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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

#121
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…

I think you will find that the people behind these things are not for equality of choice but for equality of outcome. In particular they would say that women are not equal to men unless they hold equal power in society. They want women to be in >=50% of corporate executive roles and in >-50% of government positions.

If you truly have equality of choice in any system you will get equality of outcome. There's obviously outside factors at play.

"Those people" you mention say it's cultural, other people like you say it's... I don't know honestly...

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

#122
post #13

Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? They are not. The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive. Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.

Personally, I think that having children is immoral. Yes, it can provide you with little workers to help you on the farm, and provide care and love for you in old age, but what if the child is born with a severe disability and is guaranteed to live a life of suffering? Not only will you experience some pain through their suffering, but you are literally wholly responsible for their life, which they had no consent in giving for their own birth. A happiness that is never experienced by an unborn child is neutral, while the suffering of a born child is negative. What is your opinion for how much a child can suffer before they should not have been born? How much happiness? For most lives there is a tradeoff between the two, so what is the tipping point where they should not have been born? Is it the point of suicide where not only do they not consent to being born, but the no longer consent to being alive?

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

#123
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most sources seem to be paywalled.. I am not an expert on this subject. http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001 thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/familyfacts/briefs/FF_Brief_43.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s

For this type of task, I find it best to go to Google Scholar. If you put in the title of the paper behind the first link you'll find the 1991 paper available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nazli_Baydar/publicatio... . You'll also see that it's been cited by 611 papers. It's usually a bit odd to reference a 27 year old paper as a source because additional research since then has likely given more insight i…

This is pretty reassuring, and kind of makes sense to me from a gut level. It makes sense that professionals who love children would raise children who are well-adjusted, etc., vs. dumping your kids at grandma's or the neighbor's.

I don't think I'm a bad parent, but I definitely am not cut out for full-time parenting. My wife doesn't seem to be, either. If either of us were full-time caretakers, we'd honestly be fairly miserable, and I can't believe that wouldn't reflect poorly on our kid.

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

#124
post #13

Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? They are not. The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive. Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.

Personally, I think that having children is immoral. Yes, it can provide you with little workers to help you on the farm, and provide care and love for you in old age, but what if the child is born with a severe disability and is guaranteed to live a life of suffering? Not only will you experience some pain through their suffering, but you are literally wholly responsible for their life, which they had no consent in…

Ergo, your existence is immoral.

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

#125
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyon…

> risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives.

Given just that description, you could be talking about parents. The consequences you list for not rewarding them aren't off the mark either.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Weirdly, there's still a household chore gap between men and women. My position on this is pretty well inline with John Green's: The pay gap is down to a single digit difference, but there is a difference in the unrenumerated work which go…

Dont know why you're being downvoted. Chore gap is a big issue in hetero-couple households (the majority), and chores and household caring/tending work _ is _ a big support for capitalism which capitalism refuses to acknowledge (by refusing to remunerate it). But, capitalism still benefits from it. Guess who usually does this work? Clue: not men. Most probably downvoted by men who refuse to acknowledge the value prov…

Is the fact that my comment was so downvoted as to get flagged an example of men -majority of hn readers- refusing to acknowledge unremunerated work, and the fact that men are privileged from having to perform this unremunerated household work in our society?

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

#127
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right. Why frame it in this inflammatory way? The fact that programmers can choose their work hours is a privilege and a job-perk. What is the point of guilt-tripping them about it? Surely an ideal world is where more people can work when they please rather than one where everyone is forced to clock fixed hours just because there exist s…

That is not guilt tripping. I am programmer. The flexible work is seen as a right and company that does not provide it as overly controlling and bad place for work - that is quite universal in both real life and online. And it is not just that, occasional work from home is also seen as basic perk you totally expect. And my colleges are using that right - and that is not blame, just a statement of fact. The fact is, m…

Do you have any experience with this? I have a father in law that has been together with a nurse manager for many years now, and she is the reason for the argument. Mothers of young children ask for less hours, less crappy shifts, and ability to take days off work with sick children. And they get it.

But regardless, those kind jobs are unionized here and the pay is not something you negotiate. Not for women, or men. In other words, they don't represent the difference in wages, because they are fixed and they do, by design, not differ just because you become a parent.

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

#128
post #80
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sor…

This is so intellectually dishonest it borders on insult. > 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 Here you talk about the "career of raising children" > only women can get pregnant, give birth, and breast feed And then you proceed to justify it with an activity that on average probably lasts for about a year and can in large part be ma…

That first quote was someone else's comment, but I don't see anything wrong with the premise. Trajectory and velocity are absolutely properties of career advancement. There's also the question of whether women with children at home are working the same number of hours at the office as men, even after they return to work. Let's throw in the average willingness of a male partner to limit their own career by prioritizing taking care of children over needs of their employer as a factor as well.

Children take an enormous amount of time and money to raise. And the amount of time and money we spend raising our children has increased significantly, as the age of maturity continues to increase (anecdotally this has gone well past 18 years old now, it seems children on average are being taken care of by their parents well into their 20s now). Someone in the family needs to be able to get home to make dinner every night. If you mostly can't travel for your company, that's a big limiting factor for high paying jobs. If you can't stay past 5 oclock without it being an issue that needs to be planned for, that's a big limiting factor for high paying jobs. If you get called away from an important meeting because your child is sent home from school with a cold... It's reasonable for employers to pay more to employees which can offer a higher level of service and flexibility and accommodation for work schedule and travel requirements.

One (or more) parental figures in the household need to elect to be on-call, and whoever makes that choice is going to see less outside income because of it. Equality doesn't mean that men and women need to make the same choices, just that a man and woman who do make the same choice should see the same outcome. What the statistics are showing us is merely that men and women, on average, tend to have different preferences and make different choices.

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

#129
post #62
post #13

Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? They are not. The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive. Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.

Let's also consider that most jobs are bullshit jobs anyway. The children are literally the future of humanity and taking care of them is more important than anything else.

With the population levels at present not having kids seems like a good choice.

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

#130
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance is astonishing. The point of worker rights is to provide equal footing for everyone. Your boss would certainly like it if there were no mandatory holidays/PTO... > Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them. No, but in order to provide equal chances for the kids' development in earl…

>come over to Europe

>Our people are happier and more productive.

The US ranks 14th in happiness ahead of the majority of European countries. Europe as a whole ranks between 42 and 43[0]

The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2017_Wo...

[1]https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/worlds-most-productive-...

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