What’s annoying for me is that people treat childbirth and child rearing as something special and exceptional when it is the very essence of human existence for most of the population.
Why haven’t employment systems adapted? Well, they have – to favor the male/female labor divide, to promote male supremacy in that divide, and to suppress women’s compensation (increasing their exploitation) in the spaces that remain.
Moreover, this divide ends up also brutalizing men who become shackled to one version – the breadwinner – of many possible lives. As many external-labor-market-engaged women understand, “who’s the boss here” has made homes sites of unnecessary struggle and conflict, instead of cooperation and collaboration.
