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Aug. 19, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:55
MEN DYING FROM COVID - WOMEN'S CAREERS MOST AFFECTED!
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Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid.
Hope you're doing well. So every now and then, an article comes along that to me just encapsulates so much of what is confused and messy and complicated and misunderstood in sort of modern gender relations.
And this one, from CBC News, fulfills that almost to a T. And the title is, Pandemic Threatens to Wipe Out Decades of Progress for Working Mothers.
Hmm. So pandemic threatens to wipe out decades of progress for working mothers.
So much, of course, is implicit in that that needs to be broken down.
The fact that it's decades...
How do we know it's progress? How do we know that it's progress?
Is the world better off now for children than it was, say, in 1980?
Are the children less in debt?
No. Have school standards improved?
No. Quite the opposite.
Have wages improved for the middle class?
No. They've stagnated or declined for the past...
Is the world better off as a whole because women are working?
That's an important question.
The fact that it's automatically assumed to be progress is your first sign that something is amiss.
Working mothers. That's what's called A contradiction.
Working mothers.
Now, first of all, I've been a stay-at-home dad coming on for 12 years now.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work. I basically gave up writing books when my daughter was born, and I've started to...
I've written two since my daughter was born.
Before that, I was writing like two or three books a year.
I've written The Art of the Argument.
You can get that at www.artoftheargument.com.
I've written Essential Philosophy, www.essentialphilosophy.com.
And that's it.
But what they mean by working mothers is that when they're at work, they're not being mothers.
And when they're mothers, they're not at work.
So working mothers is a contradiction.
These are kind of antonyms, right?
Because it's the opposite.
It says here, economy will suffer if women can't return to the workforce at pre-COVID levels, say experts.
Economy will suffer.
How about children? How about cultural continuity?
How about women's happiness?
Of course, are women happier now than they were in 2010, in 2000, in 1990, in 1980, in 1970?
No. Every decade of women attempting to juggle the work-family balance has resulted in stagnant or lower wages, higher debt, higher female misery, higher male misery.
Why is there such an opioid epidemic in America and in other places in the West?
Does it have something to do with the fact that children are Unprotected.
That children are often raised without fathers.
That children raised in single mother households where abuse levels are sometimes 30 to 35 times higher.
If there's an unrelated male in the household, are we better off?
It's just a question. Are we better off?
Are the things taken for granted as improvements and beneficial?
Are they better off? So the caption is, with school summer camps and daycare facilities closed because of the pandemic, working parents like Toronto law clerk Charlotte Schwartz are juggling full-time work with round-the-clock childcare.
More often than not, women are doing a disproportionate amount of the childminding, and some who have been laid off are not returning to the workforce.
Now, that's very interesting as well, right?
The photo is Anthony Hinsenberg's.
So, juggling full-time work with round-the-clock child care.
Why are you doing that? Why would you want two demanding jobs which both interfere with each other?
Why? I mean, when I was a high school student, I worked three jobs at one time.
Yeah, it was pretty exhausting.
And why did I do that?
Because I, well, I've been paying my own bills since I was 15 years old.
So, yeah, it was kind of important to keep a roof over my head to do that.
Why would you want this?
We're juggling full-time work with around-the-clock childcare.
Why don't you take the time off when your kids are young to cement your relationship with them, to have a bond with them, to make sure that you build the kind of family moat around your children's personality so they don't get sucked into groupthink when the lowest denominator, run-of-the-mill, low-rent teens begin to lure them into bad behavior after they hit puberty.
Why wouldn't you do that?
Because, you know, life is all pay me now or pay me later, right?
And so if you drop your kids into daycare, if you don't really spend much time with them, if you're always busy, if they're always annoying to you or often annoying to you because you're trying to get work done, well, what you're doing is you're putting them in a situation where peer pressure, peer influence takes over from parental authority.
And then when they become teenagers and they start being heavily influenced by their peers, you'll say, well, no, you should listen to mom and dad.
It's like, well, why? We don't have that much of a bond, right?
It doesn't really make any sense. So...
Charlotte Schwartz has four children under the age of 10, one with special needs.
She also has a full-time career as a legal clerk at a busy family law practice in Toronto.
And since the pandemic forced people into homes in March, she's been doing both her jobs around the clock with little reprieve.
Why? Why?
Why would you want to do that?
Here's the thing. I don't know much about being a legal clerk, but a legal clerk is not the same as being a lawyer.
So how is that a career?
If she's got four kids under the age of 10, one with special needs, then those kids desperately need her.
And instead, she's looking up case law and filing whatever, I don't know, filing briefs or whatever they do, right?
It's not really a career because like once you have kids, it's really tough to move up the ladder of a career because where are you going to find the time to get additional education and training and all of that to move up, right?
She said, I've started to shift my day.
She's 37 years old, so I do a bunch of stuff pretty early in the morning, a bunch of stuff late at night, but it's very exhausting.
Schwartz is one of millions of women who've been juggling full workloads and full childcare responsibilities during the pandemic, and the strain of the situation is starting to show.
So quit your job, stay home with your children.
Because again, you're going to pay more down the road when your kids don't have a bond with you.
And particularly when you get old, you dump your kids in daycare, they're going to dump your wrinkled ass in an old age home when you get older.
And what are you going to say? Oh, I really need your support.
It'd be great if we could spend more time together.
And deep down there's this, well, you dumped me in daycare because you were chasing the almighty dollar.
So, why don't you, hey mom, because you dumped me in daycare to chase the almighty dollar, why don't you use that almighty dollar to buy companions for yourself in your old age?
Because you sure as heck bought companions for me when I was a kid by putting me in daycare.
One might think in 2020 the strain would fall equally on the shoulders of all parents.
That's not what the data shows.
During COVID-19, women's participation in the Canadian workforce has fallen to a level not seen in decades.
And with uncertain school plans and few options for childcare, some women are not returning to work.
Well, sure. Of course you're not, because women are doing the math, right?
Which is, let's say you're paying $2,000, $2,500 a month for daycare, and it could be even $3,000, $3,500, or $4,000 if you count.
You need an extra car, you need better clothes, you have lunches out, you've got gas and insurance expenses, you've got all of these kinds of things.
Not to mention, of course, childcare expenses.
You've got to make all of that And more after taxes at your job.
And if you look at, if you've got a couple of kids, if you look at the amount of money you're taking home after all of those expenses are deducted, it's almost nothing.
And so, yeah, they're just doing the math and saying, okay, well, why am I working for a couple of bucks an hour and not spending any time with my kids and not watching them grow up and not training them?
See, culture passes through women.
Culture passes through women.
If you want to destroy a culture, convince women to go to work.
Because then the kids get dumped in daycare.
And I worked in the daycare for a couple of years and there's no cultural transmission.
There's no transmission of moral values in particular.
There's no transmission of Christianity.
There's no transmission of Western traditions or whatever traditions.
You're just wrangling. And you can't get involved in philosophical, deep, moral, meaningful discussions with the kids because the parents will get upset because they need to say something they don't like, right?
So it's just a way of really cutting continuity.
But it's just this automatic thing.
Mom's got to go to work, and if they don't, somehow that's bad.
Well, if that was the case, then both mothers and children should be far, far better off now than they were 40 or 50 or 60 years ago, and it's not the case.
The kids remember the 50s and the 60s as a time of almost complete bliss, where you had cohesive neighborhoods, the mom staying at home, Kept neighborhoods safe and the parents all knew each other, knew each other's business and so on, so the kids could roam around anywhere they wanted and be incredibly safe.
And there were lots of kids around and it was kind of a paradise for children and therefore it must be destroyed by the powers that be, right?
Don't want happiness for children. So let's see here.
Some of the women who were laid off are actually not looking anymore.
That's deeply concerning, said Jennifer Reynolds, CEO of Toronto Financial International, a firm aimed at boosting investment in the city and encouraging women's participation in the workforce.
So basically, they asked advice on this situation from a woman who makes money if women go to work.
Well, that's a conflict of interest.
Of course it is, right? She said, if we don't get women back to work in the types of numbers we saw before, we won't get the economic growth that we really need.
Well, why do we need all this economic growth?
I thought it was bad for the environment.
I thought that less is more.
So what do you mean kind of economic growth that we really need?
That's just not true at all.
If women drop out of the workforce, the wages of men go up.
That's about it. And this is one of the big lies.
Oh, we'll bring women into the workforce, we'll double the productivity.
It's like, no, just drive down the wages.
So it's called the Pandemic She-Session.
A report last month from Robbery See Economics called the hit on women's employment unprecedented by the 1.5 million women in Canada losing their jobs in the first two months of the pandemic.
In April, women's participation in the Canadian workforce, or the share of the working age population that is working or looking for work, fell to 55% at level last seen in May 1986.
In prior recessions, the report said the unemployment rate for men was higher than women, but not this time.
One of the factors at play is that women are more highly represented in service jobs.
Ah, you see, such as work in restaurants, hotels, and retail.
Those were the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic shutdowns, with workers only returning gradually now.
Okay, so, come on, let's be real.
I've worked, where have I worked?
I've worked in restaurants, never worked in, oh no, I did, I worked in kind of a hotel, and retail I worked in as well, in a hardware store and a couple other places, a shelving store.
So these are not careers.
Service jobs suck. They are do-for, make-do, make money while you're a student or a very young person, but, you know, they're kind of dead-end.
They're low-skill as a whole.
So these women's jobs suck.
So if they have kids, why on earth would you give up spending time with your children in order to refill somebody's coffee when I was at...
I used to call a coffee patrol, just go around and refill everyone's coffee.
Or you could be playing with and raising and instilling values in your children.
I mean, come on, it's crazy, right?
These were the sector's hardest hit by the pandemic shutdown, with workers only returning gradually now.
Rena Parekh, a personal trainer in Toronto, found herself with virtually no employment when gyms shut down in March.
She was quick to move client consultations online, but the impact on her income was significant.
She said, I feel like I'm starting all over again after building up a business for the last few years, she said.
I've had to.
Really come to terms with how I'm going to move forward.
She's 36.
She has young children at home, a five-year-old, who was in kindergarten before the pandemic and an 18-month-old who was supposed to enter daycare this year.
Now she's juggling.
Why do I always use this phrase, juggling?
It's kind of predictable, right? Caring for them while continuing to work.
It's a situation experts say is contributing to the decreasing number of women working again or looking for work.
And look, we all know the basic reality that there are two big jumps in a man's income, two big jumps in a man's dedication to his work.
Number one is when he gets married.
And number two is when he has children.
So when women are staying home, if the burden for income falls on the man, the man will just work harder, be more economically productive, more economically valuable, and make money that way.
It's people just adjust, right?
Certainly childcare is factoring into that, says Reynolds.
If we don't have childcare, if we don't have children in schools, that work does fall predominantly, in most cases, to women.
And so those women don't really have a choice, particularly if they work outside of the home.
So he says, if we don't have childcare, well, you do have childcare.
It's called the mother. It's called the father supporting the family while the mother takes care of the children.
If we don't have children in school, that work does fall predominantly, in most cases, to women.
Yes. Particularly before the age of seven, women are particularly well suited to raising children, which evolutionary, of course, you would expect to be the case.
There's breastfeeding, there's patients, women do better with less sleep because babies wake up and so on, so...
It's weird how childcare has become like industrialized, right?
It's like calling marriage, like saying that a hooker is the same as a wife, someone you pay, right?
I mean, come on. The trend of women bearing the brunt of pandemic childcare while trying to continue working has been the topic of countless articles.
The New York Times recently referred to the phenomenon as a she-session.
She identifies with that, this Parekh woman.
She says, Yes, I've made a decision not to go back to the gym until at least the end of the year.
It's hard because I feel like I'm holding myself back in some ways.
I've definitely taken an income cut, which makes it even harder in certain ways to live day to day.
Yeah. See, COVID kills men far more often than it kills women, but women having a tougher time going to the gym is the real problem, right?
Schwartz admitted that on her hardest day, she's also considered taking a leave from her job, but is still desperately resisting the option.
It would be devastating for me right now to take a step back in my career.
I would miss a lot, she said.
I didn't take maternity leave with any of the kids.
I was terrified of what would happen being out of the workforce for a year, so it's very stressful.
So this woman, she's got four kids, one special needs, didn't take maternity leave at all.
That is heartbreaking. That is so, so, so sad.
The wage gap is another reason that in heterosexual partnerships, it's the mothers more than the fathers who have stepped out of the workforce in greater numbers.
That was a factor for her family, says Parekh.
While when we look at a household between incomes and the man is making more, the other person, it almost doesn't make sense for that person not to step back, she says.
In Prax's case, business that her husband's take out, samosa shop is booming.
So the decision seemed obvious, right?
So women are taking on more childcare and men are taking on more income requirements.
Like they're paying more, they're making more and paying more.
So where are all of the articles where they're talking about how, you know, boy, in this pandemic, the shift and burden of financial responsibilities for the family is disproportionately falling on men.
It doesn't exist, right?
I mean, I don't know how many women live in this fantasy world where just conveyor belts of resources come from the state or taxpayers or husbands or boyfriends or men.
I guess it's quite a few. But where are all the articles?
Well, the burden for family income is falling disproportionately on men.
Crazy, right? So there's a wage gap.
Women on average earn 87 cents for every dollar earned by men.
The reason for that, in part, is because women tend to be in professions that earn less money, but there's also outright discrimination for women working in the same roles and being paid less.
Right. So when there's economic hardship, the women drop out of the workforce.
When women have children, a lot of women will...
Take maternity leave or drop out of the workforce.
And then let's say you have a high-skilled position where women get paid more, then you have to try and find someone who's going to fill into that woman's position for six months or three months or nine months or 12 months or 18 months or she may never come back at all.
That's really, really tough as an employer.
So we can have perfect equality for men and women, but it will only last one generation because it means not having any children.
So yay, equality, and then you've just wiped out the entire planet, right?
Good job, everyone. Good job.
As long as we have that gender wage gap, women are not going to have economic equality.
But you see, women don't have economic equality because the burden for these families is falling on the man, right?
Then there's the unpaid labor at home, the so-called second shift of housework and childcare that many women do on top of paid work.
Schwartz admits that in her home and many of her friends' homes, the roles have reverted to more traditional ones since the onset of COVID-19.
It's just very typical, and that's why it's disappointing, you know?
said Schwartz. I don't see groups popping up on Facebook of men supporting other men because men losing their jobs over the disproportionate amount of housework and childcare that they have to provide.
I don't see that happening because it's not.
So, giving men a reason to pursue status is pretty bad for men, but giving women a reason to complain is pretty bad for women and, of course, men and women on both sides of the equation as well, right?
So, okay, so here's the reality.
Childcare is not unpaid work.
Childcare, being a mother, raising your children, is not unpaid work because someone has to pay the bills.
So if you're getting money from welfare, well, it's paid because you get extra money because of, it's not paid like in the free market, but it's paid because you get extra money because of your kids.
If your husband is earning more, then it's not unpaid labor because he's paying the bills.
If your husband makes $100,000 a year, And you're home taking care of the kids.
You're getting $50,000 a year.
Well, probably more, really, because your husband is out and you're enjoying the home more.
But you're getting at least half of his income.
So you are being paid.
You're being paid by your husband to raise your children together, right?
So that's crazy.
This idea that it's just unpaid labor, it's just a way of making people feel resentful, right?
Perak agrees. It's like we're falling right back into old patterns, she said.
It's devastating in many ways, right?
We fought for so long and yet it feels like we haven't made any progress at all, she said.
The reality is that in most households with two working parents, the responsibility needs to be better spread out.
But they already say men are making more.
Men are contributing more financially.
So why wouldn't women contribute more when it comes to taking care of the house?
Oh, that's crazy, right?
Reynolds worries the shift in responsibilities could become permanent as women find it harder to reenter the workforce if they decide to later.
If you take a few years out, there's no doubt about it.
It's hard to go back, she said.
It's a possibility everyone should be concerned about, says Reynolds.
This could have a very, very long-term impact.
Impact on women and their broader economy, she said.
Broader economy, I get it.
People don't always identify that women's work and women's participating in the labor force is actually a huge growth generator for the economy.
The RBC report also warns of significant economic consequences if women's participation rate doesn't return to pre-COVID levels.
So, you're selling time for your children, right?
It's that old Jim Morrison song, trading your hours for a handful of dimes.
You're trading time with your children for spare change.
I mean, it's really sad.
I mean, what kind of ridiculous economic calculation is that?
In the meantime, Schwartz and Parekh and mothers like them across the country are just trying to make it through this day.
Some are easier than others. It's really hard because when I was going to my office I could shut everything out and get my work done.
Now anxiety is high because you're trying to have this career that in my case I've been building for 18 years and then all these additional tasks fall to you.
Yeah, so when she says she could shut everything out she means that she could completely forget about the existence of her children.
It's just reality. So, Parak, who has continued to do virtual consults with clients, always warning them her kids are in the background, has also felt the toll of juggling, there it is again, juggling her work and family responsibilities, and yet she's motivated to keep going, in part to be a mentor for her son and daughter.
My kids are young, but they're still watching, she said.
I know one day we're going to look back on this and talk about the time we were in isolation, but mommy kept working, mommy kept going and doing what she needed to do.
Yeah, what she needed to do, what the kids need her to do.
So I applaud all the women who are working two jobs right now or more and supporting their families.
It's not easy on anyone!
Yeah, it's very, very sad.
It's very sad. You know, they always talk about this big maternal bond and the bond that women have with their children.
But when you look at it, from a non-sentimental or factual standpoint, women are usually making at most a couple of bucks an hour after you pay childcare expenses and extra expenses for working.
So women are being paid a couple of bucks an hour in order to not spend time with their children.
So how strong is the maternal bond?
Two dollars an hour, three dollars an hour, and they'll dump their kids and go run after the shreds of the almighty dollar.
It's really sad. It's really tragic.
And it just shows you how powerful propaganda is, that propaganda can overcome the most basic instinct to be with nurture and protect your children.
And it's It's really, really, really sad.
And I hope that this is a bit of a wake-up call that all of this gender stuff has mostly been LARPing based upon debt and propaganda.
And the whole COVID situation is a wake-up call to the limitations of propaganda because this is something we can't build away and the effects are having significant impact on society.
And of course, people are just trying to return to propaganda, but...
It's not going to work. At some point, I hope this is a giant wake-up call.
Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
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I hugely appreciate it.
Have yourselves a wonderful day. Stay safe, my friends.
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