221–230 of 748 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lost in the modern rush for status and money, "obscenely convenient high quality daycare" used to be called "Motherhood" and was supplied by Mothers themselves. Some would argue, the most valuable contribution to society, even if not directly monetized. To sustain a healthy population, we used to need 10 children per fertile woman, which made "stay at home Mother" an obvious necessity for the vast majority of women.…
[deleted]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Daycare isn't an appropriate analogue to your example though. A shift in culture that allows you to bring your children to work would be and would be absolutely sensible for white collar and several blue collar jobs.
No... that's madness. A child has no place in the workplace. The child would just disrupt the day of the workers and slow them down.
I have worked at places that paid for convenient nearby parking.
I worked at a university that had a daycare just across the street. Given the dramatic pay gap between there and elsewhere it must have been sticky enough for some.
My note to the author, enjoy your career. If and when you feel ready to start a family, you will. And if it doesn't happen, you'll be okay too. Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women. Perhaps STEM women who are early career (24-28) would benefit from meeting mothers (both who are in STEM and not in STEM careers) who had children at age 35+. > ...Women who stay in academia expect to marry later, and…
> Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women Actually not. It's not just the genetics / pregnancy problems that are proven to significantly rise with age... but also that the time of menopause can neither be forecast nor the effects reversed (some hit it with 40, some with 60!), so there is a significant disadvantage (=no kids at all) for waiting too long. Additionally: do you want to deal with a baby…
And, I should clarify, I was speaking about the authors range of starting a family around age 35.
> Additionally: do you want to deal with a baby when you're 25 or when you are 40 or, worse, 50, that keeps you awake all night?
I see that as personal choice, and each family should be able to make that choice for themselves by understanding and weighing the risks.
Not be scared into making a decision with misleading statistics.
Me personally, I had the means at age 38, that I could hire a night doula (and nearly did). Infants usually begin sleeping through the night ~6 months, coinciding with them starting solid foods (breastmilk tends to go through a baby quickly) while solids take longer to digest. As I was on the cusp of my little guy starting solids, I tried a couple different things first:
* Used a sleep sack
* Moved his pack-n-play outside my room
Both helped him sleep through the night.
So ~6 months wasn't terrible. I also have a unique situation that helps me cope with elevated levels of stress.
For our first child, we had a live-in nanny.
I got to enjoy living for myself from 25-35, that when I settled down to start a family, I was able to focus on that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that disgust with sex is climbing in rich nations Source? People are having fewer children, but is that because they are too disgusted to have sex?
Nearly half of young women in Japan are "uninterested in sex" or "averse to sex" - https://www.rt.com/news/377342-sexless-japanese-marriages-st... - https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/23... I remember seeing a similar headline for German women but cannot find a source now. (I think people expect weird think from Japan so it's good practice to compare to other countries) Maybe social media and i…
The Politifact article does involve aversion, but only aggregated with disinterest:
"The percentage of women who responded they were not interested in sex at all or felt an aversion to it was 60.3 percent for ages 16-19 and 31.6 percent for ages 20-24. Combine the age groups, and the average response was about 46 percent negative — the figure that drove attention-grabbing stories in Western media."
To interpret the numbers differently, a net 30% of Japanese girls aged 16-19 become interested in sex within 5 years.
I tried looking for the original report to disaggregate lack of interest and aversion, but I only found it on Amazon and don't feel like buying it. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4930807085
I can't speak for women, and I'm just smart enough not to try. But what I can say is that I don't hold all of the values that I did as a young man. I'm not excited about the same things, and today I find some of those ideas uncomfortably naive or even off-putting. As I've engaged in more activities, as I've socialized with more people, I've encountered many more ideas and a lot of nuance. Nothing has simple answers a…
In her article, she explains her hypothesis that women leave top-flight STEM/academic careers because the demands (and, crucially, when they must be met: 20s & 30s) conflict with the demands of bearing children during a woman's most-likely-to-be-successful childbearing years. She goes on to suggest that creating more supports for mothers such as affordable childcare and possibly collaborative academic working environ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your example of a biologist is a bit disingenuous. By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a professor's research lab. If they're inclined to continue working for academia then it's not surprising that they won't break past 6 figures. You could just as easily pick people from different fields that are pursuing a career in academia and find that professors a…
> By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a professor's research lab followed by 2-4 years at a postdoc, asked for in every job application for a 'biologist II' which has an average salary of ~77k (per indeed). This is for industry, not academia. So how am I am misrepresenting the fact that being a biologist takes over 7+ years of being grossly underpaid relative t…
I do know a couple of friends that work at Genentech who comfortably pull in > 200k so there's that.
I think the author buried the lede here. My biggest takeaway from the article is that you'd have to be an absolute sucker to work in academia given how poorly you'll be treated. Each person that puts up with this only makes the problem worse, giving at least tacit approval to the status quo. If folks were to start opting out of academia in larger numbers for jobs in private industry, schools would be forced to improv…
It was less than minimum wage.
My note to the author, enjoy your career. If and when you feel ready to start a family, you will. And if it doesn't happen, you'll be okay too. Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women. Perhaps STEM women who are early career (24-28) would benefit from meeting mothers (both who are in STEM and not in STEM careers) who had children at age 35+. > ...Women who stay in academia expect to marry later, and…
>Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women. It's just a biological reality. It is certainly possible to have a healthy birth after the age of 35 but the rate of health problems and birth defects don't go up linearly with age. The rate of pregnancy loss is 35% after the age of 35 and is above 50% after the age of 45. This is just reality. If women want to have multiple children it is wise to start befo…
> In this preconception cohort study of North American pregnancy planners, increasing female age was associated with an approximately linear decline in fecundability.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm that I know multiple women who work less then they imagined for themselves or want to, cause their husbands basically finds it more fun to be in work and cant be arsed to go home. Their resentment is quite real. Their actions looks like choice, until they trust you well enough to vent to you.
That is often true. But the frequent prequel is also “I want a baby” originating from a woman. I don’t have un-anecdata too, but it happened to me, to my buddies and to my male family members. As men may or may not definitely, consciously want kids and do related work, at least we need to bin resentments into two buckets (fail of promise vs. fail of expectation) and evaluate them separately.
With some of the women I had in mind, I know for sure they strongly did not wanted next kid while husband suggested that, so it is not the same (in the sense that he did not wanted kid and therefore it should be all on her).
I can't speak for women, and I'm just smart enough not to try. But what I can say is that I don't hold all of the values that I did as a young man. I'm not excited about the same things, and today I find some of those ideas uncomfortably naive or even off-putting. As I've engaged in more activities, as I've socialized with more people, I've encountered many more ideas and a lot of nuance. Nothing has simple answers a…
I think there are plenty of people who believe "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." I'm lucky enough that my job is both interesting and impactful. The people that surround me are either incredible scientists or like working for a company that strives to, and does, make an impact in the world. I think it's perfectly fine to not care about your job to a higher degree than necessary, and I…
Maybe the real problem isn't even technical. Maybe Jim and Tom just hate each other because something happened when they first met. We can keep arguing about haproxy vs nginx 'til the cows come home, or I could say to myself, "Hey, they both listen to Kevin, I'm gonna go ask him for a favor..." but that's kinda passing the buck.
My biggest success not falling back to other people for this was Ben, who yelled at me - in an open office plan - the first time I asked him for help. It took most of a year of me making smalltalk at the coffee machine before he was happy to see me coming, instead of avoiding eye contact. I think at some point he figured out we think alike on certain BS technical limitations, and then I started getting smiles.
If you can't tell from this that I'm fond of cats, especially shy or cantankerous ones, well...