"Europe" doesn't mean anything. Europe is not a country. I'm from France, and the situation here (albeit acceptable) is really not the same as the situation in Nordic countries like Sweden, Iceland or Norway. But I get your point, and the fact that maternity leave still doesn't exist in the US baffles me. Also, everything is crazily expensive (paying 1500 dollars a month for daycare ? No thanks) !
In the end, I think people make way less babies because they just... don't want to. The money part is important, but not as much as we think it is. If you truly want to have a child, you will. Personnally, I leave in a country where it's relatively easy (compared to the US) to have a family. But I'm still on the fence, and it's largely in part because of the patriarchy. I don't want to lose my freedom. I don't want to become a domestic slave, like my mother was. I don't want to make sacrifices, because I only have one life. And I bet I'm not the only 30-something who think in these terms.
Honestly, the thing is : if I was a man, I probably would want to have one child. That's another way of answering the question.
Swede here. I find it so hilarious that he thought parental leave was boring because all you do i stare at an infant? For 8 months (which would be the time each parent take here if the follow the recommended procedure however a lot of dads still only take the mandatory 3 months). And he actually has kids? Has he MET THEM?
anyhoo USA baffles me daily. It all seems insane. Parents here are tired and burnt out and all that even with childcare and free schools and reduced working hours (if you can afford the pay cut…). It’s still exhausting to have very little adult time. But I do think it’s to a different degree, if you look at population level.
I'm also childfree by choice and relocated to Europe 4 years ago. Despite never having been a kid person (and 100% am not having them), I'm still astonished by how independent and well-adjusted kids are here. They bike by themselves to school from age 5 or so, go to the grocery store or run errands for their parents, and accompany their parents everywhere without being a nuisance or needing to be glued to an iPad. Babies will even be at bars and concerts with their little noise-cancelling headphones. Parents never stop having their own life! There's no helicopter parenting or gentle parenting or any of these fads and kids seem soOOoOo chill in comparison to all the kids I was around back home. Also, dads frequently take kids out by themselves or with their friends, which made me realize I don't think I've EVER seen a dad at the park alone with his kid in the US, it still feels very much a mom responsibility. So mom gets a break, dad is actually an active participant in his kids' life AND has a social group of his own... everyone wins.
One knee-jerk reaction I continue to have though is all the stereotypes about working life. There's still very much a Protestant/Calvinist work ethic here and people definitely trend toward being workaholics even with muuuuch lower salaries than in the US-- something to keep in mind for those thinking about taking the plunge to move here :) Everyone I know has Slack and email on their phone and works 40 hours/week if not more. I guess the one major difference is that you get way more PTO, and it's quite sacred, no one is messaging you while you're on holiday. But when you're at work, you're definitely working hard, and I do get sort of annoyed by people back home always insinuating that everyone is just drinking Aperol Spritz and screwing around here haha!
I think you're so right, helicopter parenting feels like the norm now whereas it really never did when we were young. My mom was a parent full-time and I do not recall being helicopter parented at all! My friend Laura (who has lived in the U.S. and in Europe) absolutely agrees about the stereotypes about working life, had the same knee-jerk reaction! Capitalism is alive and well
Echoing Caroline to say that Europe is not a monolith! Working culture varies across different countries, much like benefits. The Under the Influence podcast did a great episode recently comparing parenting in the US, Kenya, Japan and Finland. Highly recommend.
Hiii – I'm an American in Germany. I would agree that there are numerous benefits for children here (*almost* free childcare until the age of 6 is a big one), but at what cost to mothers? Schools end at midday (not around 3/4 pm like in the USA), and while more schools are instituting after-school hours for children whose mothers work, many schools still don't offer this option. This means that most mothers end up working part-time...which affects their future pension, their taxation class (Germany's tax system is so patriarchal), and their likelihood to be (or not to be) promoted.
Germany recently changed their maternity leave law. While every mother is entitled to 12 months of maternity leave (14 months total for a couple, with no more than 12 months taken by 1 parent), you're *only* entitled to maternity pay if you and your partner have a taxable income of under €175,000 (together!). By no means is having a taxable income of €175,000 "rich" – yes, you're living well...but you still need a monthly income. So what choice does this leave for women? Realistically, it's telling women to either work less or be less ambitious so they don't go over the €175,000 with their husband. Could the husband decrease his work? Yes, but let's be realistic – society (unfortunately) doesn't work like that.
I know this is a nuanced topic, and I've oversimplified things above. I moved to Germany in my early 20s, fell in love, and never left. My husband and I eventually want to have children, but I'm not convinced the grass is greener over here in Germany...
Ooooooooh wow, that is so interesting. Like we're saying if you make too much money in Germany you don't deserve to have paid maternity leave? That's fucked up and I hate it. I think you're totally right in that it de-incentivizes women to be more ambitious with their careers
France here, just want to say we have less kids because we study more nowadays (same as the almost everywhere), so more people have difficulties conceiving, and also we earn less than in the Us and we still want a life, we want to be able to afford holidays, hobbies, kids activities and such. And it s nice to have a choice. Most people who have kids here don t live for their kids but with their kids (same for their work) even if the organization and mental pressure going with it tends to weight on the day to day life. We would never envy someone hyperproductive who never takes holidays, or as said elsewhere who doesn't know their kids personality. We all want to have it all but if we can afford it we will never cut down on personnal time (or family time). I don t have kids but i am ok with it and still work hard on having balance between work and personnal time, even if it s just me time.
Great piece! I had a period where I left a company by choice and spent a few weeks on a cross-country bike trip which was an incredible reset. I did feel a bit of a pull at the end to get back home and get into the job search. The annoying thing was that I quickly got what I thought was going to be an amazing job and was let go after a month (unprofessional start-up behavior). THAT time without a job I could not relax at all. Now I felt I neeeded to spend all of my time researching and applying for jobs, even though I had nothing but free time! I wish I had looked at it more like a 9-5 job SEARCHING for a job and not let it consume all of my attention and time. It was also challenging doing the networking required to find job leads, since even if I avoided the mention of my 1-month job, I was internally embarassed in a way that I hadn't been the month before doing the same thing. Point being that your mental state and circumstances affect how joblessness feels to you so much. And also that I had been prepared to be without a job, I had at least 6 months of savings, I had a good network of support, and I still felt the constant drive/stress/embarassment of not having a job to prove to people that I was a productive person.
I also just wanted to share a quick story about parenting in Europe (Spain). I was in Madrid on a solo trip, and was walking through a very non-touristy neighborhood. It started pouring and I ducked into a very generic bar to wait it out. It was full of people, around 3 pm on a Wednesday which surprised me a bit. I got a drink at the bar and eventually went down to the basement to use the restroom... and the whole lower level was FULL of kids! There was 1 adult and maybe 25 kids just playing in the lower level, and suddenly I realized that all of these bar patrons upstairs prioritize socializing with each other and take time in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the week, to get out and spend time in the community, and aren't catering at all to their children or letting them limit their social lives. And I'm sure those children got so much out of getting to hang out with each other out in the real world with very light supervision. The whole experience was kind of a revelation to me!
Wow that's actually really cool! I feel like (in the US) when I was growing up we had so much time away from our parents, like my friends and I would just run around outside in our neighborhood. One time apparently I hid under my neighbor's deck because I didn't want to come home and I still get shit for it as an adult lol. Now, I feel like people would literally call child protective services. Like I think this is a shift from how Boomers parented and not for the better. Why shouldn't adults get to prioritize their own "adult time" and let the kids wander a bit?
I’m also childfree by choice and recently made the move to Europe. Even though I am still not having kids over here, I can see how much more support exists for moms and parents in general here.
I’m taking advantage of the lower cost of living, higher quality of life and slowing down a bit. Instead of a full-time corporate job, two side hustles, and grad school, I’m focusing on school and growing my side hustles into a sustainable business.
One cost that shocked even me is public transit. I bought an annual pass for €365. Instead of car insurance, gas, maintenance, parking, etc. I spend just over $1 per day to have unlimited access to subways, trams, and buses. My daily steps have doubled YOY too!
Meanwhile I just got a bill for $800 for car insurance which only covers HALF the year. My door has been slightly bashed in for a year because I can't afford to fix it :)
I'm Canadian, and I would say on most things, Canadian culture and policies reflect somewhat of a midpoint between the US and Europe. I loathe the American ideals that 'making money' seems to be placed above any other value, and the perception that something isn't worth doing if you dont find a way to make money off of it.
I am childfree by choice, but all of my friends here who have had kids have felt very supported by their workplace and government policies to support parents. Certainly though, being nearer to family/their own parents has made their lives much easier in the early stages of parenthood than those who were farther away.
But, I also am not sold that any of that is the difference-maker. My friends with kids - even when they have family nearby, a community of other parents to share the load, supportive husbands and partners, and financial stability to be comfortable - are still often stressed, stretched, and exhausted. But this seems to be because they WANT to do all the things; as mothers, they want to be the default and intensively involved parent. They also love their careers and want to be top achievers and contributors in the workplace. They do not feel that there is some kind of external pressure to 'do it all' or that there is an impossible choice forced upon them because something is lacking - these are both things they want, fully and deeply, and are actively choosing.
So I'm kind of inclined to agree with the idea that there is some inherent irreconcilable tension. With all the supports on the world, there is still only so much time (and mental capacity and emotional bandwidth) in a day.
It is actually interesting to look at all of this in a historical context too where this has only become more of a problem as women have joined the workforce en masse. It used to be a woman's "job" to raise kids and now that women want to have paid work and (sometimes) the work of raising kids, too, it's become noticeably harder on everyone because it was never set up that way in the past.
True, but I think this would also be true of a dad, if roles were reversed. Being an 'intensive parent' AND having a fulfilling, even moderately demanding career just seems like too much. Then or now, for either parent.
I'm a dual Irish-Australian citizen so, even in high school, I had always planned a move to Ireland and/or the greater continental region. This became more urgent, year on year, from the age of 18 through to 30 until my husband and I finally made the move on New Year's Day 2020. We lived in Ireland for two years, then spent six months in the Schengen Zone and the Balkans, before moving to Georgia in the Northern Caucasus 18 months ago.
On a values level including the question of having children (note, still undecided), living here has allowed us to have greater alignment on almost all levels. That said, I think moving anywhere is a solution only if we know our why and can have peace around the sacrifices we'll be making. A significant sacrifice we have made in moving to Georgia is clear access to high-quality healthcare as the language barrier can be really complicated. Conversely, our overall stress levels are qualitatively and quantitatively manageable in a way they weren't in Australia and Ireland. We talk constantly about how it feels like having a baby would be more manageable living here though the underlying point we return to repeatedly is how to make it work on our terms. Like any social conditioning, that's a scary thought because what if we do it wrong? But on the other hand, what if the only way to get it right -- and parent in a way where both child and parents thrive -- is to do it this way?
We just got back from a week on Crete where we met a couple from Munich travelling with their six-month-old baby; they were spending a month on the island, slowly travelling by ferry from beach town to beach town, then they were going back to Germany so that the mother could restart work and her (male) partner would be the primary caregiver for his final six months of parental leave before their baby went into daycare. They seemed like a family who were really doing it their own way and making it work as best they could for them.
Of everything I imagine, after all our basic human rights including a safe environment without extreme existential threats are met, being in a position to do this is logical to me. Even so, we need to know precisely what it is we want and need and are prepared to sacrifice to make this a reality. Europe definitely isn't a solution but it might be someone's solution. I won't deny that it's a luxury or a privileged position to be able to experiment to find out what is. Nevertheless, trying to make it work in other places because I felt like I should or it's what everyone else was doing was a velvet coffin. Trying to do it like everyone else made me very sick. I'm grateful we chose the discomfort of the unknown and disappointing people with expectations of us over the comfort of what was known and the norm for people around us.
Related: Kelly, if you and Paul are ready for a wine trip, you're so welcome to visit us in Georgia! We'll have the tvishi and saperavi ready xx
Great topic and fascinating comments section too! This is a something I think about often as a fence-sitter.
Two recommendations for you if you haven’t come across them already:
1. I quit my job earlier this year and had just read Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. The simplified idea is we all deserve rest and don’t need to earn it. This is an important read for many reasons and I highly recommend.
2. The Auntie Bulletin by Lisa Sibbett on Substack is a fantastic resource for what it looks like to live more communally, particularly how non-parents can support the child-raising burden (and joy!).
"Europe" doesn't mean anything. Europe is not a country. I'm from France, and the situation here (albeit acceptable) is really not the same as the situation in Nordic countries like Sweden, Iceland or Norway. But I get your point, and the fact that maternity leave still doesn't exist in the US baffles me. Also, everything is crazily expensive (paying 1500 dollars a month for daycare ? No thanks) !
In the end, I think people make way less babies because they just... don't want to. The money part is important, but not as much as we think it is. If you truly want to have a child, you will. Personnally, I leave in a country where it's relatively easy (compared to the US) to have a family. But I'm still on the fence, and it's largely in part because of the patriarchy. I don't want to lose my freedom. I don't want to become a domestic slave, like my mother was. I don't want to make sacrifices, because I only have one life. And I bet I'm not the only 30-something who think in these terms.
Honestly, the thing is : if I was a man, I probably would want to have one child. That's another way of answering the question.
Love this answer. A (female) friend of mine one famously said "I want to be a dad" and I've never forgotten it
Swede here. I find it so hilarious that he thought parental leave was boring because all you do i stare at an infant? For 8 months (which would be the time each parent take here if the follow the recommended procedure however a lot of dads still only take the mandatory 3 months). And he actually has kids? Has he MET THEM?
anyhoo USA baffles me daily. It all seems insane. Parents here are tired and burnt out and all that even with childcare and free schools and reduced working hours (if you can afford the pay cut…). It’s still exhausting to have very little adult time. But I do think it’s to a different degree, if you look at population level.
Do come to Sweden, you would like it!
The USA baffles me daily too lol
I'm also childfree by choice and relocated to Europe 4 years ago. Despite never having been a kid person (and 100% am not having them), I'm still astonished by how independent and well-adjusted kids are here. They bike by themselves to school from age 5 or so, go to the grocery store or run errands for their parents, and accompany their parents everywhere without being a nuisance or needing to be glued to an iPad. Babies will even be at bars and concerts with their little noise-cancelling headphones. Parents never stop having their own life! There's no helicopter parenting or gentle parenting or any of these fads and kids seem soOOoOo chill in comparison to all the kids I was around back home. Also, dads frequently take kids out by themselves or with their friends, which made me realize I don't think I've EVER seen a dad at the park alone with his kid in the US, it still feels very much a mom responsibility. So mom gets a break, dad is actually an active participant in his kids' life AND has a social group of his own... everyone wins.
One knee-jerk reaction I continue to have though is all the stereotypes about working life. There's still very much a Protestant/Calvinist work ethic here and people definitely trend toward being workaholics even with muuuuch lower salaries than in the US-- something to keep in mind for those thinking about taking the plunge to move here :) Everyone I know has Slack and email on their phone and works 40 hours/week if not more. I guess the one major difference is that you get way more PTO, and it's quite sacred, no one is messaging you while you're on holiday. But when you're at work, you're definitely working hard, and I do get sort of annoyed by people back home always insinuating that everyone is just drinking Aperol Spritz and screwing around here haha!
I think you're so right, helicopter parenting feels like the norm now whereas it really never did when we were young. My mom was a parent full-time and I do not recall being helicopter parented at all! My friend Laura (who has lived in the U.S. and in Europe) absolutely agrees about the stereotypes about working life, had the same knee-jerk reaction! Capitalism is alive and well
Echoing Caroline to say that Europe is not a monolith! Working culture varies across different countries, much like benefits. The Under the Influence podcast did a great episode recently comparing parenting in the US, Kenya, Japan and Finland. Highly recommend.
Hiii – I'm an American in Germany. I would agree that there are numerous benefits for children here (*almost* free childcare until the age of 6 is a big one), but at what cost to mothers? Schools end at midday (not around 3/4 pm like in the USA), and while more schools are instituting after-school hours for children whose mothers work, many schools still don't offer this option. This means that most mothers end up working part-time...which affects their future pension, their taxation class (Germany's tax system is so patriarchal), and their likelihood to be (or not to be) promoted.
Germany recently changed their maternity leave law. While every mother is entitled to 12 months of maternity leave (14 months total for a couple, with no more than 12 months taken by 1 parent), you're *only* entitled to maternity pay if you and your partner have a taxable income of under €175,000 (together!). By no means is having a taxable income of €175,000 "rich" – yes, you're living well...but you still need a monthly income. So what choice does this leave for women? Realistically, it's telling women to either work less or be less ambitious so they don't go over the €175,000 with their husband. Could the husband decrease his work? Yes, but let's be realistic – society (unfortunately) doesn't work like that.
I know this is a nuanced topic, and I've oversimplified things above. I moved to Germany in my early 20s, fell in love, and never left. My husband and I eventually want to have children, but I'm not convinced the grass is greener over here in Germany...
Ooooooooh wow, that is so interesting. Like we're saying if you make too much money in Germany you don't deserve to have paid maternity leave? That's fucked up and I hate it. I think you're totally right in that it de-incentivizes women to be more ambitious with their careers
France here, just want to say we have less kids because we study more nowadays (same as the almost everywhere), so more people have difficulties conceiving, and also we earn less than in the Us and we still want a life, we want to be able to afford holidays, hobbies, kids activities and such. And it s nice to have a choice. Most people who have kids here don t live for their kids but with their kids (same for their work) even if the organization and mental pressure going with it tends to weight on the day to day life. We would never envy someone hyperproductive who never takes holidays, or as said elsewhere who doesn't know their kids personality. We all want to have it all but if we can afford it we will never cut down on personnal time (or family time). I don t have kids but i am ok with it and still work hard on having balance between work and personnal time, even if it s just me time.
Amen
Great piece! I had a period where I left a company by choice and spent a few weeks on a cross-country bike trip which was an incredible reset. I did feel a bit of a pull at the end to get back home and get into the job search. The annoying thing was that I quickly got what I thought was going to be an amazing job and was let go after a month (unprofessional start-up behavior). THAT time without a job I could not relax at all. Now I felt I neeeded to spend all of my time researching and applying for jobs, even though I had nothing but free time! I wish I had looked at it more like a 9-5 job SEARCHING for a job and not let it consume all of my attention and time. It was also challenging doing the networking required to find job leads, since even if I avoided the mention of my 1-month job, I was internally embarassed in a way that I hadn't been the month before doing the same thing. Point being that your mental state and circumstances affect how joblessness feels to you so much. And also that I had been prepared to be without a job, I had at least 6 months of savings, I had a good network of support, and I still felt the constant drive/stress/embarassment of not having a job to prove to people that I was a productive person.
I also just wanted to share a quick story about parenting in Europe (Spain). I was in Madrid on a solo trip, and was walking through a very non-touristy neighborhood. It started pouring and I ducked into a very generic bar to wait it out. It was full of people, around 3 pm on a Wednesday which surprised me a bit. I got a drink at the bar and eventually went down to the basement to use the restroom... and the whole lower level was FULL of kids! There was 1 adult and maybe 25 kids just playing in the lower level, and suddenly I realized that all of these bar patrons upstairs prioritize socializing with each other and take time in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the week, to get out and spend time in the community, and aren't catering at all to their children or letting them limit their social lives. And I'm sure those children got so much out of getting to hang out with each other out in the real world with very light supervision. The whole experience was kind of a revelation to me!
Wow that's actually really cool! I feel like (in the US) when I was growing up we had so much time away from our parents, like my friends and I would just run around outside in our neighborhood. One time apparently I hid under my neighbor's deck because I didn't want to come home and I still get shit for it as an adult lol. Now, I feel like people would literally call child protective services. Like I think this is a shift from how Boomers parented and not for the better. Why shouldn't adults get to prioritize their own "adult time" and let the kids wander a bit?
I’m also childfree by choice and recently made the move to Europe. Even though I am still not having kids over here, I can see how much more support exists for moms and parents in general here.
I’m taking advantage of the lower cost of living, higher quality of life and slowing down a bit. Instead of a full-time corporate job, two side hustles, and grad school, I’m focusing on school and growing my side hustles into a sustainable business.
One cost that shocked even me is public transit. I bought an annual pass for €365. Instead of car insurance, gas, maintenance, parking, etc. I spend just over $1 per day to have unlimited access to subways, trams, and buses. My daily steps have doubled YOY too!
Meanwhile I just got a bill for $800 for car insurance which only covers HALF the year. My door has been slightly bashed in for a year because I can't afford to fix it :)
Cars are so expensive! With the addition of amazing features like backup cameras, sensors, etc., they are more expensive to maintain now.
I am loving living in a walkable city again; it's been awhile since I was in NYC.
Fantastic topic this week!
I'm Canadian, and I would say on most things, Canadian culture and policies reflect somewhat of a midpoint between the US and Europe. I loathe the American ideals that 'making money' seems to be placed above any other value, and the perception that something isn't worth doing if you dont find a way to make money off of it.
I am childfree by choice, but all of my friends here who have had kids have felt very supported by their workplace and government policies to support parents. Certainly though, being nearer to family/their own parents has made their lives much easier in the early stages of parenthood than those who were farther away.
But, I also am not sold that any of that is the difference-maker. My friends with kids - even when they have family nearby, a community of other parents to share the load, supportive husbands and partners, and financial stability to be comfortable - are still often stressed, stretched, and exhausted. But this seems to be because they WANT to do all the things; as mothers, they want to be the default and intensively involved parent. They also love their careers and want to be top achievers and contributors in the workplace. They do not feel that there is some kind of external pressure to 'do it all' or that there is an impossible choice forced upon them because something is lacking - these are both things they want, fully and deeply, and are actively choosing.
So I'm kind of inclined to agree with the idea that there is some inherent irreconcilable tension. With all the supports on the world, there is still only so much time (and mental capacity and emotional bandwidth) in a day.
It is actually interesting to look at all of this in a historical context too where this has only become more of a problem as women have joined the workforce en masse. It used to be a woman's "job" to raise kids and now that women want to have paid work and (sometimes) the work of raising kids, too, it's become noticeably harder on everyone because it was never set up that way in the past.
True, but I think this would also be true of a dad, if roles were reversed. Being an 'intensive parent' AND having a fulfilling, even moderately demanding career just seems like too much. Then or now, for either parent.
I'm a dual Irish-Australian citizen so, even in high school, I had always planned a move to Ireland and/or the greater continental region. This became more urgent, year on year, from the age of 18 through to 30 until my husband and I finally made the move on New Year's Day 2020. We lived in Ireland for two years, then spent six months in the Schengen Zone and the Balkans, before moving to Georgia in the Northern Caucasus 18 months ago.
On a values level including the question of having children (note, still undecided), living here has allowed us to have greater alignment on almost all levels. That said, I think moving anywhere is a solution only if we know our why and can have peace around the sacrifices we'll be making. A significant sacrifice we have made in moving to Georgia is clear access to high-quality healthcare as the language barrier can be really complicated. Conversely, our overall stress levels are qualitatively and quantitatively manageable in a way they weren't in Australia and Ireland. We talk constantly about how it feels like having a baby would be more manageable living here though the underlying point we return to repeatedly is how to make it work on our terms. Like any social conditioning, that's a scary thought because what if we do it wrong? But on the other hand, what if the only way to get it right -- and parent in a way where both child and parents thrive -- is to do it this way?
We just got back from a week on Crete where we met a couple from Munich travelling with their six-month-old baby; they were spending a month on the island, slowly travelling by ferry from beach town to beach town, then they were going back to Germany so that the mother could restart work and her (male) partner would be the primary caregiver for his final six months of parental leave before their baby went into daycare. They seemed like a family who were really doing it their own way and making it work as best they could for them.
Of everything I imagine, after all our basic human rights including a safe environment without extreme existential threats are met, being in a position to do this is logical to me. Even so, we need to know precisely what it is we want and need and are prepared to sacrifice to make this a reality. Europe definitely isn't a solution but it might be someone's solution. I won't deny that it's a luxury or a privileged position to be able to experiment to find out what is. Nevertheless, trying to make it work in other places because I felt like I should or it's what everyone else was doing was a velvet coffin. Trying to do it like everyone else made me very sick. I'm grateful we chose the discomfort of the unknown and disappointing people with expectations of us over the comfort of what was known and the norm for people around us.
Related: Kelly, if you and Paul are ready for a wine trip, you're so welcome to visit us in Georgia! We'll have the tvishi and saperavi ready xx
Great topic and fascinating comments section too! This is a something I think about often as a fence-sitter.
Two recommendations for you if you haven’t come across them already:
1. I quit my job earlier this year and had just read Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. The simplified idea is we all deserve rest and don’t need to earn it. This is an important read for many reasons and I highly recommend.
2. The Auntie Bulletin by Lisa Sibbett on Substack is a fantastic resource for what it looks like to live more communally, particularly how non-parents can support the child-raising burden (and joy!).