> In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income.

... and half of asset appreciation, and in some cases (it varies) half of pension.

I will also add that it’s not just mothers. It’s any spouse. I’ve seen successful women come out on the raw end of this deal during divorce.

I mention this not as a grievance, rather just an observation that people who are married, both male and female, are sometimes surprised at asset allocation during a divorce with regards to “passive” investments and business ownership (e.g, a self-owned business that has grown).

That's a weird contortion of logic. Your point is still that raising children isn't an economically valuable activity, unless you also think that men should be paid somewhere around 2x if they are supporting a stay-at-home mom...

The existence of daycares is proof that people are willing to pay for raising children.

What you're hitting on is that staying home to raise 1-2 kids is economically inefficient compared to working and sending the kids to a daycare, because the daycare can benefit from efficiencies of scale.

Child support is intended to cover the expenses of the child - food, clothing, education, medical, etc. It's not meant to pay for the time spent by the custodial parent in actually doing the parenting, nor any sort of "opportunity cost" of not being otherwise engaged in a paying job.

Translated to HN-world: "I'm going work on a FOSS project full-time!" World: "Great; we'll pay for your server! You won't lose a dime!" Me: "Uh, what about the income from the job I gave up?"

You can always choose to work and send the child to daycare.

Providing your own daycare instead of working is a lifestyle choice, why does the opportunity cost of that choice have to be shouldered by someone else?

You said "[custodial parents] do get paid ... child support" and I was simply pointing out that this isn't "pay" to said parent in the sense of "compensation for services rendered".

> Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income.

That’s some creative logic. Being a stay at home parent is a full-time job. If the stay at home parent were being paid, they’d...well...be paid. “Effective” payment isn’t helpful to a full time parent raising a child and losing out on wages they would otherwise get at a job that the economy values with a taxable wage.

So you want the husband to explicitly pay his wife a W2 wage to raise their kids, which just means as a couple they pay more taxes and have less money than before?

I don't see the upside.

No, you’re right that doesn’t make sense, and I wouldn’t be for that. I think government should expand paid time off for family leave, especially in the US.

So if corporate attorney is taking time off to raise a child society should value, and pay, more for that then if a public defender is?

This is a loaded question. "society should value" and "pay more" are separate arguments. By agreeing to the first I'm not agreeing to the second. I think society should value taking time off to raise children, yes. However, I don't think that society should value a corporate attorney doing this more than a public defender doing it. To do so would value raising children unequally. A universal basic income with an additional stipend for child care would be one solution that captures this difference.

Okay, then we are no longer talking about paid time off and we are no longer addressing the trade-offs involved in taking time away from a lucrative career in SV.

Which is fine with me, I don’t think that’s a problem that needs solving but you and others in this thread had implied otherwise.

> “Effective” payment isn’t helpful to a full time parent raising a child

? Having room and board for yourself and your child is nothing if not helpful.

Yes, I agree. I don’t see how that ties to the original argument in the thread, though. Presumably a full time parent with a spouse who can provide for both parent and child and who gave up a taxable wage to be a caregiver already had room and board. The room and board comment seems irrelevant to the argument given the context of the preceding comments around forfeiting a taxable wage for the full time job of parenthood.