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Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

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Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#241

Post by PuppyTailWags »

chasd00 wrote: post #238
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among women I know, I don't see this attitude. Women I know who want careers actually want it because they don't want to be dependent on other people. Every woman I know either has personal experience or knows another woman with personal experience of being in an abusive domestic household and being unable to leave because of no personal income. That's a huge motivator not to be SAH.

my point still stands that a woman saying they want to be a "mom" and not have a career is looked down on by their peers due to the last 30 years of career propaganda. Fear of being abused is something else entirely.

I repeat that I don't know what you're talking about and it doesn't reflect my experience with women. Do you have sources or something?

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#242

Post by purpleblue »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #72

It's election season and I've been out talking to voters, who share their life stories... what I would say is that there are many women who are choosing WFH because they either can't afford or can't find day care, which may lead to deciding that hey, they might as well have another baby if they are now committed to this employment model. I've spoken to several women who were over-qualified for the jobs they had taken…

I've sacrificed my entire career so that I can take be the primary caregiver of the kids, and my wife can concentrate 100% on her career. During the pandemic, I quit my job and concentrated solely on the kids, and now that the pandemic is over, I'm at a much less demanding job so that I can do all the pick ups, drop offs, homework assignments, etc.

I love it, and I feel truly lucky that my life has given me the opportunity to focus on my kids.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#243

Post by dilap »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #229
dilap wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're breastfeeding, it's gotta be the woman. And ideally, you are breastfeeding. Beyond that, most women strongly want to be with their babies. There was a NYT article a few years back about the boom of internet baby monitors, and it was kind of heartbreaking -- a bunch of women sitting at their desks glued to their baby monitors wishing they could be with their babies. I think we've really fucked up as a societ…

We breastfed our daughter. Her mother pumped to cover times when she was working, and I fed our daughter. The only time this was an issue was when her mother left for a week-long conference. Accumulating supply for that period (and her dealing with the unused supply while away) was mildly challenging but we managed just fine. I then went on to quit work and stayed home to raise our daughter (she's now nearing 28 year…

We could go even further: You don't need the mother at all; you can always just raise the baby on formula.

But that doesn't change that the mother-child bond is a unique and special thing, and that there are real benefits to breast-feeding, straight from the breast.

And beyond, the simple fact is that many women really want to be with their babies.

It's misguided to pretend that there aren't biological realities underlying these preferences. We should try to tailor our policies to meet the desires of the most people possible.

(Not, of course, in a coercive way! If a mother would like to continue working and pump, then of course she should be supported in that. In past societies maybe this was the fight that needed to be fought, but now I think it's the opposite.)

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#244

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ryandrake wrote: post #189
poulsbohemian wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sense that you are trying to be needlessly provocative... >Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society Who is doing the forcing here? Many women wanted to enter the workforce. Some didn't want to enter the workforce. Some were forced by their situation or by economic changes, but it isn't like someone on HN was holding a gun to their head telling them to get a job, so I'm a little unclear…

>> Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society > Who is doing the forcing here? It's called the two income trap[1]. Back when it was traditional that one person worked, the market recognized this reality and prices of everything made it possible to live off of one income. Then, slowly we started seeing more and more two-income families. Two-income families could bear to spend more on everything, so…

>Back when it was traditional that one person worked, the market recognized this reality and prices of everything made it possible to live off of one income.

No. Back when there was class power sufficient for working families to withdraw one partner from the labor market, they did so. Then that power eroded, and they were forced to send the second partner into the workforce. This also involved a wave of inflation that was never reversed for housing, healthcare, education, or energy prices.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#245

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ndriscoll wrote: post #103
poulsbohemian wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if subsidized, if there aren't providers it doesn't actually fix the problem. Here in WA we have the Fair Start act to provide subsidies, but where it gets weird now is... does government step in and also start state-funded care facilities to cover the gap? Or does government create incentives to bring more private care providers into the market? As you point out, there's also a question of whether we've created…

I guess it's a matter of social networking, but I would think essentially any stay-at-home mom could still take in a few kids. It wouldn't even occur to me to check whether that's "allowed".

That's exactly how it works in tax brackets that are out of sight out of mind to most here.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#246

Post by Supermancho »

planetsprite wrote: post #207
maxbond wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because they’re the only ones that can do it. This seems pretty reductionist to me. Men can absolutely raise children. Husbands in heterosexual couples should absolutely be raising their children and not leaving the entire task of raising them to their wives. Gay men can also raise children. I don't think you meant to be disrespe…

People's role in society shouldn't be determined by their biology, but the manner in which their biology manifests in their life outcomes is determined by their biology.

> People's role in society shouldn't be determined by their biology,

Why not (even if only partially)? Biology at the individual level has physical consequences, which necessarily affects the available roles and roles chosen. It makes no sense to expect that this relationship is different in aggregate.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#247

Post by namecheapTA »

WalterBright wrote: post #178
ethbr0 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in (unnecessarily-) boarded industries and ones with predatory non-competes. Pedantic pique, but both annoy the hell out of me.

Don't sign predatory non-competes. If one is executive material, negotiation is a necessary skill :-) I was helping a friend buy a car the other day. The salesman kept coming back with a "final" offer and "we can't go lower than that", etc., etc. But I advised my friend to hold the line, and he did till the offer got into his price range.

Take it from a car salesman, this is often a tactic to slow down the negotiation and make you feel like your offer was a good deal for you. I have said those words many times when I could have gone lower than their offer, but if you just go back and accept it, a lot of "hard negotiators" get cold feet. Anyone that brings a friend to buy a car with them automatically broadcasts "I'm playing games and brought an extra player" so we turn on the games too.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#248

Post by chasd00 »

BWStearns wrote: post #41
bombcar wrote: post #11

I wonder what percentage was fueled by a dual income household being forced to single income and realizing that they could handle it well enough - and the non-working spouse deciding to not bother returning to the workforce?

That's apparently one big driver in the labor shortage. Childcare costs were so high that when everyone was home people realized the second job wasn't actually that useful and now there's one stay-at-home parent (seems weighted towards mothers[0]). [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/14/some-gender...

this was my exact situation when my kids were small. We added up childcare expenses and it turned out we barely came out ahead with our two income household. The extra money was not worth the commutes and logistics of managing two jobs and daycare for two kids. My wife quit her job, we cut back a little bit, and she stayed at home for about 3 years. Once the kids were school age she went back to work ( she's a teacher ). She did lose some ground on her pension and raises but at this point, about 7 years later, the impact is negligible.

I was pretty jealous of stay at home dads (I know two) and the things they were able to for their kids. My kids are older now and that ship has sailed for me.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#249

Post by dilap »

purpleblue wrote: post #233
dilap wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're breastfeeding, it's gotta be the woman. And ideally, you are breastfeeding. Beyond that, most women strongly want to be with their babies. There was a NYT article a few years back about the boom of internet baby monitors, and it was kind of heartbreaking -- a bunch of women sitting at their desks glued to their baby monitors wishing they could be with their babies. I think we've really fucked up as a societ…

Breastfeeding is overhyped. Both my sibling and I, along with my wife and her siblings were formula fed. My kids were 100% formula-fed as well, because my wife decided she didn't want to waste her time pumping. Both generations are perfectly normal and healthy. We all caught COVID with only minimal symptoms. Not having to breastfeed took an enormous amount of stress off my wife, and allowed us to split the work of ra…

Without a doubt, a baby can be formula-fed and thrive.

It also seems certain that there are advantages to being breast-fed. Exactly how strong these are is hard to stay -- as far as I know, all the research is observational, and so it becomes hard to tease out what is the effect of breast-feeding and what is just coming along for the ride (correlated w/ the type of person that prioritizes breast-feeding).

It's still a worthy goal to have a society that makes it easy for women who want to breast-feed to do so.

(And I hear you on the moralizing, which is obnoxious. Let the parents decide what is best for their baby and life situation; it is not anyone else's business.)

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#250

Post by madrox »

I made a joke on twitter at the beginning of the pandemic that we'd see a baby boom because of quarantine. Someone dryly replied to me that it'd be entirely among families getting their first child.

I went looking for this line in the article, and sure enough... "The increase in birth rates was more pronounced for first-time mothers..."

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