It's hurting in some ways, for example in increased prices for housing. If families with two income earners compete with families with one income earner, the outlook is bleak for one earner families. Prices simply rise to what the two earner households can afford. In fact many families can not afford the single earner model anymore.

There are also changed expectation, although presumably those can be managed. But once daycare is available, pressure can be on women to actually work. Where I live, you get strange looks if you don't give your kid to daycare from age one.

Apart from that it seems to me if somebody has a well paying career (like Amanda), they should be able to afford daycare anyway. If they don't, I'm not sure if society should pay for daycare just so that somebody can go to work to satisfy their ego (if their work yields less than the cost of daycare).

What you fail to mention though is the whole host of benefits to society that comes from gender equality, equality that is a direct result of woman working.

Unfortunately it seems to be fundamentally difficult to make both models of the family work equally well simultaneously.

> whole host of benefits to society that comes from gender equality

Can you give me some examples? Not disagreeing, just would like to know.

I can see how there's a lot of benefits to society for men and women to receive equal amounts of esteem and respect for the work they do, but I'm not convinced it has to be the exact same work in the exact same proportions.

What exact benefits do you mean?

I think technological progress has freed women to do other things than, say washing clothes and other household chores.

That doing other things can of course benefit society, if they so chose. A washing machine saving 16 hours of labor per week can bring society a benefit of 16 work hours per week.

As for childcare, I am not sure I agree that organizing childcare so that fewer people can take care of the children is necessarily a benefit. It can be, but there seems to be a limit, too. For example few people would say "one person is enough to take care of 100 toddlers", which would free 99 people (mothers, mostly) to do other things than childcare.

Also, if we think in terms of "benefits to society", wouldn't there be other worthwhile targets? For example, what if instead of watching TV, people would do something useful for society? It would be a huge net benefit - so maybe we should outlaw TVs?

Meaning we neglect that people may have children because they like having them, not because they want to provide a service to society.

The two income trap you mention was the subject of an Elizabeth Warren book sometime in the early 2000s. It’s a real issue, I’m not sure how to solve it, but it seems like a different larger scale issue. Also at this point its a little late. That societal evolution has already created facts on the ground such that in most larger cities it’s impossible to afford a good middle class lifestyle without two incomes.

Given that, what’s a simple thing that we could do to make life better? Make it easier for people to cope with that. Good, easy childcare is one clear way to do it.

It’s also wrong to suggest this is a rich people problem. If anything the lack of childcare is an even more acute strain at the lower end of the wage scale.

Completely free childcare for everyone may be unworkable or undesirable for a variety of reasons, but it seems clear we can do a whole lot more, and we would benefit in the aggregate. Not the least of which because more people from different backgrounds in the workplace is a great way to build empathy and creativity.

The "we" who benefits, would that include the children?

Essentially, the going theory seems to be that society would be better of if it would delegate childcare to less people per child, contrary to the "traditional" one on one of mothers and their children. (Thinking about it, in the old days mothers had more children, so it was rarely one on one either).

Also, it seems to consider having children merely as a productive factor for society, rather than something people do for its own sake.

I like to compare children to Ferraris, as both are expensive (children probably even more so than Ferraris).

So in analogy, people like to buy Ferraris, but society would be better off if those Ferraris would be parked in somebody else's garage. Think about all the time people waste driving their Ferraris, which they could have otherwise put to productive use for the benefit of society.

We already have socially funded free child care through the ages of 6-18, is it that much of a stretch for society to provide it for 0-5 too?

It's hurting Jane in the sense that her family has to get by on one income vs two and due to 'keeping up with the Jones' her family then feel poor and disenfranchised because they can't have all the same stuff Amanda can. Forgetting of course that they then have the privilege of Jane being able to raise get kids personally.

If we use a tax to pay for the child care, then depending upon how the tax is structured it could be that an increase tax on Jane (either directly, or on the partner in the relationship who is working) can make it so that it makes more economical sense for Jane to work and use the subsidized child care. Just like today the opposite often happens (child care costs so much that the lower earning parent can have a hard time justify having a job). I think it is possible to find a balance but we haven't managed to do so yet and I wouldn't bet on it anytime soon.