People Who Pay to Work, and Other Stresses

Just read a depressing article in the Washington Post about women who pay to work. Author Petula Dvorak's premise can be summed up in this sentence: "America's status as the hardest-working developed nation in the world clashes with the reality that we also have the paltriest options for family support."

Dvorak doesn't examine the most common and cheapest form of child support, the type still used in most developing countries: family. It's a mark either of Dvorak's naivete or America's cultural malaise and short-sightedness (take your pick) that she doesn't even mention this option.

The past twenty years have seen an exponential rise in the number of women in the Indian workforce, particularly in white-collar jobs (there's been an increase in the number of these jobs as well, but anyway...) Every successful professional woman I know - women who have careers, not just jobs - relied on family support and child care in order to make it.

It's a trend I've seen too often to discount. In any Indian family, extended or otherwise, helping relatives with child care is an accepted part of the family burden. Is it always convenient? No. But Indians do it, because helping each other out is still a part of the culture here.

As health care costs go up, real estate prices fall, etc, Americans are going to find themselves ever closer to a "culture of necessity," which is what bred the massive, generous, communal Indian extended family in the first place. People didn't develop the extended family just because they liked it - they needed it. It was the most efficient use of resources.

In a resource-rich nation like the United States, family obligations have gone the way of the dinosaurs. But as we discover that we can't 'have it all" - on a personal or a global level - we're going to have rediscover some of these traditional values. (This is already happening. Consider the record number of college graduates live at home after graduation.) It will require us to swallow our pride and play nice with others. But I suspect it will be worth it. Why? Because we need each other, more than ever before.