In my unscientific observation families who have mom at home and dad working do very well, capitalistically speaking.
There are great hidden costs to not having mom at home. Like divorce, affairs, childcare, house cleaning, maintenance of everything, support for husband to go get it, driving, cooking, all that.
Having both parents working results in a lot more expenses, like daycare, needing two cars, etc. Subtract all those extra costs, and you’ll find that unless both work very high paying jobs, it’s not that economically advantageous.
“There are great hidden costs to not having mom at home. Like divorce, affairs, childcare, house cleaning, maintenance of everything, support for husband to go get it, driving, cooking, all that.”
In my case I was able to work a lot of overtime and higher-paying shifts, thanks to my wife being home to take care of the kids. It’s not that complicated.
I also think a lot of dual-income pairs don’t really do the math, when it comes to having the wife work (in most cases). We considered it after our kids were grown, but why bother? In addition to what you mention, every dollar she would have made would be taxed at our marginal rate (and we’re in Texas - in most other states you also have the same thing at the state level). Plus she would have to pay into Social Security, which would be fine, except she’ll never get more from it than as my spouse, so that money is GONE too (completely), due to her shorter, less-paying work history. On top of that, my employer wanted something like $200 a month more if her job had medical available, which probably would have been the case. And not to mention that she would have limited vacation and all that crap.
Easy decision, for us. We just downgraded our ‘lifestyle’ a tad and actually came out ahead!
Troubled children buy lots of stuff to compensate. Good for capitalism.
Individuals who never get married can tend to be materialistic and fill the void with lots of purchases of cars, jewelry, clothing, eating out, etc. Good for capitalism.
It definitely is a good strategy for an individual to get married and have kids, but what makes sense for the individual is not always what makes sense for the market.
Why do you think companies build products to fail after a few years? Is that good for the individual or for the company that wants to sell them more crap?
Why are there so many restaurants (or used to be before the lockdowns) when it makes more sense for people to cook and eat at home? Why Starbucks when you can make yourself a cup of coffee at home for 25c or less rather than $3 or more? Why do mortgage brokers encourage people to get loans for more than the value of the house so they can do immediate renovations with marble countertops and stainless steel appliances?
The market needs an ever increasing pyramid of people to feed the Returns On Investment necessary to keep the stock prices up and rising.
If the population ever flattens out or starts to decline then they will have to get each person to buy even more crap. That's why both the Dems and the Pubbies are in favor of mass immigration because they know the system will fail with the current birthrate among citizens.
Also its a very hard sell to get older people to buy more crap, which is probably why healthcare costs are so high. You can't get old people to buy Porsches and pearl necklaces, but you can get them to spend thousands to keep a little bit healthier and live a little bit longer.