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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#581

Post by underpand »

elliekelly wrote: post #150
dcow wrote: post #116

I think women have largely been presented a false promise by progressives: value and purpose is derived from work, go do what men do to be their equal. It’s not necessarily anybody’s fault, we live in a society where money is valued. But I wish we could structure society in a way such that the value of raising children, homemaking, is clearly communicated and understood. Being a mother without a snazzy career is frow…

> I think women have largely been presented a false promise by progressives: value and purpose is derived from work, go do what men do to be their equal. It’s not necessarily anybody’s fault, we live in a society where money is valued. But I wish we could structure society in a way such that the value of raising children, homemaking, is clearly communicated and understood. Being a mother without a snazzy career is fr…

> Why ask these questions only as they relate to women and motherhood? Why haven't men being presented a false promise that value and purpose is derived from work?

Men aren't presented with this false promise. Men are influenced to work through negative reinforcement. A man who doesn't have a career is judged harshly, much more so than women, by society and has a difficult time dating and finding a partner.

Men also have a higher economic need to work. Women have much higher social mobility, so women are less economically motivated to work. A low income man will stay poor unless he works himself out of his social class. A low income woman can much more easily marry a man with higher income than her to propel her social class and household income up.

Women are more often presented with the positive reinforcement of value and purpose from work because women deal with less negative reinforcement when not working.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#582

Post by d1zzy »

dcow wrote: post #116

I think women have largely been presented a false promise by progressives: value and purpose is derived from work, go do what men do to be their equal. It’s not necessarily anybody’s fault, we live in a society where money is valued. But I wish we could structure society in a way such that the value of raising children, homemaking, is clearly communicated and understood. Being a mother without a snazzy career is frow…

> but we should not discourage homemaking and stigmatize people who want to raise children.

Nor should we stigmatize those that do not have a career and do not have children. Because that's a thing too. So it rather seems that the stigma depends on having a career than having kids. Having kids is just a common reason for why many women might not have the time to have a career but not the only one.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#583

Post by d1zzy »

yocheckitdawg wrote: post #555
landryraccoon wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the data looks like if you regress happiness onto age for single women. I have no difficulty believing single, childless women are very happy in their 20s and 30s. I wonder though if that rapidly changes past 40. I would hypothesize the same effect happens for men as well.

Yea, dont get me wrong I think that being a childless woman in your 40s is particularly rough but I don't think it is easy for men either. Loneliness really starts to set in by that age.

Childless != lonely, or not having plenty of social contacts. Having kids tend to force one to deal with a certain number of issues which requires socializing of some form, so it may help for those that aren't naturally outgoing and sociable people but beyond that not so much IMO.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#584

Post by ZephyrBlu »

munificent wrote: post #462
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have learned that making relative comparisons is useless if you are not at the average. If you are more capable than the average person, sure you can settle for an around average outcome, but that is very unsatisfying. The way I perceive things is that I'm going to do something, I'll do it really well or not at all.

> sure you can settle for an around average outcome, Evaluating only a single outcome and deciding whether or not it is "average" is still doing an absolute evaluation and falling into the same trap. The actionable question is not, "How good of an outcome will I get if I do X?" It's "How will the outcome of doing X compare to the outcome of doing Y or Z instead?" I am in absolute terms a well below average medical pr…

> According to the philosophy "if I can't do something well I shouldn't do it at all", I should keep my hands clean

This is not what I meant.

What I mean is if I am going to put effort into something I'm not going to accept being mediocre.

There are plenty of things I suck at, and I'm fine with that because I put minimal effort into them.

But I won't put 10% effort into 10 things because I know I'll never get good at any of them like that. I'd rather put all my energy into 2-3 things.

If I'm to be a parent I want to be able to dedicate a lot of my energy towards it, not just the bare minimum (Which I understand is still a lot).

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#585

Post by liveoneggs »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #411
liveoneggs wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no it doesn't.

Look up 'motherhood penalty'. The wage gap between mothers and non-mothers is massive.

Being paid less because you took time off does not mean "no career". I know all about the gap because my wife lives it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#586

Post by curveaway »

john_moscow wrote: post #571
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…

Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a full-time job. It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience. It's not the sa…

It's a form of demographic debt. By increasing the workforce #, you decrease the amount of kids people have (because they can't afford the time to have many kids) but increase total GDP until you pay the piper later with decrease reproduction rates and more seniors that the economically productive.

I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester.

It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#587

Post by d1zzy »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #188
dcow wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I didn't say it needs to be a women, I am highlighting that there’s a stigma against women performing that role today. 2. The problem is exactly with the characterization (that you made) of the “more ambitious” route being the career route. Why do we assume having a career requires more ambition than wanting to raise a healthy family?

>1. I didn't say it needs to be a women, I am highlighting that there’s a stigma against women performing that role today. I'm not aware of any stigma from women being stay at home moms. My impression is that most, if not all, people are aware that money gives you power (or freedom, if you will). And who doesn't like freedom. There's also less security of income for everyone, so a household relying on one spouse's in…

> Because it's too easy to say "I want to raise a healthy family", therefore it's a poor signal. Proving yourself with work, well remunerated or not, is a better signal.

I think that's a fair thing to say but one of many's life unfair situations. I've seen some people put so much effort/work into homemaking that goes beyond of most people I know put into their jobs.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#588

Post by curveaway »

nostrademons wrote: post #549
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…

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 ag…

A steady indoor temperature of 68-72F is also not part of nature, but people get pretty grumpy if it is not the case.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#589

Post by chromanoid »

blackguardx wrote: post #575
rayiner wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There has been various research about Earth's carrying capacity. The numbers are controversial but it shouldn't be controversial that there is _some_ limit. I think we are going to have to adapt to a post-growth world. Or maybe things will grow in other ways. I am not worried about declining birth rates. It's not like we are heading for a "Children of Men" scenario. The population will stabilize before it goes to zer…

> Or maybe we will just grow people in vats.

Who will raise the people who were made in vats? Which is the real problem here, not who reproduces.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#590

Post by danielheath »

jxramos wrote: post #437
JPKab wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women across all income demographics desire men who make as much or more than them. It's a fundamental preference that OKCupid identified a long time ago. As a man, I don't fault this. The risk to a man of reproducing with a woman who isn't great at making money isn't as high, at a fundamental level, as it is for women. A man isn't incapacitated in any way by the act of reproducing. Nor is he prevented or blocked out…

> Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or morality. I still try to meditate on the evolutionary advances for sexual vs asexual reproduction to begin with. There's got to be a huge advantage of the separation of the sexes that is hard to fathom just because it's everywhere. Is it a springboard of genetic diversity that optimizes in ways we can't imagine otherwise? The 'compared to what' is always somethin…

Without sexual reproduction, you are limited to cloning + random mutation at each generation to generate diversity. This generates fast-growing, homogeneous populations which get wiped out as a group when circumstances change to no longer favor them.

Sexual reproduction lets you grab non-harmful mutations from another genetic lineage en masse at each and every generation. This means that when circumstances change you are far more likely to have at least one offspring which can adapt to the new situation.

Because it can take hundreds of generations for helpful mutations to appear, and changing circumstances can wipe out an entire homotype, the advantages of preserving genetic diversity outweigh the costs.

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