Essay
6 min read
In the era of AI lots of things will and should be automated. Getting pregnant and raising a child I don't think will ever be one of them.
In the era of AI lots of things will and should be automated. Getting pregnant and raising a child I don't think will ever be one of them. And as this will become the most precious thing eventually, women will demand to get paid not just keep their jobs, have a leave and a monthly allowance.
They should get paid to be mums. To create a creature and be responsible for it. To keep a household or cook or support their husbands. Being a mum is the sacredest job of all but we should support women and show appreciation for their effort, their courage and their sacrifice, because bringing a child to life and supporting it properly a woman sacrifices part of herself and her health.
Until we are at this point, what if we changed the system to help both mums and modern families through the financial and pension system.
With longevity in the game, societies who invest in health can buy more disease free years. Survival rates will increase meaning mean lifetime will increase too, so financially this is not sustainable if the answer is just to keep pushing the pension age later and later.
What if instead of increasing the pension starting age, healthy pensioners could offer to society and increase their own pension by helping mums of kids up to the age of 6 with housekeeping, cooking, laundry, ironing or childcare, through a mutual agreement of four hours a day.
Every healthy pensioner could be allocated for 5 years, immediately when becoming a pensioner or 2 to 3 years before, to a family or to a day care. And provide what they love to do. For some it could be cooking, for others laundry, for others childcare.
And this help should scale as the number of children increases. More hands are needed, for more years and more resources.
Of course this is already the case for many families. But this should be applied between families too. Grandparents that help their children raise their grandchildren should be rewarded, as they are not obligated to do so. And society should acknowledge their effort too.
This will have a longevity health effect on both families and the elderly. For families it will decrease their family related workload, allowing them to live a sustainable longevity lifestyle while raising kids. And for pensioners it will give them purpose, extra money and the feeling that people still need them.
Of course a system like this needs to be designed carefully. We should take measures to avoid informal market distortions, so that formal payments increase caregiver supply without pushing care work into grey zones or discouraging women from the workforce. And there should always be the option for the father to stay home and raise the kid if he wants to. Paying parenthood should not mean locking women into the caregiver role, it should mean valuing the work whoever chooses to do it.
It is an intergenerational contract, not a subsidy. Both generations give something real and both get compensated for it.