1. Housework gets a bad rap. It's bad, bad, bad. This is the explicit or implicit message in tons of media & academic coverage of family.

Paid work gets a good rap. It's good, good, good. This is the message in these venues.

But what if<bear w/ me>the work of the home is good..
2. What if ...

Cooking
Baking
Gardening
Painting
Shoveling
Laundry
Fixing & even
Cleaning toilets

is good for us, esp. when *we do it together as a family*?

Better, perhaps, than just doing our paid work/schooling by and for ourselves?
3. These questions struck me in reading about the merits of *chores for kids that are done w/ and for the family*. See below, esp. fascinating comparison between Africa v US 👇🏽
4. For all of our discussion about housework, who does what, how equal it is, how much it takes us away from thing that really matters--paid work, I'd love to see new research on links between *shared family work in the home* & kids/adults' sense of meaning & family solidarity.
5. Here is the article that got me thinking magazine.byu.edu/article/family…

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More from @WilcoxNMP

5 Feb
C'mon, Ezra. I'm all for Romney's new child allowance. But @swinshi's concerns about its potential effects on family & work are *legit*. It's not fair to dismiss them as "mean." Take family. What did Raj Chetty et al find was the best predictor of economic mobility for poor kids?
"Of all the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, 1 factor clearly stands out: family structure. By [Chetty's] reckoning, when it comes to mobility, 'the strongest and most robust predictor is fraction of children w/ single parents.'” slate.com/human-interest…
There's tons of research linking single parenthood to poverty, mobility, educational success, you name it. See this @Princeton @BrookingsInst volume for more: futureofchildren.princeton.edu/sites/futureof…
Read 8 tweets
3 Feb
1. Staggering New Numbers Here:

“5.8 Million Fewer Babies: America’s Lost Decade in Fertility”

@lymanstoneky on the fallout of America’s falling fertility rate @FamStudies ifstudies.org/blog/5-8-milli…
2. “if fertility rates had remained at their 2008 levels (the last time we had replacement-rate fertility in America), how many more babies would have been born [over the last decade]?

The answer is 5.8 million babies.“

@lymanstoneky @FamStudies
3. Childbearing down most among Hispanics👇🏽ifstudies.org/blog/5-8-milli… Image
Read 6 tweets
1 Feb
1. Is “Universal Child Care” a good idea? Consider Quebec, which “launched its universal child care program in 1997.”

Evaluations found “2- to 4-year-old children who had been in child care showed significant ⬆️ in anxiety, aggression, & hyperactivity.” 
ifstudies.org/blog/universal…
2. “As children grew older, these negative outcomes did not dissipate: among 5- to 9-year-olds, the social-emotional problems not only persisted, but in some cases increased, particularly for boys with the most elevated behavioral problems.” economics.mit.edu/files/3103
3. “Follow-up studies conducted 20 years after the program’s inception further revealed a subsequent ‘sharp and contemporaneous increase in criminal behavior’ across Quebec, as the rate of crime conviction jumped 22 percent.”
Read 5 tweets
31 Jan
1. A kind of “Me-First Marriage”—where marriage was seen as a vehicle for happiness, individual fulfillment & self-actualization—reached its zenith in the late 20th c. Many people thought marriage was just abt enjoying the peaks of “Mt. Maslow,” to take @EliJFinkel’s metaphor.👇🏼
2. Many assumed marriage’s other classic functions—mutual aid, financial stability, extending/receiving care to/from kin, & the education/support/care of children—could be handled to an imp. extent by state & market. Leaving men & women to pursue more indiv. model of marriage.
3. But growing social and economic inequality, economic precarity, political & social instability, and the hollowing out of so many of our civic and public institutions mean that a more “Family-First” model of marriage is re-emerging in the 21st century.
Read 10 tweets

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