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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

#311

Post by mcguire »

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…

I have friends in North Carolina who had a daughter a couple of years ago. While they were in the hospital, a woman came by their room wearing scrubs and with the usual lanyard of cards around her neck. She told them that she was a lactation consultant and impressed on them that it was vitally important that the mother breastfeed.

Unfortunately, they had a hard time getting their daughter to cooperate.

At their first post-natal checkup with their doctor, their daughter had not gained any weight since leaving the hospital. He told them to just feed her formula and don't worry about it. Apparently, the "lactation consultant" was not affiliated with the hospital in any way and this sort of thing was very common.

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

#312

Post by Pasorrijer »

WalterBright wrote: post #121
Pasorrijer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fairly significant amount of women have dedicated a decent amount of time, and money, academically, socially, etc. To their careers. Why, some women have even found working to be more enjoyable to being at home with kids. All joking aside, my wife is extremely worried about the impact her career will take from having children and her life goals include executive level leadership as part of her career. So you could,…

She can always start her own business. Don't need anyone's approval for that.

Absolutely! We're currently looking at that idea :) She just needs to decide "what business"... she's a Clinical Engineer, and getting into Medical as an entrepreneur can be challenging.

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

#313

Post by WalterBright »

namecheapTA wrote: post #284
WalterBright wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I enjoy the game. I went along to make sure he wasn't rooked. He did notice that three times the numbers on the term sheet didn't add up, in the dealer's favor, and three times the salesman said he'd just made a mistake. I knew about the term sheet ruse, it had been tried on me twice and on another friend of mine. I also knew that I'd be up against a negotiator who does it all day every day, and so I expected gam…

I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price. If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted…

The term sheet ruse has taken the following forms in my experience:

1. the final paperwork has an interest rate a full percentage point higher than the agreed upon number

2. the "new" car turned out to have 5,000 miles on it in the final paperwork

3. an extra $1000 charge magically appeared on the final paperwork

4. the total on the final paperwork was quite a bit higher than the sum of the figures above it

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

#314

Post by schredder »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #261
dilap wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unde…

The evidence for the benefits of breast milk is overwhelming at this point, and vastly outweighs the evidence for specifically breastfeeding-induced bonding as a factor in a child's early life. So no, there is no reason to advocate for formula and several reasons not to. We should be adovcating for more parent-child bonding, however that happens; for more opportunities for parents to make whatever choices they wish t…

Yes we absolutely should encourage bonding and normalize public breastfeeding. But cut out the other breastfeeding nonsense.

The evidence is not at all overwhelming, and flies in the face of a couple of generations of formula fed people who turned out fine.

All anyone does by repeating that line is make people feel bad when they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Especially women.

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

#315

Post by Firmwarrior »

hollywood_court wrote: post #212
BitwiseFool wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard speculation that when caregivers are overloaded, there is a tendency for children to internalize that to get attention they must show elevated distress and act emotionally. Sometimes this manifests in temper tantrums, other times it manifests in breakdowns. I suspect the increasing trend of over-the-top emotional responses we see on social media and in our political discourse has roots in this. The younger…

I don't have an opinion on that, but I do know that my child hated daycare and I only learned how much he hated it after he quit going. We drove by his old daycare about a month after I pulled him out and he instantly starting having a breakdown in his car seat. I asked him what was wrong and he said "I don't want to go back to daycare." I told him we were simply driving by en route to the pool, but it took a while t…

Damn, that's brutal

I was looking around for some day care for my kid, and everything here seems to work out to ~$20/hour. I was thinking "Well, I guess that's about what I'd have to charge if I quit working at $FAANG and ran a day care out of my house.." and considering signing up.

If it's just some rich prick getting richer while an overworked person in front barely scrapes by, though, that is really infuriating. I guess that fits with every other customer-facing business in the bay area though. I feel lucky any time I make it out of a store without getting punched in the face around here

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

#316

Post by namecheapTA »

WalterBright wrote: post #313
namecheapTA wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price. If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted…

The term sheet ruse has taken the following forms in my experience: 1. the final paperwork has an interest rate a full percentage point higher than the agreed upon number 2. the "new" car turned out to have 5,000 miles on it in the final paperwork 3. an extra $1000 charge magically appeared on the final paperwork 4. the total on the final paperwork was quite a bit higher than the sum of the figures above it

1. Weird fraud I've never seen done, if the actual original interest rate was "agreed upon", and not just a "potentially if you qualify at our source bank".

2. I assume the car was looked at and maybe test driven. I find it hard to believe this was a 'ruse' left for the final moments. I can imagine people getting confused or not hearing or understanding I suppose.. someone wants a discount, salesperson says we have a demo over here we can do a large discount on.. and somehow the miles or reason for discount were not discussed. I wouldn't call this a ruse, and once again not something I've done or seen since it's just a waste of time. Obviously the person will discover the miles at some point, so why have the drama.

3. Illegal to pad a term sheet and then stuff a $1000 'charge'. You'd atleast have to have the customer sign the contract for what they were getting for their $1000. Dealers attempt to add things often, but they can't be secretly padded into the initial payment discussions. It's superficially easy for a customer to snap a photo of a preemptive term sheet and burn a dealership at the DMV dealers office or back out a whole deal months or even years after purchase if this was documented. Again, not something I saw in 10 years.

4. I saw countless people get confused by the "total" on the contract, usually when selling a used car to a less mathematically and logical buyer for some reason. You can sell a Porsche to an accountant and all goes great everytime, but sell a used Corvette to someone that personally requested a 72 month loan and watch drama unfold as he wonders why the total of payments on his $50k car is $70k. Luckily I was good and could always explain reality of sales tax, registration, and interest to these people. But not everyone is so lucky.

Maybe the dealerships I worked at were above average in integrity, because they were high performers and high performers don't have time to fraud induced drama, but honestly if you land on a dumb salesperson that can't explain your confusion to you, you can end up thinking your confusion was their attempt at a scam.

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

#317

Post by WalterBright »

namecheapTA wrote: post #284
WalterBright wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I enjoy the game. I went along to make sure he wasn't rooked. He did notice that three times the numbers on the term sheet didn't add up, in the dealer's favor, and three times the salesman said he'd just made a mistake. I knew about the term sheet ruse, it had been tried on me twice and on another friend of mine. I also knew that I'd be up against a negotiator who does it all day every day, and so I expected gam…

I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price. If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted…

> some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day

Deserve has nothing to do with it. It's about both parties negotiating for the best price.

That said, there may be very good reasons not to push too hard. You might want to do business with the other party in the future. You might want a good review on Google. You might not want to take advantage of an elderly person or an inexperienced wide-eyed kid.

But any party going on about what they "deserve" is not going to earn sympathy.

BTW, did you ever watch "King of Cars", a reality TV show at a car dealership? I found it both entertaining and instructive.

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

#318

Post by setr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #120
setr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Childcare (specifically thinking of daycare) strikes me as a low-skill job, so labor volume should be fairly high -- excluding I guess things like extra-filtering for background. And as far as I can think of, there's no substantial upfront costs outside of the normal elements -- building, room setup, initial training, etc. It also strikes me as something that can be done with some scalability -- a decent sized group…

Why are you assuming a job that is presumably low skill has a high supply of people willing to sell their time to perform that low skill job? > Unless there's some overhead per-child I don't understand I would start with liability costs, it must be massive for a professional daycare facility given how emotionally invested people are with their kids. Next would be redundancy of employees. Babies and toddlers transmit…

> Why are you assuming a job that is presumably low skill has a high supply of people willing to sell their time to perform that low skill job?

Because there’s a low barrier to entry, people want money, and unless it were particularly horrible or life-threatening, if you’re going to find a high supply of labor anywhere, it’s going to be in a low-skill job?

> I have never heard anyone tell their child to aspire to become a daycare employee.

I have never heard anyone tell their child to aspire to become a McDonald’s employee, or a bank teller, or a pool cleaner, or a gardener, yet I seem to find quite a few of them.

It’s low-skill — you don’t need a 4-year degree and aspirations to get into it. You just need to want money, and have no better options.

> I would start with liability costs, it must be massive for a professional daycare facility given how emotionally invested people are with their kids

But that’d be the same with anything taking responsibility over handling kids — eg summer schools, camps, extra-carriculars, etc. I’m sure they have good margins (parents throw money at anything supporting children), but I don’t think they’re getting barraged by insurance premiums for it.

Legal ratios might help explain it, but that’s part of the “something is going on outside of labor supply/demand”.

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

#319

Post by WalterBright »

namecheapTA wrote: post #316
WalterBright wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term sheet ruse has taken the following forms in my experience: 1. the final paperwork has an interest rate a full percentage point higher than the agreed upon number 2. the "new" car turned out to have 5,000 miles on it in the final paperwork 3. an extra $1000 charge magically appeared on the final paperwork 4. the total on the final paperwork was quite a bit higher than the sum of the figures above it

1. Weird fraud I've never seen done, if the actual original interest rate was "agreed upon", and not just a "potentially if you qualify at our source bank". 2. I assume the car was looked at and maybe test driven. I find it hard to believe this was a 'ruse' left for the final moments. I can imagine people getting confused or not hearing or understanding I suppose.. someone wants a discount, salesperson says we have a…

1. It was a handshake "come back tomorrow for the paperwork" deal with the manager. The underling who handed me the papers said they would never have agreed to the lower interest rate. I told her to go check with the manager. She did, and came back complaining that she'd have to redo the papers (!).

2. A "new" car doesn't have 5,000 miles on it. They told me it was new. There was no ambiguity there. They pushed the papers at me hoping I wouldn't notice it.

3. Illegal or not, that's what they did on the next day final paperwork. Of course, they said it was just a clerical error and they'd fix it. The original deal was not documented.

4. When you have a column of numbers and a total, the total should match the sum. There's no excuse for this.

These issues were from multiple dealerships, so I figure it is common practice. One was from a friend of mine, who I warned to check the numbers on the final next day paperwork. He laughed at me, saying nobody would do that. The next day he called and thanked me, as he discovered a $1,000 error in the dealer's favor. He said he'd have never checked it if I hadn't warned him.

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

#320

Post by namecheapTA »

WalterBright wrote: post #317
namecheapTA wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price. If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted…

> some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day Deserve has nothing to do with it. It's about both parties negotiating for the best price. That said, there may be very good reasons not to push too hard. You might want to do business with the other party in the future. You might want a good review on Google. You might not want to take advantage of an elderly person…

I haven't seen the show unfortunately.

My basic summary of the entire absurdity of the common tactic of "what's the best price you can do?" is as follows..

The best price is a vague concept depending on where we want to draw the line.

Best price I can do and keep my boss happy with my performance?

Best price I can do if I want to be below average at this company?

Best price I can do if I want to ask for a personal favor from my boss to allow me to heavily discount this car beyond established metrics we have and sell it this one time?

Best price I can do if I want to be yelled at tomorrow morning?

Best price I can do if I want both my boss and I to be yelled at tomorrow?

Best price I can do if I want my boss to negatively impact his career by the owner seeing him make deals like this too often?

Best price I can do if I want to get myself or my boss fired the next day? I could probably somehow secretly sell a car $10k under what I should... Once.

Where do we stop? Some nice people pay MSRP. Some people ask for a gesture of a discount. Some people ask for what discount is fair to market and we'd be ok with, and take it. Some people want below market, and we try to stop it if the car is in demand or we have enough volume. Some people want prices so low they'd fall into the "negatively impact the salesperson or teams career". Sometimes we even take those, but it's always a calculation between taking a below market average offer or waiting for one of the earlier described people to walk in.

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