The Gift of Feminism

My wife likes to joke that in our marriage one of us has a body image disorder, is a feminist, and is overly emotional...the only thing is, it's me.

I've been thinking about feminism recently and started to think some potentially un-PC thoughts. I haven't come to a conclusion, but I am asking the questions.

So, it seems like with the women's liberation movement and the arrival of the two income family, that the expectations of what constitutes a middle class lifestyle increases in terms of economic consumption power. In order to maintain this lifestyle, two incomes are required, for the most part.

So, when a couple has a child, it's not entirely economically feasible for the wife (or the husband for that matter, but for the sake of 'tradition,' let's say the wife) to stay home and simply raise the children. She needs to go out of the home in order to generate the income.

What this does, however, is create a situation in which the raising of the children is effectively outsourced to someone with much less education than the woman who gave birth to the children. Whether there is a difference in cultural values and morals may be debatable, but certainly the woman outside of the home, for the most part, has greater earning potential, probably stemming from advanced education, than the woman (for the most part) hired to take care of the children.

What does this mean, then, for society in the long term? Does it matter really who raises the children? Or is stimulation and sunshine for a 1 or 2 year old impartial based on who is providing it?

In the short term, it's obvious that the family will have more income to support their lifestyle, but I wonder if having non-parents doing the work of parents (with the attached questions of whether someone who, at the end of the day, is working for the money) is a net gain, net loss, or a net wash-out for the children on the micro level and society on the macro level?

All of this came about during a conversation I had with a friend over Rosh Hashana. She's an attorney and with a 4 month old is fretting the decision about going to work. "This is feminism's greatest joke," she remarked. "You can have a job and have a kid, but if you want to raise your kid yourself, then what do you do?" Or something like that, but I think you get the point.