Home and work reverse who is rational, and children bear the cost

Evidence

Man is also much more balanced and rational in his work than at home; he calculates with mathematical precision: he “lets himself go” with his wife, becoming illogical, a liar, capricious; likewise, she “lets herself go” with her child. And this self-indulgence is more dangerous because she can better defend herself against her husband than the child can defend himself against her. It would obviously be better for the child if his mother were a complete person and not a mutilated one, a woman who finds in her work and her relations with the group a self-accomplishment she could not attain through his tyranny; and it would be preferable also for the child to be left infinitely less to his parents than he is now, that his studies and amusements take place with other children under the control of adults whose links with him are only impersonal and dispassionate. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1534

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Lets himself go’ at home connects to the frontier between public-rational self and private-emotional self, mirroring Goffman’s ‘Presentation of Self’ and the work/leisure split in The Managed Heart. — connects to: Economic rationality reduces individuals to obstacles in the production process; Self-sustaining household economies are not exchange or profit-driven economies — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1146
• SHARE: For a friend who works in early childhood education: Beauvoir’s 1949 and still-current argument that children should be raised more by impersonal, dispassionate caretakers than by emotionally self-indulgent parents.

Broader Connections

• Economic rationality reduces individuals to obstacles in the production process #expands (0.75)
• Self-sustaining household economies are not exchange or profit-driven economies #expands (0.72) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1146