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After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

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Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#41

Post by [deleted] »

magduf wrote: post #17
nickelcitymario wrote: post #9

While the idea of the article is entertaining, the data is ridiculous. 3 data points: '00, '05, and '10. The policy came into play in '07. Yet the downward trend was already visible in '05. It barely changed for '10. A more interesting (and honest) take of the data is in women's desire for more children. It was on a decline in '05, but ticked up sharply for '10. So if I was writing this, I would have said: "After men…

Here's my snarky theory about it: after men got paternity leave, they were forced to be at home and help with the child-rearing, which took some of the burden off the mothers. This made the mothers want more kids because now they didn't have to do so much work. However, now the men got to see firsthand what a pain in the ass kids are, instead of being able to relegate that work to their wives, so now they don't want…

[deleted]

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#42

Post by thinkingemote »

basetop wrote: post #34
magduf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my snarky theory about it: after men got paternity leave, they were forced to be at home and help with the child-rearing, which took some of the burden off the mothers. This made the mothers want more kids because now they didn't have to do so much work. However, now the men got to see firsthand what a pain in the ass kids are, instead of being able to relegate that work to their wives, so now they don't want…

That's the pathetic "liberal" sexist caricature you see on TV and media. And like most caricature in media, it's nonsense. The problem is that both men and women are deciding to having less kids. And that trend has continued with maternity leave, paternity leave and even paying people to have children. In poor countries, they have more kids. Is that because of your caricature or lack of it? Europe has provided great…

The article was saying women wanted more kids and men (if they took paternity leave, in Spain) wanted less, it's not nonsense and it's not sexist nor a charicature. it's pretty much (but paraphrased) what the research is about!

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#43

Post by tathougies »

magduf wrote: post #19
tathougies wrote: post #13

California's (or san Francisco's... Not sure) six weeks of paid paternity leave made this dad want more kids. Babies are the best! Maybe if they gave more time off they'd want more children

After seeing other peoples' ADHD kids and what misery it is to try to parent them, I don't have much desire to have any kids.

Meh. We only find children have attention issues because we have outsized expectations of them. My mother was a public school teacher and the truth is most teachers were simply too out of shape to keep up with the kids and so labeled them ADD. For the most part, if you acknowledge children are children, they seem a lot easier.

But I'm not going to try to convince you. The more people who dont want kids the more I can have!

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#44

Post by r00fus »

Domenic_S wrote: post #36
roflchoppa2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not spacing them out correctly, you have to wait till the oldest one can help take care of the youngest one.

Also depends on the temperament of the kids. My young daughter can dress herself, brush her hair, get her cereal, essentially take herself from waking up to ready to leave the house with minimum input from me. My son on the other hand will get distracted with toys, run around the house playing, and generally takes 90% of my attention to get ready for the day. 100% if I don't want a whirlwind of clothes and toys to cl…

Chiming in as someone with identical twins, one of them is far more self-reliant, while the other one has her head in the clouds most of the time.

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#45

Post by aidenn0 »

pwinnski wrote: post #28
dk1138 wrote: post #16

As a dad who has taken two 12w paternity, I realized a few things after the birth of my second child. • There was no limit to the amount of love I could give to my second child. • There was a limit of time and attention I could share with both children which I felt started to hamper my ability to share that love. • The logistics of a second child made everything take exponentially more time. Meals, transport, dressin…

As father to three children, my experience is that you only think two is exponentially more complex than one. At least with two, they don't always outnumber you!

Also, thanks to combinatorics, the number of sibling fights that can happen increases superlinearly:

With a simplifying assumption of only pairs of siblings getting into fights, its C(n,2) which is 0,1,3,6,10,15 for 1-6 kids. I have a friend with 6 kids and can confirm that there are roughly 15x as many fights between the siblings as friends with 2 kids. Age differences do matter though (if your kids are much more than about 10 years apart, they tend to clash a bit less because they are less in competition with each other).

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#46

Post by geebee »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #33
pwinnski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As father to three children, my experience is that you only think two is exponentially more complex than one. At least with two, they don't always outnumber you!

"It's a whole different game when you have to switch from man on man coverage to zone defense."

And eventually, perimeter ;)

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#47

Post by magduf »

Domenic_S wrote: post #37
magduf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After seeing other peoples' ADHD kids and what misery it is to try to parent them, I don't have much desire to have any kids.

You do you, I came to the conclusion a long time ago that anyone who says "I don't want kids" should be left alone on the matter. On the flip side I think a lot of parents do this to themselves. Kids are not born knowing how to be polite, respectful, play well with others, etc, it has to be trained. It is an exhausting thing to train but it pays dividends. Ironically the less effort you spend on this the worse your k…

I don't know about a clinical diagnosis of ADHD, but in my observation, American kids certainly act this way, and have terrible behavior in general. You're right, this stuff has to be trained, but American parents have been failing badly at this for a while now.

I was recently in Japan on vacation, and by contrast, all the children there were extremely-well behaved. It made me think I might actually like to have a kid even, something I never feel when I'm in the US because kids (and adults too) are so poorly behaved.

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#48

Post by magduf »

bazooka_penguin wrote: post #40
basetop wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the pathetic "liberal" sexist caricature you see on TV and media. And like most caricature in media, it's nonsense. The problem is that both men and women are deciding to having less kids. And that trend has continued with maternity leave, paternity leave and even paying people to have children. In poor countries, they have more kids. Is that because of your caricature or lack of it? Europe has provided great…

I think you've walked around the part where traditional cultures actively pushed women to get married and have kids, forced even, through arranged marriages or selling them to basically go live with the man's family. It's not so much as drawing back benefits as it is literally forcing them either through extreme social pressure and isolation or physical force. Anything less has been a slow decline as we slowly drift…

Exactly. Birthrates were high in the past largely because women had no power, no choices about their future, and birth control didn't really exist. Their entire value in society was as an incubator and sex toy. Now that's changed, and surprise surprise, they don't want to have a bunch of kids, because kids are a lot of work.

Add into this that families have changed. It used to be that people lived with their extended families, so parents had help raising kids, from the grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, etc. Now no one lives with their extended families, and have gone to the "nuclear family" model, and raising a bunch of kids with only 2 parents is just too much work, so parents stop at 1 or 2, if they have any at all.

Paying women to have kids isn't going to work unless you're going to pay them enough to hire a full-time nanny.

Re: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

#49

Post by magduf »

tathougies wrote: post #43
magduf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After seeing other peoples' ADHD kids and what misery it is to try to parent them, I don't have much desire to have any kids.

Meh. We only find children have attention issues because we have outsized expectations of them. My mother was a public school teacher and the truth is most teachers were simply too out of shape to keep up with the kids and so labeled them ADD. For the most part, if you acknowledge children are children, they seem a lot easier. But I'm not going to try to convince you. The more people who dont want kids the more I can…

Nothing's preventing you from having all the kids you want.
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