The problem is compounded when you think about the types of people who are missing their fertility window. We’re talking about some of the smartest and most ambitious women in the world. It’s a huge loss of our country if we can’t create an environment that allows them to create families and offspring. What a shame.
Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
371–380 of 770 posts
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#372Your 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 agree with much of what you say except that "women have different needs". I would say each person has different needs and to divide into the male/female binary is a fairly restrictive definition of gender as I have come to understand it. My wife and I have twins a little less than 2 years old, we are both ~35, but we live in rural-ish NH not SV. She has taken the last 2+ years off for the pregnancy and to function…
You have describe a situation where you and your wife decided on priorities in your life and acted accordingly. You both decided that personal career goals were secondary to raising your kids. It's a mystery to me why this is not seen as normal. Everything involves trade-offs. It's not possible to be present, involved parents and spend 60-80 hours a week on a career. Choose one or the other, and don't complain about how unfair it is.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, my mom always rebelled at the feminist push to have women do men's work as the goal (without valuing work women already did). Join the military, kill people etc. I'm 100% for that, but it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids, perhaps the most important thing for society and with INCREDIBLE costs (if done badly) and benefits (if done well) to everyone. What's even more interesting, upvalue work…
> it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child support. The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not a downside! It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
> In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income.
... and half of asset appreciation, and in some cases (it varies) half of pension.
I will also add that it’s not just mothers. It’s any spouse. I’ve seen successful women come out on the raw end of this deal during divorce.
I mention this not as a grievance, rather just an observation that people who are married, both male and female, are sometimes surprised at asset allocation during a divorce with regards to “passive” investments and business ownership (e.g, a self-owned business that has grown).
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, my mom always rebelled at the feminist push to have women do men's work as the goal (without valuing work women already did). Join the military, kill people etc. I'm 100% for that, but it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids, perhaps the most important thing for society and with INCREDIBLE costs (if done badly) and benefits (if done well) to everyone. What's even more interesting, upvalue work…
> it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child support. The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not a downside! It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
That's a weird contortion of logic. Your point is still that raising children isn't an economically valuable activity, unless you also think that men should be paid somewhere around 2x if they are supporting a stay-at-home mom...
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, my mom always rebelled at the feminist push to have women do men's work as the goal (without valuing work women already did). Join the military, kill people etc. I'm 100% for that, but it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids, perhaps the most important thing for society and with INCREDIBLE costs (if done badly) and benefits (if done well) to everyone. What's even more interesting, upvalue work…
Every human being can value traditional female work (or, more broadly, human obligations to each other) more than money. But we seem to want to be paid. It's interesting that socializing the payments seems to strike people as more freeing than just social obligation. This seems like the kind of thinking that eventually requires payments to give up the thrill of killing each other.
> But we seem to want to be paid. It's interesting that socializing the payments seems to strike people as more freeing than just social obligation.
It's not that we _want_ to be paid. It's that we _need_ to be paid, because in order to raise a child you need a stable source of critical things for many years:
- food & water
- shelter (and heat)
- clothing
- waste disposal
If I wanted to take several years entirely away from work to raise a child, I would still have to have those things. How can I afford those things if I am not getting paid?
It's not about valuing _being paid_, it's about valuing the things that are necessary to raise a child.
You tell me how to acquire those things without being paid, and then we can analyze while people value being paid more than the social obligations.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years > actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires I find your view sexist and disturbing. 99% men would love to take couple of years off with kids as well. But face even more obstacles!
Try this: s/women/people/g If taking a break to focus on parenting was more acceptable, anyone (man/woman/nonbinary) who wanted to do this would benefit. Many careers are built around this idea that you spend 5-10 years, with no breaks, in your late 20s and 30s working on something. What if taking a substantial chunk of time off was more common (for anyone)?
Try this: s/men/paypigs/g
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And people wonder why the birth rate is continuing to decline We’re at 7.8 billion humans on this planet and rising. I don’t think we have to worry about the birth rate declining. If anything, we should do everything in our power to lower it as much as we can.
While that's fundamentally true, it's not like humanity would fare particularly well 50 years in the future if everyone stopped having children for 20 years right now.
Most of Africa would do a whole lot better if their birth rates declined rapidly. They still have huge child mortality rates despite the advances in the west and all the aid that comes from that. These things take time to make their way to all corners of the remote world.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child support. The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not a downside! It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
Child support is intended to cover the expenses of the child - food, clothing, education, medical, etc. It's not meant to pay for the time spent by the custodial parent in actually doing the parenting, nor any sort of "opportunity cost" of not being otherwise engaged in a paying job. Translated to HN-world: "I'm going work on a FOSS project full-time!" World: "Great; we'll pay for your server! You won't lose a dime!"…
You can always choose to work and send the child to daycare.
Providing your own daycare instead of working is a lifestyle choice, why does the opportunity cost of that choice have to be shouldered by someone else?
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
The value behind that attitude is that it is a problem to think that women are the ones expected to choose staying-at-home, when culturally this expectation should be distributed equally among genders.
Yes, exactly. I am disappointed (but not sneering nor contemptuous) when I find out that another one of my well-educated and ambitious female peers has decided to become a stay-at-home mom. Not because I don't think it's a valuable or valid role to play, but because I have absolutely zero equivalent male peers who have done the same thing. Another well-educated women who choose to give up her career and stay at home,…
All of the time when I hear that commentary, it has to do with them finding stay-at-home moms unintelligent, petty, vapid.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#380I 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…
Amen. I really don’t understand the stigma around having children when you’re young. It should be the norm.
Had my one and only child at 21 (wife is 10 years older than I am, mind), never once regretted it and my career never suffered (went from a $12/hr tech support job to being a decently paid DevOps engineer over a 4-year time span following our daughters birth).
Am I on a more extreme end of the spectrum? Absolutely, and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone; but I’m happy with the choice I made.