.
Not sure what they said that was "complacent," though.
Ach, Steph, I am getting old. Let's simply have a wonderful Xmas time!
I think a lot of people are misinterpreting what she was saying. She’s absolutely not saying what you’ve stated. She’s saying in cultures where women can only stay at home their is a desire to have jobs and indeed many families need two incomes but that after that transition and the difficulties of having both worlds many people hark back to a idealised vision of the past.
Okay! I get cranky too easily because the professional middle class (of which I am a member) absolutely denigrates women who aren’t career oriented. I don’t think she understands the trad wife thing but I might be biased!
She is absolutely saying what I have stated. I am from the UK and have been familiar with her for years. There never was a culture where women stayed at home and didn't work below a class threshold. Lewis is a privately educated Oxford graduate, women from her background could stay at home, working class women didn't! Also, as much as I loathe Jordan Peterson, he exposed Lewis' major blind-spot, in that Lewis legitimately thinks the emancipation of women came primarily down feminists from her background and not the industrialisation which created the conditions for the feminism to exist in the first place. Even Karl Marx makes the observation that capitalism gave women an economic freedom because industry began to remove the physical labour of work.
I too am from the U.K. and have been familiar with her for years. So snap.
both my grand-mothers stayed at home and didn’t ‘work’ except in the household sense. And they were large working class families - one married to a postman, one a widow of a railway worker
Until the arrival of nuclear families the story of working class women in industrial environs was work until marriage while living in their parents home and then motherhood without further external employment. It is only with the arrival of smaller families and the opening up of professional classes (as opposed to blue collar work such as nursing, Secretary, shop worker) that women could have careers where both motherhood and a 9-5 were possible. My own mother had to leave her job as a nurse in the late 1960s when becoming pregnant, only to return to the workforce as a social worker in the 1980s when her two children were of the ages to look after themselves. That halfway stage between the generation of options (children / no career vs both) marked the change in society at this time. Her own mother would never have been able to return to the workforce because being pregnant was a near 20 year cycle in the era of 7-8 children and then childcare and housework took up all energies.
Which is in keeping with HL’s reading.
My grandmother had 5 children and worked in the very working-class central belt of Scotland. But what you are talking about is not in keeping with what Lewis was talking about. Lewis' jumping off point was women effectively being nothing but housewives, a la trad-wife model. This is middle-class women getting married and NOT working. It is very American, and seems like a suburban middle-class thing in Britain. If your contention is that women in pre-industrial Britain didn't work after their children were infants, I don't know what to tell you.
Everything you type shows an incredible misreading of Lewis, there's not much more to be said
Sure showed her!
Absolutely nailed it. I too love the show, but this one was wanting. Too many luxury beliefs from non real-world participants. I am 64 yrs old and my grandmothers and their sisters taught school, were domestics, and postal employees. They were strong, fiercely independent women who would have mopped the floor with today's influencer-ersatz-feminists. And as for the waning of the IDW...their raison d'etre was chiefly to push back against radical leftist madness. They were always a loose confederation with more of a common enemy than a common cause. With DEI and wokeness on the wane, of course they have fractured and quieted. Just like the way our alliance with the Soviet Union dissolved once Hitler was dead. Seems to me like some peddling of sour grapes from the Atlantic writer.
They are, indeed, real world participants. Maybe their surroundings are quite different from yours, but a lot of people live that life. Not sure why that is so controversial here.
But a lot, if not the majority do not. The criticism stands.
Helen Lewis doing a Cartman accent is the best thing that's happened in 2024 lol
It's disappointing to me when smart people say things like " almost nowhere in America or Britain can you live on one income in the way you could 50 years ago." This claim is very common and based on a statistical argument which I think has severe flaws, but it would take great space to explain them. I'll content myself with an anecdote: My income is at the 84th percetile of personal income in the US, and it is enough to support a pretty comfortable lifestyle for a family of six. This suggests that 1) at least 15% of Americans can support a spouse and four children on one income, and 2) significantly more than 15% of Americans can support a spouse and, say, two children.
I think it is true that my income would be stretched very thin for my family if I lived in a major US city or one of the expensive coastal areas of this country. But those vast open spaces that Helen talks about at the top of the show are full of small and midsized towns where life is at least as good, and I would argue much better, than it was 50 years ago.
A lot of people who talk about whether you *can* support a family on one income mean they want to be able to do it without feeling a budgetary pinch. And that's actually a different question with a different answer.
Yeah, and if you set your level of desired consumption based on coworkers and peers in two-income families, then you're always going to feel deprived.
There's another wrinkle here, which is risk management. Two people making $40k is safer than one making $80k, because you're less likely to suddenly end up at zero. If you have only one household income then it's much more important to have substantial savings and to reduce the non-negotiable monthly expenses as much as possible. Which, again, means less consumption.
I’m in the 75th and I agree. I supporting a wife and two kids on only my income and I live in a decent size city.
I think it's very easy for people who don't live in a major city to underestimate the costs of living in a major city. I make $95K, which sounds like a lot on paper, but it's $20K less than the metro area median. It's recommended to earn at least $250K to be a homebuyer here. And rent is like a minimum of $2K/month for a 1 bed, regardless of how far into the outskirts I look... going further outside the city gets more space for the price, but there's nothing cheaper/smaller.
Very true although certain cities are way more expensive than others obviously. We more than doubled our real salaries by moving from Seattle to Phoenix. We now pay 1000$ less per month to own a very nice new four bedroom house -with a swimming pool and neighborhood parks and nature trails less than a block away - than we did renting a two bedroom condo in Seattle.
I believe it! I used to live in the Midwest, and when I moved here, it was shocking how much more expensive everything is. The amount I was paying for my own 1-bed apartment in a nice neighborhood, with downtown a ~30-minute walk or very short drive away in the Midwest essentially would only get me a shared bedroom with multiple roommates in the same bedroom here (and I'm too old for that shit now, lol). What my 1-bed here costs would rent me a whole house back in the Midwest! (Though I know the Midwest has also gotten more expensive since I moved.)
But at the same time, I am happier and healthier here than I was there, so I keep paying the sunshine tax.
Ugh, sunshine. I’m in Phoenix, I’m over it! 😆
Helen does caveat her statement by saying that if a couple were to afford children on one income, they would have to make significant financial sacrifices. What constitutes an unreasonable financial sacrifice is a matter of opinion. Sure, you can't afford to have children, and buy anything else you might want, and afford to live on one income, but that's setting the bar a little too high, don't you think? We have access to all kinds of things that weren't even possible 50 years ago, and you can't simply take that for granted when arguing that things are worse than they used to be.
So l looked again and I’m in the 90th percentile for the city I live in. That makes a big difference obviously. The big thing with us is that if my wife worked, she would have to earn enough for daycare, which would end up being another rent payment on her own and we would just benefit from whatever came in on top of that. She’s never worked though since we’ve been married so the odds of her finding a job that good are not in our favor. I think she’s basically just waiting until our kids are old enough to be in school for a full time shift.
I don't think it's that simple to compare Britain to the USA. Population, area, per capita GDP & debt are very different. We are not the same. I think those vast open spaces small/mid-sized towns are much rarer in Britain.
It’s a lifestyle disease where people don’t want to forgo luxuries for a family. It’s asinine excuse washing preferences.
I am a SAHM and our household income is under 40k but everyone assumes we are secretly wealthy when they find out I don’t work
The complicating factor is that there wouldn’t be so many people in the top earning percentiles if there weren’t so many people living in the big expensive cities. It’s their presence there that allows the economy to be so productive, but then the competition for scarce space in those cities eats up a big chunk of their income.
In a sense all this is weird: if we could all move to middle America and save so much money, why don’t we? It’s called the “spatial impossibility theorem.” Basically, cities shouldn’t exist because they cost so much more. But they do exist, so they must play some crucial role in the economy.
I agree. I think there are multiple senses in which the big cities are subsiding the rest of the country, and I don't think we can all move to the Midwest and start a family.
But the next marginal person absolutely can. It's also true that many people could stay in the big cities and start a family, they would just need to make more lifestyle sacrifices than someone in middle America.
I think her impression comes from the U.K. economy where wages are lower and the norm for people of very average incomes is that a household needs two incomes.
But anyway I don’t think you acknowledge your own exceptionalism in generating a very high income in a rural / small town area. Most of that top 15% are going to be in much more expensive areas than you and people in the bottom 80% are much less rich than you.
The area I live (a mid-sized Midwestern city) had a median income petty close to the national median, so my logic largely applies here.
It's also worth noting that the median personal income statistic includes teenagers and people who work part-time, both of which groups will be expected to make less money than somebody trying to support a family, and they will drag down the median.
Not sure what that’s got to do with either your status in the upper bracket of income earners or an average British family needing two incomes.
It doesn't have anything to do with that. It has to do with your suggestion that I'm comparing myself to higher income people in more urban areas where the cost of living is higher.
So you’re a very well off person in a region where most people aren’t so fortunate. Indeed going from your figures you’re likely earning twice what the average person does in your area. Or effectively….. drum roll… two,wages.
Which was where we started.
My point isn't that *most* people can support a family on one income (although that may be true). It's that *a lot* of people can.
The evidence I've provided suggests that at least a fifth of American adults (which would be 50 million people) can support a family on their current income. Bear in mind that the US is pretty dynamic, so even if you don't make 80th percentile wages now, there's a good chance you can reach that point over time.
The larger point of Helen's statement on the podcast was that tradwife content is unrealistic because it suggests that it's feasible for two-parent households to have one working adult. For at least 50 million Americans, it is feasible.
Why do these influences edit these videos to sound like they never take a breath? It disturbing.
More disturbing is cookie lady sounds like a serial killer who is about to pounce.....
I find any kind of ASMR or whispering close to the mic enormously grating. I had to set the volume super low for the clips of the one woman cooking, it was like a cheese grater on my brain.
Also, maybe I'm "taking the bait" by getting mad about it, (since I'm sure pissing people off is half of how this lady gets engagement, hence the outfits and stupid names), but if you spend literal hours hand-making spaghettios for your kids just because they begged, what sort of message does that send to them? That's not being a parent to your children, that's being their butler. This is all assuming any of this happened, which it didn't. The kids didn't ask, and I doubt the woman even made the food. She probably had a paid chef make it, and just shooed the chef away at various points throughout the process so she could pose with the dough and tomatoes. I know a lot of annoying crunchy conservative parents, and you know what they'd actually say if their kid asked for spaghettios? "No, those have gluten/sugar/whatever and will make you unhealthy, eat this expensive sweet potato penne instead." I doubt the lady even raises the kids, she probably has nannies.
There's this episode of Normal Gossip about this horrible German momfluencer who tricks Americans into being her combination nannies-and-personal-photographers with the offer of living abroad in Germany for "free." The nannies are underpaid and often quit after a few months. The influencer's house was absolutely disgusting, except for one immaculate spot where she filmed her content, and which the children were forbidden from touching. The nannies did literally all of the parenting, the mom just spent all day on social media or at various influencer, wellness, and sponsorship events. These people are FAKE. They're not "tradwives," they're regular old girlbosses who curate their online images to appeal to reactionary conservatives who hate women's lib and want to fantasize about "returning" to the "good ol' days."
I hated that voice clip so much. I turned the volume down to the absolute lowest setting and took out one headphone, just so I could listen to hear when it was over. Completely horrifying.
It made my eye start twitching and then I had this uncontrollable urge to throw the phone. On the other hand, I've only ever come across the parody version of those videos and they're pretty great.
Something really strange about her voice. I can't figure it out.
She sounds like she is dead inside.
Yeah I think they think they sound nonchalant and cool, like what they're doing is so common that they can't be bothered to get excited about it, but they come off as annoying pretentious boring a*holes.
Very flat affect
Isn’t she just trying to sound like an AI voice? As a 60 something who remembers when the Valley Girl accent took over in the 90s I sure hope this doesn’t catch on.
She's doing an ASMR voice.
I like to think she’s going for this texture: https://youtu.be/lq6KFhke20c?si=OfXJ9rWSONxNkSfv
I think there is an automatic tool that does this, removing breaths and “um” and similar. I have started to notice it on lots of podcasts, nobody seems to ever have to think about their answers.
It sounds like part of her nightly ritual is recording tiktok audio the moment before she falls asleep in bed.
My attitude towards stay-at-home-moms is my same towards working moms and my same towards working dads and stay-at-home dads.
Whatever works for your family and its situation.
Jesse and Helen both sorta gasped when Katie confirmed that Jana "doesn't have her own money", but that could be a little vague/misleading. My wife also doesn't have her own money. Neither do I. Our finances are co-mingled to such an extent that I don't think either of us could point to any single asset and say "mine". Even accounts that are in one name (like retirement), we both legally control and we are each other's main beneficiary. It makes gift-giving a bit awkward and maybe anticlimactic but otherwise works pretty well for us. Also gives both of us security in case something happens to one of us. I imagine lots of married couples do this?
We are also co-mingled, but my husband and I do each have a personal checking account for our own monthly fun money as well as a little pot of savings for ourselves that's only in our own names. I spend enough time on Mumsnet to see the difficulties women can get into when they become a SAHM, stop making pension and NI contributions, and everything is either joint or in their husband's name - far worse if they aren't married - and the relationship then breaks down.
My wife and I are trying to figure out christmas gifts and yeah... the shared accounts does make it a bit difficult, but I am happy this is how we do it.
Katie clearly has her own money though, she says so.
Sorry for the pedantry, but just saying that it was Thoreau, not Emerson, whose mother was washing his clothes while he wrote Walden Pond
In addition to confusing Thoreau with Emerson, I wonder if Helen Lewis was also mixing up the name of the Fonda/Hepburn/Fonda movie "On Golden Pond" with the name of Thoreau's book, which is "Walden", not "Walden Pond" or "On Walden Pond".
There's a dislike of Pete Buttigieg among people on the left, call them Blue Skyers and the now woke Gawkers. Threats to do another "Dem Exit" if he gets involved in 2028 primary.
They say he's a whyte straight acting totally slick talking fake corporate stooge who killed babies in the army and goes on Fox News and podcasts trying to make himself look good by talking to people and doing too articulate interviews. Not at all the "right" kind of gay man.
Years ago on this podcast I believe, there was discussion of progressive backlash to Buttigieg. One sentiment was that Buttigieg is "gay but not queer". This to me is the best insight into what these people mean by the word "queer".
“Be yourself! Unless you’re a conventional normie, then no, you’re awful.”
Ahhhhh, you're taking me back to 2019, when one of the lefty outlets (new TNR or Slate, I forget) published an opinion piece making fun of him for supposedly only having had sex with his husband. It was like the far right morality police but for gay men. So cringe.
So cringe. I hope that Pete and Chastain can take some time for their family, they have 2 adopted? Kids right? Mayor Pete was my guy originally, until he had to toe the Trans activist line. Chastain talked about all the theater kids he worked with who just wanted to love their authentic life or something. Probably gay kids like you both!
People still mad about gay marriage, but from the left
Reminds me of that butthead James Somerton who said that only the "boring" gay people survived the AIDS crisis and that's why they cared about marriage rights and military service in the 2000s. People in his mileau acted all shocked and appalled he said that, but his position is a logical extrapolation on how identitarians often scorn what they call "respectability politics." Their views on gender also jibe with their overall attitude that being gay is not about being homosexual, but about vibes and aesthetics; hence their belief that lesbians are attracted to "femme people" and not "female people."
I’m not a politico at all, but anytime I hear Pete speak I think he seems like a smart, grounded, moral, competent, responsible person who I’d be happy to vote for.
He was the first Democrat running for president who sent on Fox News to talk. And has that skill for fast think on your feet rhetoric but from a placed rooted in values.
I was a Pete primary voter and had one of his campaign flyers on my fridge for a long time. The three biggest words were "Freedom," "Democracy," and "Security." He has a real talent for articulating left-of-center views in language that is understood across the political spectrum.
If he were 6'2" and married to a woman, I think he'd be president today.
A friend of mine from South Bend has been a fan of his since his first run for office. I like that people who know his work (not just his TV appearances) think he's the real deal.
Yeah I have always liked him. It surprised me when suddenly liking him was "wrong."
That’s good to know!
He's about the only politician who I feel like even comes close to approaching the liberal wet dream ideal of smart, competent, fast on their feet thinkers in The West Wing or The Diplomat.
The reaction of much of the online left to Mayor Pete was one of my turning points away from identifying as progressive. I couldn't believe the level of vitriol directed at someone who ostensibly agreed with these people on 80-90% of major policy choices. All because he wears khakis and doesn't suck dicks at bathhouses with or without his husband.
Pete Buttigieg is an exceptionally talented political rhetorician, with a real talent for articulating Democratic policy in ways that people across the political spectrum can understand. That's why he's the one they always send to Fox News!
Shapiro/Buttigieg 2028, y'all
I think a lot of the online left were jealous of Pete Buttigieg and had to label him a boring nerd who sold out to McKinsey in order to disguise the fact that they were still bitter about having the exact same cerebral tendencies as him, but not reaching his heights of likability and success. They resent that he became successful in the mainstream rather than depressed and chasing a hopeless cause. Probably ties into elite overproduction - some people make it, others don’t and think they deserve it too so they can’t stand other people’s happiness. I mean, on paper this guy has everything. Gay and happily married, highly educated, military veteran, multi-lingual, well-off, gainfully employed, famous, conventionally good-looking, well-liked enough to win elections. It’s jealousy.
Some of the criticism of Buttigeig was bullshit but he was basically white gay Kamala.
Except that Kamala is an inarticulate political loser with no real political skills and Pete Buttigieg managed to win enough people over, as the mayor of a small-to-mid-size city, that he became the first openly gay man to win a state in the Democratic primary. Pete is "white gay Kamala" in the same way that Barack Obama is "black Mike O'Malley."
"It was the worst thing I've ever drank."
So it's confirmed that Helen Lewis has never had Malört.
Do I want to know what that is?
It’s a liquor invented by a Swedish immigrant to Chicago not found much outside the Chicago area. It has the flavor profile of shoe polish, or as John Hodgman once said, “tastes like pencil shavings and heartbreak.”
See I thought this was just a Pennsylvania thing
Mallört is genuinely putrid
I see Malort plenty in New Orleans. It's somewhere between ironic and genuinely liked?
This is also the region that popularized Jagermeister though
It's not good!
We need a BARPOD live event in Chicago that involves flying Helen in and doing Malort shots with Jesse
Somehow our Thanksgiving devolved into everyone doing shots of Malort and scarfing down corn nuts.
What the fuck is wrong with you people??? 🤮😂
Love me a Helen episode!
Also, I hate the way the sprinkle cookie woman speaks arrrghhhh my ears 😖😖
I did not get it either. How is sounding like you ´ve just been roofied a selling point?
Not into ASMR? For me it’s funny, because I find it creepy until the back of my neck starts tingling and I slide into ASMR heaven. It’s such a weird phenomenon.
Okay but Nigella is very sensual. Nara is beautiful and glamorous but utterly sexless.
Her recipes are good. Nigella, that is.
There is very much a Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess vibe for many of these influencers. While I would eat those spaghetti-os or Twinkies from scratch or whatever she's feeding Garage Door, Rapid City and Slim Jim Dandy, it's staged and strange, and the voice is disconcerting. I guess it works for some people.
It's funny to me that wealthy people today are the ones who choose to have eight children and churn their own butter. (Or at least, pretend to for the camera.) What ordinary people of the past had to do--bake bread, knit socks, ferment pickles, etc., are now hobbies for the rich.
Plenty of people enjoy these hobbies who aren’t rich they just don’t make content about it
Remember Marie Antoinette had a miniature farm created on the palace grounds? She used to play pretend farmer there.
After seeing the opulence of Versailles, I totally got the charm of her petite hameau. If those were my surroundings and I had the money, I'd make a fake village to escape to also
This is completely true. It's a flex to have the time to do all that stuff instead of being a wage slave at a corporate job. And it means you have a rich husband. I admit that I sometimes smugly give homemade jams and chutneys to my city friends who have much better careers than me, but are single and don't have time to do stuff like that.
The spaghetti-os from scratch video is literally just her making pasta. Apparently being a normal Italian makes you a tradwife.
My favorite Helen Lewis quote of the pod, paraphrased:
> If there's one thing the Ozempic revolution has taught us it's that skinny people don't eat.
Fucking. Truth.
I just went to find out what was happening with Jesse Singal's account on bluesky and found a notice requiring me to sign in!
I must say I found the fact that Musk requires an account to view twitter as the most galling thing he did. Honestly it was insane before he took over, and insane afterwards.
I don't want to participate in these platforms. I want to spectate. Sign in!? WTF. No way.