Pregnancy and birth are work, and most importantly, only women can do it, and they can only do it once every 9 months. It is a skill that is highly in demand (male sperm not so much), so a woman could potentially get a lot more in exchange for it than "nothing".
One thing women usually get in exchange is the privilege to choose to stay home with their children.
Now how hard it is to stay home and provide for the children every couple has to decide for themselves. But yeah, I personally will claim that it is not as hard as most jobs, putting a roof above the families head and so on.
You can also check the cost of household services (cleaning, cooking, washing) to estimate the value a male housekeeper brings to the table. I think a husband as housekeeper is usually more expensive.
"It is disturbing because it makes a number of assumptions, which seem skewed from reality."
The underlying biological reality is that making children is more costly for women than for men. The rest follows from that.
I think therefore that you have the skewed view.
"I don't think the transactional and combative assumption of gender relations is really applicable"
It is the low level consideration of evolution - other things are layered on top, like the construct of "love" enabling people to stick together.
"the man is "convincing" the woman to have "their" child, and shouldn't "get it for free""
So you don't think a man fathering a child should take care of the mother and child? You wouldn't think it bad style to father a child and then leave mother and child to their own devices?
In any case, as I explained, the mother invests more into bringing the child to life than the father, so doesn't it seem fair if the father tries to even the scales by providing other things?
"In my reality, women usually want to have children, even more so than men."
Sure, but they need food and shelter to succeed in raising those children.
Really doubtful about these claims. I know gender studies has generated tons of studies like that, but the quality is low.
And in these examples, what would be the repercussions for being perceived as lazy? If he wants a family, the problem for the part time working man would presumably still to be able to provide for a family, which would not be an issue of perception, but of actual shortage of money. If he doesn't want a family, it doesn't matter. The difference is that a woman would never need to earn enough to provide for a family, so the judgement "too lazy to provide for a family" would not apply.
And a messy woman's household will be seen and judged by whom, exactly?
Feminists claim going to work is the privilege, and staying home with children is the chore. The opposite is true.
People are being "liberated from gender roles" merely by technological progress: washing machines and the likes making household chores not a fulltime job, office jobs being doable even while pregnant, that sort of thing. The claim that people choose jobs just because of societal expectations is unproven.
One thing women usually get in exchange is the privilege to choose to stay home with their children.
Now how hard it is to stay home and provide for the children every couple has to decide for themselves. But yeah, I personally will claim that it is not as hard as most jobs, putting a roof above the families head and so on.
You can also check the cost of household services (cleaning, cooking, washing) to estimate the value a male housekeeper brings to the table. I think a husband as housekeeper is usually more expensive.