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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

#331
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

> 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.

So there is your answer. People have better options.

And prices for labor at the bottom have increased for almost all jobs at the bottom of the pay scale. Fast food, landscaper, bus driver, daycare worker, etc.

The obvious cause would be a reduction in supply of labor willing to do the jobs at the bottom of the pay scale.

I would expect the trend to continue as the labor force participation rate continues to decline, partially due to decades of lower and lower birthrates not offset by immigration and automation.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess it's indelicate to say that when a man and woman are both stuck at home, more babies will be conceived. It would be inaccurate to assume an increase in frequency of sex will lead to more babies, in the age of access to very effective birth control. Many (most I assume?) choose when to have or try to have children.

> Many (most I assume?) choose when to have or try to have children. Might sound a bit too cynical for this site, but plenty of people decided to get a dog in 2020. Why shouldn't they choose to have a baby for the same reasons?

I was wondering something similar - could it have been that in the first half of 2020 people put off having a kid and then after lockdowns were lifted, made up for lost time?

For a little more cynicism, that fits with their finding that the "boom" was most pronounced for first-time parents, aka the ones that weren't stuck home with their kids...

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

#333
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No disagreement about any of those things. I would just add: It should be easy for women who wish to be with their babies and breast-feed them to do so. It should also be easy for dads! BTW, I'm about two weeks out from becoming a father. I only get 2 months paternity leave, but if I were the mother, I'd get 4! This seems unfair to me, but it's certainly better than if the policy were reversed . It seems like there's…

Congratulations! As someone on the other end of them, those 2 months will go by very fast.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might depend on the kid. I had almost that much freedom, including unchecked access to firearms, and I absolutely fucking loved it and felt the freedom helped set me up for success as an adult. Other kids would be inside playing with mom and dad and I'd be "lets make a map of the whole fucking county by exploring everything." I feel like the future of my kid is mostly limited by ever more dystopian standards of CPS r…

Perhaps I lack perspective because my son is only 3.5 years old and it's hard to imagine him becoming that mature by 5. I'm lucky to be alive based on some of the dumb stuff I did as a kid. At age 6 I wasn't quite strong enough to saddle our horses by myself so I would just hop on my quarter horse every afternoon after school and ride her bareback. She threw me once because of a snake and I spent ~3 hours hanging ups…

I'm not saying I'm going to hand my kid a horse and say good luck, nor that you should do so, but the downside of freedom is generally exactly what you say: that the potentiality for danger exists.

More free kids probably means more dead kids. Get a bad dice roll and the kid is dead and now you're in jail for some form of neglect induced manslaughter. Get a good dice roll and the kid gets life experiences, confidence, and more ability to navigate the world. Don't roll the dice at all -- maybe the kid locks up and can't rise to the challenge later in life when they meet challenges that threaten their life.

Life is a gamble. What I find ever more frustrating is the legislation and the child welfare organizations and courts increasingly take it out of the parents hands to determine what level of freedom and risk is appropriate for their children. I'm not sure there is any 'right' answer, but if there is a threshold I think we've long past moved beyond it towards the point of paranoia.

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

#335

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…

> women have stepped up for their families often to the detriment of their own careers Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society. Women are the only humans that can produce children and they have to do it during a relatively short time window - especially if we want to reproduce at replacement level. Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because th…

The contemporary need for dual earners is bad for child raising, but that's because the amount of work does not leave time for child care, not for any reason of gender or sex; The vast majority of time spent raising children can be done a person of any gender and/or sex. Also, child raising being done by a couple is itself sub-optimal; Communal child-raising is a better approach.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

I happened to know beforehand that the car had been on the lot a while, and the dealer probably wanted to be rid of it. Unsold cars on the lot are burning cash, as they're there on borrowed money. BTW, he had to get the manager's signoff on the final price, so I'm sure he wasn't getting fired for it. A savvy manager isn't going to let a salesman underprice a car to sell to his buddy. You mention a lot of consideratio…

Unless there's value in it to me, I generally dress down for anything where I'm paying money.

My thinking? If I'm polite and verbally confirm that I'm good for the amount and the salesperson treats me poorly? Not someone I'd want to do business with anyway.

Actions >> appearance

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't discuss family obligations at a job interview, full stop.

I think if you are doing child care and work at the same time it is relevant. If somebody was taking their child to the office, however, that would relevant.

It's relevant, but it's illegal for a prospective employer to ask about and it's against a prospective employee's interest to raise the issue.

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

#338
post #30

We have had more parental leaves this year on my team then we have had in the last 5 years combined. Anecdotally confirmed

I had a lot of friends that got their first child during lockdown. Exactly 0 that already had a kid created another. Take that for what you want.

I had a number of friends with 1 kid pop out another during the course of the pandemic. It's def a factor as well.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> women have stepped up for their families often to the detriment of their own careers Forcing 2 household incomes was/is awful for a healthy society. Women are the only humans that can produce children and they have to do it during a relatively short time window - especially if we want to reproduce at replacement level. Raising children should be regarded as one of the most important things a woman can do because th…

There's a difference between having children (which only women can do) and raising them (which both parents can do).

There is an astonishing amount of posters that have jumped into the comments to explain that “raising a child” means the exact same thing as “breastfeeding a child”

I can’t tell if it’s concern trolling, poor english comprehension, or tradwife enthusiasts tipping their figurative trilbys to one another. It’s funny nonetheless!

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

#340

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

The terms sheet ruse as I've heard it and seen it, aka the triangle game, is pushing a sheet with down payment, monthly payment, and total price in front of a customer.

The salesperson then attempts to discern which of the 3 the customer is actually paying attention to and optimizes that one at the expense of the others.

Because the input vars (e.g. interest rate, term length, MSRP) and dealership profit are concealed behind the displayed numbers, the deal can be "adjusted" to please the customer but keep the same sale profit.

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