My partner is an academic. I am an academic. We both have tenure-track jobs in different universities -- and different countries. I really, _desperately_ want children some day; I don't quite have the guts to tell her _how much_ I _inherently know_ I do, but I think she knows, and I know that some day she does too -- but it won't work until we're in the same country. We're just getting to that point where we _really_ should start sprogging soon, but because of society, we can't. I know I'm in for a tough ride in the future, but I love her, don't want to leave her, and therefore don't like thinking about it and put my head in the sand.
Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
521–530 of 770 posts
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#522Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not clear what you're asking for exactly, but the solution is obvious: give whatever it is that you want to provide to EVERYONE, regardless of their gender, and whether or not they actually have children. Special treatment for everyone.
This is a nice sentiment, but doing so would have unintended consequences. For example, in most top universities, they give roughly the same leave to new fathers as new mothers. New mothers use this time to care for their baby, but many new fathers use this time as an extended sabbatical/research leave. Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book. Then when it comes time for…
My adviser used his paternity leave to interview at other jobs and then leave half his grad students behind because his wife thought New Orleans was a third world country. Still rankles me.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#524Very good article about the poster child for this type of family planning:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/01/27/f...
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but those people are the one-in-100-million types. Most people have lack-luster careers in their 20s, which pick up in their 30s and peak in their 40s-50s. It makes a lot of sense for the average person to prioritize family building in their early 20s so that the kids are more self-sufficient right at the time where your career is taking off. Plus, if your blessed enough to have parents who can help out, having…
> It makes a lot of sense for the average person to prioritize family building in their early 20s I'd say it used to make sense before the late 1970's when wages started stagnating. As the gap has grown the average person in their early 20's has to struggle to afford to pay for their own basic needs, much less trying to afford to have kids. Once their career is starting to pick up in their 30s they finally have the f…
Oddly, the wage stagnation really took off as we doubled the workforce over less than a generation...
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#526Your 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…
> Your 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.
Yes! I wish we could talk about this more openly and honestly. As you note, we still structure workplaces around the needs of married men with stay-at-home spouses, and insofar as women can succeed within that framework, it comes at a real cost to their families. There is a huge gap between how many children women want, and how many they are having: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility...
> As a result, the gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years. (From 1972 to 2016, men have expressed almost exactly the same ideal fertility rates as women: In a given year, they average just 0.04 children below what women say is ideal.)
It does't make any sense to me to structure career paths to necessarily put the major pressure points during the same time period when biology dictates people will be having kids. Kids really don't require intensive parenting for all that long. Our oldest is already very manageable at 8. I'll only be 45 when our youngest hits that age. At that point, I'll have at least another two decades before retirement, but parenting obligations will go down a lot. I'll be twiddling my thumbs waiting for grandkids, I guess. But I would have preferred to back load the career stuff a bit so the major milestones weren't happening while I was trying to parent toddlers.
Corporate policies such as paying for egg freezing are a really unfortunate example of the male-centric nature of workplaces. I'm sure it's well-intentioned, but in effect the message is that women must shift their biological timeline to accommodate the workplace.
Not only that, but egg freezing is not magic. More often than not, IVF using frozen eggs does not work: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expensive-lottery...
> The data that does exist is not overwhelmingly positive. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 21 percent of cycles among patients using their own frozen eggs ultimately ended in live births. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which uses a slightly different metric than the CDC, showed odds that top out around 11 percent, depending on age.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't assume you don't have kids, but what you said does not align with my experience at all. I have two kids from different relationships, and as dad, in both cases, I calmed down my kids better than the mothers did. They both relied on me specially in the worst baby crying situations. I don't think I am an exception in ability or anything, I just cared to go learn a bit about babies, that's all. Thought a couple…
So how do you do it? I want to be good at calming babies too!
Dad here as well and while there are a few actual tricks (which you can google and add to your arsenal), what I found was to approach it as a puzzle and try some logical things first (wet/soiled?, hungry?, needs burped?, over-tired?, too hot? [rare], too cold? [less rare]) and if it wasn't one of those, well then here we go: just keep trying things somewhat randomly, taking notes later as to what worked and what didn't. Some kids like to be squeezed, others talked to, others picked up, others tickled, others rocked, and it changes 15-minute to 15-minute period.
My wife was better at some aspects or episodes than I was (especially if it was feeding as I could feed from a bottle eventually once I thawed and warmed and bottled the milk, but that took an eternity in crying infant terms), but I was better at staying calm and intrigued by how to solve the puzzle this time. If she got upset/frustrated because our infant was upset, nothing good came of it, and I am personality-wise better suited to plowing through that situation without [much visible] frustration.
Assuming it's not a fatal problem, eventually something will work; in the history of the world, that's never failed to be true.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not clear what you're asking for exactly, but the solution is obvious: give whatever it is that you want to provide to EVERYONE, regardless of their gender, and whether or not they actually have children. Special treatment for everyone.
This is a nice sentiment, but doing so would have unintended consequences. For example, in most top universities, they give roughly the same leave to new fathers as new mothers. New mothers use this time to care for their baby, but many new fathers use this time as an extended sabbatical/research leave. Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book. Then when it comes time for…
I'm not proud to share this anecdote, but I pitched a VC firm wearing a long-sleeve shirt to cover up the bracelet that let me back into the maternity wards for the first 48 hours of my kid's life.
To the VC partner's credit, he stopped the meeting when he saw the bracelet and I explained what it was (and re-scheduled the meeting for a couple weeks later, so it wasn't a blow-off; I still didn't get funded, but it left a positive impression).
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it economically more efficient to have kids go to daycares (which benefit from economies of scale) and have both parents work and pay taxes? Of course some people prefer to raise their kids themselves, but that seems more like an expensive lifestyle choice than a necessity.
There are lots of studies showing that being raised by your own parents is far more beneficial than a day care. But as you point out, that's a privilege reserved for the wealthy. Paying people to be stay at home parents would make it a viable choice for a lot more people. It would also help reverse the trend of the fertility rate dropping below 2.1
Please share those studies.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
#530As a male, I have always insisted to my wife to get embryos frozen.
I don't understand her reticence on the subject.
It is just an insurance policy for the future. You insure against unexpected events. Why not insure against changing your mind about having 1 (or more) children ?
*Comment : the author should have explored surrogacy. It may have made sense for her given her lifestyle / work demands.