Education & Career

The Stay At Home Mother (or Father) raising the kids is only second best for family structures.

The Stay At Home Mother (or Father) raising the kids is only second best for family structures.

So, in today's day and age, with so many children in the West being raised by single mothers, and families with two parents out earning paycheques and the kids in daycare; the "traditional stay at home mother raising the kids while dad goes out and brings home money" looks rosy in comparison for most, and it is the ideal many aspire to and hope to provide for their children.

But I argue that it's the silver medalist to the truly ideal family structure; the cohesive unit of enterprise and family life bound together; in which you have two stay at home parents; both working together on the family business; be that a farm on the prairies, a narrowboat in the English canals, or one of the many small storefronts in thousands of towns across every continent where the family's living quarters were perched on the second floor, and husband and wife worked together on the operations of both the home and the business.

In this environment; children have both parents available as role models and childrearing figures nearly all the time, the children also have better access to the world of adults generally, learning about what their parents do to provide the necessities of life, and directly observe and learn about their parents own trades; potentially giving them a direct entry to the world of work, saving tens of thousands of dollars on post secondary education, or going into such education exceptionally prepared.

If; as some have predicted, we find more and more of ourselves out of lucrative work outside of the home as automation replaces more and more jobs; the advantage of the "stay at home mom, breadwinner dad" model falls away; and those seeking the best traditional arrangements to raise children in should not focus on it myopically, especially when a better method is available and still in service.

The Stay At Home Mother (or Father) raising the kids is only second best for family structures.
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