The distribution of baby time is unequal in a way that seems amenable
to pareto improvement. There are lots of young adults without
children who would like baby cuddles, and there are lots of new
parents who would love someone to play with their baby a bit while
they have a nap or shower. People in my cohort tend to have their
first kid at around thirty which is ~10 years after people would have
historically had their first, and that leaves lots of potential years
of being pushed biologically to have babies but not being socially or
economically ready for that yet. When people used to live together
more closely this was also probably less of an issue; now it's more
each couple being off in their own house with their infant. And in
fact living with family as Julia and I do, we really don't so often
find ourselves in the "if only there were someone to take Lily for a
moment" situation: her grandparents and especially her aunts are often
pretty excited to get to spend some time with her. Our family seems
to get along atypically well for the US, however, as most people in my
cohort seem to be pretty sure living with extended family wouldn't
work for them at all. Something similar that might work well would be
living with friends? Most people who live together after college seem
to split up into separate houses as they get married and have kids,
but perhaps more people should consider continuing to have one big
household?
(One thing I think is key to making this kind of informal pareto
improvement childcare work is trying really hard as a parent to let
the non-parents have the easiest baby-moments, and making it really
clear that they're free to give the baby back as soon as they're not
enjoying it. Give them a happy giggling baby and take back a sleepy
grump who needs a change. You could certainly do some amount of
pushing people into looking after your kid when they don't want to out
of a duty they feel to help out, but this would not be a good plan.
Aside from the damage it does to your relationships to buy childcare
with goodwill and social capital, you're also opting for a small
amount of free time when it's convenient to you when instead you could
have a larger amount of free time total by letting it be when it was
convenient for the other person.)
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