> The former-Communist East-European country I lived in as a kid was a lot more egalitarian than most of present-day Western countries

That really depends on how you measure gender equality and general freedom though.

> to this day I still think that a stay-at-home parent is a lazy human being

You're just being too judgemental though. If a family is wanting for nothing and they agree that one parent should stay at home to spend more time looking after the family, why not?

> That really depends on how you measure gender equality and general freedom though.

Like I said, gender equality was pretty well established. "General freedom" doesn't have that much in common with equality, we can all be equal but not free. I'd say that for further reading on the matter Mona Ozouf's essays on "liberté, égalité, fraternité" is a good starting point (a related article about it in French: http://www.letelegramme.fr/bretagne/mona-ozouf-pas-simple-de...)

> You're just being too judgemental though. If a family is wanting for nothing and they agree that one parent should stay at home to spend more time looking after the family, why not?

I know this point-view might be seen as judgemental, it's just that I see people not contributing back to society with their work-time as not giving it all. It's not a matter of money, I am a little marxist inside me and I do believe that work it's one of the things that define us as a species. I've heard my ~84-year-old peasant grandma' saying that she was very upset that her legs were hurting her because she wanted to continue working.

>I know this point-view might be seen as judgemental,

It is judgmental.

>it's just that I see people not contributing back to society with their work-time as not giving it all

Child-rearing has societal benefits. It's one of the key reasons why children from two parent-households do significantly better on average than children from one. Either they get the benefit of dual income or a full-time parent.

>I've heard my ~84-year-old peasant grandma' saying that she was very upset that her legs were hurting her because she wanted to continue working

I believe that but it's a choice.

> Child-rearing has societal benefits. It's one of the key reasons why children from two parent-households do significantly better on average than children from one. Either they get the benefit of dual income or a full-time parent.

Link to studies on that? And I mean comprehensive studies, not the ones limited to the US.

They won't be able to provide, because it turns out the differences basically evaporate when you control for the financial stability of the households. It's just that one-parent households (especially in the US) tend to be a hell of a lot less financially stable than two-parent households.

Your last paragraph, I feel, is focusing too much on the individual, direct contribution and ignoring the effect a person staying at home can have on their family. By taking care of their auxilliary needs and letting them focus on their core tasks (work, school, etc.), the increase in productivity of the family as a whole can exceed that of a direct individual's contribution. I think of it as a project manager for the family - they don't directly contribute to the development of a project, but they handle the overhead that would otherwise thrash their developers.

Well the idea of a stay at home parent is that child care is work. You can either pay someone or do it yourself, in which case you're doing the job you would have paid someone else to do.

You could not have given a better explanation of why I would never want to live in a marxist society if you tried.

> The former-Communist East-European country I lived in as a kid was a lot more egalitarian than most of present-day Western countries and the women were treated pretty much the same as men were when it came to work.

This. Soviet block was also mostly atheist, which affected this egalitarianism positively as well (and opposite in places like the US). This still largely remains, even with Orthodox Church reemerging and realigning with the government (at least in Russia).

>to this day I still think that a stay-at-home parent is a lazy human being

I'm not sure why it's lazy to avoid work if it doesn't negatively affect your health or well-being. I can't say what the objective meaning of life is (or if one even exists for certain) but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it isn't to "grow up, work for decades, and die." Nothing gold can stay.

> but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it isn't to "grow up, work for decades, and die."

I've also said it in a previous comment, but my ~84-or-so peasant grandma' did just that, i.e. she worked all of her life ever since she got married at 17, never took a "vacation" day off. I've heard her saying that she was really upset that her legs were hurting her, because she really wanted to continue working as she had done before. I'm pretty sure that, if given the chance, my gradnma' would choose the same lifestyle as she had. For some of us work is indeed fulfilling.

Have you considered the possibility that she kept herself occupied as a way to avoid uncomfortable dilemmas like the one I posed above? As virtuous as hard work may be, vain work is not. Dealing with difficult questions is the only way to know whether or not the life we lead is as full as it can be. We can certainly close ourselves off to difficult questions and enjoy what we have, but why would we intentionally waste the opportunity to rise above that if we can?

For some, sure, but there is a argument to be made that it's really about time that we decouple work and income. If I didn't have to work to get an income I sure would work with something quite different, more artistic, instead of reinventing the wheel for the fourth time even though I know this code will not be used for anything usefull anyway.

Conversely to that, maybe people who work when they don't need to are just chumps.