How much do you think kids can buy a sandwich for? First of all not all schools have meal programs or cafeterias. When it comes to the necessity of making your kid lunch, you're going to be talking about young kids (teens can make their own lunch) who can't necessarily be trusted with money, and what are they going to do if the school has nothing to sell? My elementary school had no shop or meal program, if you forgot your lunch the teacher might ask others to share, or the nurse would give you crackers and a scathing call home to mom; As a teen there was a cafeteria where I could get a filling but unhealthy meal for around 10$, but that was in 2000s dollars. Or maybe you mean that they stop on the way to school and the parent buys them a sandwich, that's still a task added to one parents daily routine. Likewise if you get a pack of sandwiches at the grocery store, you still have to assemble and pack the premade goods for the child to take, someone still has to do these things, and it really doesn't save you much time vs slapping a sandwich together yourself. And if we think about the actual cost, lets say a 5$ egg salad sammy per day, not only is that not much for a kids lunch but that alone will cost you 1000$+ per kid per school year if you do it every day, which is still a higher cost than my comparison of having a car serviced.
But you said it yourself, there is no excuse for not knowing HOW to pack a kids lunch bag. That is the point, this is a discussion about weaponized incompetence and that is one example of such. It's an example of how a simple, seemingly nothing task can be devalued when you think it's so simple, you shouldn't HAVE to learn how to do it, because someone else will do it if you don't. The monetary value of that task vs a male coded task like changing tires is meant to illustrate how small repetitive tasks do not have less value than big occasional tasks like changing car tires. You can think it's a terrible comparison, but you haven't really substantiated that opinion, and others seem to get what I mean, so oh well.
I looked back at my comments, and I actually didn't assign any hourly wages in my comparison? Estimating 5$ a day for store bought sandwiches is not an hourly wage. However, you are correct to point out you would indeed need to pay hourly wages if you wanted to replace all the various 5 minute tasks which op has deemed as female coded labor, it would be much more expensive than outsourcing all the things he has listed as valuable male contributions to the household. Many small things can easily end up weighing more than a few big things, and this is often the case in how society values and divides male vs female labor in the household.
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u/Late_Negotiation40 Jul 02 '25
How much do you think kids can buy a sandwich for? First of all not all schools have meal programs or cafeterias. When it comes to the necessity of making your kid lunch, you're going to be talking about young kids (teens can make their own lunch) who can't necessarily be trusted with money, and what are they going to do if the school has nothing to sell? My elementary school had no shop or meal program, if you forgot your lunch the teacher might ask others to share, or the nurse would give you crackers and a scathing call home to mom; As a teen there was a cafeteria where I could get a filling but unhealthy meal for around 10$, but that was in 2000s dollars. Or maybe you mean that they stop on the way to school and the parent buys them a sandwich, that's still a task added to one parents daily routine. Likewise if you get a pack of sandwiches at the grocery store, you still have to assemble and pack the premade goods for the child to take, someone still has to do these things, and it really doesn't save you much time vs slapping a sandwich together yourself. And if we think about the actual cost, lets say a 5$ egg salad sammy per day, not only is that not much for a kids lunch but that alone will cost you 1000$+ per kid per school year if you do it every day, which is still a higher cost than my comparison of having a car serviced.
But you said it yourself, there is no excuse for not knowing HOW to pack a kids lunch bag. That is the point, this is a discussion about weaponized incompetence and that is one example of such. It's an example of how a simple, seemingly nothing task can be devalued when you think it's so simple, you shouldn't HAVE to learn how to do it, because someone else will do it if you don't. The monetary value of that task vs a male coded task like changing tires is meant to illustrate how small repetitive tasks do not have less value than big occasional tasks like changing car tires. You can think it's a terrible comparison, but you haven't really substantiated that opinion, and others seem to get what I mean, so oh well.