But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption?
I'd love to see not just solid support for moms at work, but solid support / encouragement for dads at home: paternity leave up-to-par with maternity leave, a normalization and acceptance of stay-at-home dads where desired, etc. It's kind of amazing how prevalent the assumption is that children are mom's problem. As a guy I care about this not just from a supporting-women perspective but from a when-I-have-kids-I'll-want-to-spend-time-with-them-too perspective. This should be one of the easiest ways for men to be sold on feminism.
Somehow though, paternity leave is a second class citizen and people who talk about advancement of women mostly just talk about maternity leave benefits. Let me help! I'm happy to take care of kids while you build your career!
As someone who has taken the kids out and about during the day, I have to say that it's awkward. You end up being the only man in a group of dozens of women with their kids, or you are the guy at the playground sitting by himself while his kids play on it (which looks a ton like you don't have any kids to an outsider). Society, at least in most of the U.S. is frankly a bit hostile to males as the caregivers. I can't imagine what single dads have to go through.
And now you know how it feels to be the only woman engineer on a team of 20 engineers. It's awkward and sometimes hard for women engineers like me to focus on our jobs because of the awkwardness contributing to hostile work environments. And this is why it's awesome that YC is supporting Women Who Code.
Sure. Just so we are clear though, there is a huge difference between being regarded and treated as a potential pedophile/kidnapper (father at a playground) vs. simply an outsider.
I don't think "simply an outsider" covers many of the experiences described by some women in tech: Groping, sexual harassment, assumptions on getting the job on looks, over-scrutiny of their work, etc ...
This is not every woman's experience, but neither is the pedophile one. I have worked at an all girls school and everyone - parents, students, children was fine with it.
Here in Sweden I'd say it's always basically 50/50 when I take my kid to the playground, no matter what time of day. Make it easier for dads to take paternity leave and more will do it and it will become more common and stop being awkward.
You're right, of course. But there are biological reason why all else being equal, having mom stay home might work better than dad. (Breastfeeding, mainly)
Also as a dad I fully agree with your other point - I want to spend time with my kids as well, and I bristle at the suggestion that my kids are my wife's 'problem.' I love my kids, and if I had the means I would spend all of my time with them. But considering the reality that one of us has to work so we can eat, I've found that it's easier on me emotionally to spend time away from them than it is for her. Maybe that's not widely true, maybe it's nurture over nature, maybe it's something else entirely, but it's something that exists and maybe shouldn't be absent from these discussions.
There are biological reasons favoring dad as well. As the father of a toddler, I count physical strength as a huge asset. Example use case is carrying my sleeping infant holding with a single arm while the other hand unlocks the door.
> Example use case is carrying my sleeping infant holding with a single arm while the other hand unlocks the door
I think you are underestimating the strength (as well as form) women are born with, specifically for this reason. Most women I've seen carrying children on their hips with one arm behind their backs look much more comfortable than when a man does the same thing.
Yes, I did know that. I assume you don't have kids? Breastfeeding is extremely difficult and painful for most women, and pumping moreso. I can only watch my wife crying from the excruciating pain of having her breasts pumped by a cold machine several times a day so many times before I say 'you know what, let's not do that anymore.'
Just wanted to chime in here to agree with you. While some people don't mind pumping, there are benefits to both the mother and the child when breastfeeding directly. It does come down to choice about what you prioritize in life. Far be it from any of us to deride women who prioritize their family's income, but we can't simply hand wave by saying "we have pumps and refrigerators!"
I can't believe I'm about to talk about breast feeding on hacker news but here goes.
> there are benefits to both the mother and the child when breastfeeding directly
There is data that points this in both directions, and there isn't a lot of agreement in any of it. There is a push for "brest is best", and a LOT of that is based on W.H.O recommendations. These are a direct result of Nestle pushing formula in the third world, and the impact it had on infant mortality.
If you live in a place without clean water, then breast feeding is the way to go. This assumes you don't have any communicable diseases, AIDS being the biggest one, but it is a large list of infections that preclude you from breastfeeding.
If you live in a first world country, and have access to clean water, and the facility to clean and sterilize bottles, there isn't a BIG gain that is universally agreed on in the research available.
Also, we raised an entire generation of Americans on bottles (75% of children born in 1971 were never breastfed, even in the hospital) and everyone turned it fine.
"Turned out fine" is highly subjective. The peak violence rates in the US happened when that cohort was 22; right around the age at which people commit the most violent crimes. So at least on that one metric, that cohort was probably among the worst ever (I'm not claiming a relationship to breastfeeding, of course).
Breastfeeding declined dramatically from 1910 to 1945 (and stayed below 30% from 1945-1970s). While crime went up from 1965+, it also went steadily down from 1935-1960.
100% agree. At the start-up I work at when I brought up we needed to set a maternity leave policy, I made a point of saying we should match it with a paternity leave policy.
I'm a woman, but if I was hiring and it came down to someone I had to give x weeks of paid leave to if they had a child (aka a woman) or someone with the same credentials and skills who I wouldn't need to give that leave to (a man), you bet your ass it would impact my hiring decisions. Particularly at a small company.
Matching maternity leave with paternity leave removes at least one rational incentive to hire men over women.
Having equal parental treatment is a good start. But how do you deal with the subtle cultural bias against men who partake of the leave policy? Their peers and boss judge them as not being committed enough to 'the team'.
We should do all we can to support mothers and parents. They should be free to make their own choices. But nobody should be surprised if mothers make different choices than fathers. Nor should we force the matter. There is some biology here. Equality doesn't create interchangeability.
I'm arguing for equality of opportunity, not outcome. If the final split isn't 50/50, fine, as long as everyone is making free choices. The problem is that today that (equality of opportunity) is not the case -- there's immense pressure for the woman to be the one to stay home, if someone does.
The immense pressure is the women's own doing. Women largely prefer to partner with men who make more money than them, so naturally if one partner becomes a stay at home parent it makes more sense economically for it to be the woman.
If women don't like the pressure to be a stay at home parent, then women can start marrying men who make less money than them (men don't as a group place little value on their partner making more than them) and instead face the pressure of providing for their family.
As a women who would love to have my future husband raise the kids, let me tell you it's not easy to find an intelligent man in a big city who is willing to stay home and raise children.
But "free choices" is a tricky thing. Many would say that so long as 50/50 isn't reached, for whatever reason known or unknown, the choice is not free.
Precisely. I just want equality of opportunity, that people are free to do what they want, not necessarily that the choices are a perfect 50/50 coin toss. However, since we posit that there are no inherent biological mental differences between sexes then some people contend that if the split is not 50/50 then there is still discrimination.
We especially shouldn't be surprised if mothers make different decisions with fathers when society judges them, parenting books fearmonger, and parental leave is extremely disparate.
Why don't we set aside the biological differences (all of which we have the means to offset) and tackle the most obvious problems first.
That's completely ludicrous. There are breast pumps, there is formula, there is no compelling reason that a mother has to stay at home. The question becomes is this a biological imperative or a social imperative, and until we remove the social portion it's too confounded to tell. Why do we also assume that men have no "overwhelming paternal instinct?"
The answer is that we have an ideology strongly rooted in the past and justified by the ridiculousness that is modern evo-psych.
Not the biology I meant. I meant the fact that someone just hauled around a baby inside themselves for nine months, with all that entails. Breast pumps cannot change the fact that women and men may have different views.
I don't understand. Do you think that gestating makes you have a stronger attachment to your baby, even after months of having your child around?
You're right that men and women may have different views. The overwhelming majority of women in my parenting group who could afford to were very excited to go back to work. The majority of fathers had a romanticized view of staying at home.
Maybe my experience is an outlier, but I think that after a few months both parents have developed connections with the baby -- it's just that half of them are told by society that if they haven't it's wrong. There's a reason that many women develop postpartum depression, and I don't think that it's entirely chemical. Being a stay at home parent is extremely isolating.
Sure. But there's also centuries of entrenched societal structure that is only slowly dissolving. And much of that structure was built up with bogus explanations of what women were biologically capable of.
So at the very least, we need to carefully consider both biology and possibility when we talk about this. But if we're going to err, I think it's worth leaning the other way for a while. We'll never really know where the true balance lies until we try things with the assumption that biology is not all that important.
That's certainly popular for most topics on Hacker News. Can people live on synthetic food substitutes? Let's put some up on Kickstarter and see! Do humans have a natural lifespan? Let's try pretending otherwise and see where we get. Maybe we could also favor it for radical ideas like women having careers.
> But there's also centuries of entrenched societal structure that is only slowly dissolving. And much of that structure was built up with bogus explanations of what women were biologically capable of.
I don't think the centuries old explanations are as bogus as you imply. The differences between men and women that we can all agree on such as avg. strength, breast feeding composed a lot more constraint on the divisions of labor. Regardless of what you think about breastfeeding or formula today you can't argue that it more or less forced women to do the early child rearing in centuries past. And men's increased brute strength was far more important for much of the labor before the industrial revolution.
"Natural differences" was used to explain all sorts of things. E.g., why women couldn't be writers or doctors or lawyers or senators. I think those were bogus. Women weren't allowed to vote in the US until 1920 (and we were early adopters). I'm pretty sure that voting didn't require brute strength before then.
"Natural differences" was also used to justify slavery. That goes back to Aristotle, and up through the US Confederacy. I think that was bogus too.
I also assert that the claim of individual differences can only ever justify individual situations. If a strong person ends up having to carry the coal because a weak one can't, fine. But we're talking about systems where millions of people were judged on hypothetical averages and the crudest of stereotypes. E.g., firefighters need to be strong, but there's no reason to think that the US's weakest fireman was stronger than the US's strongest woman.
And I think that the reason women were forced to do all the childrearing was mainly not biology. Even if we ignore things like cow's milk and wet nurses, dads are perfectly capable of doing all the work once a child is 2 or so. Women were forced to do it because they lived in patriarchal societies where women were nearly property.
So I think we should always be deeply suspicious of any justification that comes down to natural differences. The history of it as an argument is absolutely terrible.
Well, it's cultural, undoubtedly. Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it. But as far as I've seen/heard there is also significant social cost to stay-at-home dads. They're alternately demonized, ignored, assumed incompetent, assumed less worthy for not financially supporting the family, or just not accommodated in a thousand other ways. That's what we (society) should challenge and change, IMHO. It would be a huge win for women and for men alike.
>Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it
My hunch is that you don't actually know any women in tech who have decided to take a leave from their careers (either temporarily or permanently) in order to raise their children, and your handle + the fact that you just made that account makes me think you're a troll.
Many (most?) mothers suffer if they can't be around their young children. That's not to say that fathers don't either, but who do you think typically wins out in an argument if it comes down to deciding which parent keeps working and which handles childrearing?
You're pushing a narrative that suggests that being responsible for childrearing is a burden and a sacrifice, and that the argument is "who gets to keep their career" and not "who gets to raise the kid(s)". Most parents/couples absolutely do not see it that way, and I really do believe that, if given the choice, both fathers and mothers would overwhelmingly choose to be the stay-at-home parent. The ones that actually wanted kids, that is.
Strongly disagree, and I say that as a parent who loves his child. Raising kids is often hard unfulfilling manual labor, and leaving the workforce to do it leaves many women in precarious financial and social positions as a consequence. I know a middle-aged woman who left her job as a hospital exec to be a stay at home mom. Now the kids are grown, she's bored out of her mind, she's ineligible for any career that would challenge her, and resents being financially dependent on her husband. I probably know more women in that position than the other way around, between family and friends. It's particularly challenging when marriages don't work out later in life, which is common.
And saying that you should be happy staying home if you really want kids is a crock. You can love your kids without desiring to restructure your whole life around them. And as a society we should be skeptical of glorifying parenthood to the point of encouraging people to structure their lives around their kids.
> Raising kids is often hard unfulfilling manual labor
I don't see how raising a human can be classified as unfulfilling. Is making a CRUD app really more fulfilling than raising a child to a happy, healthy, well-adjusted adult? That seems an order of magnitude more fulfilling.
As for the ex-exec who's now bored, that can also be seen as a symptom of "career worship" that projects such as the OP seem to focus on. There's a lot you can do with your time so you don't end up bored. Learn to cook, sew, program for fun, read, write...
It seems like the #1 problem is that people are basing their identities on their career and then finding themselves lost when they end that career to raise a family. Even worse they are resenting the children and partner because they're not on the career track anymore.
A career is a burden not a privilege. People would be a lot happier if they saw through the marketing hype and realized that.
Just out of curiosity, what is the largest # of consecutive hours you have been responsible for a young child? I love my son and watching him progress over the last 11 months has been amazing but the day-to-day of raising a child can be mind numbingly boring.
I know it's boring and very, very hard work. Which is why I believe that we should support stay at home moms (and dads) by elevating the position in society and recognizing the hard and rewarding work it is. Going back to a career and paying someone to take care of your child is quite frankly the easy way out.
Women leaving the workplace to raise kids should be seen as a victory, not a "problem" that needs to be fixed. It's definitely not easy though and all of this media broadcast negativity surrounding being a parent instead of having a career can't make it any easier.
What do you think happens when your kids reach school age? You can kid yourself that changing diapers is part of some noble struggle (it is not), but there's no way to fool yourself during the 7 hours you'll spend waiting for them to get back from school. And, as they get older, those 7 hours become 9, sometimes 12, as they join clubs and go hang out with friends.
I'll stand by my statement that the hard work you put in when raising an infant is rewarding. Just as cutting firewood to stay warm in the winter would be, but I digress...
When they go to school is when the stay at home parent has time to indulge in their actual interests. By that time, if one partner is working and the other is SAH, the finances should be pretty stable so the at home partner should be able to enjoy their free time a bit.
I still maintain that a huge part of the problem is that people tie their identity to a career. When the child goes to school, the at home partner should not just sit around watching tv and getting existentially miserable. They should start working on their interests. It's really a valuable opportunity and a bit of a pay off for all the hard work they did when the child was an infant.
I think we have very different definitions of unfulfilling. Doing something hard to stay alive is the definition of fulfilling in my book. What does fulfillment mean to you? The task in and of itself has to be rewarding? I'm purely judging by the outcome of the task and not how difficult the task itself is.
That's the debate only in your own mind. You've completely failed to grasp the not-so-nuanced context. He's not talking about the raising of the child, but the meaningless, but necessary, work that goes with it.
Watching my kid succeed at something that I've helped her to learn is very fulfilling. But no matter how much you protest, being a stay-at-home dad was filled with thankless, unfulfilling tasks. I gagged -every- -single- -time- I changed my kid's diapers. The "result" of changing those diapers? Another filled diaper.
No matter how much of a rock star she is and becomes, changing diapers wasn't, isn't, and will never be a fulfilling task. And parenting is absolutely filled with similar tasks.
I don't understand how you can divorce the hard work that goes into raising a child with the end result of that hard work. When you're changing diapers, do you really not think that you're helping your baby be healthy? That's not rewarding?
I know I said in another comment that my background doesn't matter but believe it or not, I'm actually a dad. Yeah, stuff is tough, boring... but I always think that it's worth it because I'm happy being a good dad.
The "result" of changing a diaper is that your kid isn't sitting around in their own waste. You can take some pride in making that happen IMO.
Also, gagging while changing diapers is a bit weak. You're not really making the case that men are more suited to be stay at home parents :P (jk)
I don't think anyone was talking about whether raising a child is fulfilling or not, rather it was that the process often involves unfulfilling manual labor.
Two very different things and you're conflating discussion of latter with the former.
Raising a child is nothing but the process. All those long nights, boring days when they're infants... it's all hard work for a good cause. That it's difficult makes it even more rewarding.
Well, no, I don't think it's a burden and a sacrifice to take care of kids. From what I hear it's one of the most rewarding things in life, and I look forward to it (I'm in my late 20s and am thinking about having kids ten or so years from now). This is more in the context of career breaks, i.e., the current HN thread - in that context, taking time off a career is a burden.
I actually do know a few couples who've had long discussions about staying home. "Not really thinking about it" is a bit harsh, I admit, and I'll back off a bit there; but certainly the cultural bias leads to a default assumption, which people seem not to notice sometimes, i.e., the discussion framed as whether the mother should stay home, not who should stay home. For the couples I'm aware of, the father continuing to work was not in question.
I do think your implication that mothers may care more about kids than fathers do ("that's not to say that fathers don't either, but who do you think wins...") is a little disappointing. It's part of the cultural bias that I am trying to fight against here.
And finally, please don't call me a troll just because I have different ideas and opinions than you do. I'm trying to have a good-faith conversation and I care a lot about this issue. (Yes, I'm using a throwaway because any sort of gender politics discussion is politically dangerous. I hope my points are not dismissed as a result.)
There is a huge cultural push for women to leave the workforce after having a kid, which you don't even really appreciate until you try to swim against the tide.
After law school, my wife and I pursued the best jobs we could find, which left us working about 120 miles apart. We also had a baby. There was enormous pressure on her to make a career sacrifice to come work where I did, none for me to do the same. Even when there wasn't active headwind, just the total lack of support and encouragement was demoralizing and might have caused a less obstinate woman to just give in.
What kind of pressure was there? You, her family, your family, friends, coworkers, ...? Were they only saying that she should make the sacrifice (easy to ignore), or was she e.g. not promoted because of it (hard to ignore)?
I would argue the exact opposite applies to many people:
I couldn't care less about promotions (An additional $40,000? It doesn't affect my happiness in any way). If I want extra responsibilities for the challenge, I can usually engineer my roles and projects to do them without moving up the org-chart.
On the other hand, all your family and friends judging you, raising eyebrows, making you feel like a bad mother ... that one is harder to ignore.
> Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it.
Are you sure about that? Have you asked them? No one that I know makes these decisions just because that's "how it's done," although I can imagine that might be how it looks from the outside.
Because women dont want to marry men who want to be primary stay at home dads, some do, but I have never met a woman who wants that. Most of the women I speak to when asked think its a little bit funny.
Women tend to prefer men that are higher status than themselves. For a working woman (especially one in tech that earns alot) they tend find partners who are also employed.
This makes a dichotomy where if a man makes $100k+ in most places in the US, they can one-income support a family. Where as women tend not to look favorably to men who take time off of to stay at home.
Women's desire for high status men is something that comes to us from being primates. It's at best a mixture of nature and society. Even if we had a radically egalitarian society, there is a part of many couples that would be unsettled by it.
All that said, there is nothing about that should stop women from pursuing careers in tech. Of all work, ours is one that is really friendly to working remotely and with flexible hours.
Modern-day living expenses being what they are, most people nowadays actively seek out partners who work because, unless you're filthy stinking rich, having a dual income is the only way to afford to raise a family and still have a decent lifestyle.
But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption?
I'd love to see not just solid support for moms at work, but solid support / encouragement for dads at home: paternity leave up-to-par with maternity leave, a normalization and acceptance of stay-at-home dads where desired, etc. It's kind of amazing how prevalent the assumption is that children are mom's problem. As a guy I care about this not just from a supporting-women perspective but from a when-I-have-kids-I'll-want-to-spend-time-with-them-too perspective. This should be one of the easiest ways for men to be sold on feminism.
Somehow though, paternity leave is a second class citizen and people who talk about advancement of women mostly just talk about maternity leave benefits. Let me help! I'm happy to take care of kids while you build your career!