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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#631

Post by kaitai »

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…

I don't disagree with your larger point, rayiner, about "figur[ing] out a way to allow women to have careers and also children". But I agree with the GP poster (hycaria) that the top poster (astan?) creates a false dichotomy, that one must either have a high pressure grinding 100-hr-week job or be a SAHM, which are certainly mutually exclusive. Many of us do just work 40-50 hours per week. Further improvements in work-life balance and support for families of all kinds would definitely be good for the US.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#632

Post by hinkley »

underpand wrote: post #597
hinkley wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to blame this on 'toxic masculinity', but I think there are a lot of men who would make allies for this sort of work if they would stop for a moment and think about what's good for them instead of toeing the party line. I am deeply convinced that I would be as productive at 32 hours a week as I am at 40, ±5%. And the +5% in particular interests me, because it would say a lot about how we are mishandling…

This is a baseless generalization of men. Men are not an obstacle to a 32 hour work week.

So brave.

Who is working 60-80 hours a week, regularly? Who is running those companies? Who is funding those companies?

Microsoft didn’t change until most of management had kids. Why do you suppose that is?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#633

Post by kaitai »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #569
AussieWog93 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with no (monetary) compensation? I suspect, very few. Literally every single person that has children does this. That covers almost 90% of the population.

Every single person who has children takes 2-4 years off from work? (as300's original comment, five posts parent to this one.) No, I'm pretty sure that 90% of the population does not do that.

I just don't understand why 2-4 years off work is the ideal. Have you spent 2-4 years with a baby/toddler? The moments of delight are interspersed with poop and boredom and any human would want a break. I think the neo-American ideal of having a single adult human hover over a child non-stop for four years to give them the "best possible childhood" is really f(*&ed up. As a child certainly my parents were important but playing without them, with other kids, out in nature were all highlights! Children are not hothouse plants.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#634

Post by kaitai »

centimeter wrote: post #341
random5634 wrote: post #236

Earlier 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 Because she already collects a massive amount of utility associated with raising her own children. The economics of paying people to raise their own children doesn't make sense; the externality allocations are completely wrong. I'm sure you can imagine some of the perverse incentives that come into play. A woman benefits from raising her own kids (with an as…

Can you explain to me the utility I get from raising my kid? I'm not really a kid person, you should know up front.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#635

Post by sokoloff »

paledot wrote: post #623
lettergram wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the people HN haven’t spent much time with people out of the “bubble”. “Trigger warning” This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight. 90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage gro…

Wage stagnation has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with the obscenely rich being permitted to get obscenely richer. It's disappointing that your friends have fallen for that lie.

Nothing to do with it is a strong claim.

Do you believe that labor is a market that does not generally behave like other markets in terms of supply and demand for price discovery? Do you believe that immigration did not increase supply by more than it increased demand? I’m trying to tease apart and understand your certainty that there is no downward pressure on wages from immigration.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#636

Post by wjamesg »

bennysonething wrote: post #433

My wife went through the hell of a lot of failed rounds of IVF. It's way worse for a woman. It was bad for me in a different way, and not nearly as bad as what my wife had to do. However this was our choice, I don't demand that the world should change to help. She works a zero contract min wage job. We didn't demand anything of anyone else we had our own goals. Edit: my heart goes out to anyone suffering through IVF.…

Similar experience here. Most people have no idea

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#637

Post by sowjetthrowaway »

paledot wrote: post #623
lettergram wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the people HN haven’t spent much time with people out of the “bubble”. “Trigger warning” This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight. 90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage gro…

Wage stagnation has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with the obscenely rich being permitted to get obscenely richer. It's disappointing that your friends have fallen for that lie.

its basic supply and demand. the wealthy encourage mass immigration because it makes the cost of labour cheaper in the economies they run businesses in.

see: h1b visas and ultra pro immigration silicon valley companies

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#638

Post by kaitai »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #520
kaitai wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and disagree. During my PhD, I had several women friends have kids. It was a great time to have kids other than the poverty thing, if you had a supportive advisor. But what was not great was the lack of structure around it, by which I mean clear and equitable maternity leave policies for people in this sort-of-employee, sort-of-student position which many PhD students in STEM inhabit. But I gotta say I don't…

My brother-in-law, a grad student in Seattle, has six months of paternity leave. Not sure how old a practice that is. I'm not sure what kind of lifestyle would lead to a kid with only two adult contacts - most stay at home parents I've known are involved in multiple social groups aimed at parents and kids, even decades ago my mother took us to playgroups and swapped babysitting time with others to get that time alone…

MIT apparently just instituted some parental leave policies for grad students. I go my PhD about ten years ago, and we did not have parental leave policies across departments at that time.

What bugs me about much of the discussion is that many of the commenters here are talking about how ideal a stay-at-home parent (mom) is, while not acknowledging that fact that actually being a stay-at-home parent involves lots of not staying at home and making arrangements so that you can get time not with your kid or doing less intensive supervision of your kid, but still firmly holding that you are more virtuous if you are sitting on your porch drinking wine with other mommies while the kids play, or cleaning up their poop, than if you are in a standup about what's happening this sprint and your kid is in daycare playing with the other kids and having poop cleaned up by someone who gets some money for the task. Something just seems lost in the rhetoric.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#639

Post by kaitai »

pc86 wrote: post #242
antisthenes wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Exactly this. Generous maternity leave and at least 0.25x paternity leave. I am not a woman, so I can't possibly begin to imagine how tough pregnancy is on a body. I also rea…

There's zero legitimate reason to gender parental leave either way. Not because "muh equality" or sexism or anything like that, but it should be "new kid == n weeks leave," whether you're the biological mother, father, adoptive parent, had a biological child via surrogate, whatever.

Gotta disagree. Bleeding, bleeding, bleeding, tears, pelvic instability, trouble pooping, breast milk coming in, mastitis, difficulty walking for several weeks, hormonal changes to sleep ability. People who give birth need time to physically heal. Some have an easy time, others are still shuffling around in mesh underpants with witch hazel and aloe soaked hygiene pads at four weeks post birth. (Search for padsicle to learn about it.)

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#640

Post by tomcam »

lgleason wrote: post #619
AussieWog93 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James Damore went a bit further than the author did. He also didn't take care to avoid offense and misunderstanding when talking about certain topics. For example, he mentioned that women, on average, have more neuroticism. He's technically correct in terms of the psychological definition of the word (women will, on average, experience higher levels of anxiety than men when exposed to the same level of negative stimu…

My wife was friends with Damore during the time of the memo, publicly stated she supported his views and was torn to shreds for it so you are correct.

She is a hero. Please thank her for me.
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