Elle and I chat about relationship anarchy and finding baby-raising nesting partners. Non monogamy and coparenting are definitely things that can work together. Enjoy our lively conversation and possibly the dulcet sounds of my trying to discreetly eat an orange while recording. We talk about time allocation and how hard these issues can be to navigate as a woman.
We briefly discuss how the gender pay gap is getting to a point where it’s almost entirely due to motherhood. In equal partnerships where both share domestic duties rather than assuming it’s the woman’s job (think “I have to go do some dishes rather than I have to go help my wife with the dishes”), even in those equal partnerships, the man will go to work and if it’s known he’s a father, he’ll make a little more than men and women in the workplace. The mother, however, will go to work and make significantly less than her non mother female coworkers. I’ve included a link as I find it both horrible and fascinating.
We also recorded a session about dream living arrangements and forming intentional non monogamous communities, and we’ll tackle that topic in a few weeks if you’re a patreon. For now, I’m excited to have Elle back to discuss non monogamy and how it intersects with parenting.
Resources
NYTimes: The Gender Pay Gap is Largely Because of Motherhood
See the study below, page 39 figure A vs figure B of this study from Denmark. Look at page 39 figure D to see the wage rate and how mothers 20 years after having their first child are paid less even when you take into consideration hours worked and that motherhood in its immediate demands are behind them. It’s also possible that when paid less, people choose to work fewer hours; so it’s a bad assumption (especially 10-20 years later) that working fewer hours is necessarily why people are paid less, especially when they proportionally more hours as evidenced by page 39 figure D.
“if a college-educated woman has one child, she will lose about a million dollars in lifetime earnings. I didn’t have my child until I was over 40, and I already had a number of years working. But my Mommy Tax is close to a million.” – Ann Crittenden