[HN Gopher] Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
Author : femfosec
Score : 283 points
Date : 2021-03-04 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| JacobSuperslav wrote:
| i don't understand why adoption isn't more popular. besides the
| obvious shallow reasons of wanting a biological copy of yourself
| etc.
| austincheney wrote:
| The only logical answer here is youth. The younger you are the
| more fertile you are. This is true for both men and women, but
| more true for women. If you want children at some point in life
| then prioritize children first and early.
|
| I know, this puts your ambitious career on hold for a while and
| start ups require huge ambition. Still, start up opportunities
| will not be hyper critically different in the future than they
| are now. In the future you may not be able to have children.
|
| This is so completely clear based upon my commute to work. Closer
| to the downtown where I live there are all kinds of clinics for
| young mothers in mostly poorer areas. Where I work is the
| wealthiest county, per capita, in Texas and there are fertility
| clinics lining the street. That difference is striking. People
| who put their careers first tend to have more trouble having
| children and are willing to pay massive sums of money to fix
| biology.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Adoption is another logical answer that can be very rewarding.
| All of us in the family I grew up in were adopted as infants.
| It's more expensive than birthing your own children but I
| imagine parents that left their fertile years focused on a
| career would be able to afford adoption.
| austincheney wrote:
| In most places adoption is also very expensive. For some
| absurd reason prospective adopting parents must prove they
| are worthy of raising children to the state, while biological
| parents don't have to prove anything.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Because orphans are wards of the state, and if the state
| thinks you would do a worse job providing for them why
| would they hand the child over?
| DanBC wrote:
| Children are taken off the parents to protect them from
| harm. We can only justify that if we then protect them from
| harm, and that means not placing them with abusive parents.
| [deleted]
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > The only logical answer here is youth.
|
| No, the only real answer is that you are in no way required to
| reproduce. There are more than enough humans. Humanity is
| basically a plague.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Humanity is basically a plague.
|
| This succinctly states the premise behind a lot of
| progressive thinking.
| evnc wrote:
| This is essentially ecofascism and is not compatible with a
| modern free society.
|
| I actually _like_ humanity, and I want it to persist. Many of
| my best friends are humans.
|
| (I'm not trying to throw around "fascist" as a cheap insult:
| this is an actual ideology, and "humans are basically a
| plague" is a core tenent.)
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| I feel like part of the problem is the obsession in media and
| social circles with young success. I see lists like Forbes 30
| under 30, 40 under 40, and the celebration of young
| billionaires who are worshipped and held up as the example of
| what high performers should strive to be, and its quite
| unhealthy. I wish there were more stories about people who
| found success in their 40's, 50's and beyond, especially the
| ones who took time to fail, learn from it, and apply it later
| in life.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yeah, but those people are the one-in-100-million types.
|
| Most people have lack-luster careers in their 20s, which pick
| up in their 30s and peak in their 40s-50s. It makes a lot of
| sense for the average person to prioritize family building in
| their early 20s so that the kids are more self-sufficient
| right at the time where your career is taking off.
|
| Plus, if your blessed enough to have parents who can help
| out, having babies when your parents are in their 40s-50s is
| substantially better than when they are 60+. My parents (50s)
| do really well at caring for their grandkids while my in-laws
| (60s) actually aren't capable of being alone with their
| grandkids, aunts or uncles "come to visit" anytime they watch
| the kids.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| > It makes a lot of sense for the average person to
| prioritize family building in their early 20s so that the
| kids are more self-sufficient right at the time where your
| career is taking off.
|
| It does make a lot of sense, but my point is that's not
| what people are doing. The ages that women have their first
| babies have been increasing [0], and a large part of that
| is that women are more focused on their careers in their
| 20's than they have been in the past [1].
|
| [0] :
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-
| bir...
|
| [1] :
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-
| stud...
| NathanKP wrote:
| > It makes a lot of sense for the average person to
| prioritize family building in their early 20s
|
| I'd say it used to make sense before the late 1970's when
| wages started stagnating. As the gap has grown the average
| person in their early 20's has to struggle to afford to pay
| for their own basic needs, much less trying to afford to
| have kids. Once their career is starting to pick up in
| their 30s they finally have the financial situation to
| start considering kids.
| Miner49er wrote:
| This advice is likely economically bad though. Capital now is
| better than capital later. I would think money made early and
| saved by not having children and invested will end up being
| much more then what will be spent on a fertility clinic later.
| PKop wrote:
| It's almost as if human social norms solved this dilemma by
| division of labor: men bear the brunt of earning capital,
| while women are freed up to have and raise children.
|
| The women's "empowerment" movement in this context can be
| seen as a cynical ploy by capital to convince women their
| "power" is tied to earning wages and having a career instead
| of having a family and they must pursue economic independence
| over over strategic "dependence" on a husband to help them
| realize commons goals.
|
| At the end of the day women, and men, will ultimately want
| what they want. The argument here is that in the grand scheme
| of things they want a family, and will regret early choices
| that threaten this goal long term. Whether they are
| distracted away from this goal by capitalist propaganda to
| increase the labor supply, or they combine forces to achieve
| it is the challenge.
|
| People will argue "men and women should make their own
| choices and determine this for themselves". Yes, but what is
| the default cultural message nowadays? What is promoted as
| the norm? What is the institutional and political rhetoric
| around this question? Western liberal democratic, capitalist
| nations stand firmly on the side of promoting careerism for
| women over early motherhood and marriage.
| jfengel wrote:
| They also promote careerism for men, a notion that doesn't
| ever seem to come into question. It's true that only women
| can gestate and breast feed, but after that fatherhood and
| motherhood are very similar callings. Men could opt out of
| the capitalist summons to the labor supply just as easily
| as women, and it shouldn't have to fall entirely on women
| to choose between "careerism" and "motherhood".
|
| If we shifted the norms to allow that, women would be able
| to make their decisions freely and fairly, rather than just
| accepting that the lion's share of of parenting should be
| up to them. Rhetoric that shifts solely to ending careerism
| for women, but not for men, does indeed disempower women.
| PKop wrote:
| Ultimately you're arguing for reality to change to fit
| your utopian whims. I'm saying, for the average couple,
| we should lean into reality.
|
| Would it be great if we could all have it all? Of course.
| I'm more concerned with the actual happiness and
| fulfillment of people who really will regret not having
| started a family early, and instead wasted their efforts
| following the neo-liberal careerist path.
|
| Someone's got to have the children and raise them.
| Someone's got to put in the time at work. Because of the
| time, effort and physical realities of women bearing
| children, for most couples the division of labor falls
| most efficiently on men putting in most of the time
| rising up the corporate ladder.
|
| People that recognize this happy path and want to go
| their own way are welcome to it. But we shouldn't lie to
| people. We should be honest with men and women from a
| young age what reality is.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > It's true that only women can gestate and breast feed,
|
| If you have multiple children, that can add up to a
| significant chunk of prime career building years.
| austincheney wrote:
| Unfortunately, that is the other side of the coin. Most
| people who have children at young ages tend to be less well
| off financially for the rest of their lives than people who
| wait until late to have children. That is simply because time
| and principle are the only factors that really matter in
| building wealth.
|
| This difference can also be taken to absurd extremes though.
| I honestly wonder why single people without children in my
| line of work aren't millionaires just based upon the
| compensation of their day jobs. After having 5 military
| deployments I can live in a cardboard box and would require
| only the cheapest of cars to commute to work. I don't spend
| money very often.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > I honestly wonder why single people without children in
| my line of work aren't millionaires just based upon the
| compensation of their day jobs.
|
| I'm not sure that people who never have children
| necessarily end up with more wealth than people who do have
| children, due to psychological impacts.
|
| Having a kid can inspire parents to get their shit together
| and succeed financially and think about the future,
| compared to a single person just spending on their hobbies
| and playing video games.
| oeuiiuhmbuh wrote:
| Mother's age at birth directly affects a child's health and
| life outcomes [1]. It is impossible to replace a woman's 20s
| with any amount of money.
|
| [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS221
| 4-1...
| mattnewton wrote:
| Minor nit, this article is mostly about how teenage mothers
| result in worse outcomes, and talks about the many
| advantages older mothers have up to over 35 when
| complications dominate the better resources older mothers
| tend to have.
| itronitron wrote:
| _If you have very good health insurance_ then the main cost
| for having children is going to be the increased cost of
| housing, which can be a capital investment. In addition to
| mortgage deduction, families also get deductions for children
| so there really isn 't much to be saved by not having
| children until later in life.
| poopoopeepee wrote:
| Another alternative is to design your startup around a very
| low burn rate and change nothing else in your life. I mean,
| if it is going to take 5-10 years as the blogger claims,
| what's 8-12 years if you get to tick all the other boxes in
| life?
| mattnewton wrote:
| 8-12 years of child rearing is very expensive. That's
| without even taking into compounding returns from working
| longer hours, seniority, experience, and investments.
| poopoopeepee wrote:
| The blog post starts with your same premise: pull out all
| the stops on working hard. It's just a choice. Why not
| have a startup that takes longer to grow?
|
| To make the point clear: children raised by young and
| growing parents and different from children raised by old
| and established parents. Slow startups are different from
| fast startups. No judgement, they are just different. But
| the premise that a fast startup is the only way to do a
| startup is false. It's just choices for different
| outcomes.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I am the child of two young parents who had to drop out
| of college to raise me and my siblings, eventually on my
| father's "lifestyle business" when working multiple jobs
| didn't balance the books, so I am well aware of the
| tradeoffs. In my experience though it's not a question of
| just adjusting your lifestyle for many people, it's a
| question of financial survival.
|
| My parents have not come close to being financially
| recovered relative to later-parents a decade after we've
| all left the house. The delay you are talking about
| compounds to absolutely massive differences in my
| experience. Trying to multi-task both the other "life"
| check boxes and your work is going to have large hidden
| costs on work because of these compounding advantages.
| nzmsv wrote:
| The chances of having a kid with a serious disorder go up
| dramatically for older mothers (and recent research shows
| this is true for fathers too). Even if we decide only to care
| about economics and not the kids health, health issues are
| expensive.
| andi999 wrote:
| Can you point to the 'dramatic' risks for older fathers?
| Usually it is a minor change in chance blown up by
| sensational press.
| nzmsv wrote:
| First hit on Google:
| https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20100208/autism-
| risk...
|
| 77% increase seems pretty dramatic to me.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| That stat is for mothers. He asked for fathers.
| [deleted]
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It's certainly economically worse, sure, but on the other
| hand you might be optimizing for other things. I for one
| would like to know my grandkids, and if I have my first kid
| at 40, and my kid has their first kid at 40, I'll have likely
| died of old age before my first grandkid reaches high school.
| Plus, I really like the idea of my kids being out of the
| house before my 60s. Factor those in with the studies about
| the relationship between the health of children and the age
| of the parents, and I'm willing to trade some potential
| income for those considerations (although that has limits,
| and having kids early can have quite substantial economic
| downsides, especially if you're a woman, and doubly
| especially if you end up out of the workforce entirely to
| raise them).
| devmunchies wrote:
| time is worth more than money. I'm glad I spent some time in
| my 20s raising little tikes so I can have more time with
| them.
|
| Having kids late in life is like a deathbed confessional.
| people just want to cross "birth children" off their list,
| but don't really think about being a mother/father for the
| rest of their life.
|
| If you value career over family thats cool, but you wont get
| returns on "family-as-an-asset" if you invest late in life.
| Invest early for greater returns.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| If your only goal is to accumulate capital over your
| lifespan, then you won't have children at all, since they're
| tremendously expensive and have no dollar return.
| koolba wrote:
| They're a great way to add some diversity to your
| retirement portfolio. Young able bodies that can get a job
| and provide you with food and shelter in your old age are
| the original inflation proof investment. Also, kids are
| awesome.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Young able bodies that can get a job... are the original
| inflation proof investment.
|
| Not quite sure that is true:
| https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mk1AG.jpg
|
| >Also, kids are awesome.
|
| If I am a dollar optimizer, the only thing I care about
| is money. How much can I sell "awesome" for? Can I skip a
| step and sell the children directly?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Children have massive potentials for dollar return. Not
| least because you can't buy the type of care your child
| might give you in old age for any price. But also because
| if they succeed, then you have access to their networks,
| which can also be worth quite a lot.
|
| You won't be able to calculate a precise number, but the
| saying "It's not what you know, it's who you know" shows
| the dollar price of networks is very high.
| kansface wrote:
| > Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically
| different in the future than they are now. In the future you
| may not be able to have children.
|
| This is not accurate for people with kids. A startup is an all
| encompassing job that pays very little in the short term and
| has a small chance at ever paying out a large amount. The
| opportunity cost of a real job is enormous.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| I wonder if "children raised mostly by their grandparents" will
| start to become more common. There's been a rise in multi-
| generational households lately due to pandemic shifts.
|
| Maybe younger parents who are also clawing their way up the
| career ladder will be able to take advantage of this situation
| to offload some parenting to their own parents, and then pay it
| forward when their own kids have children later on? Might be
| the only practical way to have kids in your 20s these days.
| evnc wrote:
| I kinda wish it would. Anecdotally, as a dual income
| household grandparental assistance was indispensable in
| raising our baby, and I've sorely missed it since the
| pandemic hit and no one's visiting any more. I recognize how
| lucky we were to have that available, since not everyone
| does.
|
| I think it can also have great benefits for the grandparents,
| who find a new sense of fulfillment and purpose and something
| to fill their time later in life. It reminds me of the
| studies on combining preschools and nursing homes showing
| positive outcomes for both populations. Also, intuitively,
| multi-generational households were the norm throughout human
| history before industrialization and economic centralization
| encouraged "leave your family behind and go Seek Your
| Fortune".
| abellerose wrote:
| It's completely unethical to have kids and like another
| commenter has said brings a great disadvantage economically. I
| would suggest to anyone to not follow your advice.
|
| edit: I won't be further commenting on the topic because the
| same people asking everyone "when are you going to have kids
| like me?" are just going to downvote. Yes, I rather see an end
| to humankind because that ends suffering. Less suffering in a
| universe is better than a universe that experienced more. Yes,
| nobody cares about the ones that wish they never had been born
| because of whatever reason that was inflicted upon them.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Women are biologically determined to have children with a man
| that can provide security and resources. It's natural drive
| and need on the same level as breathing, eating, drinking.
|
| Men are biologically driven to have many children, from many
| different women, as their circumstances and resource ps
| allow.
|
| This is the human condition and anyone born alive accepted
| the EULA agreement, by being born alive.
| drakonka wrote:
| Do you deny the existence of men and women who choose not
| to have children?
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Please go out and meet people, men, women, in real life.
|
| People go through phases. Little children think they are
| dinosaurs and have pretend tea parties.
|
| I've known several women that said they didn't ever want
| kids, while dating loser college boyfriends.
|
| However, when the same women met and married successful,
| richer, older men, the women popped out babies left and
| right.
|
| People say things all the time to rationalize their
| circumstances.
|
| Men and women will make babies. It's biological drive. It
| doesn't matter what people believe or think. It's how
| species continue and survive.
| drakonka wrote:
| > Please go out and meet people, men, women, in real
| life.
|
| That's horrible advice, we're in a pandemic. But when
| it's over I would highly suggest taking your own advice.
| If you are really discussing in good faith and genuinely
| have never met or heard of a person who has chosen to go
| through life without having kids, to the point of
| legitimately not believing that such people even exist,
| it sounds like your world has been very small. I wish you
| the best of luck with expanding it.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Deflecting reality is not going to make it less real.
|
| You exist because your parents make babies. All these so
| called people that claim they don't want kids exist,
| because their parents make babies. Men and women make
| babies, because it is core biological drive in reality.
| No amount of rationalization will change reality.
|
| Reality will bite people on their butt, one way or
| another. Biological drive will overcome any belief or
| thoughts, when circumstances become better for people.
| lainga wrote:
| What impact do you foresee any economic gains from
| childlessness having in 100 years, if your advice is followed
| universally? Who will inherit those gains?
| abellerose wrote:
| I believe the context for the advice is directed to whoever
| is capable of having children. So, economic gains are
| meaningless to them when they're dead in 100 years.
| lainga wrote:
| Put another way: let's say everyone who is capable of
| children follows your advice. To whom are these economic
| gains meaningful in 100 years? Who would their parents
| be?
| abellerose wrote:
| What you're implying is meaningless to the ones that are
| dead. So maybe you can now realize why I wrote my
| response and it was directed towards anyone considering
| conceiving a child.
| lainga wrote:
| OK, from a pure hedonistic view - let's say at some time
| in the future, there are no more humans left. Why would
| it make sense to invest anything into economic gain in
| the time before that happens? You'd rather run the
| economy into the ground to extract as much value as you
| could from it, before the end of human existence. You -
| or else someone else who is the last human alive - are
| "leaving something on the table", so to speak. Otherwise
| they are just leaving value around for wildlife.
|
| In other words there would be a time, maybe dependent on
| the rate at which remaining humans can unwind the human
| economy, past which any effort at collective economic
| gain wouldn't be worth it.
| drakonka wrote:
| I think of this as a non-issue; either my partner, or a
| friend, or a charity of choice will inherit my gains if I
| don't spend them all enjoying life first.
| [deleted]
| austincheney wrote:
| It's unethical to have kids? I don't follow.
| abellerose wrote:
| You might find the following interesting:
| https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/choosing-children-
| ethical... I, for one, would never bring another life into
| this world and while so much suffering occurs. It's ethical
| to adopt contrary to conceive children.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| I am certain your parents had same ideas. Until they
| decided to have babies. Having kids is powerful natural
| drive after finding suitable enough mates.
|
| Statistically, you will have children in future, if
| you're under 30 right now.
| leetcrew wrote:
| statistically, you will be attracted to women, if you're
| a man right now. and yet...
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Attractive men and women will find each other and make
| babies, as they have done for thousands of years.
|
| Instagram, Raya, Tinder make it much easier for
| attractive people to find each other efficiently.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| That was my interpretation. There are some antinatalists
| out there.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Can I just say we should really stop using these 'turf'
| labels, the flat-earthers, the anti-vaxxers, now this
| 'antinatilist' label.
|
| It makes it seem like a binomial thing, you are either in
| my group or in the other. Discussion stops being about
| the ideas and more adversarial, focused on taking sides.
|
| Also it creates a group identity which in my opinion
| makes it harder for people to change their minds based on
| discussion or new info.
|
| If my aunt tells me vaccines are bad I might trust her.
| But if there is whole group of 'anti-vaxxer' people who
| make me feel good about myself then I suppose I am now an
| anti-vaxxer and that becomes an identity more so than an
| opinion which would be more fluid and mutable.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > brings a great disadvantage economically
|
| yeah but you forgot about my platinum, enterprise-grade DNA.
| really good for the economy as a whole.
|
| Other people are going to have kids, their kids will
| encounter hardships and need problem solvers among the pack.
| Its unethical to deprive their posterity of my web-scale(r)
| DNA.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| This could work as Tinder bio. It's unethical to deprive
| future generations of my DNA.
| shaneprrlt wrote:
| The antinatalist point of view is incredibly damaging to the
| long term progress of our species.
| harperlee wrote:
| Seeing as a big chuck of what someone believes is
| culturally inherited from their parents, and thus
| hypothesizing that meme* survival partially follows parent-
| child relationships, I'd say that that's a problem that
| will end up self-correcting :)
|
| * In the original Richard Dawkins sense, not in the funny
| gif sense.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| You would think this is the case. But yet, they keep on
| reproducing while complaining bitterly about it.
|
| Above commenter will likely have children very shortly.
| bulek wrote:
| Amusingly we have a case study for this: the Shakers.
|
| "They practice a celibate and communal lifestyle,
| pacifism, uniform charismatic worship, and their model of
| equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in
| their society in the 1780s."
|
| Needless to say there's only 2 left.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
| leetcrew wrote:
| I'm not intimately familiar with all the different strains
| of antinatalism, but I think that's kinda the point? an
| antinatalist would not consider funding existing people's
| retirements or possibly even the survival of the species to
| be sufficient justification for creating new conscious
| beings who cannot consent to their creation.
| jimbokun wrote:
| At which point that philosophy has completely jumped the
| shark.
|
| The premise that the universe is somehow "better" with no
| conscious life is just silly sophistry.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > The premise that the universe is somehow "better" with
| no conscious life is just silly sophistry.
|
| meh, no more than all the other moral philosophies. some
| are more practical than others, but none are more "true"
| than others.
| john_moscow wrote:
| That's what the corporations want you to believe because they
| want you to spend as much time and energy as possible being a
| cog in their machine and source the next generation of
| workers from the lowest bidder on the global scale.
| mberning wrote:
| I just recently had my first at an age closer to 40 than 30. I
| think freezing your eggs and having kids later is not such a
| great idea. Sure, you can have the kid well outside your prime or
| even use a surrogate. But that is just the beginning. Your child
| is not going to get the experience of being raised by a more
| youthful and energetic version of yourself . I think there is a
| lot to be said for that. I wish I had started 5 years sooner.
| darrylb42 wrote:
| I had kids in my mid-late 40s Certainly motivation to be
| healthy and get energy levels up. For women and the men who
| have kids with them the chances of twins goes up with age. Or
| at least that is what my wife found when search for a reason to
| blame me. :)
| Baeocystin wrote:
| My Mom was well in her 40's when I was born, my Dad in his
| early 50's.
|
| I wouldn't trade the childhood I had with them for the world.
| By the time I came around, they were able to provide a wise,
| warm, stable and loving home in a way that even the best-
| intentioned younger folks wouldn't have known how to do. That I
| played fewer games of toss the ball or the like in exchange
| doesn't matter a whit. FWIW.
| hycaria wrote:
| I really don't feel the same. As a young adult you get to see
| your parents get very old very fast, and also when you get
| internships first job and such your parent has been in
| retirement for ten years and is clueless about the workforce.
| Also they're too old to bother to be grand parents now. Also
| my old man globally did not give a shit and focus on his own
| aspirations while he still had free time in good health and
| financially prepare for his retirement rather than see and
| help his kid bloom as a young adult. And I can't really blame
| him for it.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| In the same boat. Another con of waiting is that many people I
| wish my children could meet (great grandparents, uncles,
| friends of family) have died. And of course I and my partner
| will be dead N years sooner than if I had children at age X -
| N, which means (at best) less time for grandchildren, or who
| knows.
| [deleted]
| sct202 wrote:
| I have older parents who had me at 40, and I wouldn't feel
| guilty over it if I were you. I didn't really realize how much
| older my parents were than a lot of other people's until I went
| to college.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Can't speak for the OP, but it's not a "guilt" thing for me.
| Just trying to understand the pros and cons from a personal
| and social level.
| benlivengood wrote:
| One thing I noticed as I aged is that my emotional intelligence
| and resilience increased (as energy decreased) and I'm not sure
| which is more important for kids; generally what I've read is
| that so long as kids have food, shelter, some quality time with
| parents, and healthy interactions with other humans they
| generally turn out normal. It's fun to be able to do youthful
| things with kids but the kids can honestly do youthful stuff
| with anyone and grow from it.
|
| Definitely don't beat yourself up for not being younger; kids
| will always have more free time and energy than their parents
| (I had all my kids before 27) and the important thing is to
| help them find outlets for that energy that they really enjoy.
| Solvitieg wrote:
| Another downside is smaller multi-generational families.
|
| Children birthed to older parents are unlikely to have
| grandparents.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It is not only about eggs.
|
| Childcare requires a lot of stamina: waking up at night,
| multitasking all the time. It is not something you want to start
| doing in your 40s until your late 50s.
|
| You do not to have a huge age gap between you and your kid and be
| a parent that is tired all the time.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Great blog post. But this HN thread has a toxic level of "well
| actually..." going on.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Facebook and Apple will pay to freeze your eggs as an employee
| benefit, is that right?
| Nesco wrote:
| Am I the only one to find this dystopian? Society should adapt
| to humans and not the other way around.
| nyghtly wrote:
| I agree. The implicit messaging is: "If you care about your
| career, then you should freeze your eggs. We'll pay for it,
| so no excuses." It's like they're admitting to the fact that
| pregnant women will be discriminated against professionally.
| barnaclejive wrote:
| That is great, but also deeply depressing.
| antattack wrote:
| Even when having children young, I feel that whole child-rearing
| experience, aka family, takes a back seat once both parents start
| working full time. 8 hours work day + one hour commute = you see
| your kids for hour or two before they go to sleep.
| [deleted]
| izolate wrote:
| This is a heartbreaking read, I feel for the author. This is a
| true case of biology not having kept up with societal progress.
| mutatio wrote:
| "Progress"? Interesting interpretation, I'd invert that;
| society is miles from where it needs to be if these situations
| are increasing in frequency. And I don't think medi/biotech is
| the solution.
| grillvogel wrote:
| or you could argue that "societal progress" is at odds with
| basic human needs
| dcow wrote:
| I think women have largely been presented a false promise by
| progressives: value and purpose is derived from work, go do what
| men do to be their equal. It's not necessarily anybody's fault,
| we live in a society where money is valued. But I wish we could
| structure society in a way such that the value of raising
| children, homemaking, is clearly communicated and understood.
| Being a mother without a snazzy career is frowned upon by plenty
| of people these days. I don't think that stigma is healthy. Why
| do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
|
| Couple that with the fact that depression is most prevalent among
| childless women in their 40s, it's like we're fighting nature to
| create a perfect 3rd wave utopia. Of course women should follow
| their heart and we should build a society that allows them to do
| so on equal terms, but we should not discourage homemaking and
| stigmatize people who want to raise children.
|
| And then there's the practical side of things for which I've not
| been able to come to a good solution: In order to have a society
| of power career couples, someone has to raise their kids. As a
| couple that means you have to find someone who makes at most the
| same as you make, but probably less, to be your nanny (otherwise
| it would make more sense financially to just do it yourself). I
| don't see how that's a sustainable narrative unless we are
| holding out for technology to fill that need.
|
| Me? I would be a stay at home dad in a heartbeat. I love cooking
| and homemaking and being there for children. But practically in
| my relationship that doesn't make sense so I'm obligated to work
| my days away in order to provide for my family. I think there's
| this idea that all men love career life because it pays the
| bills. In reality it's far from a pipe dream existence.
|
| Point is life is about making sacrifices in order to find
| happiness. If you sacrifice your youth and fertility for a shot
| at big riches, ultimately thats your choice. I just wish as a
| society we were more honest about reality and weren't so
| dismissive of people who choose to raise children. That is where
| I see the path start to turn destructive.
| jberryman wrote:
| > presented a false promise by progressives
|
| I think this is a poor framing for the rest of your comment,
| which is essentially a feminist critique of patriarchy and
| capitalism, and how patriarchy/capitalism is a harmful
| structure to men as well. Progressives are totally on board
| with this.
| Kye wrote:
| I was on the train to goofball-ville a long, long time ago
| because I thought the goofballs were the only ones making
| these critiques of binarist advocacy focused on one part of
| the problem. Fortunately I found that feminists made them
| earlier and better than any MRA type person could ever hope
| to. Give me any number of Judith Butlers or bell hookses over
| the sharpest "intellectual dark web" genius.
| cloudier wrote:
| +1000
|
| It's just way easier to help women achieve success in a way
| that helps capitalists than it is to push for better working
| conditions for parents. But pushing for better working
| conditions isn't impossible either, and the US is an extreme
| outlier in how hostile it is to working parents.
| HuShifang wrote:
| I completely agree with the point here -- people should have
| the freedom to work a bit less and "live" more (however they
| define that, be it parenting, pursuing hobbies, or what have
| you) without fear for their livelihood.
|
| I would offer one amendment: in the US at least, disagreement
| on this theme is probably one of the major dividing lines
| between liberals and progressives (and their fellow travelers).
| Liberals (like Elizabeth Warren, who has labeled herself a
| progressive but is generally liberal in her policy positions)
| prioritize free child care and other policies that would make
| outsourcing childcare less financially onerous, freeing people
| to work more; progressives and their fellow travelers (like
| Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang) prioritize paid family leave,
| UBI, and other policies that would minimize the need to
| outsource childcare in the first place by allowing people to
| work less.
| amelius wrote:
| Meanwhile it is impossible for many people to own a house
| without a double income...
|
| So your idea makes sense, but not in today's economy.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
|
| Why do we assume that those behaviors are inherently a man's?
|
| Women that have a drive to become business leaders do so for
| personal reasons and not to emulate anyone (except perhaps
| personal heroes who could happen to be women).
|
| You later speak about a wish to become a stay-at-home father.
| Is this emulating women or is it a wish based on activities
| that are not inherently gendered such as cooking and taking
| care of children?
| dcow wrote:
| My point is not that these behaviors are inherently those of
| a man. It's that success should be defined much more broadly
| than "things men traditionally do". I think we are in
| agreement on that I may have not done the best job at
| capturing the point.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| But is being a start-up founder really something that men
| traditionally do or is it a completely new role that people
| of all genders can aim for?
|
| This role can be toxic and lead to problematic behaviours
| that can worsen a person's personal life and mental health,
| regardless of their gender identity.
| africanboy wrote:
| it's something that men have traditionally done, yes.
|
| it's like the beard, it's traditionally something that,
| in general, men have and women don't.
|
| that doesn't mean that things can't change in the future
| and that the change won't be for the better.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Some of my personal idols from the past are Coco Chanel,
| Estee Lauder and Katharine Graham.
|
| That would be women born in the 1880's, 1900's and early
| 1920's.
|
| While few women had the privilege required to focus on
| their career, it was still present. At what point should
| we mark something as "tradition"?
|
| Remember that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was not a
| thing until 1974. Until then, banks required single,
| widowed or divorced women to bring a man along to cosign
| any credit application, regardless of their income.
| africanboy wrote:
| I'm not American, so I know nothing about the equal
| credit opportunity, sorry.
|
| I also think that traditions in USA is used to mean
| inertia ("things have always been done that way" etc.),
| but US are a very bad country for female workers for
| reasons that go beyond traditions.
|
| My country has its share of remarkable women, Miuccia
| Prada is one of them and she's still alive and well,
| Fabiola Giannotti is Italian and the first female
| director of CERN, Maria Montessori (1870) the inventor of
| the Montessori educational method was Italian,Grazia
| Deledda was the second woman in history to win a Nobel
| price in 1926 and the first Italian woman and the list
| could go on, the fact is that until not long ago men and
| women had different jobs because it was required by the
| job.
|
| See construction for example, you don't see women in
| construction.
|
| Traditionally, if we talk about the entire World, means
| since at least hominids have settled down and started
| farming.
|
| Luckily things are changing, but there's still the
| question: do really women want that?
|
| I'm not questioning their abilited here, but the idea
| that having the choice they would chose to be part of
| something that men have built in their image at their
| rules.
|
| For example in Scandinavia where gender equality is
| higher than everywhere else in the western World, women
| are less keen to attend STEM faculties because they are
| too hard for too little reward. They can make more money
| working as lawyers or for the government, having also
| more time to do what they like, including spending it
| raising their kids and with their families. Once they
| reached equality (same opportunities) they started to
| chose because they don't have to prove anything to the
| others.
|
| EDIT: if you think about it we Italians are usually
| laughed of because we live with our "mamma" and talk a
| lot about the "famiglia", we are " those lazy Italians"
| but that's the reason why being a housewife here it's not
| a stigma. Housewives are not rewarded enough in Italy,
| but being one it's not the end of your social life. On
| the contrary in USA (in particular) not working to death
| is frowned upon, free time is for the lazy people, "work
| hard and the American dream will come true", these are
| the kinds of " traditions " that make it impossible to be
| a woman, a mother and a successful business woman, to the
| point that paid maternity leave is not even a right!
|
| Here in Italy, which is not the best country in the World
| about maternity policies, women have 5 mandatory months
| of paid maternity leave during which they can't be at
| work, it's mandatory that they abstein from it. The
| period can be extended if the medical conditions require
| (or suggest) it.
|
| Paradoxically younger generations that grew up on social
| media immersed in American culture, see things the same
| way and have a very hard time accepting that not being
| highly succesful at work (or in general) is not the end
| of the World and they also think that being an housewife
| is a failure.
|
| full disclosure: there haven't been housewives in my
| family at least in the past three generations, so I am
| not saying it because I wish for women to stay home and
| take care of the kids.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > See construction for example, you don't see women in
| construction.
|
| Three of my close friends are women in the construction
| industry and my cousin is a car mechanic. My best friend
| who is male works as a secretary and my uncle is a nurse.
|
| People will works on things that passionate them when
| they have the freedom to do so. There is no such thing as
| a gendered job.
|
| I am familiar with the gender equality paradox and
| personally believe that it's causes are socioeconomic and
| not about "not having the stress" to "emulate men".
| Especially since Nordic countries have a higher
| percentage of women in parliament which I would argue is
| "traditionally" a man's role.
| africanboy wrote:
| > Three of my close friends are women in the construction
| industry
|
| anecdotes aside
|
| _Women working in construction numbered 1.5 percent of
| the entire U.S. workforce_
|
| they also earn only 80 of the men's pay on average.
|
| > and my uncle is a nurse.
|
| and so was my father, for 42 years. There are cultural
| differences in the World, as a low payd job there is less
| incentive for men in USA, only 13% of nurse are men, in
| Italy about 30% of them is a man.
|
| But in Italy 80% of teachers up to high school are women,
| for example, still today.
|
| Because traditionally education is a women's role.
|
| We think (or thought) they do it better.
| kmclean wrote:
| This! Women who get into business or tech or whatever aren't
| "emulating men". Many are actually genuinely interested in
| those pursuits. A lot of women just do not want to be
| homemakers. Many do, sure, and it should be a viable option
| without stigma, but for at least half it would be hell and we
| should allow women to pursue their interests and desires.
| africanboy wrote:
| I don't think that the intention was that, but since we are
| commenting on an article that suggest to women to "freeze
| their eggs" while pursuing a carreer as a founder, it's
| probably honest to acknowledge the fact that men don't need
| to freeze their eggs if they want to have kids later in their
| lives and can have them while pursuing a career because, in
| some countries more than others, like in the US for example,
| women are highly penalized for the fact that they can get
| pregnant.
|
| So it's less a men's problem than it is a women's problem.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > I think women have largely been presented a false promise by
| progressives: value and purpose is derived from work, go do
| what men do to be their equal. It's not necessarily anybody's
| fault, we live in a society where money is valued. But I wish
| we could structure society in a way such that the value of
| raising children, homemaking, is clearly communicated and
| understood. Being a mother without a snazzy career is frowned
| upon by plenty of people these days. I don't think that stigma
| is healthy. Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
|
| Why ask these questions only as they relate to women and
| motherhood? Why haven't men being presented a false promise
| that value and purpose is derived from work? Being a father
| without a snazzy career is equally (if not more so) frowned
| upon by plenty of people these days. I don't think that stigma
| is healthy, either. Why do men have to emulate other men to be
| "valuable"? Why do men have to _avoid_ emulating women to be
| "valuable"?
|
| > Couple that with the fact that depression is most prevalent
| among childless women in their 40s
|
| I don't know your source for this but you should at least
| consider the possibility that women, particularly women with
| financial resources (childless women in their 40s, for
| example), are _significantly_ more likely to seek mental health
| treatment compared to similarly situated men. Correlation is
| not causation and more women being treated for depression does
| not necessarily mean more women are depressed.
| mfer wrote:
| > Why ask these questions only as they relate to women and
| motherhood? Why haven't men being presented a false promise
| that value and purpose is derived from work? Being a father
| without a snazzy career is equally (if not more so) frowned
| upon by plenty of people these days. I don't think that
| stigma is healthy, either. Why do men have to emulate other
| men to be "valuable"? Why do men have to avoid emulating
| women to be "valuable"?
|
| +1000 this
|
| Have you noticed that it's leaders focused on their
| businesses and capitalism that we turn to when we look for
| definition of value and purpose. Those folks who are looking
| for our productivity that feeds their wealth.
|
| Maybe we should look for our value and priorities somewhere
| other than these folks.
| TuringTest wrote:
| _> Have you noticed that it 's leaders focused on their
| businesses and capitalism that we turn to when we look for
| definition of value and purpose. Those folks who are
| looking for our productivity that feeds their wealth._
|
| _> Maybe we should look for our value and priorities
| somewhere other than these folks._
|
| That may be a strange thing to say at the web forum of a
| company _whose whole purpose is to channel young people
| towards that mentality_ and the capitalist perspective of
| value and purpose.
|
| So please, say it louder.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Me? I would be a stay at home dad in a heartbeat. I love
| cooking and homemaking and being there for children. But
| practically in my relationship that doesn't make sense so I'm
| obligated to work my days away in order to provide for my
| family. I think there's this idea that all men love career
| life because it pays the bills.
| dcow wrote:
| 100% agree that any stigma against being a stay at home dad
| (viewing the issue from the opposite angle as you ask) is
| also unhealthy. In my personal journey, at least, I have not
| encountered men who stigmatize my desire to be a stay at home
| dad but I have (surprisingly often) encountered women who
| stigmatize female homemakers (or the concept thereof). I
| guess it's only anecdata there, but I don't think I'm wildly
| off base with my experience.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> ...encountered women who stigmatize female
| homemakers..._
|
| I've read plenty of rants from both genders of stay-at-home
| dads getting snubbed by stay-at-home moms from their play
| groups, brunches, and other social activities. I think the
| stigma against stay-at-home dads hasn't gone away, just
| shifted to different venues.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
|
| I don't think it's a men vs women issue.
|
| Our current society is structured in such a way that work is
| necessary to survive & thrive - it is usually not possible to
| take a lengthy break from work without financial & career
| consequences.
|
| Whether you are taking that break for childcare or (to pick a
| typical men's stereotype) drinking beer & having BBQ's with
| your friends every day doesn't make a difference.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I think there's this idea that all men love career life
| because it pays the bills. In reality it's far from a pipe
| dream existence."
|
| I completely agree.
| vbtemp wrote:
| > I think women have largely been presented a false promise by
| progressives
|
| There's a lot of sneering and judgment by women, toward women
| who choose to be a stay at home mom and not have a career.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> There 's a lot of sneering and judgment by women..._
|
| Do you think they would feel differently if the bar to owning
| a home was lowered to one-income household, 20% DTI, 20-year
| mortgage, no more than 3% interest, 10% down, no PMI? I
| suspect a lot of distortions come from a very misaligned
| house purchase requirements to income availability picture.
| TuringTest wrote:
| The value behind that attitude is that it _is_ a problem to
| think that _women_ are the ones expected to choose staying-
| at-home, when culturally this expectation should be
| distributed equally among genders.
| LeonardMenard wrote:
| Yes, exactly. I am disappointed (but not sneering nor
| contemptuous) when I find out that another one of my well-
| educated and ambitious female peers has decided to become a
| stay-at-home mom. Not because I don't think it's a valuable
| or valid role to play, but because I have absolutely zero
| equivalent male peers who have done the same thing.
|
| Another well-educated women who choose to give up her
| career and stay at home, without a corresponding man doing
| the same, is just another data point that makes MY career
| look invalid, and sees MY career as optional.
|
| Like, more power to her, but it does make me sad at the
| state of society.
| vbtemp wrote:
| All of the time when I hear that commentary, it has to do
| with them finding stay-at-home moms unintelligent, petty,
| vapid.
| kmclean wrote:
| Interestingly, single, childless women are also the happiest
| population demographic.
|
| (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-h..
| .)
|
| I don't disagree homemaking should be less stigmatized, but the
| real problem is American startup culture that expects this kind
| of around-the-clock all-in hustle mentality. The vast majority
| of businesses are actually just small firms with a few people
| that make a decent living. That's the lifestyle that should be
| celebrated and desirable. There's no reason running a business
| can't be compatible with having a family, we just need to re-
| define what it looks like to run a company. The focus should be
| on sustainability and balance, not growth at any cost.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I wonder what the data looks like if you regress happiness
| onto age for single women.
|
| I have no difficulty believing single, childless women are
| very happy in their 20s and 30s. I wonder though if that
| rapidly changes past 40.
|
| I would hypothesize the same effect happens for men as well.
| dpoochieni wrote:
| What did you expect them to say? That they are unhappy. I
| take this kind of investigation with a pinch of salt. It can
| be a case of the ladies doth protest too much of their
| happiness. In my personal experience, many complain of
| loneliness as they grow older.
| enko123 wrote:
| Not remotely believable.
| danbolt wrote:
| What makes you feel that way? Do you think the narrative
| might be more complicated than what the parent suggests?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't think this is some false progressive promise at all.
| Work is freedom and independence. Through work people express
| themselves at a cognitive and creative level.
|
| It's not just about 'snazzy careers'. It's about self-
| realization. When given the choice in countries with tons of
| generous child welfare policies like in much of Europe, women
| still defer pregnancy and prefer to get an education or a job,
| and I don't blame them because honestly most people grow tired
| of being a stay-at-home parent very quickly. It's just a
| menial, not really inspiring, and not very social job.
|
| I know a lot of guys who said the same thing you said, that
| they'd love to stay at home. All who did now work again full-
| time, some even admitted directly to me how much they hated it
| after only a few months and how much they missed work.
|
| I think this attempt to romanticize stay-at-home parenting is
| basically cultural nostalgia. It's also interesting that you
| frame it as a women's job as others have pointed out, because
| the only reason women had to do it in the past is because they
| didn't get much of a say in the matter.
| core-questions wrote:
| > Of course women should follow their heart and we should build
| a society that allows them to do so on equal terms, but we
| should not discourage homemaking and stigmatize people who want
| to raise children.
|
| I think that many women do actually have the desire to be
| mothers in their hearts, and that they repress this desire in
| the current social context because having children is no longer
| something that confers high status upon you.
|
| Changing that would fix the birth rate. As a man, I do actually
| feel empowered and somehow more complete and grounded by virtue
| of having a family; but I know that before I had kids, I didn't
| really look at dads that way. Changing that perception,
| returning the family to a position of honor rather than just
| portraying it as a drag that stops you from doing all the great
| fun stuff out there in the world, would do wonders on that
| front.
|
| Sometimes it feels like a concerted effort has taken place to
| knock the family off of the pedestal.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Somebody is down voting you, possibly because of the non-
| gender-neutral language, but I agree with your message: we
| currently overvalue wealth and job status and undervalue the
| joy of raising a family.
|
| I switched to a 4-day week to find a better work-life balance
| and couldn't be happier. Time with my kids is more valuable
| than the salary cut.
| core-questions wrote:
| I get downvoted continually because I post edgy things like
| "eating meat is okay" and "you should consider having a
| family" etc. I'm used to it, comment karma is largely
| meaningless, and sometimes the rate limiting helps make
| sure I have composed my thoughts well before responding.
|
| Very envious of your 4-day week! I do 6-7 days worth of
| work in 5 days and it's slowly killing me. Still finding
| time for the kids somehow, but the result is no sleep or
| recreation time for myself... the switch from office to WFH
| life has not been a blessing in terms of work/life balance.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Been there, done that. Burned out. Twice.
|
| Eventually learned that I can't achieve everything I want
| on every facet of my life. I am not superhuman. The day
| only has 24 hours.
|
| Something had to give. I was in a position in which I
| could afford to work less, so that's what I did. Now I'm
| mediocre at a few things in my life rather than being
| great at one at the cost of everything else, and I
| couldn't be happier with that decision.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > In order to have a society of power career couples, someone
| has to raise their kids. [... Y]ou have to find someone [...]
| to be your nanny [...]. I don't see how that's a sustainable
| narrative [...].
|
| Bomb some more countries. Make some more refugees. Problem
| solved.
|
| In England, when the aspiring middle classes started finding it
| impossible to afford servants (which was a problem, because
| that was a key mark of their status), they started taking in
| kids from workhouses to serve them, and made it out to be some
| kind of charity. When that ran out they started up guest worker
| programs. A notable one took poor Jewish women fleeing a
| certain German government. Win-win, right?
| madamelic wrote:
| >I think people have largely been presented a false promise:
| value and purpose is derived from working outside the home.
|
| FTFY.
|
| As you state further in, it's not women's exclusive job to be
| child-rearing nor is it not 'work' to maintain and run a house.
| silvestrov wrote:
| You'll have to accept that running a house is _much_ less
| work today than it was 150 years ago when there was no
| fridge, no hover, no washing mashine, no ready-made food.
|
| Today a single mom with full time job can still run a (not
| too big) house.
|
| So to be fullfilling there has to be more than just keeping
| the house clean and people fed, which is probably why so many
| upper-upper-middle class women have a part-time job running
| some kind of fashion store.
| sturgill wrote:
| > Today a single mom with full time job can still run a
| (not too big) house.
|
| Until COVID hits and children have to be taught virtually
| from home.
|
| There are no easy and cheap answers here, but a series of
| trade offs. I think the original question is "where is the
| conversation of the trade off?" I don't think it's settled
| that the ideal social structure involves a dual income
| family. And I think very few people envy the workload
| required of single mothers, regardless of technical
| advances that make cleaning a home easier.
|
| Caregiving goes well beyond making sure the kids have clean
| underwear.
| [deleted]
| rcpt wrote:
| In other nations where the state provides good childcare women
| have historically entered the workforce just fine.
|
| It's the US (and especially California) that drains everything
| possible from young families.
| ummonk wrote:
| And a good chunk of the women entering the workforce then
| work for the state providing childcare for other women's
| children.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| You do get a roughly 20:1 economy of scale though, which is
| tough to sneeze at. And you might be able to scale that up
| even more with iPads.
|
| Have you seen videos of orphaned animals that bond with
| stuffed toys or socks or whatever? Cue a DeepDream
| hallucination triggered by the word "ma-ma": The perfect
| supernormal stimulus for Baby. Even better than the Peppa
| Pig nightmare fuel you can already find on Youtube. Little
| Ash A-10 will be too absorbed to miss you in his cute
| CarePod.
| koverda wrote:
| Could you elaborate on why California especially?
| nostrademons wrote:
| Not OP, but in the major Californian metropolises housing
| has a way of sucking out all available resources. There are
| lots of people and not enough land, which means that people
| have a tendency to bid up the price of available housing up
| to the very maximum that they can afford to pay. As a
| result, wages are high, but it all goes to landlords or
| previous homeowners.
|
| Worse, this applies down the income ladder, such that
| childcare workers, cashiers, waiters, etc. are _also_
| living at the edge of subsistence because of housing. As a
| result, the price of these services gets bid up as well.
| This affects everybody but tends to affect families more
| than singles, because they can 't bunk with roommates and
| they require a lot more services that involve paying other
| people.
|
| This isn't really California-specific: families in Eureka,
| Merced, and Bakersfield do just fine (except for it being
| boring and not having many opportunities). But most people
| associate "California" with either the Bay Area or LA, and
| both of those metros have lots of money flowing in, lots of
| people flowing in, and restrictive zoning that keeps
| housing scarce.
| rcpt wrote:
| No school busses, difficult schedules, insane commutes for
| parents, expensive aftercare, super expensive daycare,
| super expensive housing. Hell, they used to make kids pay
| to play sports until the courts struck that down.
|
| Mostly because California has prop 13 -- the $30B per year
| transfer of wealth from the young or new into the pockets
| of Native Sons of the Golden West.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jlos wrote:
| I think this is due to at least 2 factors:
|
| 1) The success of movements for gender equality actually make
| the excesses of those movements hard to critique.
|
| 2) Treating a problem as a choice. The problem is having a home
| that is relatively clean with 3 healthy and enjoyable meals a
| day for 2 adults and children. Having one adult focus on income
| earning while another focuses on household management is a
| solution many families find works for them. There are others. 2
| career focused adults with a nanny is an option if those
| careers have enough earning power. Some immigrant families here
| in Canada will have the entire extended family live in a single
| (large) residence. The grandparents do childcare and household
| maintenance while all the adults work.
|
| Most media seem to treat family arrangement as people dictating
| their political philosophy onto those less powerful when in
| reality the vast majority are managing trade-offs in time,
| finances, lifestyle, and career.
|
| 3) The increasing tendency to optimize society for the upper
| end of the wealth distribution. When a woman becomes a fortune
| 500 CEO, supreme court judge, or in any other way reaches the
| upper echelon of society this is treated as a victory for women
| as a identity class, even though such victories have no
| material benefit to the 99% of women who lead normal lives near
| the median.
|
| Ideally, society optimizes for the median while allowing
| outliers to path to success. But that requires a level of
| nuance and flexibility that doesn't seem to have much place in
| public life.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Fixing this would require raising wages to the point where a
| single income can support a family. Until that's the case, both
| parents have to work unless you're wealthy (not a high earner;
| actually wealthy). I would just ask yourself who in society
| benefits from this situation and who loses. It _doesn't_ have
| to be this way, but we keep electing politicians who promise to
| keep it this way (on both sides of the aisle).
|
| If the US had a viable left it would be different; but we
| don't. Other countries have solved these problems to some
| degree. We need to stop acting like taking care of people and
| funding social programs is the next step to Stalinism (but
| again, think of _who_ is saying this and how it threatens their
| power).
| soheil wrote:
| There is something wrong with the argument that women need to
| think of raising kids and staying home as ambitious as anything
| anyone does including those working 16 hours/day jobs and
| building a career that rewards proportionally, ie. lawyers at
| top firms, surgeons etc.
|
| Incidentally this is orthogonal to if men raise the kids or
| women.
|
| You can't equate the two. The stigma is not entirely
| irrational. Raising kids is the default thing humans do,
| graduating at the top of your law school and becoming a partner
| at Cravath, Swaine & Moore is not.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I've been wondering if we're moving
| further or closer to the ideal you describe. As more excluded
| groups move towards unfettered capitalism, I wonder if we'll be
| lift with a huge gap to fill in the "bleeding heart" jobs, e.g.
| being a home maker, social worker, etc.
| mbgerring wrote:
| I think the economics of raising children plays a much greater
| role than stigma or culture.
| austincheney wrote:
| Actually, why must the family homemaker necessarily be a woman?
| If in a male/female relationship the female is the more
| ambitious one prioritize the male as the primary care giver.
| Either way raising children still takes time, energy, and focus
| that could otherwise pile into something else.
|
| While there are differences in general approaches males and
| females take in raising children I don't think there is any
| research indicating females are necessarily _better_ than
| males, or the contrary. The reductio ad absurdum of it is that
| males tend to be more challenging and females tend to be
| nurturing, but those distinctions are highly variable.
| foolinaround wrote:
| >family homemaker necessarily be a woman
|
| Women, making a broad assumption, seem to have the traits
| (honed over millemia) of watching over the family.
|
| But in a household, if the husband and wife exhibit the
| opposite traits, then that must be encouraged too.
|
| I know of a family in which the woman is the bread-winner,
| the husband takes care of the kids and home, and both are
| happy.
| dcow wrote:
| 1. I didn't say it needs to be a women, I am highlighting
| that there's a stigma against women performing that role
| today.
|
| 2. The problem is exactly with the characterization (that you
| made) of the "more ambitious" route being the career route.
| Why do we assume having a career requires more ambition than
| wanting to raise a healthy family?
| david-gpu wrote:
| > I am highlighting that there's a stigma against women
| performing that role today
|
| That is true, but there's an even bigger stigma against men
| who want to perform that role. Sure, you may find a very
| career-driven spouse who would be happy with you taking the
| role of the caregiver, but that is not a common occurrence.
| The man who does not provide substantial income to the
| family will find it much harder to find a partner than a
| woman in the same situation. Talking about heterosexual
| couples here, of course.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >1. I didn't say it needs to be a women, I am highlighting
| that there's a stigma against women performing that role
| today.
|
| I'm not aware of any stigma from women being stay at home
| moms. My impression is that most, if not all, people are
| aware that money gives you power (or freedom, if you will).
| And who doesn't like freedom.
|
| There's also less security of income for everyone, so a
| household relying on one spouse's income is risky.
| Especially if there's no extended family around that can
| come to the rescue in the event of loss of income.
|
| >Why do we assume having a career requires more ambition
| than wanting to raise a healthy family?
|
| Because it's too easy to say "I want to raise a healthy
| family", therefore it's a poor signal. Proving yourself
| with work, well remunerated or not, is a better signal. So
| I would say there are a lot of incentives for women to
| work, but not because society stigmatizes it, but because
| it leads to optimal results for women (and men).
| dcow wrote:
| True about income security. I am interested in a solution
| that looks something like the homemaking person operating
| as something that resembles a sole proprietorship focused
| on the care of children. Not a perfect solution but
| something in that vein.
|
| Re "too easy": I'm not talking about just wanting to
| raise a healthy family, the implication is that you
| actually do it. And that takes a lot of hard work.
|
| The suggestion that two working parents provides optimal
| results is not true or sustainable in my experience and
| seems to be the undertone of the discussion: in order to
| have both parents working, someone probably sacrificed
| their most fertile years to build a resume. And this
| isn't necessarily good for the future of our species.
|
| Is a household with two stable incomes nice? Sure. At the
| expense of the woman's fertility.. the sacrifice is
| questionable. Would also love to see our society support
| mothers of older children who need less immediate care
| entering the workforce not just young blood fresh out of
| high school and college.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Re "too easy": I'm not talking about just wanting to
| raise a healthy family, the implication is that you
| actually do it. And that takes a lot of hard work.
|
| And how do you discern if your potential partner is and
| willing to do the hard work? One way is to use the type
| of work they do as a proxy. Maybe it's not a good proxy,
| but I think it is one in use in much of the dating
| market.
|
| I agree with most of the rest of your comment, but people
| are just trying to play with the cards they have, even if
| that results in undesirable long term consequences for
| society. In the US, I blame all the voters who have
| somehow not prioritized parental leave and adequate time
| at home with children. I guess many of us want to be able
| to shop at grocery stores and eat at restaurants at 9PM
| at minimum cost.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I don't think the GP implied that women must be the
| caregivers given that he himself would be happy as a stay-at-
| home dad. I think he was just commenting about a common
| scenario.
|
| > If in a male/female relationship the female is the more
| ambitious one prioritize the male as the primary care giver
|
| Why equate "ambition" with "desire for a high-paying career"?
| Somebody who wants to raise a family can also feel ambitious
| about it.
| [deleted]
| sir_bearington wrote:
| It doesn't. But only 20% of mothers want to work fill time as
| compared to 70% of fathers. 30% of mothers want to not work
| at all, and 50% want to work part time.
|
| I don't think the argument here is that women make better
| parents than men. Rather, we live in a free society where men
| and women make their own choices. And women and men have
| substantially different work preferences after becoming a
| parent.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/3/2010/...
| [deleted]
| jimbokun wrote:
| I agree with your general point.
|
| But would add that in the very early stages:
|
| 1. Women are the ones who get pregnant, which takes a
| physical toll, and maybe makes working super stressful jobs
| and long hours ill advised.
|
| 2. There is a period of time needed for recovering from the
| trauma of child birth.
|
| 2. Many women prefer breast feeding their children. Yes, they
| can pump, but may prefer to feed their children er,
| "naturally", which means getting up at odd hours of the night
| for a period of time.
|
| 3. If the mother is doing most of the feeding because of
| this, it takes time to fully wean the child. And then the
| child will likely have a stronger bond with the mother than
| the father for a little while after that.
|
| 4. And maybe the father is now working more hours than the
| mother due to the added burdens the mother has, which could
| be another reason the child might be more attached to Mom
| than Dad at these very young ages.
|
| 5. Repeat all of the above for the number of children you
| plan to have.
|
| All of which is to say, socialization is a huge factor. But
| there are also differences between being a mother and being a
| father that are strictly due to biology.
| llimos wrote:
| 1000% this.
|
| > Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
|
| Growing up in a "traditional" family, the first thing that
| struck me when I went to work at a big investment bank was how
| the women did everything they could to be like men - all the
| way down to dress. I remember thinking, _this_ is called
| equality? That what men traditionally did is clearly so much
| better, so women now need to become men, and we should
| celebrate the achievement that they are now free to do so?
|
| I mean, yes, obviously if they want to, the fact that they can
| is a good thing. But the fact that they almost _need_ to, is
| not.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Did they act and dress like men because of "equality," or
| because that's the only way they can actually be taken
| seriously?
| zo1 wrote:
| Sounds like we jumped the gun a bit on that? Maybe we
| should have "changed" people's minds and values regarding
| gender first before we shoved everyone into a conforming
| box, and then wondered about the "consequences" and their
| unwillingness to play along.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| I like the film short by pixar called "Purl" for this.
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| It might not be emulating men as much as it is simply
| dressing business casual or business professional because
| it's required while in the office.
| vmception wrote:
| > Being a mother without a snazzy career is frowned upon by
| plenty of people these days. I don't think that stigma is
| healthy. Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
|
| I used to think that, but then I found out that many people
| aren't trying to emulate men, they are trying to do a more
| encompassing thing, juggling an unprecedented number of roles
| and responsibilities surpassing what has been human in nature.
|
| So, basically, even worse than emulating men.
|
| My observation is that a lot of this is based on an assumption
| that men _want_ to be in corporate careers. As in, pursuing a
| corporate /intellectual blue collar or white collar career is
| not an optional checkbox of pride for men that want to exchange
| time for food and shelter and have a female partner. I think if
| this was acknowledged for how it is interdependent in the state
| of the world it would help even out representation and many
| other strifes, as opposed to gendering the problems and
| invalidating problems based on priority.
| everdrive wrote:
| >is not an optional checkbox of pride for men that want to
| exchange time for food and shelter and have a female partner
|
| This is something that crosses my mind often. Work has some
| perks, but I would NEVER have taken a career so seriously if
| I never wanted to get married.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would have quit my current job years ago if I didn't have
| to support my family.
| foolinaround wrote:
| this is also a big reason why several women who have chosen to
| stay home and look after family and kids feel unfulfilled
| because many of their peers are seen as more valuable by
| society.
|
| The reason for this unhappiness is then portrayed as the
| inability of the women to not have a career. it is often, the
| other way around.
| everdrive wrote:
| Joke's on both parties, huh? Can you imagine feeling
| particular pride because you are important in some random
| company?
| Draiken wrote:
| I don't believe this is sexism at its core. The entire west
| society is built on the one axiom that work means value.
| Everything else is extra. That's even worse in the US.
|
| I'm in a similar situation where I'd love to be a parent full-
| time and be essentially free to live my life. But I could never
| do that even if my wife wanted to work and let me stay at home.
| With one person's salary, you can't really sustain a house
| unless you drastically drop your living standards. It's not
| really a choice.
|
| We have allowed companies to lower the value of work,
| drastically forcing every being in a household to work as soon
| as possible. Society has bought into this making any choice
| that is not work/career feel like a wrong choice.
|
| Regardless of sex, the problem is the work culture itself.
| dolni wrote:
| If all companies decided to 4x all salaries tomorrow, the
| cost of all the things we pay for would rise drastically,
| offsetting whatever extra you're making.
|
| The answer is not as simple as "companies should just pay
| more."
| irrational wrote:
| It's amazing to me how few women in their 20s are aware of this.
| I have a lot of early-20s coworkers. One time I mentioned that
| fertility declines greatly past 35. They laughed and thought I
| was joking. Why is this not covered in high school health
| classes?
| vikiomega9 wrote:
| I'm not a policy person, so consider this a good faith question.
| If government policy mandates larger leave times (both parents),
| who eats the cost? I'm guessing the company does and the
| government probably provides a tax credit? How do policy people
| think about this?
|
| Say we do have such a policy, what's stopping a hiring manager
| from not hiring more women who might be say 30 and more likely to
| have kids soon? There's two parts to this question, one if we
| have equal leave for both parents, and if we have 2x more leave
| for women over men. How do policy people think about these types
| of arguments?
|
| How do policy people think about costs in general for such
| government policies?
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| I wonder if there are better models that might work with a bit of
| help from everyone involved, that don't amount to taking medical
| risks and delaying children more than any man ever would?
|
| Such as: being a founder comes with a lot of work, but also some
| power. To the degree that bringing children to work is mostly a
| problem of co-workers rolling their eyes, could a confident
| founder make them stop doing that?
|
| Since that would probably still be somewhat stressful, could a
| pair of founder-parents pull it off? And/or could on-site
| childcare make it work? For a VC-backed startup, the costs
| wouldn't seem to be prohibitive?
|
| (I maybe naive here, considering some of the tales I've heard of
| how women are still seen/treated in the industry)
| karmasimida wrote:
| Wow, that is pretty depressing just hearing your story. I am not
| a woman, but I feel like that I can empathize with you from your
| words.
|
| Work isn't everything, and it is gradually and painful
| realization as you grew older.
| bennysonething wrote:
| My wife went through the hell of a lot of failed rounds of IVF.
| It's way worse for a woman. It was bad for me in a different way,
| and not nearly as bad as what my wife had to do. However this was
| our choice, I don't demand that the world should change to help.
| She works a zero contract min wage job. We didn't demand anything
| of anyone else we had our own goals.
|
| Edit: my heart goes out to anyone suffering through IVF.
|
| Edit 2: we got lucky, she gave birth at 38. Anyone else going
| through this I'd recommend a book called it starts with the egg.
|
| PS I keep saying "she" because it wouldnt be true to say "we". I
| didn't suffer my body getting fucked up with hormones.
| draw_down wrote:
| This is really sad to read. If you want children, I can only
| imagine that's ultimately more important than having some company
| to run.
|
| Realizing opportunities are foreclosed to you as you age is
| always sad, but this one seems really tough.
| Kye wrote:
| The title is heavily editorialized. I know the submitter is the
| writer, but it's still completely different.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I wish when I was younger I just had kids early when my career
| was at the "bums on seats" stage and I didn't have much
| responsibility.
|
| Now I am older and more senior, I have more responsibilities and
| the expectations are higher so it is more "difficult" to dedicate
| more time to my offspring by taking more time off or just not
| going to late meetings etc.
|
| Of course there is some power that comes with more seniority to
| simply say no to things outside of the normal office hours or not
| "taking one for the team" or whatever to do a late night or a
| weekender.
|
| I guess there is an element of me thinking "If I had just done
| this 10 years ago it would have been a lot easier now" sort of
| hindsight type thing going on, but yeah it is difficult to shake
| the thought that I waited too long. Not just for work but also
| for normal social life/holidaying etc too - like if you had kids
| in your early 20s you could have had teenage kids (who can look
| after themselves) and yet be in your 30s and still be young
| enough to do fun/crazy things, rather than be 55-60 with teenage
| kids and then be too old to do a lot of stuff you used to enjoy
| (e.g. sports, social scene etc) although the flip side is you got
| to spend those 20s-30s years doing fun stuff anyway .... as you
| can see I am conflicted :)
|
| tl;dr - if you are young, there is never a time when you are 100%
| "ready" for kids so just go ahead and do it before it is too
| late.
| vecplane wrote:
| Wait, why is the advice to 'do something invasive, risky, and
| unnatural' when the actual advice should be 'have children when
| you're younger, not older.'
| pattt wrote:
| I personally agree with your sentiment but the two provided
| advice examples are not comparable, it's not just about giving
| a birth but also raising your kids which can give your career a
| good break. Incidentally this perspective also reveals our sad
| state of priorities.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| You shouldn't refrigerate your food. It's risky and unnatural.
| For the first 300,000 years of human history, people got along
| fine without refrigeration - why don't you just hunt and gather
| like you were intended to?
|
| IVF, egg and embryo freezing, and related technologies are
| modern miracles that allow people to live better lives by
| increasing their fertility options.
| vecplane wrote:
| That's an obvious false equivalence. While technically
| 'unnatural' refrigeration is not 'invasive and risky.'
|
| The vast majority of pre-modern humans were likely starving
| or malnourished, and those problems are mostly solved in the
| modern era, thanks in part to refrigeration.
|
| We don't really have good solutions for women trying to have
| children into their 40s, though I fully support the
| advancement of fertility technologies! But still the *best*
| advice is to have children when you're younger.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| > The vast majority of pre-modern humans were likely
| starving or malnourished, and those problems are mostly
| solved in the modern era, thanks in part to refrigeration.
|
| What makes you think that? I find it more likely that early
| hominids fared about as well as contemporary chimpanzees.
| Some starving, some being malnourished, but definitely not
| a vast majority.
| dolni wrote:
| "Got along fine" with half of the life expectancy, or less.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Refrigeration works. Food lasts longer when refrigerated
| because cold temperatures slow down the growth of bacteria
| and other organisms. In order for metabolism to occur,
| enzymes are necessary. Enzymes have an optimal operating
| temperature. It is a biochemical fact that the reaction rate
| of those enzymes will be slowed down by a refrigerator,
| slowing down the metabolism of organisms and the spoiling of
| food.
|
| IVF is not a miracle. It's a last resort that doesn't even
| guarantee results. With IVF women have _a chance_ to have
| children. The probability of success is always inferior
| compared to healthy women choosing to have children early. By
| choosing this route, these women face a significant risk of
| failure with serious consequences.
|
| A lot of couples want to have children but do not succeed.
| IVF can help these people overcome real fertility issues. It
| was never meant to be used as an insurance policy by people
| with no medical impediment to reproduction.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Because your actual advice also implicitly includes a 'just
| give up on having a career' part.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So? Does that make it bad advice?
| liveoneggs wrote:
| no it doesn't.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Look up 'motherhood penalty'. The wage gap between mothers
| and non-mothers is massive.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Because that would violate the "I want to have my cake and eat
| it too" mantra. "I want to make massive life altering choices
| and suffer no 2nd order effects." "I want to handicap others to
| compensate for my decisions"
|
| It's selfish, unfair, and morally wrong. When did the smart way
| of doing things in alignment with nature, become old,
| antiquated, and dumb?
|
| I find the ignorant snobbishness of our modern world to be
| insane.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Because society actively punishes people who do so. If having
| a child in your twenties is career suicide, it's only natural
| that people who aren't willing to give up their career
| prospects to have a child (would you?) will try to postpone
| it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| And people wonder why the birth rate is continuing to decline.
| Our nation-wide workaholism is making family life an increasingly
| distant fantasy. I've had this discussion with my S/O before, and
| we've always come to the same conclusion: it would be
| irresponsible for us to adopt while both of us are working.
| That's a difficult place to be in, considering we're both quite
| passionate about our jobs. It makes me quite depressed to watch
| my chance at parenthood slowly pass me by, perhaps for good this
| time.
| cronix wrote:
| There are 2 young married couples (mid 20's) in my immediate
| family who cannot get pregnant naturally, and they really want
| to and have been trying for multiple years. The issue is bigger
| than who is doing what job. Something external, likely
| environmental, is messing with our biology as it's happening
| all over the world, not just here.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/15/world-population-falling-fer...
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > And people wonder why the birth rate is continuing to decline
|
| We're at 7.8 billion humans on this planet and rising. I don't
| think we have to worry about the birth rate declining. If
| anything, we should do everything in our power to lower it as
| much as we can.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| While that's fundamentally true, it's not like humanity would
| fare particularly well 50 years in the future if everyone
| stopped having children for 20 years right now.
| zo1 wrote:
| Most of Africa would do a whole lot better if their birth
| rates declined rapidly. They still have huge child
| mortality rates despite the advances in the west and all
| the aid that comes from that. These things take time to
| make their way to all corners of the remote world.
| Rompect wrote:
| Then why are we continually sending aid to Africa which just
| powers their insane child boom?
| evnc wrote:
| If we lower the birth rate below replacement (roughly 2
| children per couple), humanity will die out. This is not a
| desirable outcome.
|
| If the answer is, "well, the birth rate will never lower
| _that_ far, because _some_ people are going to keep having
| children " -- who will those people be? (Do you presume to be
| able to choose who gets to have children and who does not?)
|
| Aren't those some people then doing a great service, keeping
| humanity alive? Shouldn't we value their efforts, and give
| them support?
|
| Also, drastically lowering birth rates has negative effects
| on demographics and economies (e.g. a population pyramid
| heavily weighted toward the elderly, without enough young
| people to do the work of taking care of them, or the
| productive work of maintaining and improving society
| generally).
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I don't see how well educated, career oriented people having
| fewer children will meaningfully reduce the birth rate.
|
| The data I've seen shows that poorer countries and families
| tend to have a _higher_ birth rate than wealthier countries
| and families. To abstain from having children as a well
| educated, well off individual because you want the global
| population to drop is like not drinking a glass of water when
| you 're thirsty because there's a drought, while farmers
| consume thousands of acre feet of water. It's not rational.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| Although I won't have children myself, I'm very glad that I
| live in a country (Sweden) where we have 480 days of parental
| leave (and each parent has an exclusive right to 90 of those
| days).
|
| Yes, you don't get paid as much during those days (~80%), but
| it allows parents (not just mothers) to stay home for longer
| periods of time to raise their children. It can ofc cause some
| disturbances in your career (especially if you're working at a
| startup), but it allows for a much better work-life balance
| than parents can get in the states.
| manmal wrote:
| Sounds like you are selling your best years for a certain
| amount of money and lifestyle.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Isn't that the gist of all jobs?
| core-questions wrote:
| > it would be irresponsible for us to adopt while both of us
| are working.
|
| Why have you convinced yourself of this? You do realize that
| the vast majority of families have both parents working. Is it
| irresponsible for all of us to have done so?
|
| I too struggled with the fear before having children. Fear that
| it would ruin my personal life, my fun, my recreation; fear
| that lack of sleep would kill me; fear that I wouldn't be any
| good at it. All of it unfounded, as the instincts we are all
| born with kicked in and gave me the strength I needed to adapt.
|
| You can do both. In fact, if your work is already taking over
| your life to the extent where you can't imagine having the time
| for children, there's a strong chance your quality of life will
| _improve_ because the children will force you (and give you an
| emininently socially acceptable excuse to) step back and change
| how your time is allocated.
|
| Specifically, as far as adoption is concerned, you're also
| faced with knowing that you could provide an excellent home for
| someone who may very well end up in a much worse situation
| otherwise. The horror stories of people who adopt children just
| to get a cheque... you personally can make a difference on this
| front.
|
| All of this wealth flows to us working in tech, more than most
| of our ancestors ever had... to not use our security to raise
| good children is at once both a waste of ten thousand years of
| sacrifice, and also a shirking of our own personal
| responsibility to society. I know that social contract feels
| like it's breaking down, but it is only through our actions
| that we can mend it, and raising good children who still
| believe in civil society is probably one of the best ways of
| doing that.
|
| Your chance is not over unless you choose for it to be.
| munificent wrote:
| _> it would be irresponsible for us to adopt while both of us
| are working._
|
| You are falling into the classic nerd trap which is doing an
| absolute evaluation when you should be making a relative
| comparison.
|
| The question is not, "Can I raise this adopted child in the
| optimal way?" The question is, "Will I raise this child at
| least as good as the other parents they are likely to end up
| with instead?"
|
| It's not like if you don't adopt them they get whisked away to
| a magical realm populated full of only perfect parents. Also,
| _your_ parents weren 't perfect but you probably turned out OK.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I have learned that making relative comparisons is useless if
| you are not at the average.
|
| If you are more capable than the average person, sure you can
| settle for an around average outcome, but that is very
| unsatisfying.
|
| The way I perceive things is that I'm going to do something,
| I'll do it really well or not at all.
| bigyikes wrote:
| I generally agree with your sentiment. However, I would say
| that this type of consideration is only useful when
| deciding to birth a child, not if you are considering
| adoption. In the latter case, the child is assumed to
| already exist in below-average circumstances.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Holding ourselves to impossibly high standards leads to
| dissatisfaction.
|
| Accepting that we will sometimes be mediocre at what we do
| and knowing that we will do better over time is a healthier
| alternative.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| "Impossibly high standards" are different for every
| person.
|
| I fully expect to be mediocre at something when I start
| doing it, but I also expect to progress past being
| mediocre otherwise I see little point in doing that
| thing.
| verisimilidude wrote:
| This is especially true when it comes to raising kids.
| Children have their own personalities. Some will be
| introverts and others will be party animals. Some will be
| quiet and others will make trouble. If a person goes into
| the job of parenthood with perfect preparation and
| explicit expectations, then failure is guaranteed.
|
| The best approach requires some level of improvisation;
| we learn each child's tendencies, accept them for who
| they are, and try to mold them into the best versions of
| themselves. I don't see a way to prepare for this.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I have no expectations of parenthood, but I want to be
| able to give my children (Assuming I have any) a large
| portion of my attention to try and nurture them as best
| as I can.
|
| That is what I mean by "doing it well" in terms of
| parenthood.
|
| This is partly driven by me viewing the education system
| as failing children, and also me wanting to try and
| impart more knowledge upon my children.
| munificent wrote:
| _> sure you can settle for an around average outcome,_
|
| Evaluating only a single outcome and deciding whether or
| not it is "average" is still doing an absolute evaluation
| and falling into the same trap.
|
| The actionable question is not, "How good of an outcome
| will I get if I do X?" It's "How will the outcome of doing
| X compare to the outcome of doing Y or Z instead?"
|
| I am in absolute terms a well below average medical
| practitioner. I haven't even taken a first aid class since
| I was a Boy Scout. Imagine I'm at the scene of a car crash
| and someone is bleeding out. Should I help? According to
| the philosophy "if I can't do something well I shouldn't do
| it at all", I should keep my hands clean.
|
| But if I'm the only person on the scene and they're about
| to die, trying a little direct pressure is better than
| nothing. My well-below-average in absolute terms medical
| care is the _best_ choice because all of the other options
| are terrible.
|
| Maybe because we tend to be perfectionists, but I often see
| here on HN people completely underestimating how bad the
| alternative outcomes can be. Like they say about self-
| driving cars: the robot doesn't have to be perfect, just
| better than a human.
|
| You don't have to have the best solution, just the least
| bad one.
| goatcode wrote:
| Reminder that a few hundred years ago, people typically worked a
| few months out of the year, and were able to live the whole year.
| The source(s) of the reason(s) we need to work nearly 5/7 of the
| year now is one element of why this is even an issue.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| A 2016 study of 1,171 IVF cycles using frozen eggs found that,
| for women under 30, each egg retrieved had a 8.67% chance of
| resulting in a child; for women over 40, that chance dropped to
| less than 3% per egg at best. More likely closer to 1%. Reminder:
| If you are a woman, plan on having children in your 20s. If
| you've frozen your eggs you've probably wasted your money.
| frEdmbx wrote:
| >But nothing is as awful as it not working out.
|
| It only makes sense to plan, and have some sort of strategy. For
| those who feel it's their best option to freeze eggs, do it
| sooner rather than later. For young women who have more options,
| consider that if you both want to have a family, and want to have
| a business, one of the two things has a time sensitive deadline.
| You can choose to pursue a career, and go about it the way this
| lady suggests, or you can have a family first, and pursue your
| career for the rest of your life. Whatever you decide to do,
| consider your options, and formulate some sort of strategy. If
| you just put off considering what you want, and how you'll
| attain, you'll wake up one day realizing it's too late.
| em-bee wrote:
| wasn't there a study that suggested that more successful startup
| founders are in their 40s?
|
| so have kids in your 20s and build your startup when the kids are
| old enough. use your life experience and increase your chances of
| success.
| astan wrote:
| Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate
| grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until
| we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for
| mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off
| for parents of both genders.
|
| Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure,
| sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something
| that creates a genuine barrier for women.
|
| Startups have it worst, and everday I count the number of years I
| have to work in the high stress places I want or do a startup if
| I want to have two kids before 35. No one talks about planning
| around fertility. When I mention it to someone that I want to
| take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon
| valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be
| pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived
| and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their
| youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy.
|
| All careers are built this way. PhD to tenure, startups,
| generally high stress professions. I wish the world wasn't so
| male centric, that feminists actually cared about finding
| structural solutions instead of forcing women to become copies of
| men to achieve gender parity. But they care more about power than
| actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different
| needs and desires, that those needs and desires are equally
| valuable and not inferior to desires men have, that the two
| genders have different strengths and capabilities and it is
| equally important to reward both. And maybe not wanting to
| outsource your baby to a nanny during their most vulnerable years
| is not a heretical thought.
|
| I wish we had more focus in allowing people to transition back
| from taking a few years off to raise young kids, and it wasn't
| automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or
| professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years
| you didn't commercially work. Hell, I want to take that time to
| contribute to open source, something I don't get to do much
| usually and I'm looking forward to it because I am willing to
| face the consequences. But I wish more women could be less scared
| of their career prospects for choosing to have children.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly
| something that creates a genuine barrier for women.
|
| HN is to technical discussions what ____ is to social
| discussions.
|
| Please fill in the blank.
|
| Serious question, and thanks to any serious respondents!
| as300 wrote:
| Unfortunately I just don't think it's a tenable position to
| assert that women (or men) should be able to take 2-4 years off
| of work and not be disadvantaged in their career for doing so.
|
| I wholeheartedly support the idea that, as a society, we ought
| to value childcare/child-rearing and (perhaps monetarily)
| support those who perform this service. But I don't believe
| corporations ought to be the ones making a space for that.
| ljf wrote:
| Genuine question, who should?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The society as a whole seems to be as300's idea - which, in
| practice, means the government. If parents give up 10% of
| their career in order to give their kids a better
| childhood, are we willing to pay to make it up to them? My
| money is on "no way".
|
| If not that, the only other answer is the parents. Are you
| as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at
| the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with no
| (monetary) compensation? I suspect, very few. (More will do
| so with only one parent giving up the years.)
|
| "You can have it all" is a lie. You can't both have a
| wonderful career, a great marriage, _and_ give your kids
| all they need from their parents. You can 't. What we
| really need is for people to stop believing that "having it
| all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes
| it to them. Instead, people need to prioritize and choose
| what they want out of the tradeoffs that reality imposes.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > You can't both have a wonderful career, a great
| marriage, and give your kids all they need from their
| parents. What we really need is for people to stop
| believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore
| expecting that someone owes it to them.
|
| I think the brutal/ultra-competitive work culture is
| uniquely American - Europe seems to do OK with giving
| working parents generous amounts of time (and money!) to
| be with their kids; 4 weeks PTO per year is unthinkable
| in the US, but I'm sure its a multiplier for good
| parenting.
|
| I do not know if it is possible to change the work-
| culture when money is king.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Four weeks vacation, and 6 months (?) parental leave.
| Four years is a big reach, even for Europe.
|
| But yes, Europe does much better at this than the US. Can
| the US culture change enough to give what Europe gives?
| Maybe, but I'm doubtful.
|
| But until it does, my point remains - in the world we
| actually live in, you can't have it all. You have to
| choose between various less-than-what-you-want options.
| tastygreenapple wrote:
| I think there's a well of volunteers.
|
| I'm doing pretty well financially, enough so that I could
| support a family. I just can't find a partner who wants to
| start a family. I know there are a lot of people like me in
| my peer group.
| yibg wrote:
| Depends on how you look at having children I think. If you:
|
| 1) See having children as a right and benefit to society,
| then society should shoulder at least some of the "burden"
| of it. By providing child care, (paid) maternity and
| paternity leave etc. Many countries already do this.
|
| 2) See having children as a privilege and a choice made by
| individuals knowing there will be sacrifices in time,
| finances, career etc. In this case, the individual (or
| couple) deals with the consequences. In some cases,
| incentives can align such that companies provide paid
| leave, but at least right now it's not the norm.
|
| Looking at countries that provide paid leave vs those that
| don't, the ones that do seems to have a healthier society.
| afaejzjfiefia wrote:
| > it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse
| founder or professor or software engineer just because you have
| 2-4 years you didn't commercially work.
|
| Is there any scenario in life were someone with 2-4 more years
| of experience (maybe 50% more at that point in time) isn't more
| valued for their greater experience? What is the difference
| between a junior and senior engineers salary for instance? A 4
| year break is possibly worse in that regard.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think there are two ways to look at the quoted statement.
| Is person A with 2 years of professional software development
| experience and a 2 year gap about the same [on average across
| a large population] as person B who has 2 years professional
| software development experience and no gap? Person B is
| slightly more valued by virtue of recency of experience, but
| 3 months from now, once the rust is knocked off person A, I'd
| expect them to be basically the same so I'd value them the
| same in hiring.
|
| Now, is person C who has 4 years of software development
| experience, no gap, more skilled and capable at software
| development than person A who has 2 years of software
| experience and then a 2 year gap or person B who has 2 years
| and no gap? Absolutely, and I'd expect C to be quite
| rationally valued more highly in the software development
| market. Person C has twice as much directly relevant
| experience at a time in career where the curve is still
| rising quickly.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I'm pretty biased, but it would depend on the role.
|
| Thinking that parenting is not "experience", or that it has
| no commercial relevance is (in my opinion) a mistake.
|
| Many roles, I suspect a candidate with 4 years of SWE and 4
| years of parenting could be a more valuable team member than
| a candidate with 8 years of just SWE. Parenting does not
| universally develop emotional maturity and wider
| perspectives, but I believe there's a correlation.
|
| Disclaimer: Of course, individual differences swamp any other
| factor, so always take each person as they come.
| hycaria wrote:
| I am female too and I really don't relate to this kind of
| discourse.
|
| If you're really that into high pressure job and grinding the
| ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a
| sahm ? You can't do everything at once. No one is stopping you
| from raising children but yourself. Many don't go for the
| business route and that's a respectable choice but of course
| you can't have it all. If in the end your fertility is more
| important than your career then have kids without making a fuss
| about it. Especially if you know that for some ecologically
| unreasonable reason you want numerous kids then start early.
|
| Also I've seen so many female acquaintances wanting to keep up
| their old life ambitions and eventually just never go back
| there because child rearing became more important than anything
| (and sometimes their sole motivation left in life). How can you
| be so sure you won't fall for this ? Especially if you aspire
| at staying at home for a few years, it seems a higher
| predisposition to stay in that state forever than when you long
| for your office job.
|
| Because some manage to do it both and it seems right that they
| be rewarded for it.
|
| With kids you just have to focus on a few priorities with the
| time you have left and if it really is software then one will
| find the motivation to cultivate it and to make it work. Heck
| we have the perfect job for it you can remote you can freelance
| you can contribute ... But talking about aspirations not
| pursued without a kid to be developed while child rearing when
| you will have even less time sounds like a fantasy to me.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| You don't understand why people can have multiple,
| potentially incompatible ambitions, and talk about the major
| obstacles that exist to achieving them and how to get around
| them instead of just giving up? That seems like a fundamental
| limitation in your own understanding of people.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| _that the two genders have different strengths and
| capabilities_
|
| Even the concept of two genders is under attack, let alone
| whether they have categorical behavior patterns.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months
| will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces
| and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps,
| breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders.
|
| Exactly this. Generous maternity leave and at least 0.25x
| paternity leave. I am not a woman, so I can't possibly begin to
| imagine how tough pregnancy is on a body. I also really doubt
| that anyone is _really_ focused on work in the months
| immediately following birth.
|
| You can't buy baby food and bond with it with a pink ribbon or
| with the fact that your company's board of directors is 50%
| female.
|
| Lack of parental leaves is just young parents subsidizing
| unsavory capitalistic practices and outright greed.
| pc86 wrote:
| There's zero legitimate reason to gender parental leave
| either way. Not because "muh equality" or sexism or anything
| like that, but it should be "new kid == _n_ weeks leave, "
| whether you're the biological mother, father, adoptive
| parent, had a biological child via surrogate, whatever.
| hksh wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| I experienced a variation on that and learned pregnancy is
| not a vector space. My wife carried twins so when I asked
| about the "new kid == n weeks of leave" it was _not_
| multiplicative. I only got n and not 2n. Boo.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Best of luck calming the baby down without the mother.
| triceratops wrote:
| Why?
|
| There are times when a baby just wants mom and nobody
| else will do. But there also also times when a baby just
| wants dad (or grandma/grandpa/nanny/other caregiver) and
| nobody else will do. Babies are just weird sometimes.
|
| Other than those specific cases, calming a baby is mostly
| a matter of your skill and being lucky with your baby's
| temperament.
| irae wrote:
| I won't assume you don't have kids, but what you said
| does not align with my experience at all.
|
| I have two kids from different relationships, and as dad,
| in both cases, I calmed down my kids better than the
| mothers did. They both relied on me specially in the
| worst baby crying situations.
|
| I don't think I am an exception in ability or anything, I
| just cared to go learn a bit about babies, that's all.
| Thought a couple of friends how to do it, they also
| became very good at it.
| neonate wrote:
| So how do you do it? I want to be good at calming babies
| too!
| requieted555 wrote:
| Seriously! From a male perspective, I want to have 2
| lamborghinis before age 35 but I'm stuck working this stupid
| 9-5! I'm seriously upset when I'm out on the street and I see
| hardly any cars, I really feel like it's my duty to put 2 more
| cars on the street. Plus it would make me so happy to have 2
| cute little lambos of my own resting in my garage. I've always
| wanted some of my own. All to myself, hehe. Work sucks!
| throw8932894 wrote:
| > _When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off
| for a couple years_
|
| > _actual equality where we acknowledge that women have
| different needs and desires_
|
| I find your view sexist and disturbing. 99% men would love to
| take couple of years off with kids as well. But face even more
| obstacles!
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take this thread into gender flamewar. It's
| obviously already prone to it--that's no reason to push it
| into the volcano. Actually it's a reason to consciously post
| otherwise, as the guidelines say:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jluxenberg wrote:
| Try this: s/women/people/g
|
| If taking a break to focus on parenting was more acceptable,
| anyone (man/woman/nonbinary) who wanted to do this would
| benefit.
|
| Many careers are built around this idea that you spend 5-10
| years, with no breaks, in your late 20s and 30s working on
| something. What if taking a substantial chunk of time off was
| more common (for anyone)?
| jbay808 wrote:
| That would be awesome.
|
| Unfortunately, young people also don't have money. That's
| the time period when many people feel a lot of pressure to
| accumulate savings -- often, that might specifically be so
| that they can afford to raise a child in the future.
|
| Acceptance of multigenerational households, living with
| grandparents, and raising kids there, would be an option
| and allow people in their 20s to become parents before
| their careers have taken off. But even for those who have
| loving and supportive grandparents, that also can be a
| major strain on a relationship.
| cc_cccc wrote:
| > Try this: s/women/people/g
|
| Wow I don't even know what to say haha.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| Try this: s/men/paypigs/g
| dcow wrote:
| > When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for
| a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at
| me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not
| working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to
| spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is
| some strange outlandish fantasy.
|
| And this happens _way more_ than people lead on and for the
| exact BS reasons you call out. As someone who dated in SF not
| for the hookup but to try and find a life partner who wanted to
| prioritize and raise a family, it was bleak. We almost seem
| intent on reinforcing "career is king", not tearing it down.
| zippergz wrote:
| I have a lot of friends in SF. At least in the tech industry,
| it seems that the main reason people live in SF despite the
| significant downsides is for career options and pay. So I'd
| guess that the SF dating pool is already strongly skewed to
| people who choose career over all else.
| fossuser wrote:
| The bay area M/F ratio is extremely skewed and the dating
| market is extremely competitive - (has way too many men).
|
| I would guess that in cities with high skew (in either
| direction) this creates a disincentive to staying together
| for one person in the relationship.
|
| I'd also guess the NIMBYs and extreme housing cost also
| incentivize delaying things.
|
| If there was a lot of housing supply the financial risk of
| having kids would be way lower.
| andrepd wrote:
| I don't want to sound like an extremist but this is what
| happens when _everything_ in life is mercantilised. Money
| becomes king.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's really housing and then money only as a prerequisite
| to that.
|
| To start a family you need somewhere to live. When housing
| costs are insane you need crazy money to afford it, so
| everything becomes about money.
| kungito wrote:
| It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they
| want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to
| do that.
| samr71 wrote:
| I'm sure most of the people working in Tech in the Bay
| Area could go get a job at some firm in Cincinnati, with
| substantially lower COL. Of course, they would have a
| substantially lower salary as well, probably low enough
| to make the Bay Area the better option economically, even
| including the high COL.
|
| Of course, that doesn't mean we can't lower the COL of
| the Bay Area! Make Silicon Valley as dense as Tokyo, and
| I assure you rents will fall.
| sjwalter wrote:
| See, you're looking purely in terms of financial
| economics.
|
| But, just as there are other forms of wealth than
| financial wealth, there are other forms of economics,
| like social economics.
|
| Your decision to take the XX% improved pay in the higher
| COL area surely will improve your balance sheet over a
| decade.
|
| But what will your peers look like after that decade?
| Will they be a bunch of 40yo millionaire single people
| all secretly worried that they took a bad tradeoff?
|
| Will the dating pool be full of careerist greedy types?
| Or family-focused types?
|
| I've lived all over the US, and can't recommend enough
| making _actual sacrifices_ for family. As in, yes, less
| 401k contribution this year, but I get a house proper for
| raising children and a stay-at-home wife that is
| extremely happily homeschooling our brood.
|
| So funny, too: Building intergenerational capital for
| your family is now easier in low CoL areas, because the
| sacrifices imposed upon children raised in high COL areas
| are arguably much more damaging than them having smaller
| college funds.
|
| (specifically: dual-income requirement means less
| parental time, plus high COL areas have spent the past
| decade making their schools less competitive in order to
| eradicate, for one example, the horrid specter of white
| supremacy from the math classroom, where it has loomed
| large for generations, apparently, which makes the "but
| the schools" argument basically irrelevant).
|
| Can't recommend enough: Move to the country, homeschool
| your kids, spend as much time as possible with them.
|
| Finally, basically the very most common deathbed
| confession is guilt regarding prioritizing work over
| family.
|
| Do you _actually_ care about regret-minimization? Or do
| you really truly care about buying baubles and ensuring
| your children are just as entranced with the rat race as
| you and all your peers are? If the latter, stay in SF!
| kaitai wrote:
| I've done the math with my Midwestern salary and I still
| come out ahead in the Midwest on average. Yes, you're
| looking at it all economically, disregarding culture,
| quality of life, access to nature, family, etc, but even
| economically, good schools are cheaper here, cultural
| events are cheaper here, college is cheaper here, day
| care is cheaper here. That's why a lot of people do move
| away from the Bay when they've got kids to raise.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because
| they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really
| have to do that.
|
| It's not a problem limited to "expensive areas" though it
| is dramatically worse there as a result of zoning
| restrictions on top of everything.
|
| It's a problem caused by near-zero interest rates
| inflating housing prices everywhere.
| ovi256 wrote:
| When living in an expensive area, one doesn't have to
| wonder if it's a desirable area. It's obvious it is, look
| how expensive it is. We copy what others want, a lot,
| unconsciously.
| monoideism wrote:
| It's partly that, but it's partly what the GP comment says:
| the prevalent idea that true equality of the sexes is for
| women to become exact copies of men. Since women and men
| are _not_ exact copies, this causes problems.
| kaitai wrote:
| But no one is an exact copy of anybody. I am a woman who
| never ever wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, and I'm not,
| and that's great. I have a husband who did a 4-day week
| to spend three days with his kid, and that's great. Does
| that make him a woman or me a man? No, that's ridiculous.
| Does me having a STEM career make me a man? No, also
| ridiculous. This "equality means everyone is the same"
| thing is ridiculously straw-man-y.
|
| You know what leads to equity, rather than equality, and
| actually addresses some of the structural concerns the GP
| raises? Health care that allows for healthy pregnancies;
| time off that allows for healthy pregnancies and babyhood
| and recovery; and time off for all caretakers, whatever
| their gender may be. My husband used FMLA to care for his
| kid and now will use it to care for his parents. Give
| people support and they will do what is best for their
| families. All this worry about who is an exact copy of
| who is in general a desire to start an ideological fight
| in order to avoid taking any substantive action that will
| help anyone.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Imo it's because there's less social resistance for women
| to take on the roles of men.
|
| Until men that take on the former roles of women are
| viewed equivalently in the dating market, it's going to
| be a much harder slog
| JPKab wrote:
| Women across all income demographics desire men who make
| as much or more than them. It's a fundamental preference
| that OKCupid identified a long time ago.
|
| As a man, I don't fault this. The risk to a man of
| reproducing with a woman who isn't great at making money
| isn't as high, at a fundamental level, as it is for
| women. A man isn't incapacitated in any way by the act of
| reproducing. Nor is he prevented or blocked out of
| reproducing with others, at an evolutionary level. A
| woman is at great risk for mating with a man who isn't a
| good provider. If he abandons her, she's stuck. This was
| the reality for our ancestors, and those preferences are
| baked into our genes. The opportunity cost of mating with
| a loser was horrific for women.
|
| In case anyone thinks that preference is cultural, it's
| not. It exists across every culture on the planet, not
| unlike the biological attraction men have to women who
| display physical features that are indicative of high
| fertility.
|
| Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or
| morality.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| > In case anyone thinks that preference is cultural, it's
| not. It exists across every culture on the planet
|
| Could you provide a cite for this? It's an extraordinary
| claim. It doesn't match with my understanding of some
| historical cultures.
| jxramos wrote:
| > Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or
| morality.
|
| I still try to meditate on the evolutionary advances for
| sexual vs asexual reproduction to begin with. There's got
| to be a huge advantage of the separation of the sexes
| that is hard to fathom just because it's everywhere. Is
| it a springboard of genetic diversity that optimizes in
| ways we can't imagine otherwise? The 'compared to what'
| is always something I wanted to contemplate. Like why did
| organisms split into near copies of each other with male
| and female? Why had one developed that carried the womb
| and the other not? Was it just simple reproductive
| concurrency? The separation being the better evolutionary
| choice is so mysterious to me.
| barrkel wrote:
| If you have advantageous mutations in two parallel family
| trees, sexual reproduction permits them to join into a
| single tree while asexual (splitting) doesn't. There's a
| similar effect for eliminating harmful mutations that
| coincide with beneficial mutations.
|
| It's more complex in practice for bacteria - there can be
| DNA transmitted horizontally - but bacteria usually win
| out by sheer numbers.
| [deleted]
| in_cahoots wrote:
| This is a common misconception. Equality means that both
| sexes have options. It means offering (but not forcing)
| men to take paternity leave, so that the family can bond
| as a unit. It means offering flexible work options for
| everyone. I've not met many women who want to work the
| stereotypical 60+ hour weeks with a stay-at-home partner
| that comes with being 'successful'. We want to raise
| families and have careers on our terms. But the modern
| workplace and economy isn't set up that way, in the US at
| least.
| tomcam wrote:
| Big capitalist here. I agree completely. The reason I'm a
| millionaire instead of a billionaire is that my first
| priority was always to have a stable family and marriage. I
| noticed all the billionaires seemed to go through a few
| wives before settling down. Didn't like what that did to
| the children, or what I imagined it might have done. This
| kept me out of SV (and in much more, at the time, stable
| and family oriented Microsoft country).
| asoneth wrote:
| Of more than a dozen friends who moved to Silicon Valley for
| work/education, all but one left California around the time
| they started their families. The impression I get is that
| they're happy they had a chance to work there for a decade or
| so and now they're happy to live somewhere else. Silicon
| Valley sounds like a great place to do many things and it's
| OK if having a family is not one of those things. I'm not
| saying it's not possible -- one of my friends is making a go
| of it. But it does sound like having a family there is
| playing on Hard Mode.
|
| Contrast that to NYC where most of the folks I know who
| started families there still work in the city, though some
| did move a little further out into the suburbs.
| JPKab wrote:
| As a father who had his first child at 23 years of age, the
| corporate/SV world is just AWFUL to women who don't want to
| have to rely on IVF to have kids. And often the worst
| perpetrators of said awfulness are other women who themselves
| are delaying having kids. They have sacrificed, and really
| don't like the women who they view as "not making the same
| sacrifice".
|
| It's all around just awful to pit human biology against
| corporate norms.
|
| And the parent commenter you responded to above really hit
| the nail on the head with the things women's rights activists
| have prioritized. Because activists are primarily based out
| of universities and urban centers, they are really pre-
| occupied with the wants/needs of 20 something women, and
| could give two shits about things outside of landing that
| sweet job at Google.
|
| The effect on our society is insane. It's basically
| incredibly common now to encounter a stereotype:
|
| The couple in their 40s with twins, often born premature, a
| consequence of IVF technology leading to incredibly high
| rates of multiple births.
|
| My brother and I are identical twins, born before IVF was
| remotely affordable. Twins used to be rare. Now they are
| everywhere, and fit a certain demographic. It's absolutely
| twisted and toxic that workplace norms and cutthroat
| competition in said workplace have been allowed to remain
| static, and demanded that humans delay reproduction.
|
| What a testament to how absolutely corrupt the feminist
| movement is that it looked at the Don Draper character in Mad
| Men, and concluded that their mission should be to create
| female Don Drapers, instead of challenging and upending
| whether ANYONE would want to be Don Draper.
|
| Edit: Dang and other commenters correctly pointed out that I
| violated some HN norms in here and also my wording was poor
| and undermined my point. I'm leaving the above unedited for
| others to learn from my stupidity, and will clarify here:
|
| I have zero problem with people having kids later in life. I
| only have a problem with people being FORCED to have kids
| later in life when they otherwise wouldn't have, due to
| inflexible and arbitrary corporate norms which were
| established for male only workplaces. (That forced decision
| was what I viewed as toxic) I'm a full advocate of women's
| rights as well, and my frustrations with feminism expressed
| above were intended to express my view that it didn't go far
| enough, and "settled", leaving women in a perpetually unfair
| position compared to men.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Your comment would be a lot more effective if it didn't
| suggest that women's rights activists only care about
| landing jobs at Google and are "absolutely corrupt". The
| sentences linking identical twins to "twisted and toxic"
| are also weird.
|
| There are some kernels of insight there, but this is not a
| remotely accurate characterization of any of the women's
| rights activists I have ever met, and it largely comes
| across to me as paternalistic victim-blaming.
|
| 20-something feminist activists have limited power and
| influence, and are not responsible for toxic workplace
| culture in industries dominated by middle-aged men.
| JPKab wrote:
| I'm a twin. How you read that as me calling twins twisted
| and toxic is rather confusing to me. It was obvious that
| I was referring to the system that forces these delays in
| reproduction.
| jacobolus wrote:
| It comes across as <<I am a twin and it's horrible that
| other kids are forced to be twins.>>
|
| And <<I had my kid at age 23, and it is 'twisted and
| toxic' that other parents delay having children until
| their mid 30s. They should do what I did.>>
|
| Neither of which is likely to be your intention, which is
| why I would recommend rephrasing.
| dang wrote:
| I appreciate your posting about your personal experience
| but your comment also crosses into an ideological flamewar
| rant and we don't want those here. Please stick to the
| former and edit out the latter in the future.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| JPKab wrote:
| Will do, and yes, you are correct. Shouldn't have gone
| into that territory.
| dang wrote:
| Appreciated!
| earthboundkid wrote:
| YES! I have been saying this for years, but my fellow PMCs look
| at me like I have three heads or I'm saying we should all live
| in a shoe with more kids than we know what do.
|
| Human beings have limited fertility. It sucks, but it's part of
| life.
|
| Professional life is designed around the idea that you are a
| male with a female partner who will bear and raise your
| children while you are attaining your professional credentials
| and leaving them to their own devices. That is no longer a
| valid design because we now want female professionals and male
| involvement in child rearing. Therefore, the system must be
| changed.
|
| But if you say that every PhD program, medical school, start
| up, etc. should be designed so that it's NBD to take a year off
| for having a kid, you're crazy, how would that even work,
| anyway, have you heard about egg freezing??
| tomcam wrote:
| Thanks. This is something dudes can't write about. My wife & I
| simply decided decades ago that one of us would always not
| work. We lived cheaply so we could accomplish that goal, but we
| wanted a good family life.
|
| I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's
| about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love
| business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start
| out assuming that a 2-career life would simply be too much
| stress in the high tech world. Great thing is it forced me to
| make creative choices, but one thing that got us both
| hoodwinked was this notion that a woman is as fertile at 35 as
| she is at 21. Um... no. So we had two severely handicapped
| kids. It would have been nice if the popular press had been a
| little more honest about the biology--but of course I should
| have educated myself better.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Why can't men write about it?
| krrrh wrote:
| Parts of what she wrote are similar to parts of what James
| Damore wrote, and he was fired for it.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| For the same reasons it needs to be written about.
| vbtemp wrote:
| > It would have been nice if the popular press had been a
| little more honest about the biology
|
| You are not alone with this sentiment.
|
| Some years ago, in my 20s/early 30s-something friend groups,
| any time the topic of declining female fertility with age
| came up, it was basically attacked as fake news and a
| conspiracy by older, conservative family members to get them
| to breed.
|
| Moreover, sex education in school was 110% about all the
| wonderful ways you can avoid getting pregnant.
|
| As I reflect back on it, no one calmly, but firmly gave the
| message that female fertility (in particular) is neither a
| given nor to be taken for granted, and that sooner than you
| expect it drops to zero. Beyond that point, it can only be
| extended by extremely expensive, painful medical procedures,
| and even then there is no guarantee.
|
| ----
|
| Edit: Another thing that comes to mind is that women have it
| really tough, in a lot of ways, and this one feels the most
| relevant.
|
| I think for women, people close to you and people who you
| don't even know seem to take particular interest in the
| choices you make with your body: How you dress, how you do
| your makeup, who you sleep with, who you date, what you do
| for work, etc etc etc. Infinitely more so than with men. I
| think with all that going on, for young women, discussions of
| female fertility just feel like yet another way people are
| sticking their noses in her business while telling her whats
| best and sapping her autonomy. And I think that's why to lots
| of friends groups with lots of 20-something women this all
| feels like fake news and sinister.
| mycologos wrote:
| > one thing that got us both hoodwinked was this notion that
| a woman is as fertile at 35 as she is at 21. Um... no. So we
| had two severely handicapped kids.
|
| (Preamble: not trying to argue anything about parent
| comment's experience, just wanted to find data about this.)
|
| Some data on the rate of Down syndrome per 10,000 births vs.
| maternal age appears on p10 of this paper [1]. The rate is a
| stable 6-7 per 10,000 for the mothers in their 20s, about 50%
| higher for mothers age 30-35, and then jumps to 25-30 per
| 10,000 for mothers age 35-40 (4x the 20s rate), and something
| like 100 per 10,000 for mothers age 40+ (>10x the 20s rate).
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636004/pdf/
| nih...
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| Society has never been more gynocentric than it is now. It's
| frankly unhealthy how gynocentric things are.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| > I wish the world wasn't so male centric, that feminists
| actually cared about finding structural solutions instead of
| forcing women to become copies of men to achieve gender parity
|
| What is happening is destroying both men and women in their
| roles: sure, men can have their great enjoyment at the male and
| performance centric workplace, but providing for a family is
| also part of being a man, and it's being ignored. Sexual life
| of most men is in a strong decline.
|
| Sadly man hating and women hating increased together (according
| to Google trends), and more and more relationships are just
| transactional.
| michaelbrave wrote:
| Only thing I can right now is pay attention to things like this
| in the hopes that when/if I can finally get a company off the
| ground that I can help to implement things like this, and
| hope/encourage it to pave the way for things the way that
| Ford's early factories paved the way for the weekend.
|
| I think we can make the world better, it's within our reach if
| only a few courageous executives would take that initial hit in
| immediate productivity in the interest of long term
| sustainability.
| ansible wrote:
| The only solutions to all this I can think of are considered
| hopelessly "radical" and "socialist".
|
| One thing that would help is having a Universal Basic Income,
| with Universal Healthcare. This would allow people to work on
| startups at their own pace, instead of desperately needing to
| become successful in a relatively short time-frame in order to
| create some stability.
| hksh wrote:
| I agree with much of what you say except that "women have
| different needs". I would say each person has different needs
| and to divide into the male/female binary is a fairly
| restrictive definition of gender as I have come to understand
| it.
|
| My wife and I have twins a little less than 2 years old, we are
| both ~35, but we live in rural-ish NH not SV. She has taken the
| last 2+ years off for the pregnancy and to function as primary
| caregiver while I continue to work. While I don't feel a need
| to work (perhaps a "need to project" would be closer) I do feel
| a need to provide for my kids while being with them as much as
| possible. As such I have chosen a low-stress, 9-5 SWE role
| optimizing for family time over career advancement. At least
| for the foreseeable future.
|
| From what we can tell she seems to be the only woman from her
| MBA class that has taken so much time off from career to have
| children. I don't want to speak for my wife but my impression
| is that she feels torn by desires to have a high-power career
| and to spend all the time with the kids (though pandemic
| parenting in NE with no third spaces available means that some
| days it would be an easy choice). Maybe that is society having
| an outsize impact on her internal valuation of family rearing,
| but I am not sure.
|
| The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation
| doesn't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit so
| I find it less plausible that a less-represented person would
| match it either as my "group" [more accurate term requested]
| has largely set the social norms.
|
| I acknowledge I could be an outlier.
| centimeter wrote:
| "Women have different needs" is both extremely accurate and
| extremely predictive. Taking issue with the statement because
| it's not perfectly correct 100% of the time is, at best,
| exceedingly pedantic.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation
| doesn 't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit
| so I find it less plausible that a less-represented person
| would match it either as my "group" [more accurate term
| requested] has largely set the social norms._
|
| I don't understand this conclusion at all. You just described
| a fairly standard situation, and then said trying to apply
| historical understandings of gender don't work... and yet
| they fit perfectly within the story you provided.
|
| To me the issue has always been allowing other to define
| success for you.
|
| If you find success is being a high powered executive who
| spends 90hrs a week working, then do that, and don't let
| someone else tell you that having kids is the only metric of
| success.
|
| If your definition of success is raising children who are
| normal humans and can function in society and make it a
| better place, then do that; and don't let anyone tell you
| that success can only be found in working and being valued at
| ever higher dollar amounts.
|
| Your definition of success is exactly that: YOURS not anyone
| else's and you shouldn't take anyone else's definition and
| try to apply it to yourself.
|
| I think most of society's current problems stem from everyone
| using some amorphous societal understanding of success that
| no one has defined, but thinks everyone else knows. You be
| your best as you understand that to be. That's the only path
| to happiness. Trying to conform to some gender philosopher's
| definition is a rabbit hole that leads no where good.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You have describe a situation where you and your wife decided
| on priorities in your life and acted accordingly. You both
| decided that personal career goals were secondary to raising
| your kids. It's a mystery to me why this is not seen as
| normal. Everything involves trade-offs. It's not possible to
| be present, involved parents and spend 60-80 hours a week on
| a career. Choose one or the other, and don't complain about
| how unfair it is.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| > "equitable to mothers"
|
| > "actual equality where we acknowledge that women have
| different needs and desires".
|
| I can't see any other meaning besides equality of outcomes
| split across employees by fertility lines regardless of inputs.
| I think this is unfair. What do you tell someone who did not
| take X amount of time off when their outcome is equated with
| someone who did?
|
| Increasing paternity leave for all people doesn't help
| compensate those who do not have children or don't have this
| issue. Likewise for subsidizing fertility treatments.
| retrac wrote:
| It's no less fair than me having to pay school taxes when I
| have no children. Healthy families and adequate children so
| the population pyramid doesn't implode (more of an issue in
| other developed countries than North America) is a pressing
| issue that affects everyone in those societies. We should pay
| our part of it.
| babesh wrote:
| My town exempts people over 55 from some school parcel
| taxes. That is because there needs to e a supermajority to
| pass bonds and exempting people who don't have school age
| children makes them much easier to pass. There is a balance
| that needs to be reached here. If you take this to the
| extreme, I could have no children and work while my
| neighbor has 7 children and chooses not to work.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| Is that the same issue? Public schools are a public good
| but compensation/equity/advancement is a private one with
| private benefits. This isn't an issue of preventing
| financial collapse but as OP says a matter of "career
| prospects". The justification for that reason as a public
| good seems a lot less obvious to me than for public
| education.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I don't think these changes are likely because, in my opinion,
| there is a silent anti-natal movement in Western culture. We
| have serious issues of an aging population, not enough kids
| being born to fund social security, etc. and all of our
| solutions look like bringing people in from other countries
| with high fertility rates. None of the ideas being tossed
| around seem to have anything to do with facilitating our own
| families. There's lots of different sub-sects of the anti-natal
| movement ranging from the environmental to racial. I have a
| friend who confided in me she was afraid to have a child
| because she didn't want to pass on whiteness.
|
| I truly hope you are able to find a partner and employer who
| supports you in your life decisions.
| frongpik wrote:
| "pass on whiteness"? Never heard this phrase before.
| kaitai wrote:
| I agree and disagree. During my PhD, I had several women
| friends have kids. It was a great time to have kids other than
| the poverty thing, if you had a supportive advisor. But what
| was not great was the lack of structure around it, by which I
| mean clear and equitable maternity leave policies for people in
| this sort-of-employee, sort-of-student position which many PhD
| students in STEM inhabit. But I gotta say I don't see non-
| feminists advocating for maternity leave for grad students, so
| part of your post puzzles me.
|
| I was breast-feeding while a professor and needed to pump at
| work. The nearest lactation space was in a different building,
| which was somewhat inconvenient, and I had a sometimes-shared
| office during the day so that wasn't perfect. But it worked out
| -- mostly because a bunch of, uh, I guess feminists had
| advocated for lactation spaces to be officially made available
| across campus (they did a great job, taking a very data-driven
| approach wrt geography and student/staff density). Before those
| spaces were available, I know a woman who pumped in a dirty
| janitorial closet. One day the janitor walked in on her
| accidentally and everyone was quite embarrassed. But there were
| no other places available; even the bathrooms didn't have
| electrical outlets close enough to space to sit to pump.
|
| Heartily agree that destigmatizing gaps and breaks would be
| great, and there are lots of people working to do that. Maybe
| it's different where you live compared to where I live. I guess
| I live in a low-cost-of-living part of the Midwest where we
| aren't so high-stress about everything. Don't know what it
| would take to change SV.
|
| For me, I sure as heck outsourced my baby to a nanny 15 hours a
| week after she was 3 months old. Do you know how nice it is to
| shower alone and have conversations with adults? Also, it was
| wonderful for my kid to get some love from someone else; I
| don't why she should be restricted to only two adult contacts
| for 16 months of her life. I was very lucky that I was able to
| teach evening classes and my husband took FMLA one day a week
| for the first year, so that we both had time to devote to the
| careers we love as well as the kid we love. I fully support the
| stay at home moms I know, and I am also thrilled that I did not
| do that, thanks.
|
| But my message to you is don't be scared of your career
| prospects w/children. Seriously, don't worry about it. F*&^
| anyone who says having kids will derail your career. Maybe they
| will, maybe they won't. Maybe a TBI you sustain during a
| competitive road biking event or your weekend at Tahoe will
| derail your career instead. And the higher-paid you are before
| you have kids, the easier it will be to advance afterward. Life
| is long. Babyhood and toddlerhood is short. You'll be fine.
| conradev wrote:
| Perhaps the alien look you are getting is because you are in a
| financial situation where you can afford to take 2-4 years off
| of work while also being able to afford to live in the Bay
| Area. I don't think it's a fair assumption that every sleep-
| deprived working new parent wants to be working.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't want to blame this on 'toxic masculinity', but I think
| there are a lot of men who would make allies for this sort of
| work if they would stop for a moment and think about what's
| good for them instead of toeing the party line.
|
| I am deeply convinced that I would be as productive at 32 hours
| a week as I am at 40, +-5%. And the +5% in particular interests
| me, because it would say a lot about how we are mishandling
| creative roles. 32 hours a week not only opens up more
| diversity in hiring, it also shifts the balance in co-
| parenting. Yes, I can take Billie to his eye appointment/drop
| him off at school/buy groceries for dinner on the way home.
| xenihn wrote:
| It's not clear what you're asking for exactly, but the solution
| is obvious: give whatever it is that you want to provide to
| EVERYONE, regardless of their gender, and whether or not they
| actually have children. Special treatment for everyone.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is a nice sentiment, but doing so would have unintended
| consequences.
|
| For example, in most top universities, they give roughly the
| same leave to new fathers as new mothers. New mothers use
| this time to care for their baby, but many new fathers use
| this time as an extended sabbatical/research leave. Their
| wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work
| on their next book.
|
| Then when it comes time for tenure review, the men who did
| this have accomplished more than they would have if they
| hadn't had kids (and more than some faculty who are mothers,
| who spent their leave with their baby).
|
| So when everyone gets the same treatment, that doesn't
| necessarily reduce or eliminate disparities -- and in some
| cases it can exacerbate them.
| triceratops wrote:
| > many new fathers use this time as an extended
| sabbatical/research leave.
|
| How do they even focus with a crying baby in the next room?
| And how do their marriages survive such an abdication of
| responsiblity?
| gnicholas wrote:
| They go into their office at the university, so noise is
| no problem.
|
| As for their marriages, it's not necessarily an
| inappropriate division of labor; one partners is earning
| money and the other is caring for a child. The potential
| unfairness is that it tends to result in men getting more
| work done, and appearing to be either more productive or
| more intelligent than women whom they work with.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| 2nd step would be a cultural change that would make it OK
| for men to do childrearing.
|
| Let young boys play with dolls. Celebrate fathers who
| parent young kids in movies and TV shows.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| Similar where I work. A male colleague has taken a couple
| paternity leaves in the last few years and he said he just
| spent the time working on side projects and watching TV.
|
| He did spend some time caring for his new children but if
| his case is representative then, for a male, having a child
| is like getting extra paid time off which is not fair to
| people who may not use paternity leave.
| as300 wrote:
| I don't think the goal should be to eliminate disparities.
| I think it should be eliminate obstacles.
|
| If the husband and wife agree that they want to use their
| combined paternity/maternity in a given way, who are you or
| I to tell them that they can't? The wife could just as well
| force the husband to take care of the child and work on her
| own next book. Or the pair could stagger their leaves so
| that they spend equal time taking care of the baby.
| irae wrote:
| > Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and
| they work on their next book.
|
| I was under the impression people had kids to build a
| family together, not to compete with their partners for
| achievements. I don't think at all the situation you
| described is bad in any way. In fact, it would be a huge
| step forward.
|
| You know what is better then a new father stressed at work,
| absent from home, worried his career is not growing fast
| enough? A new father excited about the future, doing
| something that is quite easily interrupted to help with the
| newborn and building a future for the family.
|
| I do agree giving everyone the same things would be the
| best, but it is easier said than done. Easier for large
| corporations to support larger universal parental leaven
| than to for startups to do the same.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _I was under the impression people had kids to build a
| family together, not to compete with their partners for
| achievements. I don 't think at all the situation you
| described is bad in any way. In fact, it would be a huge
| step forward._
|
| I wasn't indicating that the spouses were in any way
| competing with each other. I was pointing out the
| inequity that results among professors who are fathers
| and their colleagues who are mothers. The seemingly
| generous and 'equal' policy of giving the same leave to
| mothers and fathers has the result of disadvantaging
| professors who are mothers, on balance.
|
| (I should note that not all male professors spend their
| leave in this way, but enough of them do it is a
| problem.)
| random5634 wrote:
| Yeah, my mom always rebelled at the feminist push to have women
| do men's work as the goal (without valuing work women already
| did). Join the military, kill people etc. I'm 100% for that,
| but it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids,
| perhaps the most important thing for society and with
| INCREDIBLE costs (if done badly) and benefits (if done well) to
| everyone.
|
| What's even more interesting, upvalue work that is
| traditionally female, and you may see more men drawn to it,
| staying home, teaching etc.
|
| Instead, those can be thankless jobs from a money standpoint,
| and only folks who sell their souls into a male centric
| hellhole of work environments (PhD life is silly, medical
| residencies are nuts etc) are rewarded and women are told to
| lean in.
| centimeter wrote:
| > it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids
|
| Because she already collects a massive amount of utility
| associated with raising her own children. The economics of
| paying people to raise their own children doesn't make sense;
| the externality allocations are completely wrong. I'm sure
| you can imagine some of the perverse incentives that come
| into play.
|
| A woman benefits from raising her own kids (with an
| associated opportunity cost in employment availability), and
| the father also benefits from her raising the kids (without
| the same opportunity cost), so the rational economic strategy
| is for the father to defray some of the opportunity costs to
| the mother. This arrangement has existed for at least
| thousands of years and is called "marriage".
| seneca wrote:
| > This arrangement has existed for at least thousands of
| years and is called "marriage".
|
| Well said.
|
| The modern inclination to tear down tradition institution
| and then replace them with increasingly more damaging and
| convoluted schemes is an endless source of confusion to me.
| It's almost if we've become so arrogant that we assume if
| something has been done for generations that it must be
| wrong, which seems like the exact wrong assumption to make.
| frenchy wrote:
| There's also a inclination (not specifically modern) to
| mythologize traditional institutions. For example, the
| notion of a medieval knight in full plate.
|
| The modern notion of traditional parenting is about 60
| years old. Before that, things were much less
| straightforward, unless you were rich, because the
| absense of modern machinery and whatnot meant that that
| often both parents had to work.
| seneca wrote:
| > There's also a inclination (not specifically modern) to
| mythologize traditional institutions. For example, the
| notion of a medieval knight in full plate.
|
| Indeed, the proverbial rose colored glasses. I think this
| is where a lot of conservatives get tripped up.
|
| Being willing to make improvements is necessary to avoid
| stagnation, but it's equally important to remember change
| is not necessarily improvement (and often isn't).
| ramzyo wrote:
| That's a pretty narrow interpretation of "marriage" and
| doesn't track my experience at all.
| centimeter wrote:
| Obviously it's an oversimplification, but the point is
| that marriage nicely handles (among other things) the
| allocation of child-rearing externalities.
| klipt wrote:
| > it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids
|
| Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half
| their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child
| support.
|
| The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not
| a downside!
|
| It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting
| paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
| ramzyo wrote:
| > Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own
| half their husband's income.
|
| That's some creative logic. Being a stay at home parent is
| a full-time job. If the stay at home parent were being
| paid, they'd...well...be paid. "Effective" payment isn't
| helpful to a full time parent raising a child and losing
| out on wages they would otherwise get at a job that the
| economy values with a taxable wage.
| klipt wrote:
| So you want the husband to explicitly pay his wife a W2
| wage to raise their kids, which just means as a couple
| they pay more taxes and have less money than before?
|
| I don't see the upside.
| ramzyo wrote:
| No, you're right that doesn't make sense, and I wouldn't
| be for that. I think government should expand paid time
| off for family leave, especially in the US.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| So if corporate attorney is taking time off to raise a
| child society should value, and pay, more for that then
| if a public defender is?
| twoifbyseat wrote:
| > "Effective" payment isn't helpful to a full time parent
| raising a child
|
| ? Having room and board for yourself and your child is
| nothing if not helpful.
| ramzyo wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I don't see how that ties to the original
| argument in the thread, though. Presumably a full time
| parent with a spouse who can provide for both parent and
| child and who gave up a taxable wage to be a caregiver
| already had room and board. The room and board comment
| seems irrelevant to the argument given the context of the
| preceding comments around forfeiting a taxable wage for
| the full time job of parenthood.
| drfuchs wrote:
| Child support is intended to cover the expenses of the
| child - food, clothing, education, medical, etc. It's not
| meant to pay for the time spent by the custodial parent in
| actually doing the parenting, nor any sort of "opportunity
| cost" of not being otherwise engaged in a paying job.
|
| Translated to HN-world: "I'm going work on a FOSS project
| full-time!" World: "Great; we'll pay for your server! You
| won't lose a dime!" Me: "Uh, what about the income from the
| job I gave up?"
| klipt wrote:
| You can always choose to work and send the child to
| daycare.
|
| Providing your own daycare instead of working is a
| lifestyle choice, why does the opportunity cost of that
| choice have to be shouldered by someone else?
| drfuchs wrote:
| You said "[custodial parents] do get paid ... child
| support" and I was simply pointing out that this isn't
| "pay" to said parent in the sense of "compensation for
| services rendered".
| csa wrote:
| > In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income.
|
| ... and half of asset appreciation, and in some cases (it
| varies) half of pension.
|
| I will also add that it's not just mothers. It's any
| spouse. I've seen successful women come out on the raw end
| of this deal during divorce.
|
| I mention this not as a grievance, rather just an
| observation that people who are married, both male and
| female, are sometimes surprised at asset allocation during
| a divorce with regards to "passive" investments and
| business ownership (e.g, a self-owned business that has
| grown).
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| That's a weird contortion of logic. Your point is still
| that raising children isn't an economically valuable
| activity, unless you also think that men should be paid
| somewhere around 2x if they are supporting a stay-at-home
| mom...
| klipt wrote:
| The existence of daycares is proof that people are
| willing to pay for raising children.
|
| What you're hitting on is that staying home to raise 1-2
| kids is economically _inefficient_ compared to working
| and sending the kids to a daycare, because the daycare
| can benefit from efficiencies of scale.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids
|
| Are you suggesting that the father should pay the mother a
| salary for raising the kids? (Or same thing with the sexes
| reversed if it's the father raising the kid)
|
| Isn't that just a more formal arrangement of a stay-at-home
| mother/father? The main difference would be: more financial
| independence to the stay-at-home party, which is good in my
| book, but I'm not sure if that's what you're suggesting.
| jedberg wrote:
| I believe the proposal is that the government should pay
| stay at home parents to remain that way, because it is a
| net benefit to society.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| That proposal runs into issues. In particular, the income
| replacement flavor implicitly suggests that the positive
| externality of a stay at home parent is exactly equal to
| the market rate pay in a wholly unrelated profession.
| That seems very unlikely to be true.
| jedberg wrote:
| Presumably it would be a fixed amount for everyone, and
| not based on the job you've left.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| In that case I'm tentatively for it. But I don't think it
| will be useful in the kinds of situations being discussed
| in the blog post and comments.
| klipt wrote:
| Isn't it economically more efficient to have kids go to
| daycares (which benefit from economies of scale) and have
| both parents work and pay taxes?
|
| Of course some people prefer to raise their kids
| themselves, but that seems more like an expensive
| lifestyle choice than a necessity.
| jedberg wrote:
| There are lots of studies showing that being raised by
| your own parents is far more beneficial than a day care.
| But as you point out, that's a privilege reserved for the
| wealthy.
|
| Paying people to be stay at home parents would make it a
| viable choice for a lot more people. It would also help
| reverse the trend of the fertility rate dropping below
| 2.1
| frenchy wrote:
| > Join the military, kill people etc
|
| I don't think we should push women into these job, but I
| don't think we should push men into those jobs either.
|
| > it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids
|
| Actually, my kid's day-care provider does exactly this! In a
| few years, he'll have teachers doing the same.
|
| Valuing work is complicated. Personally, I'd be happy to be a
| stay-at-home parent if finances made that easy, even if
| seemed a little thankless. It's not like I feel that the
| webshit I build all day long is really valuable.
|
| If someone feels undervalued as a stay-at-home parent, it's
| probably because they feel stuck in that job, either because
| of lack of education, lack of available child care, or
| otherwise lack of jobs.
| seneca wrote:
| > it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids
|
| Why would women get paid to raise their own kids? You suggest
| it's because when done well, it has incredible value to
| society. What is that value to society? It's having
| functional, productive members. Women already reap the
| benefits of that by sharing society with other peoples' well
| raised children.
|
| What I mean to say is that it's a web of mutual benefit. The
| gap is actually in all the people who don't have children,
| who are essentially free riders in this scheme, but that is
| offset by the fact that they pay taxes for things like
| schools, which they don't themselves consume, and lack of tax
| breaks that parents receive.
| petr25102018 wrote:
| Also, the world is already overpopulated as it is in my
| opinion. So not having a kid can be or will be seen as a
| benefit to society...
| sangnoir wrote:
| The world is not overpopulated - it's that just some
| (large) corners of it are seemingly incapable of living
| sustainably (outsized consumption that goes with outsized
| waste and pollution)
| Digory wrote:
| Every human being can value traditional female work (or, more
| broadly, human obligations to each other) more than money.
|
| But we seem to want to be _paid._ It 's interesting that
| socializing the payments seems to strike people as more
| freeing than just social obligation.
|
| This seems like the kind of thinking that eventually requires
| payments to give up the thrill of killing each other.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > But we seem to want to be paid. It's interesting that
| socializing the payments seems to strike people as more
| freeing than just social obligation.
|
| It's not that we _want_ to be paid. It's that we _need_ to
| be paid, because in order to raise a child you need a
| stable source of critical things for many years:
|
| - food & water
|
| - shelter (and heat)
|
| - clothing
|
| - waste disposal
|
| If I wanted to take several years entirely away from work
| to raise a child, I would still have to have those things.
| How can I afford those things if I am not getting paid?
|
| It's not about valuing _being paid_, it's about valuing the
| things that are necessary to raise a child.
|
| You tell me how to acquire those things without being paid,
| and then we can analyze while people value being paid more
| than the social obligations.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > How can I afford those things if I am not getting paid?
|
| From savings or by having another family member work?
| Combinations of that worked for a very long time in human
| history.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| The down stream effects of our system could be that the
| successful, educated, intelligent women and men dont have
| children, and the more aggressive, more risk taking, less
| educated among us have many children.
|
| This has the potential to massively harm our society in the long
| term.
|
| We need to ascribe virtue to having children. We need to ascribe
| an extremely high amount of virtue to being a good parent.
| ArlenBales wrote:
| That's basically the opening premise of Idiocracy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
| jimbokun wrote:
| I think it's pretty well documented this is already happening.
|
| People with less education have more children, on average, than
| people with more education.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think maybe a wider perspective is needed on this topic.
| Instead of the assumption that women should have more resources
| for fertility as a founder of a company or trying to run/work at
| a startup, let's examine why that assumption exists, which is men
| in a similar position.
|
| Male founders also face hardships in rearing children when
| working demanding jobs, but less so than women, partly because of
| the luck of the genetic draw, and partly because as a culture we
| are more lenient and have less expectations of fathers. The good
| parent will have problems no matter their gender (but harder for
| women obviously, who carry the child to term), but men can get
| away with being more absent and less involved without as much
| judgement.
|
| What if instead of taking at face value that people in these
| positions should have resources allocated to make it easier to
| raise children, we instead focus on their choices. They made a
| choice to go into a high risk venture for the possible payout of
| money and/or more control over their future. Worded in a more
| harsh way, what's being asked is "Why aren't more resources and
| attention focused on me while I attempt to play the lotto and
| become a millionaire, or work my high paying job?" Perhaps the
| answer to this should instead of providing additional support to
| women and men in child rearing in an industry that pays famously
| well and is getting less and less tethered to locale _by the day_
| , we instead decide to stigmatize fathers that focus more on
| their career than their children?
|
| That's not to say I think we shouldn't as a society focus on
| making child rearing easier, especially for those without as many
| resources, but I'm not sure focusing on those that have chosen to
| make the trade-off already to pursue a demanding and risky career
| for the _chance_ at a large payout is what we should be doing. If
| they benefit somewhat from societal changes, that 's great, but
| I'm not really going to shed a tear over founders complaining how
| hard it is with a pregnancy or rearing a small child to raising
| funding for the next round, whether they be male or female.
| They've made very specific life choices to put themselves into
| that position, and I don't think it's out of bounds to say maybe
| taking the hard and risky path doesn't always pay off.
|
| Note: This is probably way more harsh than I intend it to be, and
| it's not exactly a correct representation of my feelings on this,
| but I think it is a perspective worth considering. That is, to a
| small degree I'm playing devil's advocate here.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >Freeze your eggs/embryos.
|
| Trouble is that this doesn't work too well either, or so I have
| read.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > It might seem weird or somehow frivolous to freeze your eggs
|
| Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I'd see this as good time
| management and life planning which should be celebrated and
| encouraged.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| > _Startups take much longer than you'd think before they become
| successful._
|
| 90% of startups fail, they NEVER become successful. Gambling on
| some theoretical future success is just bad advice.
|
| Also egg freezing and late age pregnancy is VERY expensive and
| complicated. Author herself had three miscarriages.
|
| I would suggest something else: have children between 18-25, and
| start self funded company while working at home. By early 30ies,
| kids will be at school and company should generate some income.
| neonate wrote:
| The author is a female founder writing for female founders.
| People can choose to be founders if they want to. The issue is,
| what next? That's what the article is about.
|
| Your comment reminds me of those annoying answers on Stack
| Overflow that say: why are you trying to do that? you shouldn't
| do that! you should do what I think you should do instead!
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I don't know if there's an ideal age to have kids, but 18 has
| always seemed way too young to me. I know a lot of people who
| had kids at that age who, while they love their kids, deeply
| regret not waiting.
|
| You also make it sound like starting a business from home in
| your early 20's with kids is somehow more feasible than working
| a stable job. That doesn't really make sense, especially when
| you just talked about 90% of startups failing.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| Author waited and also regrets. My point is that having kids
| early is much easier and cheaper, because it is at peak
| physical health.
|
| Baby requires too much attention and prevents work in normal
| 9-5 job with fixed schedule and meetings. But it leaves
| enough "holes" in time table to work on something.
| LeonardMenard wrote:
| Having kids between 18-25 is very, very difficult, if you want
| to raise them in a financially stable 2-parent home.
|
| I worked very, very hard to build both a financially stable
| life and have a family "young." I had my first kid at 28, was
| married at 24, and am the youngest mother I know in my
| professional social circle.
|
| The only women I know who had kids 18-25 had accidental
| pregnancies with flings or short-term nonviable relationships,
| the fathers bailed, and the mother spent many years living with
| her parents while struggling to have a much more basic career
| than those discussed on this board. None of them had time,
| money, social support, or educational resources as single
| mothers to "start a self funded company while working at home."
|
| Ideally if a woman wants to have kids, she can make a plan to
| have them with a committed partner at sometime around or just
| before 30. If she also wants to be a start-up founder, frankly
| she should look for a non-traditional relationship where her
| husband takes on most of the childcare after those early baby
| months, and hopefully he also has a stable but flexible
| corporate or blue-collar job to give them a bit of financial
| buffer.
| bartvk wrote:
| Yeah, the writer of the article first states "The focus that's
| required at first will probably force you to cut back on almost
| everything in your life". Then it's almost like she describes
| how you can also cut back on fertility. Loving my kid so much,
| I didn't feel great after reading the article.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I would suggest something else: have children between 18-25
|
| Let's not undersell how hard it is to have kids when just
| starting out in life, when you generally have less resources,
| which may mean less stable housing. Couch surfing or staying
| with good friends for a week or two because of financial
| hardship problems is doable when you're single or a couple,
| it's much harder to swing with children unless you have very
| good friends in a more stable place in life than you or family.
| Requiring there be family means mobility is limited, and
| limited mobility means limited career choices.
|
| That's not to say it's not a good idea for some people given
| their circumstances, just that it's not obviously a better or
| easier path.
| frEdmbx wrote:
| Having children isn't easy. Having children near peak
| fertility is relatively easier than later. If a woman has the
| foresight to know that she would like to have a family first,
| and then work on her career, she could focus on finding a
| husband who can provide the resources necessary to both have
| children between 18-25, and support starting a business
| later.
|
| This used to be common knowledge, and it was so for a reason.
| If someone doesn't want to go this route, they obviously have
| every right not to.. but they should understand the tradeoff.
| kbenson wrote:
| > This used to be common knowledge, and it was so for a
| reason.
|
| It also used to be much more common for women to wed older
| and more established men. It also used to be less common
| for women to go to college. There are lots of societal
| norms that have changed to make early parenthood less
| popular than it used to be.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Now that we are subsidizing fertility procedures, will SV
| companies also subsidize nannies because productivity would
| depend on sleep and outsourcing it to night nannies would help
| female employees tremendously. Why not?
|
| How much more can we extend this? Let's be creative here.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Or get a husband that takes care of the kids. The woman will of
| course have carry the children in her womb, which will be some
| tough months. But after that the husband can do almost
| everything. If she feels that it is important to feed the baby
| breast milk the first months, excellent pumps can be bought.
|
| This is a much better option than waiting until it almost is to
| late.
|
| (I'm not talking out of my ass: I'm currently a stay at home dad
| so my wife can focus on her career. Soon our second kid is a year
| and will start kindergarten, and I'll start working 75%).
| johnzim wrote:
| This is great advice. I was in a similar position till we moved
| to the Bay Area, which flipped the financial calculus.
|
| Other than breast-feeding, Dads can do everything that's
| required and pumping works out great for everyone.
| tobib wrote:
| > pumping works out great for everyone
|
| You might want to ask a few (other) women about that. My
| partner very much dislikes pumping. Both the physical aspect
| as well as the emotional/psychological side of it. But I get
| what you're saying and I agree with the sentiment.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Also important to remember is that breast milk isn't
| essential. There are of course many studies that show that
| breast milk is great in so many ways, but on the other
| hand, a lot of perfectly healthy adults were fed formula,
| so maybe it's nothing anyone should give up their career
| for.
| tobib wrote:
| Maybe I just didn't find the studies but I wish we knew
| more about the benefits of breastmilk and the act of
| breastfeeding (e.g. social, hormonal) and the
| benefits/downsides of formula.
|
| I have this subjective feeling about one clearly being
| better than the other in so many ways but it's nothing
| rooted in facts. All the information I can find on the
| internet don't seem trustworthy mainly because it's so
| difficult to control for the socio-economic realities
| around who breastfeeds and who feeds formula. Plus I
| suppose it's difficult to do a blind trial at least when
| it comes to breastfeeding vs bottle feeding.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >pumping works out great for everyone.
|
| Pumping is an enormous pain in the ass compared to
| breastfeeding. All the moms I know who had to pump wish they
| never had to pump.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| And for some women breastfeeding is a pain (often
| literally) and pumping at least works.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I should have acknowledged that is a problem for
| many also.
| tobib wrote:
| I'm currently working in my home office while my partner is
| looking after our newborn full time and I'm jealous as hell. I
| genuinely with I could stay at home longer than just a couple
| of weeks/a few months and be a full time stay at home parent.
| Unfortunately it doesn't work for us financially but I wish it
| did.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| This is a fine thing that can work for some people and not for
| others: it's really hard to live a decent life on a single
| (tech!) income in Silicon Valley if you're not already wealthy,
| and young people may not have enough saved up to take a year
| off.
| lainga wrote:
| Do you think people would receive your advice the same way if
| the sexes were reversed?
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The situation where the sexes are reversed is the norm. That
| is what almost all successful career men do: they let the
| wife take care of the kids.
| damagednoob wrote:
| No, but that doesn't mean the advice is bad. Two consenting
| adults should be able to divide up family responsibilities
| however they see fit.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| scarmig wrote:
| I'd love to be a stay at home dad: I enjoy taking care of and
| spending time with children, and I like doing household labor.
| It's not like I'd be bringing nothing financial to the
| partnership, either: I'd be bringing substantial assets into
| the partnership, such that my wife wouldn't need to worry about
| my retirement or even day-to-day expenses.
|
| The reality, though, is that most women want someone ambitious
| (in the very limited, traditional sense of ambition), and
| aspiring to be a stay at home dad is considered at best neutral
| and more often a negative or dealbreaker when it comes to
| forming relationships.
|
| This is true even of (or perhaps especially of) career-focused
| women, despite the fact that their male counterparts are more
| than happy to date and marry less-ambitious women with the
| intention of a division of labor conducive to family rearing.
| k__ wrote:
| In Germany you can get a few years paid leave for getting a
| child.
|
| I met a few women who used their parenting time to found a
| company.
| lnsru wrote:
| Paid leave is 12+2 months if both parents use it. And it's
| capped at 1800EUR. Depending on location and business type it
| is absolutely reasonable to start something with that
| conditions. There are no paid years for sure.
| k__ wrote:
| Interesting, Wikipedia said something about up to 36 months
| per parent and per child.
| lnsru wrote:
| 36 months per child for both parents. 12+2 months are paid
| if both parents share the time. For one parent only 12
| months. I recently did this whole paperwork, but canceled
| my parental leave since we found affordable property for
| buying. Shouldn't be that bad with current pandemic home
| office ruling at work.
| [deleted]
| jplr8922 wrote:
| My two cent : we got the whole ''parental leave'' thing wrong
| because we make business pay and the individual pay the costs.
| Big firm might have plenty of ressources to deal with it and 'not
| appear sexist', but a startup or small business will not. It
| should be a government program to help both the individual and
| his employer.
| krrrh wrote:
| In Canada it was introduced as part of the Employment Insurance
| system. I think that's a good way to look at it and spread the
| costs across the workforce. It doesn't replace your full wages
| (I think it's 55%, though some employers top it up with private
| insurance), but the parents basically get a year of wage
| support to divide between the two of them. Your employer also
| has to hire you back.
| nyghtly wrote:
| What a horribly dystopic conclusion. You can't bio-hack your way
| out of the consequences of hustle culture. Every working adult
| should have sufficient personal time to support their family (or
| start one). The fertility industry is a symptom of a corrupt
| culture in which childbearing is punished.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'll upvote, but I disagree with the connotations that come
| with using the word "punished".
| sjtindell wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. As I understand it is low risk to freeze
| eggs. No offense meant, did you consider adoption at all? Is it
| an option?
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Is adoption possible in the U.S? I had a colleague in Europe
| who wanted to do it (stable high-income, good careers, nice
| couple all around) and found it to be impossible. I've always
| heard it was not a thing in rich countries.
| sjtindell wrote:
| It is possible yes. The process is definitely grueling from
| what I've heard (many interviews, lots of documents to
| furnish, lots of luck) but it is doable.
| u678u wrote:
| In Europe its pretty normal to have one child. It seems only in
| America people aspire to have 2, 3, even 4 kids.
| requieted555 wrote:
| kids = status = protection
| dang wrote:
| Please don't add nationalistic flamebait to this thread, which
| is flammable enough already.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jurassic wrote:
| I feel like the moonshot or bust VC startup mindset is the
| problem here. The startup fantasy is that you're going to take
| investment to build a multi-billion dollar company. But most
| people don't need anything close to a billion dollars to do
| everything they want in life, so it's unfortunate that many
| peoples' idea of entrepreneurship is tangled up in this unicorn
| playbook. This version of entrepreneurship is just a status game
| for young white men, and the rest of us should probably consider
| other options.
|
| Most middle class people would be radically more secure and happy
| with only a few million dollars over our current level of wealth.
| It sounds like a tall order, but it's a pretty low bar in the
| world of business. There's a huge range of financial outcomes
| that would be amazing success for individuals that would be
| miserable failures for a VC-funded company. Those are the sweet
| spot, because they change your life without attracting VC-backed
| competition.
|
| So I see the question as: What is the easiest and most
| predictable way to reach my wealth target in the next 3-4 years
| instead of the next 30-40 years? Trading time for money won't get
| me there. The best answer I've come across is to create a simple
| idea for subscription physical product or micro-SaaS, validate
| the customer need, presell, then build/manufacture, and sell the
| shit out of it. Emphasis on selling not building.
|
| People like to look down on the "lifestyle" business, but this
| seems like the best option for most people because it can be a
| vehicle to accumulate a life-changing amount of wealth (millions
| not billions) without the expectation from VC gatekeepers that
| you will be sacrificing every other part of your life at the
| alter of the business. As long as you're not yolked to the
| expectations of investors, you can scale your effort on the
| business up or down as your life and ambition dictate.
| neonate wrote:
| The blog is about female founders specifically. What's wrong
| with that? If you're implying they shouldn't be founders, then
| what you're saying is patronizing, and if you're not, then it's
| off topic.
| jurassic wrote:
| I am a female founder, and I think most people (not just
| women) have better options than going down the VC path.
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| You shouldn't plan on relying on frozen eggs. They have a
| relatively high probability of not working.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/01/27/f...
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Your fertility drops exponentially after age 35, and the risks
| for both the mother and child significantly increase. And since
| it takes ~2 years to make a baby, ideally you should start having
| kids no later than 35 - 2k, where k is the number of kids you
| want. And you probably want at least one extra year in case
| anything goes wrong, which it often does.
|
| IVF and egg freezing, while useful tools, don't really magically
| change this formula in any meaningful way.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| As a (male) who is definitely uninformed - does female fertility
| begin to decrease far earlier than the biological capacity to
| have a successful pregnancy (post conception)?
|
| As in, if a woman was to freeze some of her eggs in say, her 20's
| and desire to use them for IVF in her late 30's, is it still safe
| for her to have a child?
| [deleted]
| svachalek wrote:
| As a couple who had a child in their 40s (naturally) I find a
| lot of people overestimate the difficulty. Yes the odds of
| success drop dramatically with age so it's best to start when
| you can but even so, IIRC, the most likely outcome is no
| problems at all even at age 40.
| jedberg wrote:
| In short, yes, kind of. There is a decrease in success the
| older the mother is, but the age of the eggs plays a key role
| in the success rate. 20 year old eggs have a higher chance of
| success with IVF than 35 year old eggs.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Feminism did a lot to stigmatize motherhood. "Stay at home mom"
| became a term of disparagement. You're basically a dumb loser and
| a miserable failure if you aren't a careerist woman (which is
| hilarious because such moms are typically much happier than those
| forced to earn wages or slave away in some toxic corporate
| environment). I think many more women would prefer to raise their
| children (which, btw, is a full time job and much more important
| than some job and for which jobs primarily exist in the first
| place) instead of pushing them onto some stranger who is payed to
| do their job for them and then go to work. And frankly, most jobs
| aren't something people would miss. Feminism of this kind is and
| always has been an upper middle phenomenon. There is little
| consideration for low income earners. You think most women are
| just dying to be wage earners? They do it because they have to.
| Low income mothers have always been working women, out of
| necessity, not some weird sense of ambition and needing to prove
| something. It's the middle and upper class mothers who could
| afford the privilege of staying at home. (Well, until now when
| even the upper middle class needs two income earners just to buy
| a house.)
|
| Before someone possessed by the Zeitgeist clicks that downvote
| button, I will add that this isn't to say women should be banned
| from anything. You want a career, that's your business. Also,
| consider that besides raising children, there is plenty to do
| around the community that's probably more rewarding than a full
| blown career (even part time is stuff). However, I am saying that
| the social and cultural pressure, the NECESSITY, to be a
| careerist, and this means at the expense of your family which is
| sort of an afterthought, should be ridiculed and abolished. Girls
| should not be taught that their self-worth and happiness are to
| be found in a career. No one should. In this case it's making
| women miserable. Maybe as people begin to sacrifice some material
| comforts for the sake of a healthy family life, the market will
| begin to shift. After all, if you don't have that income rolling
| in any more and you're not keeping up with the Jones' likes some
| zombie, then the market will need to respond in turn.
|
| (Also, please, no IVF. IVF is gravely immoral, especially given
| that you typically have to fertilize multiple eggs which are then
| are discarded or remain frozen.)
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| The problem is compounded when you think about the types of
| people who are missing their fertility window. We're talking
| about some of the smartest and most ambitious women in the world.
| It's a huge loss of our country if we can't create an environment
| that allows them to create families and offspring. What a shame.
| asdf333 wrote:
| thank you for writing about what must be a difficult topic to
| discuss, for the benefit of others.
| rantwasp wrote:
| I empathize with how hard it is for a female founder in
| particular and for a woman in general when it comes to mixing
| children with a career.
|
| That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live
| later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society
| where people would not have to work themselves to death and were
| able to... you know... enjoy life
| umanwizard wrote:
| Our society doesn't force or even encourage people to be
| startup founders -- they choose it for themselves. There are
| plenty of examples of classes of people who have to work harder
| than they should in an ideal society, but I'm not sure what
| point you're making with this particular one.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| being a founder is glamourised. Being rich is glamourised.
| What more encouragement do people need? Wealthy
| businesspeople are basically the symbol of social success.
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| I think the overarching point they were making was about the
| difficulty women have with balancing a career with having a
| child(which is further exacerbated for women founders due to
| the increased workloads founders face).
|
| I do agree though that choosing to be a founder then
| complaining about a poor, usually self imposed, work life
| balance is a bit silly.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| There is an imperative to be a high earner due to
| skyrocketing housing, medical, and education costs in the
| United States. At the same time popular media like Wolf of
| Wall Street, The Social Network, and Shark Tank, show how
| life affirming and beneficial it is to gain wealth.
|
| To many start-ups seem like a short cut - even if they are
| laughably not.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| For highly skilled technical people and business leaders, we
| already do live in that society. There are many companies that
| will happily pay you entirely unreasonable amounts of money to
| work a 9-5 job. However, you can opt in to lifestyles where you
| work yourself to death in the hopes of getting even more
| excessive riches and fame than you would get by living a more
| relaxed lifestyle.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't want fame or riches.
|
| I just want to build something nobody else has built.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| You can do that as a hobby, or you can do it as a startup
| but treat the startup as a 9-5. (Your leisurely pace of
| work might hurt your chances of staying ahead of your
| competitors, but that's only important if you want the
| wealth and fame part.)
| fastball wrote:
| Hmm I don't think that's quite right.
|
| In order for me to _continue_ building something nobody
| has built, I need it to be generating revenue. And in
| order to generate revenue I need to stay ahead of the
| competition, which probably requires _not_ treating it
| like a 9-5. So yes I 'm pursuing money, but not to
| achieve vast personal wealth, but rather to ensure my
| (hopefully) novel business is long-term viable.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| if you build something nobody else had built, wouldn't
| that mean there is no competition?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Ok, I guess for some founders keeping their business
| viable at all requires a very large commitment. I think
| that's going to depend on how saturated is the market
| you're entering, and various other factors. I still
| believe that most founders could work much less if they
| were not in pursuit of vast wealth/fame.
| munk-a wrote:
| I disagree with this - I think it's very much a
| reflection of the modern world being quite focused on
| profits and revenue - you can build an exceedingly
| successful thing that doesn't provide a clear revenue
| stream. It won't come with the glamour that other options
| may have but if you look at passion projects from things
| like open source libraries all the way down to dwarf
| fortress it's quite possible to make a living building a
| thing - it just won't give you 200k+ in annual income.
|
| There is a place for artisanal projects in the modern
| world - a lot of creative folks subsist greatly on
| patreon as a source of income.
| fastball wrote:
| That's more of a crapshoot though. The vast majority of
| open source projects _don 't_ generate enough donations
| to sustain even a single developer. The vast majority of
| indie games don't experience the success of Dwarf
| Fortress.
|
| A clear revenue model from the beginning makes it much
| more likely that you will be either A. long-term
| sustainable or B. call it quits before too much time is
| invested.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I respect the honesty, and I am there with you. I think
| inventing something new is exceptionally harder because the
| burden of communication is exceptional.
|
| I have spent a decade within large scale infrastructure, so
| I have climbed the shoulders of giants to see what can be.
| Once you see what can be, then there is the burden to
| communicate what you see. It's not easy, and you learn deep
| respect for all the previous innovations because they
| required exceptional communications.
|
| Here I am, an aging man, and I've invented my thing. It's a
| programming language for board games that lets you build
| durable compute. You don't have to worry about failures at
| all. The machine can live forever! It's great, but I have
| to communicate and prove its value.
|
| I intend to retire and tinker on it for a decade:
|
| http://www.adama-lang.org/docs/what-the-living-document
| grillvogel wrote:
| have a kid then
| kgybcehbx wrote:
| Well we used to have a society with a division of labor and
| stable institution of marriage so that women didn't have to
| work themselves to death through the child rearing years but we
| decided as a society that in order for women to be truly free,
| they need to be trapped in the same work to death life that men
| have been in since prehistoric times, to the detriment of their
| lives and the lives of our children. But it'll be OK because
| the village can raise the children; just send them off to the
| tax subsidized day care to be raised in a 1:20 adult: child
| ratio (they'll be fiiiiiine) and then you can have your career
| and your "motherhood" (no matter that the child trusts the
| nanny more than you because you were always at work) too
| sokoloff wrote:
| "We" didn't decide as a society. Rather individual people
| (and couples) in society decided that they'd prefer to have
| additional income [and stimulation] by choosing to work
| outside the home. Collectively, that dramatically increased
| the labor supply as compared to 100 years ago as well as
| increased the demand for goods and services.
|
| I don't want to have us go back to the old way where it was
| looked down upon or judged for women to participate in
| society as free and equal agents in deciding how they want to
| spend their one precious life. "Men should work and women
| should tend to the household and children" is way worse than
| "Adults should be able to make free choices about their lives
| [and accept the consequential outcomes resulting from those
| choices, both beneficial and detrimental]"
| defen wrote:
| Counterpoint: let's say I hate the effect that car-
| ownership has had on society - you can't just tell me "well
| then you should just choose not to own a car". The problem
| is that society itself has been reshaped around the
| assumption that essentially everyone has a car. For the
| vast majority of people in the vast majority of locations
| in the USA, it's simply not viable to live without a car,
| or ready access to one.
|
| That doesn't mean I should be able to reshape all of
| society according to my whims, but it seems flippant to
| dismiss the material circumstances that make single-
| breadwinner families economically infeasible for most
| American families by saying that people can just choose to
| live that life if they want.
| munk-a wrote:
| I hate the effect that car-ownership has had on society
| and I refuse to own a car personally. I advocate for
| urban planning that reinforces walkable neighborhoods and
| tighter parking restrictions and choose to live in a city
| which isn't completely foot-friendly but is better than
| most. Choosing to live car-free does impose restrictions
| on my freedom of movement, but it only prevents me from
| going to places I have no desire to go to.
|
| I'd also say it's absolutely fine to _try_ and reshape
| all of society according to your whims - that 's sort of
| what everyone is doing in a democracy constantly. Just
| don't get upset if some folks object and it doesn't work.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What you say is true, but partly orthogonal. If not
| owning a car is one of the most important things to you,
| then as a friend, I would counsel you to arrange your
| life to prioritize that. Live in NYC or Boston. Or
| Amsterdam or Paris. In all of those places, car ownership
| is a net negative and so you'll find a lot of life
| arranged to assume you don't own a car and as a result, a
| lot of like-minded people.
|
| If your frustration is that many _others_ choose to own a
| car and prioritize their consumption differently, again
| as a friend I would tell you in the most polite way I
| could muster to make your choices based on your values
| and let others make their choices based on their values.
| You can _also_ try to reshape all of society or some
| small corner of it, but first and foremost, I 'd advise
| you to make pragmatic choices to improve your daily
| existence.
| defen wrote:
| > arrange your life to prioritize that. Live in NYC or
| Boston. Or Amsterdam or Paris. In all of those places,
| car ownership is a net negative and so you'll find a lot
| of life arranged to assume you don't own a car and as a
| result, a lot of like-minded people.
|
| That was indeed my point - "just go live in NYC or
| Boston" is not realistic for most people for a variety of
| reasons.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What I internalize from that is that the life
| optimization function coefficient on "live without a car"
| is not high enough for that person to outweigh the
| coefficients and input variables on other quality of life
| factors.
|
| If "live without a car" was 1.0 and all other factors
| were 0.0, they'd decide to go live in
| NYC/Boston/someplace else that optimized that. Since they
| don't, they have other factors that they are weighing
| (probably implicitly) to conclude that they shouldn't do
| that.
|
| No one can have everything they want. Most people can
| have the one thing they want most in the world, if
| they're willing to make enough other sacrifices to get
| it.
| yomly wrote:
| But now I have to be twice as financially successful to
| provide the equivalent level of support my parents did
| while my wife opts to be a full time parent.
|
| We both made free choices, but the environment has now made
| that considerably more expensive.
|
| Don't get me wrong, this isn't a value judgment but, sadly,
| being a stay at home parent isn't economically "valuable"
| and so the incentives have shifted over the years.
| sokoloff wrote:
| On the economic value point, my spouse elected to stay
| home when our second was born as we calculated that with
| their (well above median pay, PhD required) science job,
| that with two in daycare or paid pre-school, we were just
| breaking even on an after-tax monthly cash basis and so
| they'd be working full-time and the only headway we'd be
| making from their work and missing our kids' development
| was maxing out another 401k account.
|
| For us, that was an absolutely economically valued choice
| to stay home. Now that they're in school, freelance
| science consulting adds to the household retirement
| savings in a very significant way (when self-employed,
| you can squirrel away about 92% of the gross income up to
| mid-five figures), which by now has probably filled in
| the gap from several years of no 401k contributions and
| growth and provides them with the intellectual
| stimulation and contribution in their field that is also
| desired.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I don't believe that is all down to the changing
| demographics of the labor force. Another aspect is the
| availability of land in desirable locales (i.e. close to
| metro areas). There are more than twice as many people in
| the U.S. now as there were "in the good old days" (by
| which I'm referring to the 50s and early 60s). And houses
| have gotten larger. And on top of that, people have been
| generally expressing a preference toward urbanization,
| with less than half as many people living in rural areas
| today compared to the 50s. All these factors have had a
| significant effect on housing prices, the dominant cost
| most American families pay.
| munk-a wrote:
| The fact that you need to provide so much more value as a
| worker isn't due to the fact that both parents tend to
| work (at least not directly) it's due to the fact that
| modern society has much more rent seeking than previous
| generations had to deal with. Because most families have
| more wealthy individuals can squeeze families more before
| they reach the breaking point and have done so to the
| point where the average family doesn't have as much spare
| as it should given everyone's productivity.
|
| The inability to have one working parent support a family
| comes down to wealth inequality like a lot of modern
| ills.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > I wish we could live in a society where people would not have
| to work themselves to death and were able to... you know...
| enjoy life
|
| Compared to almost everyone else who ever lived, if you live in
| a Western Democracy (and increasingly for many in some non-
| Western countries), that time is now.
|
| People from past centuries, and people from many poor nations
| around the world, would be baffled that people living with the
| opportunities we have available to us complaining about not
| being able to "enjoy life".
|
| Things certainly aren't perfect, but seize the opportunities
| already being afforded to you for enjoyment.
| mountainb wrote:
| If you live anywhere with cheap cost of living you can have a
| pretty chill lifestyle and raise kids. If you want to live in a
| tournament zip code you have to live a tournament lifestyle.
| The US is a gigantic country that is mostly empty.
| vmception wrote:
| > That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live
| later) rubs me the wrong way.
|
| That seems to be based on a lot of assumptions. I consider
| working a fulfilling job to be living. Whereas raising children
| seems to be the fulfilling... life role.. to you? I don't view
| them as separate delineated things.
|
| I think freezing eggs should become cheaper, more viable, and
| covered by insurance, and there are a couple ways to improve
| the process.
|
| A lot of times I find dating 28-33 year old women to be
| predictably _annoying_ because many stigmatize options like
| freezing eggs while still rushing to check the boxes on various
| rites of passage, as if freezing eggs is a form of defeat.
| Whereas older women have just gotten over it, already done it,
| or something else. And younger women haven 't gotten around to
| "wondering where this is going". My experience, corroborated by
| some other men. I wonder if that contributes to Leo's age
| limit. I don't have experience dating men, so I wouldn't know
| if they do something similar at certain age ranges.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > wish we could live in a society where people would not have
| to work themselves to death and were able to... you know...
| enjoy life
|
| While I do agree, this is where I draw a distinction between
| "job" and "career." A job is something you do to make money. A
| career is an end in itself. Balancing a career and parenthood
| is incredibly hard because they're both large time commitments.
| Despite what the 90's told women (though this applies equally
| to men), you can't have it all, and you have to decide what's
| important to you.
| tobib wrote:
| There are societies where a woman can have both, a career and
| a family. And that usually comes with maternity leave,
| parental leave, child benefits, child care, etc.
|
| I hope I don't misunderstand you but what you said sounded to
| me like it's either or, and I don't think that has to be
| true.
| bengale wrote:
| It's true. Telling people they can have everything does them
| such a disservice, because it strips them of the knowledge
| that these decisions exist. We all have to pick and choose
| where we apply our energies based on what we value most,
| pretending that isn't the case just means those decisions are
| made for them.
| munificent wrote:
| I think the initial intent of feminism was that "have it all"
| meant "here is a buffet of life paths and each individual is
| free to pick _which_ ones they want in order to live a
| meaningful life. "
|
| But somehow that's turned into, "we put _all_ of the life
| paths on your plate and if you don 't eat them all, you're a
| failure". We went from "you can" to "you must".
|
| Maybe there's something fundamental in the nature of esteem
| and prestige that leads to this. We don't see to be good at
| building cultures that understand there can be many entirely
| disparate ways to live that are equally successful.
| rantwasp wrote:
| offtopic: Hey munificent! Great fan of your books. Keep up
| the great work!
| munificent wrote:
| _waves and gets back to work_
| MajorBee wrote:
| If I may add to your distinction between "job" and "career"
| -- a career can be thought of what a person ultimately
| decides their economic contribution to society over the
| course of their life is going to be. While full-time
| parenting is usually not counted as a career, raising the
| next generation certainly seems like a very critical economic
| contribution (among others). To this end, there are movements
| to recognize this contribution by paying the stay-at-home
| parent (usually the mother) some form of "salary" to not only
| fully legitimize the role of parenthood in a society that
| values contributions by money earned, but also to make them
| more independent and therefore confident by not making them
| fully financially dependent upon the earning spouse.
| everdrive wrote:
| > A job is something you do to make money. A career is an end
| in itself.
|
| By that definition most of us don't have careers.
| dheera wrote:
| Potentially controversial thought here, but I'd like to bring
| it up for discussion.
|
| I feel like the work ethic I see throughout the industry is
| extremely toxic to society, and leads to some of this. In China
| for example there's a so-called "996" work schedule (9am-9pm, 6
| days a week) which is basically expected of everyone in tech,
| unfortunately, and it seems Silicon Valley is heading that
| direction as well with all the off-hour meetings, weekend work,
| and on-call requirements. Many SV companies also demand 72
| hours or more of work per week, in my adecnotal observations.
|
| What I'm often observing is:
|
| (a) such toxic work ethic is largely set _by male founders_ who
| don 't care about other important things than work e.g. family
| plans
|
| (b) others in the industry are forced to compete with those
| ridiculous standards, including females, those with
| disabilities, those already with family, those taking care of a
| family member, etc.
|
| (c) this results in those groups being consequently
| disrespected by investors because they can't match up to the
| workaholic male founders who don't care about anything but
| work. I've heard several investors talk negatively about
| females behind their back because "they might want to have
| kids".
|
| (d) this results in more workaholic male CEOs rising to the top
|
| (e) the cycle repeats
|
| Are my observations and inferences correct, or am I off? Open
| question here.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Don't play zero-sum games with people who are willing to give
| up more than you. Are you precluding yourself from winning?
| Absolutely.
|
| But what is the value of winning if you had to give up what
| you defined as too much?
| qiqing wrote:
| A bit of cultural context on "996" even though most of my
| cousins in China don't work in tech, the context is useful.
|
| The mandated retirement age is 60 over there so most of my
| aunts and uncles who have grandkids are primary childcare
| providers for my cousins. Due to the one child policy from a
| generation ago, each baby today has 6 adult caretakers, 2 of
| whom work full time (sometimes "996"), 4 of whom are retired
| and take shifts on childcare, household tasks, or ordering
| delivery / grocery shopping. Some of my cousins have opted
| for a second child, which means 4 60-ish caretakers for 2
| kiddos. It's not too bad when there's good communication and
| teamwork between the adults, even though several of my
| cousins actually have never changed a diaper and I have no
| idea how they'll manage when it's their turn to be a
| grandparent in 20-30 years time.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I'm not sure if you've got the details right, but it is
| definitely true that if you are taking part in any elite
| competition, you are probably going to be competing against
| people who are working very hard. I don't think that this is
| specific to male cofounders. Even in the counterfactual world
| where all founders are women, some will work harder than
| others, and if there is a perception that the harder workers
| are more likely to succeed, there will be pressure on
| everyone else to work harder as well.
| dheera wrote:
| > specific to male cofounders
|
| I guess what I was trying to say is, male founders have a
| few biological choices that female founders don't, and I'm
| suggesting that it should be considered unethical to set
| industry work-hour standards to a level that only males can
| achieve because males are able to de-prioritize biology.
|
| An article about one of the most widely acclaimed male
| founders today:
|
| "As an Apple employee in the early 1990s, he almost walked
| out of the delivery room when the impending birth of his
| first child threatened to disrupt a presentation he was
| scheduled to give. As president of Google China from 2005
| to 2009, he had a special table installed on his bed so
| that he could sit directly up from sleep and immediately
| begin responding to emails, without having to waste time
| standing up or reaching for a laptop."
|
| I'm hypothesizing that behavior like this, at different
| scales, is quickly becoming both romanticized and
| _expected_ of founders, and that is marginalizing all
| groups except single males.
|
| https://qz.com/work/1488217/a-former-symbol-of-silicon-
| valle...
| lainga wrote:
| What aspects of male biology are they de-prioritizing?
| The need to participate in child-rearing?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Men can have (with more difficulty, it's true) children
| for much later in their lives relative to a woman of the
| same age.
| dheera wrote:
| Males can more easily wait till 40+ to have children.
|
| Males don't have periods. If work hours are kept to a
| healthy level, both males and females can achieve those
| work hours averaged over a long time because there is
| sufficient time for rest. If sufficient rest isn't
| planned into the schedule, there isn't time for periods,
| and that culture unfairly favors males.
|
| Males don't get pregnant, and are often looked down upon,
| or lose promotion and investment opportunities, for
| working less hours to help their pregnant or child-
| rearing partners. The males who set aside time for family
| are out-competed by males who either (a) don't value
| having a partner or children or (b) treat their family
| like crap by not being there for them. (I'm saying this
| from direct observations of acquaintances and friends.)
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I personally don't believe, at least at the
| founder/executive level, that this is a standard that has
| been set. Rather, there is a degree of self-organization
| here. Individuals are making decisions that they believe
| will help them compete better. I doubt there is a
| practical route toward lessening this effect, short of
| detonating the whole concept of the startup and possibly
| the entire economic system. There is zero chance that
| you're going to convince individual founders to take
| steps that they believe will make them less competitive
| in the name of "ethics."
|
| Personally I don't find it romantic at all, and therefore
| I am not a startup founder. I love my 9-5.
| itronitron wrote:
| My personal experience has been that women are just as likely
| to resort to toxic work practices as men. Though a lot
| depends on how you define toxic.
| rcpt wrote:
| I don't think I've known anyone who worked a 996 or regular
| 70 hour weeks. Where are you seeing this?
| geodel wrote:
| The one thing I am seeing is non-toxic folks are not opening
| enough companies that offer great work-life balance, good pay
| and other perks. So people who like good things are only
| looking for jobs and not setting up companies and offering
| these to others.
| tobib wrote:
| I feel the same way. So often we optimize for situations that
| many of us feel shouldn't exist in the first place.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| A young Buddhist monk went to a temple one day to renounce his
| worldly life and find enlightenment. He found the eldest member
| of the temple to be a very wise man and good friend. This elder
| also scrubbed the toilets and cleaned up the bathrooms every
| day.
|
| Seeing this, the new monk spoke with the other monks in the
| monastery. "This is terrible! The elder should not have to do
| such a lowly chore. He is a great man and has already helped me
| to realize many things. I believe we should help give him time
| to do more relaxing in his old age. Let's take his cleaning
| supplies and hide them so that he won't have to clean the
| bathrooms every day." The other monks agreed, and they hid his
| supplies.
|
| The elder said nothing about the new state of affairs, but
| instead began fasting. He did not eat for 2 days, then 3, then
| 5. Concerned, the monks asked him "Why do you not eat?"
|
| The elder replied: "No work, no food."
| drakonka wrote:
| I think in some places society does work with this at least
| reasonably well, at least from the perspective of employees -
| I'm sure this is harder for startup founders. But I think that
| startup founders are in the minority, whereas the child-raising
| discourse usually touches on all kinds of professionals,
| including normal employees.
|
| Where I live it is common for both parents to take long
| stretches of leave to be with their children for the first few
| years of their lives, and later it is common to take special
| childcare days off if your child is sick, has school events,
| etc etc. I _think_ the government pays for most or all of this
| time, so I am thinking there is a way for startup founders to
| claim it too, but I'm not 100% sure how that works.
|
| I don't know all the ways that it affected each person
| professionally, but as someone on the team working closely with
| quite a few of these people I never got the sense that it
| hindered their position at the company. I've had a TD go on
| 6-month paternity leave for kid 1, then go back on another
| 6-month leave less than a year later for #2. He went on leave
| leading a project and came back leading another project.
|
| Another anecdotal example: when I was joining my first project
| at the place, our lead producer had just left for maternity
| leave. Another producer was hired to temporarily fill her role.
| When the original producer came back, there was no question of
| her position: of course she was coming back to the team she'd
| been leading. The replacement producer was simply moved to work
| on another project.
|
| I often hear in online discourse that it can be disruptive to
| the project when this type of thing happens, but personally I
| just never experienced it like that (from the perspective of
| the teammate who has experienced many people at the company
| going on parental leave, not from the actual parent
| perspective). I think when taking these amounts of parental
| leave is the norm and not the exception, we find that it isn't
| really as hard or scary as many companies seem to think it is.
| It also has the benefit of fostering a culture where no one
| person is absolutely pivotal to the project (or has to work
| themselves to death lest their project falls apart since
| everything depends on them...) They _will_ go on leave to spend
| time with their child, and you as a team/company/management
| have no option but to be prepared for that.
| cutemonster wrote:
| What's a TD?
|
| > The replacement producer was simply moved to work on
| another project.
|
| I wonder about the theoretical situation when the replacement
| did a significantly better job, and you needed just one
| person for that job role.
|
| Then, I wonder if there could be some resentment when the
| original less talented person returns and "kicks out" the
| more talented one.
|
| Maybe a solution is to not be too attached to the company and
| how it's going, and have a life outside work, hmm. And just
| not care
|
| > fostering a culture where no one person is absolutely
| pivotal to the project
|
| That sounds good. Maybe could even be a good thing to
| practice project leader rotation, without anyone going for
| parental leave
| o_p wrote:
| The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a
| disaster for the human race.
| u678u wrote:
| Its interesting I had a friend who got pregnant at University. I
| thought it would be ruinous to their career but maybe its a
| better solution. When she was 40 her child was already an adult
| and she could fully concentrate on working.
| hycaria wrote:
| Well thing is it most often ends up in parents splitting.
| Although I have such a case in my entourage and it worked but I
| think being religious helped them quite a bit ! (For the get
| pregnant by accident and keep it too, now that I think of it.)
| zwieback wrote:
| In German there's an old saying "Jung gefreit hat nie gereut",
| e.g. "married young, no regrets". It always seemed wrong when I
| was young but my kids are just out of the house now and my
| bones are already getting creaky. Maybe there's some truth to
| those old sayings...
| ksdale wrote:
| This is an underrated perspective. My wife's mom became a
| mother at 18, she certainly had a stressful 20's, but by her
| 30's, she was just a mom working at a bank as a teller, and by
| her 40's she was a woman in the back office with grown
| children, and now at 50 she's a VP of something or other with
| several grandchildren.
|
| Society so heavily stigmatizes teen pregnancy that she _still_
| thinks of herself as kind of a screwup, but minus all the self-
| doubt, it seems like about as well as a life could possibly go.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It depends what type of business you want to go into. If you're
| aiming for high finance/law/management/acting, it's improbable
| to get into without following the normal formula.
| munk-a wrote:
| I disagree with all of those examples - most managers go into
| managing late in life. My partner, for example, is current a
| VP of Operations after diverting twenty years of their life
| to care for a son with special needs.
|
| A whole lot of actors get into it later in life - but if
| you're talking about being a hollywood actor than yea - the
| chances of being a big movie star are vanishingly small no
| matter what you do.
|
| A lot of really good lawyers go into the field after gaining
| experience in another specialty and there are some notable
| lawyers out there that didn't start practicing until well
| into their forties - it's a very different track than pre-law
| into a firm but it's quite doable.
|
| On the topic of finance (or "high finance") unless you just
| generally mean "being rich" then I'd draw your eyes to the
| fact that the finance industry actually employs a
| disproportionately large number of women and boosts some of
| the best work/life balance you can find out there.
|
| The normal formula is normal because it is the easiest to
| approach, but making shifts to your life later on in age is
| pretty cheap. You'd be surprised how little it costs you at
| 30 or 35 to start taking night classes[1] and transition to a
| new field - it's certainly not as easy as sticking with the
| same thing but it isn't particularly difficult.
|
| 1. If those are even needed, honestly formal education is a
| bit overvalued and having any formal education is generally
| transferable to other fields outside of highly specialized
| scientists - next time you're in the office ask around and
| see if one of your coworkers has a communications degree -
| they probably do.
| u678u wrote:
| Agreed, but that is like 0.1% of all people.
| yanslookup wrote:
| Grass is always greener for me but I often think if I could do
| it over I'd rather have children as early as possible instead
| of in my late 30s.
|
| I think if I had known how young late 30s and 40s actually is
| it may have resonated. Like, I still do all of the hobbies and
| activities I did in my 20s and am arguably in the best shape of
| my life, pandemic bod not withstanding. I think I truly felt my
| youth was fleeting and I wanted to be able to "enjoy it".
|
| The reality is I squandered it in some ways and I feel a bit of
| sadness that my children will have a dad in his 60s by the time
| they are out of the house. Should have given that youthful
| energy to them with something to spare as adults. In reality I
| probably won't have much left when they become adults.
|
| Such is life!
|
| EDIT: Someone down thread makes another point that applied to
| us. By the time we were "ready", we found we had "unexplained
| infertility". Science helped us out but it wasn't fun, it was
| stressful, and pushed our parenthood even later than planned.
| fertilitythrow1 wrote:
| RE "unexplained fertility" - exact same thing happened to us.
|
| We waited until we were "ready" (are we ever "ready"?
| certainly didn't feel like it when the baby arrived!) but it
| took about 4 years to actually have the baby. Miscarriages,
| then just _nothing_ apart from endless mechanical &
| unromantic sex day after day after day for years, with deeply
| upsetting emotional consequences when nothing happened.
|
| Everything checks out medically and the doctors cheerily just
| say "keep trying!" but then write "unexplained infertility"
| on your report as you plod back home for more fruitless
| intercourse. No one can explain why it is not working as the
| usual battery of tests they do come back fine ... you begin
| to envy and resent people you see who are pregnant, you cant
| look at a cute puppy/kitten because you feel like you'll
| never have a baby, you simmer with inner rage when someone at
| work brings in their baby to show around the office, or
| someone mentions their kids etc ..."HoW cAn thEYy bE _sO
| INSENSITIVE?!?!?!?!_ " you fume to yourself as you die a
| little inside. It is quite the existential torture.
|
| To HNers reading this: If this sounds like you, please do
| yourself a favor and find a clinic that deals with immune-
| related infertility. During consultations for starting IVF,
| one clinic casually noted that my wife had "natural killer"
| CD16+ and CD56+ cells that might be causing the miscarriage
| and no natural pregnancies. We immediately found a clinic
| that specialised in treating that condition and 2 months
| later we had a natural pregnancy that went full term - our
| baby boy was born 1 year ago and he is thriving. After 4 hard
| years of sorrow and misery, it just took some basic immune-
| modulating drugs and we got pregnant naturally after just two
| months, and a totally textbook baby (straight down the middle
| on weight & size etc) was born naturally with no
| complications. It can happen - good luck.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I imagine a futuristic society would have dorm-like options for
| people to have children while in college/graduate school.
|
| Having a supportive community in an educational environment would
| be a win/win/win for all.
|
| As is mentioned elsewhere, it is not as fun raising kids when you
| are older and slower.
|
| It's great being able to experience youth with the new youth.
|
| People with kids will self report higher levels of meaning and
| focus in their work, so a village/dorm like environment in a
| university might be an ideal place to take advantage of such a
| situation.
| powerslacker wrote:
| I'm not so sure freezing eggs is sound advice.
|
| Lord Winston, who is professor of fertility studies at Imperial
| College London, warned that it was "a very unsuccessful
| technology" and said: "The number of eggs that actually result in
| a pregnancy after freezing is about 1%." He later clarified he
| was referring to live births.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51463488#:~:text=Lord%20Wins....
|
| "It's not like I would discourage egg freezing. Women should be
| doing it because it's the best option they have, but it is not an
| insurance policy," says Christos Coutifaris, past president of
| the ASRM and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the
| University of Pennsylvania. "Insurance policies usually guarantee
| a payoff. In this case, there is no guarantee."
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/14/133377/mothers-j...
| jartelt wrote:
| Just for context, numbers I have been told from multiple
| fertility doctors are:
|
| 20-30% of eggs extracted will fertilize and grow to day 5
| blastocysts (aka embryos). The rest will die before reaching
| day 5.
|
| If the eggs were preserved before the women turned 35, each
| blastocyst has a roughly 70% chance of being chromosomally
| normal (which means it is a "good, viable embryo"). For women
| above 35 years old, the percentage of viable blastocysts goes
| down (e.g. for a 40 year old, ~40% of blastocysts are viable).
| This is why is it is important to preserve eggs early.
|
| Each chromosomally normal day 5 blastocyst has about a 50%
| chance to result in a live birth after it is transferred.
|
| So... if you are 35 years old and start with say 12 frozen
| eggs, you are maybe going to end up with 2-3 viable day 5
| embryos, which are likely to turn into 1.5 children.
|
| Note that this presumes everything is in working order with the
| woman's reproductive system. Egg quality issues or other issues
| can make the probabilities for each step decrease.
| theptip wrote:
| I don't agree with this take. IVF live birth rates are
| something like 30% of implantations. e.g. see
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7139227/.
|
| The article you're linking even says that Winston is using the
| wrong number, and spends most of its time explaining why he's
| wrong;
|
| > Lord Winston's 1% figure was referring to the proportion of
| all frozen eggs thawed for use in fertility treatment which
| result in a pregnancy and subsequent live birth.
|
| You have plenty of eggs; it's not particularly relevant if a
| single egg has a 1% chance of resulting in a live birth. The
| extraction process will gather something like 10 eggs (plus or
| minus a lot) and then later you fertilize lots of those eggs
| and select the best candidates for implantation. Selectively
| quoting the single-egg success rate provides an inaccurate
| picture of the actual success rates of the overall process (one
| that's quite obscure and therefore susceptible to people
| misunderstanding when articles publish misleading advice like
| this).
|
| Furthermore, research shows that the primary factor determining
| live birth rate is the age of the eggs. As you get above 37/38
| the live-birth rate starts to decrease dramatically. If you
| freeze your eggs at 35 then implant at age 40 then you don't
| see the same increase in failure rate as if you just did IVF at
| age 40.
|
| IF you want to postpone having kids until your 40s, but you
| know you really want to have kids at that age, then freezing
| your eggs is a good strategy for those that can afford it.
|
| I'm all for giving women more choices/options around child-
| bearing; it's already difficult enough for women to balance
| career and children in modern society.
|
| > Insurance policies usually guarantee a payoff. In this case,
| there is no guarantee.
|
| If you're looking to buy an insurance policy that guarantees
| you will get pregnant, I'm sorry to say no such thing exists.
| All you can do is improve your probabilities. Freezing your
| eggs does this.
|
| > Women should be doing it because it's the best option they
| have
|
| Again your quote is actually arguing for freezing eggs being a
| good option. What would you say "sound advice" is for women
| that want to defer having children until their 40s, if it's not
| freezing their eggs?
| Goronmon wrote:
| _The extraction process will gather something like 10 eggs
| (plus or minus a lot)..._
|
| Isn't 10 minus "a lot", close to or equal to 0? Or is there
| something I'm missing with this phrasing?
| theptip wrote:
| Perhaps I was being overly flippant as I don't have the
| precise distribution. I'm sure it could be zero, I don't
| know how often that is though. A quick Google gives 10-20
| on average:
|
| https://www.arcfertility.com/how-is-ivf-done-step-by-
| step/#:....
| bdcravens wrote:
| Age can affect this. We didn't freeze my wife's until her
| late 30s; only 4 eggs were created.
| gnicholas wrote:
| A 2018 study [1] showed that kids conceived via IVF had
| abnormal arterial development. IIRC, teenagers had arteries
| that were as stiff as an average 40-year-old.
|
| 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815705/
| Domenic_S wrote:
| Ehhh... the only conclusion I can see there is that more
| study is warranted. The sample was n=17, normal BMI children
| currently living in CA with parents who used Stanford for
| IVF. The control was several years older, and looking at the
| box plots there's substantial overlap in most measurements.
| caeril wrote:
| I mean, sure. We need more research. But shouldn't the null
| hypothesis be that children born of a novel and
| extraordinarily unnatural process be less healthy than
| those born of the usual process?
|
| There's no reason to believe that after all the factors
| arrayed against IVF children (poor starting egg quality,
| genetic and cellular damage from ice crystals,
| mitochondrial damage potential, implantation problems, etc)
| that the null hypothesis would be "they will be exactly the
| same".
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _(poor starting egg quality, genetic and cellular
| damage from ice crystals, mitochondrial damage potential,
| implantation problems, etc)_
|
| Well, IVF doesn't necessarily imply any of those things
| -- in male infertility the eggs may be of high quality,
| in a fresh cycle the embryos may not be frozen at all, in
| a healthy mother there may be no implantation issues,
| etc. There are perhaps hundreds of factors to control
| for, and the null hypothesis would change depending on
| the population of IVF children (and their parental
| history) you're studying.
| mbgerring wrote:
| In the United States, it's economically difficult verging on
| impossible for young people to have and raise children. Between
| the increasing costs of housing, childcare, and education, it
| shouldn't surprise anyone that more and more people are putting
| off starting a family until they're able to earn and save a
| substantial amount of money. That leads people like the author of
| this post to the very rational decision to delay pregnancy. If
| you want a society where people are _practically_ free to start a
| family instead of putting everything they have into earning
| money, you need to fix things up from the material conditions,
| not down from the culture.
| ernst_klim wrote:
| >In the United States, it's economically difficult
|
| I doubt that until you pretend to have living conditions on par
| with these in Pakistan.
|
| I bet people simply are ambitious, and have way higher
| expectations regarding living standards, hence this feeling of
| struggling in pursuing the expected standards.
|
| > you need to fix things up from the material conditions
|
| Birth rates:
|
| Pakistan: 3.51
|
| India: 2.22
|
| US: 1.73
|
| Denmark: 1.73
|
| Seems like living conditions doesn't matter that much, or the
| correlation is negative.
|
| > If you want a society where people are practically free to
| start a family
|
| Do I? Why would I want a world where people are practically
| free to start a family? I think people who would like to start
| a family should prove that they a responsible and can manage at
| least their own life, not to mention the life of an infant.
| mbgerring wrote:
| OK, now show me the average percent of a person's income
| required to secure a roof over your head in Pakistan. We
| could also talk about the difference in availability of
| childcare in Pakistan, or any country where strong family
| ties and multi-generational households are common, vs higher-
| income countries without these features. We would also have
| to consider that in many high-income countries it is
| literally illegal to live below a certain standard of living
| without running the risk of having your children taken from
| you by the state.
| ernst_klim wrote:
| > show me the average percent of a person's income required
| to secure a roof over your head in Pakistan
|
| Very high. Avg US person spends 6.4% on food, while avg
| Pakistani spends 40%+. [1]
|
| > We could also talk about the difference in availability
| of childcare in Pakistan, or any country where strong
| family ties
|
| This is my point. People in the wealthy countries are way
| more focused on their careers and consumption (no negative
| implied). It's not that people can't have more childcare
| by, say, earlier retirement or one parent dedicating
| themself to babysitting at the expense of the lower living
| standards.
|
| > We would also have to consider that in many high-income
| countries it is literally illegal to live below a certain
| standard of living without running the risk of having your
| children taken from you by the state.
|
| Relevant maybe for lower few percents in the West, while
| you are talking about "young people" in general.
|
| [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/this-map-shows-
| how-mu...
| praveenperera wrote:
| Whats the success rate of frozen eggs?
| notRobot wrote:
| It's complicated, see this article for more info:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51463488
| spoonjim wrote:
| Very high if they're frozen when the woman is <35.
| notRobot wrote:
| That's a terrible answer for a website like HN where accuracy
| is important.
| spoonjim wrote:
| ok, here's your accurate answer: every situation is
| different and predictions are impossible.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The answer is that fertility only goes down. If you want to
| ever get pregnant, you should begin at least taking initial
| steps today rather than waiting.
| boatsie wrote:
| Yes, I think GP is noting that egg quality declines
| somewhat exponentially, rather than linearly.
| snicker7 wrote:
| Or delay the startup. Older founders are more successful, anyway.
| You don't have to give up family. Just wait until your kids moved
| out (or are teenagers and ignore you, anyway).
|
| People who trade their happiness for money will lose their
| happiness and (statistically) their money as well.
| realreality wrote:
| The earth doesn't need more high-carbon-footprint kids. The
| richest 10% are responsible for more than half of global
| consumption emissions (https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-
| releases/carbon-emissions-ric...). When they reproduce, they're
| likely to pass on their profligate culture to their kids. It'd be
| better for everyone if they abstained.
| usize wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out. It makes me so sad when I see my
| friends waiting too long and struggling with their fertility.
| ksdale wrote:
| I agree completely with the premise that most people don't
| appreciate just how fleeting fertility can be, but I think rather
| than freezing eggs, the solution is for people to normalize
| having children at a younger age and designing work and home life
| around children existing and even being present in certain work
| contexts.
|
| Obviously freezing your eggs is something that you can do as
| individual without society's input, and my preferred solution is
| a cultural overhaul...
|
| But economic productivity is only useful insofar as it leads to
| better lives for people, economic activity that increases well-
| being by one unit is pointless if it requires us to spend more
| than one unit of well-being (by say, freezing our eggs and not
| becoming grandparents until we're 80) to achieve it.
| notjes wrote:
| > the solution is for people to normalize having children at a
| younger age and designing work and home life around children
| 100% In ancient times mothers always worked with babys strapped
| to their stomachs. A baby needs a mother and it needs to be fed
| with nice milk constantly. I was really happy seeing a lady
| breastfeeding her child in the Australian parliament. An safe
| and sane environment where this is normality needs to be the
| goal.
| centimeter wrote:
| It's clear that, on so many levels, the gradual deferral of
| child-bearing to the 30s (even 40s!) has been _incredibly_
| costly and destructive to society.
|
| We need to figure out a way to reconcile having children
| starting in the late teens and ending in the mid-20s (which is
| by far the safest, cheapest, and easiest time to do it) with
| the modern economy (which prioritizes slavishly focusing on
| school/work until your fertility has mostly dried up and you're
| at massively increased risk of passing on genetic
| abnormalities).
|
| One strategy could be to have child-rearing skip a generation,
| with grandparents (in their 30s/40s) doing most of the work
| while the parents (in their teens/20s) go to school and start
| their career.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| For a while I've been thinking about moving back in/near my
| parents so that if/when I decide to start a family, they can
| be around to help out so as dampen the career stunting
| effects of having children. I think this would especially be
| useful to my then wife, but of course such things sound great
| on paper but are much more difficult to execute in reality.
| cam0 wrote:
| How do you think it's been incredibly costly and destructive
| to society?
| centimeter wrote:
| Medical outcomes rapidly become _much_ worse and more
| expensive for both mother and child as mothers age, as well
| as precipitously falling birth rates partially attributable
| to the increased difficulty of having marginal children as
| one gets older.
| mycologos wrote:
| I made a comment elsewhere in the thread trying to
| quantify the way outcomes change with the mother's age
| [1]. Using the data referenced in that comment, it looks
| like outcomes are quite stable for the entirety of a
| woman's 20s and still decent into her early 30s. The real
| change seems to occur in the early-mid 30s.
|
| In contrast, your parent comment prioritizes women having
| children at age 20-25. Looking at the data I just
| referenced, this seems unnecessarily aggressive from a
| medical standpoint -- do you have a different measure of
| maternal outcomes in mind? (And from a non-medical
| standpoint, I'm skeptical that late teens/early 20s are
| the best time for modern humans to choose the parent of
| their child.)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26349221
| golemiprague wrote:
| I am not even sure women at work improved the economic
| situation of the family that much. I am generalising here and I
| know there are exceptions but most of the work women do is a
| replacement to what a housewife used to do.
|
| They don't create new companies or businesses, they don't work
| in anything related to infrastructure or creation of actual
| physical value. They don't do engineering and even music
| creation and production is mostly done by men.
|
| Women concentrate in care taking, from teachers to social
| workers to nurses and services or value transfer like lawyers,
| marketers, HR and such. Those jobs don't create anything new or
| tangible and are basically the same jobs they used to do at
| home, caring for the family, some services and moving the
| husband money around.
|
| In some way they were more productive as housewives by doing in
| parallel and cheaply many jobs that are now outsourced. Their
| salary was just swallowed by land owners increasing rent and
| house prices in addition to all the house work they now have to
| pay for to other women.
|
| It is all a scheme that we suppose to believe is helping anyone
| while what actually is happening is that men still finance
| women as it was always was but now instead of the husband
| giving their wife the money directly they do it via their
| corporate accounting funnelling men hard work money to some
| women in HR to do another program about diversity and
| inclusiveness.
| [deleted]
| steve_taylor wrote:
| Amen. I really don't understand the stigma around having
| children when you're young. It should be the norm.
| snuxoll wrote:
| Had my one and only child at 21 (wife is 10 years older than
| I am, mind), never once regretted it and my career never
| suffered (went from a $12/hr tech support job to being a
| decently paid DevOps engineer over a 4-year time span
| following our daughters birth).
|
| Am I on a more extreme end of the spectrum? Absolutely, and I
| wouldn't recommend it to everyone; but I'm happy with the
| choice I made.
| nappy-doo wrote:
| My MIL used to say, "there's a reason that they make mothers
| young," and it's because kids are exhausting. As a mid-40s
| male, I can't imagine bringing a child into my life again right
| now. I would die before 50 from sleep deprivation.
| krrrh wrote:
| I just had my first at 45, and it is worth it, but I do now
| appreciate the wisdom of my friends who did this in their
| twenties.
| nitemice wrote:
| But it's not just about work/home balance. It's also about
| being in a financially sound position, in a strong enough
| relationship with the "right" person, to be able to have a
| child. And that's increasingly hard for young people today,
| with the cost of living being higher than ever, wage growth
| hitting a wall, and attitudes towards relationships changing.
| Having a baby isn't as simple as deciding to do it.
|
| The problem is that society has been moving in basically the
| exact opposite direction for quite a while now. Anyone married
| under 25 is seen as weird and rushing into something, and
| anyone with a child at that age is assumed to have gotten
| themselves there by accident.
| StillBored wrote:
| Why is this specific to females? This happens to males
| indirectly. Unless your fabulously wealthy and can basically hire
| a 25 Y/O wife/Surrogate Mother, most men have steadily declining
| chance to have a child as they get older too. Simply because the
| available pool of fertile females willing to have a child with
| them is declining.
|
| That is not even to mention actual biological problems that make
| men functionally infertile. So while its technically possible for
| men to have children until they are dead, realistically a large
| number are loosing their fertility as well. I know couples in
| their 30's/early 40's where it turned out to be the male causing
| the problems.
| supergirl wrote:
| I think it's implied that it's easier for men to have children
| and not drop the ball on the career; so they don't need to wait
| until they are old. A newborn is a much bigger disruption for
| the mother than the father. This is biological but also
| cultural (e.g. in some EU countries only women get a months
| long paid vacation after birth).
| StillBored wrote:
| Maybe.. OTOH, in the US it seems the common expectation these
| days it that men pull their weight when it comes to raising
| children. God knows I would have gotten divorced if I
| continued to work till 10PM leaving my wife at home with a
| young child.
|
| Which maybe, if the man is ok with biologically having a
| child they see a couple times a month that works, otherwise
| most men are going to be up feeding the baby all night long
| too, and picking them up from school, staying home to take
| care of them when they are sick.
|
| So, just the split work/family focus is going to remove most
| men from the competition to be top dog at the office unless
| they are successful enough, and can find a women willing to
| be a housewife.
|
| Women can probably pull this off in reverse if they are
| successful enough, and find an "artist" or someone already
| outside of the traditional male career paths too.
| Biologically its not unheard of for women to work until their
| due date and then return to work in a week or so, leaving the
| child with a caregiver (frequently an aging parent/etc).
|
| Of course if she wants to participate in the child's
| upbringing the split focus issues will likely arise too.
|
| Hence my comment that to imagine this is strictly a female
| problem is an oversimplification. Yes, the problems are
| slightly different, but to imagine a man can work his way up
| to some level of success and then find a younger woman
| willing to be a housewife to a 20 year older man is a risky
| proposition too.
| [deleted]
| bdcravens wrote:
| My wife and I waited too long to try IVF, and at that point, we
| had only one shot because we hadn't frozen more eggs sooner. (and
| our once chance was unsuccessful)
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