Female Founder Secrets: Fertility • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#671

Post by azundo » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

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…

The data don't support this story. Time spent with kids is going up, not down, especially for parents with higher education: https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#672

Post by noisy_boy » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

We all keep talking about providing more facilities to working mothers but no-one talks about providing the social structure to keep previous generations together with current generation. Its like a taboo to advocate grandparents staying with parents and children.

There was a reason my parents could devote their energies towards whatever they were doing outside of raising me without having to go to extremes of waiting till their 40s etc - my grandma/aunts were with us. I was basically taken care of by a different loving person every few hours whenever my mother was busy. Granted my parents didn't have to deal with the stress of startups/corporate grinds but I'm sure they had their own share of stresses of a different kind (e.g. none of the technological comforts/tools we take for granted today). But atleast they got to deal with those stresses without just having each other for support. Sure, there were conflicts but then those are everywhere anyway. Unfortunately with people growing up in nuclear families, they do not have the background/emotional tools/training to deal with such conflicts creating a self-perpetuating cycle.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#673

Post by azundo » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

arvinsim wrote: post #610

sizzle wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I never understood was if there are less female software devs simply because they genuinely value others things more in life than staring at pixels on a computer screen (e.g. raising a family) and if this is the case in other time intensive fields such as medicine and law? Biological clock and childrearing are well understood from an evolutionary perspective and are things that affect men disproportionately less…

The ironic thing is that the earliest programmers are women. I think I saw or read that the reason why there is such a gender disparity in programming is because programming was marketed as a male-oriented activity in the 80's. Sadly, I can't find the source for that anymore.

I heard it on planet money a few years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#674

Post by davidn20 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #634

centimeter wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The utility is your kids being raised. For example, it doesn't make sense to pay you to clean your own room. People get pay because they provide value to another person, not because they provide value to themselves.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#675

Post by centimeter » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #634

centimeter wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Can you explain to me the utility I get from raising my kid

This is deeply instinctive - if you don't feel this, most likely you have been deeply mindfucked by modern society. Evolution, obviously, ensures that you get rewarded with lots of utils for doing the single most important thing you can do from an evolutionary perspective.

I'm not saying you've done anything wrong; this isn't your fault. But just try to imagine someone from a healthy society (in the sense of "the society is not at risk of collapse") asking a question like "what, exactly, do I get out of having children?"

Even in unhealthy societies like ours, if you can convince people to raise children, they almost uniformly report higher life satisfaction (both vs people who don't have children and vs themselves before having children).

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#676

Post by centimeter » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

curveaway wrote: post #594

frenchy wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a inclination (not specifically modern) to mythologize traditional institutions. For example, the notion of a medieval knight in full plate. The modern notion of traditional parenting is about 60 years old. Before that, things were much less straightforward, unless you were rich, because the absense of modern machinery and whatnot meant that that often both parents had to work.

Hell raising kids in the 60s & 70s is a lot less work. You could send the kids off into the neighborhood to play with all the other kids and only interact with them when they had issues. Otherwise they would rather be out exploring the local woods or streets with all the other kids, and family being around to help out. Now with the legal necessity of 24/7 adult supervision before they are 12, that is gone and as a re…

The preponderance of research suggests that modern humans in high-IQ societies are substantially K-overselected. That is, we are investing an irrational amount of resources into a small number of average children when by basically any rational analysis, we should be having more children and putting in much less effort. As you say, part of this is distortion from the legal system.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#677

Post by Agentlien » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

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 strongly agree with this. Personally, I am a Swedish father who works in a typically stressful industry (game development) and I've been able to take a good amount of time off to care for both of my children.

In Sweden doing so is quite normal and an employer is not allowed to object in any way, as long as you give a few months' notice.

For each of my children my wife and I took two months together at birth, then she stayed at home for another ten months while I worked. After that I spent six months on parental leave while she went back to work.

This means our children have each had a year and a half of at least one of us being home with them before they started at daycare. It's been a magical time and I feel blessed to have had that opportunity. Months where every day was built entirely around just playing and learning together.

Of course, you might note that my wife was home for about twice as long as I was. This was definitely a financial decision and shows there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#678

Post by mariojv » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #659

Negitivefrags wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US they have the concept of filing jointly. If you have one partner earning a lot more than the other then you can get tax bracket advantages of both when you pool your incomes together.

Interesting. I knew some countries in Europe had joint filing. I was unaware that the US did. Does anyone know what the requirements are for the non-working individual to be considered for joint filing? Say if you're on a working visa, but your spouse is not, presumably you don't get the tax benefits?

I believe you'd still be able to file jointly if you're on a working visa and your spouse is not working, even if they don't reside in the US. The only caveat is that their worldwide income would be subject to US taxation if they have income from abroad.

https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/family/claiming-a-non-c...

"In general, resident aliens are taxed just like U.S. citizens. You would list a resident-alien spouse on your return and provide his or her Social Security number (SSN). If your spouse is not eligible for a Social Security number, he or she will need to apply for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) from the IRS.

If your spouse is a nonresident alien, you can treat your spouse as a resident alien for tax purposes. If you choose this option, you can file a joint tax return with your spouse and have an increased standard deduction. You increase your standard deduction, but all your spouse's worldwide income will be taxed by the United States."

Reference on "Standard Deduction": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deduction

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#679

Post by Chris2048 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

Proziam wrote: post #668

Chris2048 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would require that culture, broadly, stop believing women need to have a formal job No it doesn't, the gender imbalance in one industry can cancel out over all industries.

I think the point the commenter above was making was this: "If women cannot work while simultaneously having/raising children there will always be at least a slight difference in the amount of men vs women in the workforce."

But OP specifically mentions NYT articles saying:

  a gender ratio any lower than 50:50 in any role at a company is proof positive that the company is evil

This can happen even if women overall spend as much time in the workforce.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#680

Post by filleduchaos » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #562

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…

I am not a female, but I'm a dad who quit the industry a year ago so when my wife was pregnant with our first child. I think what you're missing is the fact raising a child is something that all human beings are biologically engineered to find overwhelmingly fulfilling, yet office environments are not designed with employee fulfillment (or even basic wellbeing) in mind. Once you become a parent, over time your viewpo…

> the fact raising a child is something that all human beings are biologically engineered to find overwhelmingly fulfilling

This is very much not a fact, and I really wish society as a whole would stop pretending that absolutely everybody wants to be an actual parent. Then maybe the people who do find parenting fulfilling can do that while those of us that don't can make up for them instead of being pressured into a role that we can't and/or don't want.