this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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Teaching is not Teaching anymore, its doing the job of the breeders these days and raising their kids teaching them decent manners and how not to be a cunt.
Being a teacher is literally like adopting a class full of feral fuckin cats and trying to turn them into decent humans from the POS ipad baby version their parents have created.
This is a miserable take. Either
You have beef with the disparity between the lines for who has responsibility for the child vs who has ultimate authority over the child. And that is fair! But it's a problem with the current structure of the system, and we don't need to harken back to some stupid lie about the good old days to justify the current impasse.
US perspective here. The problems I see:
Going back to when one income could support a family and almost everyone had a parent that was at home that they could rely on is not a stupid lie.
The stupid lie is it is the parent's fault when they both have to work 40+ hours a week (if you even have two parents), take care of the household, help with homework, and deal with the constant curve balls thrown at you by life (car broken down, major sickness, mental disease, dental issues, housing emergency, etc.)
I am lucky to maybe have a hour a day maximum to myself and that is half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night getting ready or going to bed. We are far past the breaking point for the US.
That never fucking existed. There was never a large portion of the population that made enough money for the woman to stay at home, and even when there was enough to apparently make memes about it, it was at most 2 decades.
For real people, women have always worked. In the 1950s, my maternal grandmother ran the general store they owned and lived above while he worked in the factory, and she helped him bale hay on the weekends when it was in season. My paternal grandmother didn't work, and they were dirt poor. She thought it was a woman's place to stay at home and they barely kept food on the table and a roof over their heads. They got frequent financial help from her parents.
My husband: His maternal grandmother didn't work, and the husband had a decent job. And my MiL died bitter because her parents would take all the kids' incomes as teenagers to support the household/themselves. His paternal grandmother worked and retired from a federal job.
It's a lie. It was a lie then to keep women suppressed, and it's a lie now that doesn't serve you like you think it does. The average American has always worked, and women's work has always been discounted. The only ones who didn't work were the wealthy parasite class.
I agree with you that the person I responded to was wrong for dumping on the parents, but everything else is just more grievance politics, but this time from the left.
Seriously. We were middle class wealthy growing up. Mom always worked. When dad was in college, she put him through his degrees. Ran a dry cleaners. When he was a fresh college grad, she did taxes. Still does taxes but is winding down her practice. She picked up bookkeeping reliable enough she ended up being an office manager for a few successful medical and legal practices. Dad ended up retiring when he could no longer work. Physically, not mentally. Mom still works, more for her health than her finances.
Gran, she always worked. She was an RN. Tough as nails, worked prisons because she took the parable of the sheep and goats to heart and was an atheist because the Christians she grew up with didn't.
Gramgram, she was a cost accountant. Worked her whole adult life. Grumpa was a cost accountant, and when he discovered he was not one for the ladies he taught her his trade so she could make money just as well as he could, then he fucked off to San Francisco. And Gramgram, she looked after the family. Remarried, specifically a worthless lump of flesh who could help pay the bills, but she was the main breadwinner.
My wife, well when we got married she was already outearning me even before I said fuck it let's play jazz and she said honey you supported my dreams I'll support yours even though bwahahaha jazz really you couldn't even be a clown so I'm not sure what your point is
You are passionate but wrong. There was a large portion of society that did this in the past and continue to do so.
In Europe almost 50% of the time children are with one parent or the other. It is very common for one parent to not work or work very little during the first five years of child rearing.
Almost a fourth of US households have a stay at home parent. With over 11 million stay at home parents in the US alone. I have a hard time understanding where you are coming from.
You also seem to confuse the issue of parents making enough to comfortably take a lot of time away from work to raise children and the fact that housework has been traditionally unpaid.
I think as a society we should recognize the need for a parent, particularly during the first five years, to be at home. We shouldn't be penalizing people for this. Raising children is tough enough without the economic reality that you will be significantly behind your peers if you actually raise your kids.
No wonder birth rates are down. Having kids has become cost prohibitive in a society that tries to squeeze every penny out of people. We have prioritized making money to the detriment of all over raising children. The system in the US in particular is beyond broken.
I am not talking about unpaid housework, nor did I ever mention parental leave from work/ a pause in a career. I am talking about paid work. Running a general store and baling hay is not housework. Most poor women have always worked. I read the autobiography of Grandma Moses a while back. You'd probably label her a housewife, but she worked a dairy farm like a dog for years with her husband to sell milk and butter. If she's working to make money and provide, she's not a housewife who is free to spend her energies only tending to the family's needs. That is a luxury.
Further, when you mention the European stat... Which I'll take in good faith since there's no citation... You are confusing the first five years of life (preschool) with the original comment which seemed to be about grade school kids as well as your other comments about helping with homework, etc, that also imply grade school age kids. Maybe I could buy your argument about small children, but not school age children.
My point is not to penalize people who choose/have the financial ability to stay home. My point is that it was only really ever economy viable for the wealthier people. For the left to sit around and demand it makes them seem as coddled and out of touch as when they demanded student loan repayment. You are asking for subsidized luxury goods on the backs of people who can barely provide food and shelter for themselves. And maybe you think the whole system should be restructured for the wealthy to pay for it and/ or for us to cut back on military spending to pay for it, etc. but that's not what people lead the argument with. They lead with this expensive, privileged demand.
Most poor women did the work they knew how to. This was often housework. It was common for women to do laundry, dishes, and general cleaning for others. This was also work unless we are going to ignore its value.
I totally understand your poor women angle, but a lot of poor mothers lived in poverty without jobs taking care of their family. Sometimes it was by choice and sometimes not. I am not going to stand in moral judgement of women who were dirt poor and stayed with their family.
I get it, your stock was hard workers. They struggled despite working hard. This is pretty common as my mother's side was literally the Grapes of Wrath because their farm went under during the dustbowl.
I am not sure you understand the struggle of raising children as you stand in judgement to trivialize other's experiences. My wife stayed at home for several years raising our kids and we survived on one income.
Tens of millions of people who are not wealthy choose to stay at home with their children. 20% of stay home parents are men in the US. People are doing what you deny every single day and making it work.
Society and the wealthy benefit greatly from parents raising kids. The problem with the US it is extremely exploitive taking that value and not giving back with garbage childcare, uncaring employers, inflated housing, insane medical costs, etc.
I think people are crazy to have kids in the US. So that makes me insane I guess.
I am a married working mother of two. Don't tell me what I don't understand. I am not trying to uphold my family as some paragon of virtue. They were the most accessible anecdotes I have on hand. My point is women always worked, and the view that they didn't is just a rewrite of history to erase them and their contributions by conservatives, and now this fake history is being repurposed by liberals as some achievable ideal. Why do you think all the early women's rights advocates were demanding equal pay for equal work? Because they were working!
I was going to throw out anecdotes about the folks I know now where one parent has stayed home, but it didn't help to paint the picture of how things "used to be". But as far as what people I know do, the picture remains that it is largely a luxury of the well-off: in households where I am fairly sure the husband makes >$250k/yr, I think they do/did fine (past tense for the mother's that still chose to go back once the children were school-aged). They don't live extravagantly, but there is no hardship. I know a couple where the Dad stays home, unemployed not by choice. The mom makes (I think) between $200k-$250k/yr, and their finances are tight. They are managing, but it's not great. She actually took an assignment overseas where their money would go further and more expenses would be paid by her company, but this administration ended that opportunity and they are back. The last couple I know, the husband makes maybe $100k, and it is a hardship that she thinks her role is at home and will not work. They are constantly struggling to pay rent, to pay their bills, and to buy vehicles. They frequently seek financial help from everyone they know.
Anyway, go read some Simone de Beauvoir. Historically most people were poor and most women worked. She called the women in the upper class who didn't work "parasite women".
No, your point is only wealthy people can stay home and that those who do are lazy. The first is objectively false and the second is a shitty judgement call you have made. Parasitic women!? Wtf is that victim blaming bullshit.
You need some serious class solidarity and to stop letting wealthy people tell you who is "lazy" and who is righteous.
https://poweratwork.us/the-myth-of-the-obsessive-american-work
No, my point is that your demand that everyone be able to do it is entitled and unrealistic. And I think your insistence that almost everyone has always done it does a huge disservice to the majority of women who always had to bring in income.
'Parasitic women' is a term de Beauvoir made up to refer to the elite women who did not advocate for their own sex and instead adhered to classist, sexist ideals that maintained their husband's - and by extension their own - privilege. I just referenced it so you could go look it up.
I'm not interested in your defensiveness. I never used the word lazy. Do I think it's more important to give your children the stability of a home and consistent heating than to be able to keep them isolated in religious indoctrination (the family existing on $100k)? Yes, yes I do. As a working woman, do I resent the implication that I ought to personally be more devoted to my children while also being tapped for money to support someone else's ideology? Yes, yes I do. As a working woman, do I want to be shoved back into economic obscurity so that it is easier for my human rights to be trampled upon? What the fuck do you think?