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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#541

Post by d1zzy »

astan wrote: post #67

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. 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 wish we had more focus in allowing people to transition back from taking a few years off to raise young kids, and it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work.

I don't know about you but I'm pretty certain I'd be a worse SWE after 4 years break. Worse than I was before the break and much worse than I'd have been if I didn't take the break (and not just because I would have become better with practice but also because being a good SWE means keeping up with new stuff happening all the time). I personally see it as dropping a level on the company engineering ladder, it's not the end of the world but it's definitely a regression, regardless of the reason for the break.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#542

Post by d1zzy »

rayiner wrote: post #536
hycaria wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am female too and I really don’t relate to this kind of discourse. If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fer…

> If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without ma…

> This viewpoint is common, but doesn't scale. Having kids isn't a "life choice." It's a basic requirement for a sustainable human society.

I disagree, I think in the countries and social spheres where this is an _actual_ choice for women, it is very much a "life choice" (because the rest of the world makes more than enough children to resolve the issues of "sustainable human society"). When we'll get to a point where world wide population growth drops below 2.1 factor, maybe then we can start reconsidering this policy.

And that said, longer term, what is not sustainable is a continuing growth of population, not reducing it. Yes I realize reducing population invalidates many things currently supporting our civilization but having to deal with the pain of those changes seems much better than dealing with the issues of an overpopulated planet.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#543

Post by [deleted] »

lhorie wrote: post #517
hycaria wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am female too and I really don’t relate to this kind of discourse. If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fer…

Sometimes I wonder how much of this idea of "maternity = bad" is self-imposed and/or a false impression. > When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. Is this really that common? As an anecdote, a few years ago, my kid's preschool teacher announced she was quitting half way through the school year due to health re…

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#544

Post by nicoburns »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #504
sangnoir wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. I think the brutal/ultra-competitive work culture is uniquely American - Europe seems to do OK with giving working parents generous amounts of time (and money!) to be…

Four weeks vacation, and 6 months (?) parental leave. Four years is a big reach, even for Europe. But yes, Europe does much better at this than the US. Can the US culture change enough to give what Europe gives? Maybe, but I'm doubtful. But until it does, my point remains - in the world we actually live in, you can't have it all. You have to choose between various less-than-what-you-want options.

Not to mention 35-40 hour work weeks.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#545

Post by foolinaround »

As a society, generalizing, aren't we better off having kids? So, should'nt we start optimizing such that it leans a lot more to being supporting of women who have children in their prime, with opportunities provided once their children past middle-school or whatever the age the mother feels like she does not need to be as hands-on?

Just like we have affirmative action for races today, can't we have affirmative action for moms who are returning back to their careers after a decade out, with specialized courses to help them catch up, etc.

This way, more women will feel incentivized to have babies and rear them without any guilt. Healthier children are a future healthier world.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#546

Post by rayiner »

d1zzy wrote: post #542
rayiner wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without ma…

> This viewpoint is common, but doesn't scale. Having kids isn't a "life choice." It's a basic requirement for a sustainable human society. I disagree, I think in the countries and social spheres where this is an _actual_ choice for women, it is very much a "life choice" (because the rest of the world makes more than enough children to resolve the issues of "sustainable human society"). When we'll get to a point wher…

> I disagree, I think in the countries and social spheres where this is an _actual_ choice for women, it is very much a "life choice" (because the rest of the world makes more than enough children to resolve the issues of "sustainable human society"). When we'll get to a point where world wide population growth drops below 2.1 factor, maybe then we can start reconsidering this policy.

That's not really a rebuttal to my point--just an assertion that we should take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity while we can. It tells us nothing about what a sustainable liberal society looks like.

And the fact is that the arbitrage opportunity won't last long. If you're 30-something, the world population is currently projected to start declining within your lifetime.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#547

Post by powerslacker »

theptip wrote: post #218
powerslacker wrote: post #37

I'm not so sure freezing eggs is sound advice. Lord Winston, who is professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, warned that it was "a very unsuccessful technology" and said: "The number of eggs that actually result in a pregnancy after freezing is about 1%." He later clarified he was referring to live births. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51463488#:~:text=Lord%20Wins... . “It’s not like I would disco…

I don't agree with this take. IVF live birth rates are something like 30% of implantations. e.g. see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7139227/ . The article you're linking even says that Winston is using the wrong number, and spends most of its time explaining why he's wrong; > Lord Winston's 1% figure was referring to the proportion of all frozen eggs thawed for use in fertility treatment which result in…

I made my statement and posted those quotes because a woman should prioritize children over her career if she desires them. I don't think that there is "sound advice" for women who want to defer having children until they are in their 40s. The odds of a woman having a successful pregnancy are much better if they are under 40. It is easy to see through just the anecdotal reports that many women either thought or were convinced that freezing their eggs succeeds far more often than it actually does in the real world.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#548

Post by Arete314159 »

JPKab wrote: post #392
dcow wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy. And this happens way more than people lead on and for the exact BS reaso…

As a father who had his first child at 23 years of age, the corporate/SV world is just AWFUL to women who don't want to have to rely on IVF to have kids. And often the worst perpetrators of said awfulness are other women who themselves are delaying having kids. They have sacrificed, and really don't like the women who they view as "not making the same sacrifice". It's all around just awful to pit human biology agains…

The feminist movement, the one in the 70's, wanted all the things the top commenter wanted. It asked for structural change. Subsidized daycare, wages for housework, better maternity leave, all that stuff.

The pushback from the men in power was enormous, and the eventual compromise was, "Ok, we'll grudgingly let you work in our companies, as long as you accept worse treatment, lower wages -- and most importantly, always pretend to be little men."

This isn't the fault of "the feminists." This is a bum deal that was the best women of the 80's could get, and then they tried to make it work.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#549

Post by nostrademons »

rayiner wrote: post #536
hycaria wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am female too and I really don’t relate to this kind of discourse. If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fer…

> If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without ma…

Steady states are the exception in nature, not the rule.

It's quite normal to have a population that increases exponentially, hits resource limits, and then decreases rapidly. (This was like literally 1/3 of my calculus class - it's a pretty classic example for coupled partial differential equations.) Eventually the population declines enough that the resource limits no longer apply, and people start having babies again. Population isn't a monolithic concept: there will always be some women who have children regardless of their incentives.

I'll just be happy if we can get there without war, famine, pestilence, and death, which are the normal results when a society hits resource limits.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#550

Post by shard »

sangnoir wrote: post #502
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The society as a whole seems to be as300's idea - which, in practice, means the government. If parents give up 10% of their career in order to give their kids a better childhood, are we willing to pay to make it up to them? My money is on "no way". If not that, the only other answer is the parents. Are you as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with n…

> You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. I think the brutal/ultra-competitive work culture is uniquely American - Europe seems to do OK with giving working parents generous amounts of time (and money!) to be…

>I think the brutal/ultra-competitive work culture is uniquely American

American work culture is only moderately competitive. Many Asian work cultures are much more competitive than the US, where women taking a break to have children will basically end their career (and indeed this is how many women plan their careers), and paternity leave greater than 2-3 days have only started to show up in the past few years. Most of the drive towards more parent-friendly policies actually come from the government, as they try to stem the tide of low birthrates emptying out the countryside.

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