Should we put more pressure on women to be solo breadwinners so that equality can occur while men enjoy spending time at home?

[Answered on Quora.com by Feifei Wang]

Here’s an interesting research:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity-leave-study-spain-men-fewer-children

Basically, Spain rolled out a policy that provides parental leave for both parents. While men do take advantage of this policy and spend more time with their newborns, they also express less desire to have additional children. As in, once they realize how much work is involved in raising a child, they themselves wouldn’t want more of that.

So, how is this related to your question?

I don’t think men want to spend time at home. That’s the fundamental mistake of your question. You think if given the time and opportunity, men WANT to stay home and do all the domestic labor for free like women have done since the beginning of time. And you would be wrong. Men don’t want that.

I’ve observed many of my male co-workers stay at the office well into the night, playing video games or reading Reddit while their wives took care of the children at home. They would call their wives, telling them they’re doing overtime because of this or that project. Mind you, these are happy couples. Or at least, from my observation of them on their social media or at company events and the fact that they stayed together.

Men don’t want to spend time at home because house chores are never fun or enjoyable. Even if the wives are responsible for the majority (if not all) of the household's domestic labor, the husbands still don’t want to be in an environment where the baby is crying, and the wife is nagging.

The simple truth is that most men do not like women. They want wives and children because they’re socialized very early on during their childhood that having a woman who bears them children is what they are entitled to by simply being a man. They grow up in a family where women do most of the housework, and naturally, they believe a house would be automatically clean and well managed. When they go out and live as bachelors, they realize how much their lives would be better if they had a maid, nanny, therapist, and cook who provided sexual services at night. Even with that, they don’t want to go home and spend time there because they need their “peace and quiet.”

There have been so many anecdotal stories told by solo-breadwinner women about how their unemployed husbands would stay home and play video games all day without doing anything around the house, or the husbands grew resentful of their wives, who are more successful than them.

No. The problem isn’t women being breadwinners. The problem is how men were raised since childhood. The problem is how society teaches men to be entitled to a wife while never teaching them how to deal with their emotions or do any housework. I’m not talking about giving them a list. I’m talking about teaching men to generate the housework list themselves and understand the simple concept that “THIS IS YOUR FUCKING HOUSE, YOU FUCKING LIVE HERE TOO.”

Until we socialize boys and girls the same way, women being the solo breadwinners in the household will only lead to women working for their paying jobs for 8 hours, going home, and continuing their domestic unpaid labor for another 8 hours.

Men do not want to spend time at home. They like the idea of a home where they can relax while services are being provided to them.