Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
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Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#2It’s hard to have this debate in terms dollars exclusively.
People who are high powered execs and other top tier professionals sacrifice life for profession. I’ve yet to meet a prominent executive, lawyer or physician whose home life isn’t a bit of a shitshow.
If you want to look at equality and making the lives of mothers better, you need to look at everyone. If my wife and I were able to work 25 hours weeks in the same pay envelope, we would have made very different decisions about how to raise our child.
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#3It's not that children are career killers, but rather taking significant amounts of time off is.
It's also unclear if harming your career is even a bad thing to begin, considering the options given (e.g. Don't have children, have children but neglect them, have children and take care of them, but have lower income when the caregiver returns to the work force). Perhaps spending proper time with children, even if it is at the cost of potential income, is worth it.
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I wonder if mandating that caregivers be able to work while raising their child somehow (perhaps a combination of remote work, daycare and in laws) would be enough to negate the negative effect while preserving the benefits.
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#4From experience, primary caretakers of children tend to favor less weekly work hours, flexible schedules, ect. All things that doesn't exactly lend itself to a "high-powered career". So the question I'd like answered is not if women should have the same earning as their male part, they should have the same oppotunity. But if they want it at the cost of the flexibility and hours they ask for?
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#5It's not that children are career killers, but rather taking significant amounts of time off is. It's also unclear if harming your career is even a bad thing to begin, considering the options given (e.g. Don't have children, have children but neglect them, have children and take care of them, but have lower income when the caregiver returns to the work force). Perhaps spending proper time with children, even if it is…
In my experience, it's not the time away from work that is the issue. It's that they ask for less and more flexible hours. They simply put their career on hold until the child becomes a teenager.
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#6Some parents choose to work 75% after having kids its a legal right in Scandinavian countries. From my own experience as a parent its hard to balance being good at home and work.
Simply put your customer will not come and thank you in 20-30 years from now but your children might/will.
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#7If you choose to have children then your career is raising children. You have to choose to prioritize one or the other, the idea that you can take large amounts of time off and still be at the same level as people who kept working is insane. There isn't any injustice going on here. Juggling an intense career path with raising children is a bad idea. Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development.
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#8The point of having to ~"force fathers to take time off" rings true to me, I'd even go as far as forcing both parents to take some minimum time (and maybe of equal length) off: It would relieve all parents of the pressure to justify why they "put family before career".
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#9Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity.
What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose.
Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...
Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
#10It’s hard to have this debate in terms dollars exclusively. People who are high powered execs and other top tier professionals sacrifice life for profession. I’ve yet to meet a prominent executive, lawyer or physician whose home life isn’t a bit of a shitshow. If you want to look at equality and making the lives of mothers better, you need to look at everyone. If my wife and I were able to work 25 hours weeks in the…
I don't think it's about equality of pay. If I asked for the same terms as my wife, I would earn significantly less, and I doubt I would have much responsibility beyond a "normal" software developer, i.e. I work on what I'm told to.