Hacker News Reader

Comment by elthran | Hacker News Reader

(Admission - I've only read the abstract)

I wonder if there is any/what the correlation is between the attrition rate of these females and pregnancy - is becoming pregnant a significant blocker to their survivorship rate?

View on HN

From the conclusion:

It is most implausible to suggest that giving birth and caring for young children is the predominant reason why female executive managers, who average 50 years old in our sample, quit. Other unobserved factors leading managers to attrit could include more un-pleasantness, indignities, and tougher unrewarding assignments at work, examples of factors that reduce the attraction of work without necessarily affecting productivity or human capital acquisition. Perhaps women are subject to this form of gender discrimination. Another hypothesis is that women acquire more nonmarket human capital than men throughout their lives, and hence find retirement a relatively attractive option.

Why shouldn't women quit at age 50 because of children? If they sacrificed family time for their career before, they might realize that suddenly there is not a lot of time left with their children before they will leave the house. Maybe at 50 they have secured enough money as well to be comfortable working less. Older men seem to be taking time off for family, too.

It's a shame that they have to discredit their paper by ending it with pure speculation ("could include...").

At 50 years old, most people's children would be having children of their own, let alone be out of the house. Retiring to spend more time with your adult children wouldn't make much sense when those children are likely just ramping up their own careers.

My mother semi-retired in her fifties to care for her grandchildren (providing free childcare so that my sister could continue her career). Perhaps this is a factor.

Definitely a possibility, especially since two incomes are becoming so necessary.

Not necessary, just desirable because people like buying things.

Considering it 'necessary' is actually part of what makes this a problem. If people knew how to want instead of need, they might next learn how to delay gratifying those wants. Instead, desire becomes confused with necessity and suddenly you can't live without an HDTV right now.

The median income per household member in the US was $23,535 in 2004[1]. Unfortunately I can't find a more recent census value for that. In the case of a household with two partners and at least one child, such as we're discussing here, I would think that more than ~$24,000 would be necessary.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income_per_household_me...

I'm 58 and my kid graduates high school this spring. And looking around at my workmates, I'm far from the exception, although I may be somewhat toward one end of the scale. Looking around, 50 seems entirely plausible, even if it's only a significant minority.

Data and people should probably not be divided into the majority and nothing else.

Maybe in barbaric parts of the world where people reproduce absurdly young in their 20s, but in most of the West reproduction is moving later in life in their 30s or 40s. If you start having children at 30 and have three kids at say 30, 34, and 38, at 50 your youngest would be in middle and high school and your oldest would be halfway through college (hopefully).

Yes, how dare those "barbaric" parts of the world give their children the best chance of being born healthy by reproducing at an optimal (physically speaking) point in their lifespan.

Us "civilized" countries will just sit back and act haughty while we try to deal with skyrocketing autism/developmental disorders/disabilities as our populations continue to give birth later and later in the fertile/viable part of their lifespan, thus significantly increasing the chances of developmental disabilities in our offspring.

Yup, that's a great idea. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

I didn't say countries, I said parts of the world. There are places even in America where misogyny is so entrenched that, like you, people treat women as nothing more than offspring incubators.

It's attitudes like yours that keep women out of the tech industry. At literally the same time that you're telling young men to take risks, do a startup, and try for the big win, you're telling women to do what? Stay at home and feel despondent while little Timmy says he doesn't have to for the 5000th time that day? That's an attitude for the 1950's, not modernity.

Not even going to touch the ableism in this comment. You're literally saying that people who are differently abled or neuroatypical are worthless.

You should be ashamed.

If you don't like it, don't have children. Use protection, have an abortion, give your kids up for adoption or send them to boarding school.

However, some people actually enjoy spending time with their kids...

No, we are talking about career women here, so they are more likely to have children later in life. I don't think the typical female CEO candidate had her first child at 18 years old.

If you had your first child age 35 (I think the official limit before physicians consider you late for having children), at 50 your oldest child will be 15.

Show me the data. Here's mine: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/childbearing/20120817_...

75% of women have their first child before age 30.

Sure, but a population of 'all women' is different than the comment you are replying to, which was specifically addressing female executives. Here's the data for that, which supports their conclusion - over 50% have their first child in their 30s. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/15/for-most-hig...

That definitely supports their assertion, thank you.

I didn't mean to up vote, sorry; less than 25% of women are CEOs, and there's no indication of overlap between these two groups.

The speculation is clearly indicated, and is no discredit to the paper. In fact, it is to their credit that they admit ignorance of the causes of the effects that they observe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com