Why Can't Two Parents Work Part Time?

 
There's a debate that's been going back and forth forever about stay at home parenting. Is it good?  Is it bad?  Is the influx of women into the workforce feminism's best accomplishment or the family's worst nightmare?  Or both?

Back in the day the norm, or at least the ideal, was for the woman to stay home and cook and clean and care for the family; the man went out and earned the money outside the home. Now the norm is for the man and the woman to work... and the woman to cook and clean and care for the family. Elizabeth Warren even wrote a book, The Two Income Trap, about how middle class dual-income families aren't getting their fair shake.  Do we (as a society - not individually) really need two incomes per family?

This graph shows how productivity has skyrocketed while wages have stagnated.  This increase in productivity has caused an overabundance of labor (why we're always trying to “create jobs”): there is more supply than demand. If the workforce shrunk significantly it would likely help the economy, as in many way's we're now too productive. As productivity increases you either have to increase demand or decrease the number of workers.  (Note: part of this is that Americans work too much... or at least, they work more than everyone else)

Let's take all that information and sit with it for a moment. What if we all saw that and decided it would be better NOT to have so many folks working (or at least not the crazy hours most of us do). That perhaps having a stay-at-home parent is a good idea, because caring for your kids yourself is good and also because the labor-market is oversupplied and it's contributing to how difficult it is to find work.  A lot of crazy conservatives have written about how women/feminism/"misandry"/selfish mothers have destroyed the economy, and they use many of these points (but they're jerks, so I'm not going to link to them... google it if you wish).

Stay with me here, because I'm not ready for that plan. While I think people who genuinely want to be stay-at-home parents should enjoy their stay-at-home lives, I don't think we as a society should pressure one parent into staying home... 'cause it's going to end up being the women. And besides, some people like their jobs.

That brings us to my plan. Why don't both parents work part time? It seems so simple, really. Instead of the old one-income model or the current two-income model, we switch to a two-part-time model? Imagine a world where people split their time... part time being caretakers, part time being breadwinners, part time doing whatever it is in life they love. Women wouldn't be forced back into the kitchen, men would get to spend time with their kids, and queer folk might get a little less of that awful “who's the man” question.

There are a lot of problems that we need to address first: a broken tax system, a lack of quality free education, getting ourselves a first world healthcare system, and ending penalties for part timers. Without these things the model I've just laid out won't work.

But what if we could do it? Quality time with kids, less stress on the workforce, more home-cooked meals, and happier workers all without blaming women or telling them it's all their fault just because they wanted to be treated like people.  A gender-neutral "American Dream".  As someone who comes from a generation that seeks work life balance, I see a big appeal to this.

Through all this, it is worth mentioning that I don't think everyone should get married and/or have kids. But given that our society is built around a two-parent with children model we should consider ways to make that model better.

What do you think? Is it worth moving to a model where both partners are part-time-homemakers & part-time-breadwinners?