If women drop out of the workforce, are employers suddenly going to start doubling salaries so household income will stay the same? If not, then this isn't really a problem with gender roles, it doesn't seem.
It sounds to me like the thread of logic you're following is:
- Women have started working more, so child care is harder
- Child care costs went up during the pandemic, so more workers of all genders are staying home to care for their children directly
- Therefore, there's a labor shortage.
Well, the obvious conclusion from that thread of logic is that employers apparently need women to work in order for the economy to keep functioning, and if they stop working and stop sending their kids to daycare then there'll be a labor shortage.
If you don't have a plan to fix that problem, then complaining about gender roles seems kind of useless. If you're worried about the direction of childcare and you think more women should be in that role, then shouldn't you be happy that more people are staying home now to take care of their kids, and that this is forcing the market to adjust salaries to meet the new numbers of available workers?
You can't both have your cake and eat it, you can't be upset that women aren't staying home to look after their kids and upset that there are fewer available workers to hire once parents start staying home to watch their kids.
Taken in reverse, that's pretty much what happened when women entered the workforce in large numbers. It now generally takes two incomes to support a household, where it used to take one. (Yes, the standard of living and expectations in general are higher these days, but still.)
At least you got a few things right. Yes, women have been working "more" and it has created the difficulty to get their children proper care. It's rather logical. You can add to that it is not just women's problem. It's men's too. It is our problem : we have a model that cannot solve an absolute road block: if women work, and get equal pay, then childcare become out of reach to a large portion of the population. Unless you increase the kids to carer ratio of course, or build robots as carer. I think the issue with the work arounds are rather obvious. Or maybe not since I've only commented with simple logical critics but many won't cease to conceive a society with women taking care of their children until a proven solution comes along.
I don't have a plan to fix that problem, no. That's why I blame the dogma that introduced the problem in the first place. And I refer to the previous model that worked for millenia, which is a gender based role system. It doesn't have to be that way, but sure let's consider any way, but I don't see why criticising today's model and referring to one that worked is useless.
It seems like it's directly addressing a problem you have with the current state of child-rearing, and that in order to move to the model you prefer, businesses necessarily need to get used to the fact that fewer people are going to apply for jobs and that they'll have to pay workers more.
This should be a good thing as far as you're concerned, right?
I disagree with the ratio argument you've proposed, I'm sorry 1 carer for 12 toddlers is undeseriable. Ask any stay-at-home moms how it goes when they get their 3rd kid. And a carer will never care as much as a parent, so 1 to 12 is surely compromising on the children well being.
I would gladly consider parents rather than women, but for the vast majority of human history it appears that females have been rather focusing on taking care of home and children. Things can be arranged differently, but there are surely some deep rooted reasons as to the adoption of the role fulfilled by women for so long, and it must have shown superiority over having men take that role since it has survived across very different cultures.
We aren't hunter gatherers, we are even past the sedentary model that organised societies for millenia, so models can and better be questioned, but the childcare dead end needs to be looked at the way it is. It is not working.
Yes children grow up, I give you that. And of course it is natural for women who were mostly taking care of their own children to find an occupation, work is one. My comment was in the context of the child care chaos we've created. Not in the context of trying to hijack the thread into claiming women should not be in the workplace.