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I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

nytimes.com

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Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#51

Post by Dayshine »

> 6) It's impossible to perfectly balance a 40 hour working week and family. Best you can aim for is a kind of homeostasis where work suffers for family one week and then family suffers a bit for work the next.

The article refers to things like:

> But there is always another client to defend, story to write or struggling student who just can’t wait. Here are things I have missed: my daughter’s seventh birthday, my son’s 10th birthday party, two family vacations, three Halloweens, every school camping trip.

She didn't even try to balance...

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#52

Post by hrktb »

6cd6beb wrote: post #9

Disheartening. I grew up with absentee parents. This is an unwelcome spin on that situation. I can't even give an opinion on this that doesn't immediately fly into rage. I just hope I don't try to pair off with someone who ends up getting hoodwinked by articles like this. This is disgusting.

> They were lovingly cared for by their father, their grandmother, my son’s preschool teacher and my daughter’s babysitter.

For me that’s the critical part. Her kids could still feel they don’t get enough of her time, but they’re not just abandonned.

As a kid I spent a lot of time with my grand mother and other outer family members, without my parents. It was fine, actually fun, and everyone seemed to feel responsible for my well being while I was with them.

I also feel this mother chose to prioritize her job because she actualy could, and wouldn’t be doing so if her kids were miserable.

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#53

Post by Dayshine »

rayiner wrote: post #37
Dayshine wrote: post #20

If you don't want to prioritise your kids over your job... don't have kids . Contraception is pretty damn effective, and people often have children for entirely selfish reasons. A dog isn't for christmas, and your kids aren't just cute toys until you get bored of raising them. There are plenty of people who are willing, enough that we won't have population problems.

That’s terrible advice. Kids are great (they’re also not, at societal scale, really optional). According to a Pew study, about 7% of people who had kids would, if they did it over again, have had no kids. By contrast, more than half of those who didn’t have kids would’ve chosen to not have kids again: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp... . Indeed, out of people who didn’t have kids, a great…

Well, I think all the lawyer + law professor + writers can not have kids and we'll be fine.

I'm not saying people that want to work 40/50 hour weeks shouldn't have kids.

I'm saying people who want to work 80 hour weeks shouldn't have kids.

They probably shouldn't have dogs either...

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#54

Post by arkades »

rayiner wrote: post #12
6cd6beb wrote: post #9

Disheartening. I grew up with absentee parents. This is an unwelcome spin on that situation. I can't even give an opinion on this that doesn't immediately fly into rage. I just hope I don't try to pair off with someone who ends up getting hoodwinked by articles like this. This is disgusting.

There is a difference between parents who are absent because they don’t care, and parents who are absent because they have a lot of work to do. My dad worked overseas and was gone for 30-40% of the year when I was a kid. Grew up to have a great relationship with him, because when he was here he was always attentive. (Not in the sense of spending a lot of time with us—he worked 60 hour weeks stateside. But in the sens…

> Sometimes my choices make me sad. My daughter’s seventh birthday was the worst. She cried, and I did everything I could not to. I felt sick to my stomach. But I had a trial starting the next day, six hours away.

> I had picked the date, not the judge, because I knew that the other side wasn’t ready. Delaying even a few days would have meant losing a crucial advantage. I wasn’t going to risk it knowing what was on the line for my client.

I don’t think this one counts as “absent because they had a lot to do.” This one is just prioritizing the kids second.

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#55

Post by benatkin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21
abledon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, my coworker always goes off on a rant about how much it would suck being elon musk's kids. can't convince him its just a different upbringing

Does Musk even have kids? Dang, according to wiki, he has 5 living kids.

Had to know what happened to the other kid(s) and whether it was just one:

"Their first son, Nevada Alexander Musk, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks."

More interestingly, the five are two twins and three triplets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#56

Post by EdwardDiego »

Dayshine wrote: post #51

> 6) It's impossible to perfectly balance a 40 hour working week and family. Best you can aim for is a kind of homeostasis where work suffers for family one week and then family suffers a bit for work the next. The article refers to things like: > But there is always another client to defend, story to write or struggling student who just can’t wait. Here are things I have missed: my daughter’s seventh birthday, my so…

I agree in that regard, but the child had a father and grandparents actively involved in their lives.

She may come to regret not building a closer relationship with her children in the future, but it sounds like the children have other loving adults in their lives so they'll do okay.

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#57

Post by rayiner »

Dayshine wrote: post #53
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s terrible advice. Kids are great (they’re also not, at societal scale, really optional). According to a Pew study, about 7% of people who had kids would, if they did it over again, have had no kids. By contrast, more than half of those who didn’t have kids would’ve chosen to not have kids again: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp... . Indeed, out of people who didn’t have kids, a great…

Well, I think all the lawyer + law professor + writers can not have kids and we'll be fine. I'm not saying people that want to work 40/50 hour weeks shouldn't have kids. I'm saying people who want to work 80 hour weeks shouldn't have kids. They probably shouldn't have dogs either...

If you’re going to assert that a group of people should forgo a major aspect of life, it’s incumbent on you to actually provide evidence that shows concrete and major harms from that combination of life choices. And that evidence just doesn’t exist.

In most situations, if you tell people they shouldn’t do X without citing concrete evidence that X is bad, your viewpoint won’t be taken seriously. In the area of parenting, however, we switch off our brains, because we assign some mystical importance to biological parents spending time with kids, instead of alternative caretakers. In the case of the author:

> They were lovingly cared for by their father, their grandmother, my son’s preschool teacher and my daughter’s babysitter.

Many children, often in low income families, are raised primarily by grandparents and school. Are you prepared to say that those families shouldn’t have had children?

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#58

Post by rayiner »

Dayshine wrote: post #51

> 6) It's impossible to perfectly balance a 40 hour working week and family. Best you can aim for is a kind of homeostasis where work suffers for family one week and then family suffers a bit for work the next. The article refers to things like: > But there is always another client to defend, story to write or struggling student who just can’t wait. Here are things I have missed: my daughter’s seventh birthday, my so…

Americans assign a silly and unjustified sentimental value to things like birthday parties and school outings. Part of my wife’s family is Jehovah’s witnesses, who don’t even celebrate birthdays. Are those kids somehow missing out? Do you think the immigrant parents that own a Chinese restaurant open seven days a week make it to any of their kids school functions or camping trips? Are they being irreparably damaged?

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#59

Post by dudul »

jumelles wrote: post #18
MRD85 wrote: post #14

I made the opposite choice. I'm a single father and I've prioritised my children over my career. I'm not going to pretend it's an amazing lifestyle. If you're intellectually driven then looking after two young children isn't fascinating. However, I love them and they rely on me. I made a choice to bring them into the world and I'm not going to neglect them. I have the kids more than their mother does, and I also pay…

> I also remind myself that if I were a dad, I would be getting accolades for all the times I scheduled a doctor’s appointment or arranged a play date. > My experience as a dad is that people simply don't trust my parenting skills or assume I'm simply helping the mum out. It's incredibly sexist and somewhat hurtful. You and the author are talking about the exact same pervasive sexism from opposite perspectives.

The difference being one is talking about "how they think things would be if they were a dad", while the other is talking about the actual experience they had while being a dad. Somehow I feel like one of the two takes precedence in terms of credibility.

Re: I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids

#60

Post by rayiner »

yulaow wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s terrible advice. Kids are great (they’re also not, at societal scale, really optional). According to a Pew study, about 7% of people who had kids would, if they did it over again, have had no kids. By contrast, more than half of those who didn’t have kids would’ve chosen to not have kids again: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp... . Indeed, out of people who didn’t have kids, a great…

A thing is "inflated expectations for parenting", another thing is the person who wrote the article which has three different jobs (she could easily drop two and still manage to bring home more than enough money, but she doesn't want to for selfish reasons... Which are totally ok if you are not a divorced parent of two very young kids) and, as she herself said, prioritize all of them over her children because she pre…

The “selfish” remark rings pretty hollow when you’re talking about someone that is literally spending her time freeing wrongfully convicted people.

What Ms. Bazelon is doing is the opposite of selfish. She’s providing for her family, serving her profession, and serving her community. She’s teaching her kids good morals by example: hard work and service. What kind of terrible lesson would it be to her children if she taught them that their school camping trip was more important than those things?

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