> When the company was big and they had four kids, MacKenzie took half the load (kids) and Jeff took half the load (work).
Who is this nagging article helping? The value of raising kids is not counted in the billions of dollars by the market, at best probably in the millions, based on insurance claims.
The most absurd proposition is that for any outstanding behaviour, absolutely equal 50/50 attribution has to be given to both parties in a couple. Why is it so unacceptable to claim that sometimes the achievement of raising good children is not equally as difficult or as valuable as other achievements?
> When developing the theory of general relativity and they had three children, Mileva Marić took half the load (kids) and Albert Einstein took half the load (work).
> When devoting a 40 year career of research towards finally finding a cure for all cancers and they had a child, X.Partner took half the load (kid) and X took half the load (work).
I think the point was, Jeff could not have had kids and raised them the way they did if his wife wasn’t at home raising them. Jeff could not have built Amazon if he was chasing kids around half the day. The value of having kids raised the way you want them to be raised is intangible.
Agree completely. Anyone who actually has kids and has tried to arrange care for them will know that it's a lot more complicated than just putting up an ad and waiting for the perfect nanny to descend from the clouds on an umbrella.
You can pay someone to keep them nourished, pick them up from school, read them stories, and tuck them in at night. This person might even care deeply about their well-being. But there's little substitute for a parent or close family member when it comes to instilling values, managing discipline, modelling compassion while still maintaining firmness. These things are hard to measure, and the fruits of the labour that goes into them won't show until years later, which is why the person doing this work needs to be someone with a long term commitment to the project.
Check. My wife’s has given up her prime career years to stay home with our kids. “I” started a business with a couple of partners 6 years ago. Let’s just say there is no doubt that my wife is as much an owner of the business as I am. She didn’t do any of the direct work to make the business successful, but, she made it possible for my kids to have everything and for me to give all my brain power to the business and still live a balanced(ish) life.
If what you want is their biological mother at home with them, from a very early age, only money and an agreement between the two partners can get you there. Money helps, of course, it makes it possible for one parent to stay at home, which is rare these days.
When it comes to this sort of thing I assume there may be some agreements in place within their marriage. It is strange that the wealth isn't accounted as a union (Walton family comes to mind here). I suspect that's down to the legal paperwork of assigning shares and ownership alongside voting rights.
That said, how does my mind work? My first question was, "Will Bill Gates be the richest man in the world again?". Maybe I should start rephrasing that as "Will the Gates' become the richest couple in the world again?"
They were married in 1994. MSFT was already doing well at that point, but you're looking at a shared price of $2.50 vs $100+ today. So yeah, from a raw numbers point of view, it's not comparable at all.
I've no problem with wives that get half--I figure that's part of the deal when you get married. Wives can and do get far more, though, and that truly does seem unjust.
Who is this nagging article helping? The value of raising kids is not counted in the billions of dollars by the market, at best probably in the millions, based on insurance claims.