It seems to me obvious that not all women with children leave the workforce for the same reasons. The decision to stay home with one's children, seek part-time work, or work full-time is a complicated one, based on personal desires and beliefs, social expectations, the nature of the woman's job, interfamily dynamics, and economics. Some women no doubt would stay home if they could but don't believe they can afford to. Some who stay home would like to work if they had better child care options or a job with sufficient flexibility. But there are no doubt some whose decision is not only driven by the family budget, but also other considerations, and those women would continue to stay home or continue to work anyway. The point is that not all women are the same, and not all families are the same, and it's silly to act as though there is a single explanation for behavior across a variety of geographic, economic, and social groups.

Very very true! Agree completely.

And it also means that there is not one single way to try and "fix" the alleged "problem", even if we could.

Does it really matter how many women are working? Is it really indicative of anything? Why can't we women just make our choices, whatever the reasons, and not have to worry about making a statement because of it?

I get the feeling that second-wavers feel betrayed that so many women are "opting out" for whatever reason. But the fact is, maybe these second-wavers never really asked ALL women what they wanted.

I'm glad I have the CHOICE (well, it's not much of a CHOICE since I HAVE to work, but let's just go with that for the purposes of the discussion) to go to work or not. But if I make the CHOICE not to, why does anyone care?

Again, even if one of the reasons is because of the workplace not being "family friendly", making it family friendly may still not bring more women in because they may still WANT to stay at home.

And those that HAVE to or WANT to work are going to anyway, as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'd certainly love to be able to either SAH or have flexible work time and still make good money.

I just don't think it's going to happen that way, especially for lower-income people or people in certain types of jobs where flexibility just can't happen due to the nature of the job.

Look there are only 2 ways I know to have more money: get paid more and/or spend less. Getting paid more is going to be hard if you are working less, obviously. Spending less can be done but only to a certain degree. Again, my husband and I do not have luxury items, but we do have income tax, SS, Medicare, Unemployment and Disability, all of which takes out of my paycheck at least 36% every pay period. That's a lot of money!

I've advocated it before - getting rid of income tax (but I'm no tax expert so feel free to disagree and tell me why I'm wrong), and making the others VOLUNTARY, make them a CHOICE, so that if you are already good with your money and frugal, you can do with that money as YOU like to save (or not save) for your future. If you're not so great, well, you can VOLUNTARILY set it aside.

Again, this is not fully worked out, nor have I spoken with experts, but that seems to me a good way to start helping not only families, but everybody.

"I've advocated it before - getting rid of income tax (but I'm no tax expert so feel free to disagree and tell me why I'm wrong), and making the others VOLUNTARY, make them a CHOICE, so that if you are already good with your money and frugal, you can do with that money as YOU like to save (or not save) for your future. If you're not so great, well, you can VOLUNTARILY set it aside."

I'm not a tax expert, either, but human nature is such that if you give ppl a CHOICE to pay for their gov't out of their paycheck (income tax), they won't. Who will pay for services then? You don't like plowed roads, voting booths, public schools, emergency services? Pooling our resources to pay for gov't services is part of belonging to a civilized society.

I understand that. And certainly we can think of another kind of tax to cover the difference (federal sales tax, maybe?).

Also, I was not talking of getting rid of ALL taxes anyway. I understand how the government works and of course I want "services" that governments should provide. But many of the services maybe they SHOULDN'T provide?

But, even leaving the income tax alone and making the rest voluntary would help.

Cheers.

I agree with your sentiment ladykrystna, but unfortunately it would never work. Too large a portion of Americans are dumb enough that they would never voluntarily save for social security, medicare, etc... In short, they'll take the tricked out SUV or cruise over putting money away every time. We are already some of the worst savers in the world.

So we'll get to a point where tens of millions of Americans are old and destitute and starving. And then you know it will be up to the savers like you and me to bail those suckers out (Or maybe we're the suckers? LOL).

The problem with a sales tax solution is that, economists say that when the sales tax gets above a certain number (10%?), it leads to an explosion in black market activity. If we could prevent that, I'd be all for a sales tax solution. But I don't think we can.

A couple other problems: Sales taxes are extremely regressive, meaning that a sales tax aggressive enough to replace the income tax would hit poor people the hardest, since they by necessity have to spend a greater portion of their income, not to mention the black market. Also, the point of social security was not to replace private savings, but to help people who were unable to save (because they were poor to begin with, because they had serious illnesses or other medical catastrophes), who outlived their savings, or for whatever other reason, avoid destitution. I'm all in favor of means-testing social security, but that's a political non-starter. It was really supposed to be an insurance plan, which you paid into and then used if you needed it.

Imagine that you did intend to save, but that you had a child with a serious medical problem, or you or your spouse got cancer, or the stock market tanked shortly before you were supposed to retire, or you had to pay for your elderly parents, etc. There are lots of reasons why not everyone who can't save enough for their own retirement is dumb or a sucker. And people should still have incentives to save for retirement--it's not like social security lets you live like royalty. I don't think that social security is why we fail to save money--I doubt that the guy buying the new SUV he can't afford is thinking about retirement at all.