Is it cool that I said all that

I haven't blogged recently because the start of the semester brought a whole wave of papers I needed to read and in general a lot of stress about my thesis (I was jumping into too many rabbit holes).

I hope everyone is doing alright. I'm sure the rest of Australia thinks Victoria is going nuts with coronavirus, and I have a lot of sympathy for the people who are probably putting in some long hours where I used to work.

Brendan and I have been watching Umbrella Academy after we finished Morning Wars (or The Morning Show as it's marketed in the US) which was one of the best dramas I've watched. It is such a timely exploration of #MeToo, what it means for the broadcast industry, and everyone's complicity. Are there some sexual behaviours that are worse than others? What counts as consent? What is the extent of the transgressions we tolerate from the people we love, or are loyal to, or who have helped us in the past? Do we pursue the truth at all costs even if it hurts the people who would not hurt us? And is it fair to still ask for their trust and understanding after that? Is there an objective definition for sexual abuse or does it depend solely on how the victim responds to it?

It is a show that explores all the complex problems that Twitter #MeToo just can't. Social movements are important, but it would be stupid to think that social media can capture all the complexities within a movement. When we choose to engage with or endorse a particular movement or message, we owe it to ourselves to actually consider the complexity of the issue we're expressing an opinion on. Everyone has freedom of expression, but that does not absolve us from the consequences of that expression. Social media gives us a platform and therefore a lot of power. But as is often forgotten these days, with great power comes great responsibility. And social media is generally not that good at promoting a sense of accountability for our own opinions.

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Another thing that I've been thinking of recently is love and care work. Thanks to this amazing book that I'm reading which I've hyped about before. The crux of the book is that you can't pay someone to love you, it has to be intrinsically motivated. And yet there are a lot of things humans need that are best performed out of love. None of us would want to be raised by parents who didn't love us and when we're old none of us will want to be looked after by children who hate us. Love is reciprocal but unlike market transactions you can't just trade for them.

Parental childcare is an example of non-market care work that is arguably best when performed out of love. It is the ultimate investment in the human capital of the next generation and in that way is the biggest externality that isn't priced in today's labour market. We need children, and we need parents to raise them. Yet non-market care work has serious spill-over effects on a person's labour market participation. We may not be able to exist without love and care, but we would also not be able to live without income and food on the table.

When our markets incentivise labour supply and provide little public support for those who engage in non-market care work (think: childcare subsidies) yet impose heavy labour market penalties on them (think: gender pay gap, less superannuation at retirement, no income or work experience to fall back on if family splits etc.) then naturally people respond by preferencing careers over care obligations - we all have a limited endowment of time after all.

In ye olde agricultural days we raised kids who would supply their labour to household production or the family business (farm?), nowadays everyone gets a higher private benefit by supplying their labour to the market. So parents raise children who move out at 18 and work for someone else. Before, parents raised kids out of love and some expectation of reciprocity. With the old age pension and superannuation, that reciprocity has been partially outsourced to taxpayers and our own deferred consumption when young.

So there is less need to have kids now and less incentive (or perhaps a lot of very competitive outside options) to being a full-time parent or carer. Liberal feminism is all about giving women the choice to preference their careers too and accrue all the private benefits that men have largely been accruing for themselves (though the expectation was that men were being paid a family wage i.e. that their pay goes to their family). What liberal feminism misses out on, and is therefore sometimes criticised for devaluing, is the importance of non-market care work that women have traditionally performed. With everyone moving into the formal labour market, no one is going to be raising kids (who has time to after all?). While women have been joining the labour force at unprecedented rates for the past 50 years, men have barely moved when it comes to childcare work.

What is the result? More (burnt out) women trying to work and be the primary caregiver, more women choosing not to have kids to focus on their career instead, and men still working and still not specialising in household production (which women have been abandoning too).

Yes it's a personal choice but at some point it becomes a public problem (once our population is at lower-than-replacement rates then without productivity growth there will be no economic growth or increase in living standards), and who says our personal choices aren't shaped by the social forces around us?

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When I was young, my target age for marriage was 26, and my target age for my first kid was 30. Now I'm not sure if I even understand the point of marriage. If the person I love, loves me, and we both know we're going to try to make a lifelong - or however long we may want it to be - partnership work, do we really need blessing from an institution that originated from a religion that I don't even practice, and even in its secular form comes with a whole set of norms and practices best left to the 1950s? If I'm ready to commit, do I need marriage to show that I have? Don't even get me started on the Miss/Mrs/Ms - I'm not sure what knowing my marital status would signify. I'm sure I can define my own version of marriage, but then I may as well just practice my own version of what I want my partnership to look like.

These are questions I've been asking myself a lot lately. I can get behind weddings as a celebration of one of the most important partnerships you'll ever make. I can't get behind having to circle Miss/Mrs or Ms on every form I fill out, whereas men just have Mr. Nor the added pressure I will probably get from parents for having a kid after I'm married.

Which brings us to kids. Something I'm more sure that I want to do, but definitely not at 30. Before I go on though, the thought of not really moving anywhere in my career for the next decade because of the kids that I want to have scares me a bit. I know what all the stats and patterns look like, and I'm not looking forward to a divergence in incomes and hours worked compared to the hypothetical version of me who chooses not to have kids. Which is why I wouldn't be choosing to have kids if my partner wasn't in it with me, and willing to take equal initiative and accountability for their upbringing.

More importantly, I want to have kids for the right reason. And with the high costs associated with children (not just to incomes, time and lifestyle, but also a threat to my personal identity - I still want to be something apart from being a mum), I need to make sure that I see it as a privilege, not as a duty or burden and I don't want to hold any grudge that I will resent my children (or myself) for.

When I was young I was sensitive to the fact that my parents had sacrificed a lot for me (in fact they still continue to). And that gave me an overwhelming sense of gratitude - I will never be able to repay that debt. But other days it's like "I didn't ask to be born!!". When you're young and you get placed with the burdens of your parents' unfulfilled dreams, it's very hard to engage with that in a mature way. I'm not saying that there will be no sacrifices to being a parent (there must be, if you want to be a good one), but you cannot blame your child for them and you shouldn't martyr yourself for anyone else (not even your kids).