Female Founder Secrets: Fertility • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#491

Post by frongpik » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #334

astan wrote: post #67

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that…

I don't think these changes are likely because, in my opinion, there is a silent anti-natal movement in Western culture. We have serious issues of an aging population, not enough kids being born to fund social security, etc. and all of our solutions look like bringing people in from other countries with high fertility rates. None of the ideas being tossed around seem to have anything to do with facilitating our own f…

"pass on whiteness"? Never heard this phrase before.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#492

Post by irrational » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

It's amazing to me how few women in their 20s are aware of this. I have a lot of early-20s coworkers. One time I mentioned that fertility declines greatly past 35. They laughed and thought I was joking. Why is this not covered in high school health classes?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#493

Post by tastygreenapple » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

ljf wrote: post #409

as300 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I just don't think it's a tenable position to assert that women (or men) should be able to take 2-4 years off of work and not be disadvantaged in their career for doing so. I wholeheartedly support the idea that, as a society, we ought to value childcare/child-rearing and (perhaps monetarily) support those who perform this service. But I don't believe corporations ought to be the ones making a space for…

Genuine question, who should?

I think there's a well of volunteers.

I'm doing pretty well financially, enough so that I could support a family. I just can't find a partner who wants to start a family. I know there are a lot of people like me in my peer group.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#494

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

afaejzjfiefia wrote: post #407

astan wrote: post #67

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that…

> it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. Is there any scenario in life were someone with 2-4 more years of experience (maybe 50% more at that point in time) isn't more valued for their greater experience? What is the difference between a junior and senior engineers salary for instance? A 4 year b…

I think there are two ways to look at the quoted statement. Is person A with 2 years of professional software development experience and a 2 year gap about the same [on average across a large population] as person B who has 2 years professional software development experience and no gap? Person B is slightly more valued by virtue of recency of experience, but 3 months from now, once the rust is knocked off person A, I'd expect them to be basically the same so I'd value them the same in hiring.

Now, is person C who has 4 years of software development experience, no gap, more skilled and capable at software development than person A who has 2 years of software experience and then a 2 year gap or person B who has 2 years and no gap? Absolutely, and I'd expect C to be quite rationally valued more highly in the software development market. Person C has twice as much directly relevant experience at a time in career where the curve is still rising quickly.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#495

Post by krrrh » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

coryfklein wrote: post #450

tomcam wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. This is something dudes can't write about. My wife & I simply decided decades ago that one of us would always not work. We lived cheaply so we could accomplish that goal, but we wanted a good family life. I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start out assuming that a 2-caree…

Why can't men write about it?

Parts of what she wrote are similar to parts of what James Damore wrote, and he was fired for it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#496

Post by ArlenBales » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

nightowl_games wrote: post #164

The down stream effects of our system could be that the successful, educated, intelligent women and men dont have children, and the more aggressive, more risk taking, less educated among us have many children. This has the potential to massively harm our society in the long term. We need to ascribe virtue to having children. We need to ascribe an extremely high amount of virtue to being a good parent.

That's basically the opening premise of Idiocracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#497

Post by golemiprague » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #239

I agree completely with the premise that most people don't appreciate just how fleeting fertility can be, but I think rather than freezing eggs, the solution is for people to normalize having children at a younger age and designing work and home life around children existing and even being present in certain work contexts. Obviously freezing your eggs is something that you can do as individual without society's input…

I am not even sure women at work improved the economic situation of the family that much. I am generalising here and I know there are exceptions but most of the work women do is a replacement to what a housewife used to do.

They don't create new companies or businesses, they don't work in anything related to infrastructure or creation of actual physical value. They don't do engineering and even music creation and production is mostly done by men.

Women concentrate in care taking, from teachers to social workers to nurses and services or value transfer like lawyers, marketers, HR and such. Those jobs don't create anything new or tangible and are basically the same jobs they used to do at home, caring for the family, some services and moving the husband money around.

In some way they were more productive as housewives by doing in parallel and cheaply many jobs that are now outsourced. Their salary was just swallowed by land owners increasing rent and house prices in addition to all the house work they now have to pay for to other women.

It is all a scheme that we suppose to believe is helping anyone while what actually is happening is that men still finance women as it was always was but now instead of the husband giving their wife the money directly they do it via their corporate accounting funnelling men hard work money to some women in HR to do another program about diversity and inclusiveness.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#498

Post by fertilitythrow1 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

yanslookup wrote: post #441

u678u wrote: post #178

Its interesting I had a friend who got pregnant at University. I thought it would be ruinous to their career but maybe its a better solution. When she was 40 her child was already an adult and she could fully concentrate on working.

Grass is always greener for me but I often think if I could do it over I'd rather have children as early as possible instead of in my late 30s. I think if I had known how young late 30s and 40s actually is it may have resonated. Like, I still do all of the hobbies and activities I did in my 20s and am arguably in the best shape of my life, pandemic bod not withstanding. I think I truly felt my youth was fleeting and…

RE "unexplained fertility" - exact same thing happened to us.

We waited until we were "ready" (are we ever "ready"? certainly didn't feel like it when the baby arrived!) but it took about 4 years to actually have the baby. Miscarriages, then just nothing apart from endless mechanical & unromantic sex day after day after day for years, with deeply upsetting emotional consequences when nothing happened.

Everything checks out medically and the doctors cheerily just say "keep trying!" but then write "unexplained infertility" on your report as you plod back home for more fruitless intercourse. No one can explain why it is not working as the usual battery of tests they do come back fine ... you begin to envy and resent people you see who are pregnant, you cant look at a cute puppy/kitten because you feel like you'll never have a baby, you simmer with inner rage when someone at work brings in their baby to show around the office, or someone mentions their kids etc ..."HoW cAn thEYy bE sO INSENSITIVE?!?!?!?!" you fume to yourself as you die a little inside. It is quite the existential torture.

To HNers reading this: If this sounds like you, please do yourself a favor and find a clinic that deals with immune-related infertility. During consultations for starting IVF, one clinic casually noted that my wife had "natural killer" CD16+ and CD56+ cells that might be causing the miscarriage and no natural pregnancies. We immediately found a clinic that specialised in treating that condition and 2 months later we had a natural pregnancy that went full term - our baby boy was born 1 year ago and he is thriving. After 4 hard years of sorrow and misery, it just took some basic immune-modulating drugs and we got pregnant naturally after just two months, and a totally textbook baby (straight down the middle on weight & size etc) was born naturally with no complications. It can happen - good luck.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#499

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

petr25102018 wrote: post #431

seneca wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids Why would women get paid to raise their own kids? You suggest it's because when done well, it has incredible value to society. What is that value to society? It's having functional, productive members. Women already reap the benefits of that by sharing society with other peoples' well raised children. What I mean to say is that it's a web of mutual benefit.…

Also, the world is already overpopulated as it is in my opinion. So not having a kid can be or will be seen as a benefit to society...

The world is not overpopulated - it's that just some (large) corners of it are seemingly incapable of living sustainably (outsized consumption that goes with outsized waste and pollution)

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#500

Post by krrrh » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

nappy-doo wrote: post #275

ksdale wrote: post #239

I agree completely with the premise that most people don't appreciate just how fleeting fertility can be, but I think rather than freezing eggs, the solution is for people to normalize having children at a younger age and designing work and home life around children existing and even being present in certain work contexts. Obviously freezing your eggs is something that you can do as individual without society's input…

My MIL used to say, "there's a reason that they make mothers young," and it's because kids are exhausting. As a mid-40s male, I can't imagine bringing a child into my life again right now. I would die before 50 from sleep deprivation.

I just had my first at 45, and it is worth it, but I do now appreciate the wisdom of my friends who did this in their twenties.