Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms • Hacker News Board

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#21

Post by zeveb » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #17

se30b wrote: post #7

If 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 be…

That's an opinion I can understand, but it completely misses the point of the article. The article is about the fact that children are a far greater risk for women careers that men's.

> The article is about the fact that children are a far greater risk for women careers that men's.

Might that be because, even in countries devoted to gender equality to an extent previously unknown to mankind, women tend to devote relatively more of their time & concern to mothering than men do to fathering?

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#22

Post by zaroth » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #14

se30b wrote: post #7

If 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 be…

The entire point, and what the graph clear shows, is that fathers and mothers wage-growth significantly diverges. Both become a parent, but apparently only the mothers pay suffer.

As long as only women can get pregnant, give birth, and breast feed, it turns out that choosing to make babies will (on average) be disproportionately more work for women than men.

Obviously with unlimited resources this doesn’t have to be the case, but it will always be the average case.

This result isn’t surprising, nor does it seem something that society should be overly concerned with fixing. Choices have all sorts of positive and negative impacts, usually foreseeable ones at that. Work less to raise a family and someone in that household will earn less outside the household.

Economically both parents are still probably producing the same value, arguably the woman is producing significantly more economical value, just the economists aren’t accounting for and valuing properly the work being done inside the household so the graph is scewed.

You create a stacked line chart which tries to account for the net value of the cost-reducing housework performed by men and women in addition to the outside income producing activities, and I would bet the curve shows women driving significantly increased economic value after having children.

It’s the premise that the only metric we should be looking at is outside income which is completely flawed.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#23

Post by collyw » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally 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 th…

...or in a Google memo.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#24

Post by Xeoncross » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

We need more information. Is the drop in pay because women:

1. No longer want to work in the higher-paying, overtime/dangerous/lots of travel/etc... positions?

2. Were discriminated when looking for new work?

3. Were discriminated when raises were handed out?

etc...

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#25

Post by dsnuh » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally 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 th…

>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.

Exactly. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#26

Post by zeveb » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

jlg23 wrote: post #8

The 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".

That's just the time off, though: once both parents are back at work, no law can force them both to devote equal mental & temporal resources to childraising. I suspect very strongly that even with forced equality of parental leave, we would see mothers devoting more attention to their children than do father.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#27

Post by 09bjb » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

saas_co_de wrote: post #18

_m8fo wrote: post #3

It'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…

There does seem to be a element of: "people who value their careers more than children end up making more money" here, which seems pretty obvious when you think about it. From a social and corporate perspective we have a choice though: should be allow incentive systems that reward people who value their careers over their children to continue? Or should we change our incentive systems so that people who value childre…

Teachers, full-time mothers and fathers, and generally anyone who's in charge of raising the next generation properly, are all underpaid and arguably undervalued.

However, when you legislate away any reward for risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives...then you end up in a society where nobody tries, nothing happens, and everyone's pretty well subsumed into an existential crisis -like existence. What's the point of trying if it's guaranteed not to make a difference?

"They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work." - Soviet-era saying

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#28

Post by fixermark » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #14

se30b wrote: post #7

If 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 be…

The entire point, and what the graph clear shows, is that fathers and mothers wage-growth significantly diverges. Both become a parent, but apparently only the mothers pay suffer.

That's to be expected if most mothers become full-time caregivers to the children, right?

If caregiving were split father-primary or mother-primary 50/50 among families, I'd expect we'd see the pay gap drop.

(Unfortunately, I suspect that because of gains from specialization, doing something more elaborate like both parents juggling career and childcare equally leads to net-worse outcomes in terms of both care given and revenue for household).

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#29

Post by david38 » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

jlg23 wrote: post #8

The 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".

Wow. You know there are sci-fi books written about a world were some people are not allowed to be better than others? If you have some advantage, you have to do extra so it's nullified.

Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance is astonishing. I suppose if I don't push my kids just the right amount you're going to claim you know enough about how all children will turn out to revoke my parental rights?

I had children when I was in college. I suppose I should have been forced to fail one of my semesters, or do only good and proper people who do things the right way count?

My wife wanted to stay home for many years. I suppose I should tell her she was full of shit for not wanting to make more money?

You think it would relieve pressure to justify putting family before career? Again, wow. These are ADULTS. If they are so fucking wrapped up in peer pressure they can't decide if they should take care of their own babies they don't deserve their own children. Seriously, at what point are people responsible for themselves? Where does the nanny state end? Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#30

Post by imartin2k » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

I guess this situation will only permanently change if all fathers are completely and truly happy and comfortable with doing exactly the same amount of house work and childcare work as the mothers of their children. As long as the idea of the men as the bigger breadwinner still lingers around for the average parent and boss (consciously or unconsciously, on an individual basis and culturally), it'll impact the decisions being made which then in turn lead to children being bigger career killers for working moms than for fathers.

If that assumption is correct, then the actual question would be: Will this 50/50 (on average) state with truly happy and comfortable fathers ever happen, and will parents (on average) be happier or not? (this sounds like me questioning that they might be, but it's meant as an actual question).

Personally, I am actually quite happy that I don't have specific plans to become a father right now, because truth be told, I wouldn't want to give up so much of my work/passion for taking care of a child (although maybe me saying this is more the consequence of lacking the desire to become a father, meaning that I'd speak differently if that desire would exist).