As someone who works for a lot less money than I could be making and in an industry I am not excited about in the least (insurance...technically business process outsourcing but our clients are all insurance companies), I don't know about the word forced. I have been choosing a suboptimal career so I can be near my support network. It's hard sometimes, really hard, especially knowing I could easily be making $100k+ more than I'm making right now and working on something I care about at least a little bit more, but I am making that choice.

I realize it can be extra difficult in some markets. I'm at least near a metropolitan area, so there's some jobs (hardly any that excite me, but there are some). I've worked plenty of shitty jobs in my life and nowhere near the software dev world in order to stay in my hometown . Unless the job market completely dries up in your town, it's a choice that can be made.

It's similar to all the people who get majors in humanities or psychology or marketing and then end up working as a barista at Starbucks once they graduate. It's far from ideal, but sometimes people really don't want to move across the country for their jobs (or can't).

Again, I'm not saying it's a great choice, or the right choice to stay near your support network necessarily. I haven't lived away from them so I don't have any idea firsthand. But I think it's a bit myopic to think you are forced to always go wherever the maximum amount of jobs or money to be made is, support network be damned.

I don't think one is always forced, but I think there is always someone who is forced. As you said yourself, it could be even harder for someone else. If you take the barista job, someone else isn't going to get it. And is a barista job actually going to provide maternity benefits or pay enough to raise a child? "Maybe sometimes" doesn't make a good national policy.

Do you feel that the sacrifice you have made to stay near your support network is worth the value of your support network? By which I mean, if you had a child, is your support network wealthy enough to provide the resources to help you raise that child? For many people, their support network is itself getting squeezed. What do you do if your friends and relatives themselves have to work 60 hours a week and aren't available to help watch your baby while you work?

I don't currently have a child but in the next two or three years I am planning to have one. Other people in the family have had children recently, though, and I am seeing how they are being helped out and they're getting a lot of assistance, including free babysitting, which by itself is crazy expensive (can be more expensive than one person's income nowadays, which is why some people are becoming stay at home parents now).

I also don't know how I'd be able to afford buying a house if I moved to somewhere like Silicon Valley, whereas I've bought a home here, and I'd rather not go back to renting if I can help it.

Also, one of my professional hobbies is board game design and I have built up a pretty good local network for playtesting and have gotten to know several designers and publishers in the area (even got my first game signed), plus I am within driving distance of the two of the biggest game conventions in the US, where I can network even further, so that's another factor keeping me away from the west coast.

So there are other unrelated factors that are influencing the decision, it's not a total black and white affair. Although I was still making the decision to stick around even before these were a thing.

I do agree with you that people's support networks are probably getting squeezed more than in the past (income inequality is on the rise, tuition, health expenses, etc are skyrocketing, so everyone is getting squeezed). I did say it's not necessarily the best decision for someone to make. It might not even be the best decision for me to make. But I'm still doing it, and I see tons of people do it every day, especially once they have families. I also see tons of people choose to move away from their networks, and again that may be the best thing to do, I just don't think sticking around should be assumed to be the wrong decision in pretty much all cases for the country as a whole, which seemed to be the assumption that was made.

I think the problem is precisely that society is being squeezed to the point that many people's support networks are breaking down, forcing them into moving to keep up with labor demand, for the sake of keeping labor supply cheep and powerless in the market. We are being offered a perverse choice at the outset, and being resistant to that coercive influence is the form that privilege takes. For the modestly privileged it's a difficult choice, and for the very privileged it's an easy choice.

> Except for the long period of paid maternity leave, there's no reason someone in the US couldn't have what the Italian woman has. I know several parents that live close to their extended family and get help watching and raising their kids all the time.

This is the part about which we disagree. You are generalizing from several people you know to say there is no reason someone else can't do it. The reason is that not everyone is lucky enough to know the kind of people you do. When you say "someone" it sounds like you really mean just yourself.

Fair enough. I guess using the words 'no reason' went a bit too far. I didn't realize I had done that. Afterwards I repeatedly said that for some people it might not be the best decision for them to make, though, so for me to assert that, clearly there must be some reasons for those people to decide otherwise.