In his column he writes,
Yet it is a strange society that disproportionately bunches much work and stress for so many women in the middle of their lives, and rewards them only much later with leisure. It is a kind of feast or famine for work, leisure and earnings.
In terms of the four forces, I would say that as the size of the New Commanding Heights sectors (education and health care) increases relative to manufacturing, the proportion of women doing market work has gone up. With bifurcated family patterns, we see higher-status families where parents work until their children have completed their education. Then they retire.
Note that the cost of goods and services other than education and health care has tended to fall. Thus, the way to get the most leisure is to resist the cultural pressure to live in a high-status city, have your children attend a high-status college, and buy “good” health insurance (meaning a pre-paid health plan as opposed to real insurance). If you can do that while earning a decent wage when you work, you can afford a lot of leisure.
So what you’re saying is that women have agency and make their own choices. “Society” doesn’t control their tradeoffs. I honestly had no idea he was such a leftist.
“cultural pressure to live in a high-status city”
I doubt cultural pressure is the main problem for the middle class. It’s more likely something like:
1) My extended family is already here
2) This is where the good paying jobs are
I want a post-secondary education system that facilitates children and leisure.
I think women could learn while raising kids. We should try to make notions like “wait until your education is done and you have achieved partner before you have kids” a thing of the past. I consider it a market failure, and as usual, government subsidizes it instead of common-sense alternatives.
Your two short paragraphs there had more insight than Cowen’s whole column. Not his best effort.