Comment by ps4fanboy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ps4fanboy | Hacker News Reader

http://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/

Because of biology its very hard for the father to be the primary carer to children after being born.

Until men and women share equal parts of child rearing on average you wont see equal averages in other parts of society like income by age and career choices.

Women have shown a tendency to favor work life balance over income on average which means if you want to increase female mobility in male dominated jobs you need to increase working conditions for men, like equal entitlements for paternity and maternity leave.

Birth rates in western countries are already falling below 2.0 which is a reduction in population.

While some would argue this is a good thing for the environment, the west does not have the majority of the world population and a reduction in population could lead to geo political instability. The majority of the worlds population does not live under democratic rule, a reduction in population in democratic countries only is a troubling trend.

> Because of biology its very hard for the father to be the primary carer to children after being born.

That's not true. Fortunately, we have in our society the technology (breast pumps) that allow women to save their breast milk for anyone capable of caring for the child to use at a later time: fathers, grandparents, and even the mothers themselves.

They're not the most pleasant contraptions in the world to use (so I'm told), but I wouldn't characterize their use as "very hard".

My wife was the primary caregiver for our children the first 2-3 months, and then she went back to work and I raised them as the primary caregiver. For me to provide them breastmilk after was a bit inconvenient at times, but never "very hard" (they continued to be exclusively breastfeed until ~6 months, and breastfeed in combination with other foods until ~1 year).

Unless the mother continuously pumps her milk during the day her production will prematurely stop. Additionally the world health organisation recommends breast feeding for two years.

> Unless the mother continuously pumps her milk during the day her production will prematurely stop

That's true. Most jobs in the U.S. allow women to do this, and those that don't are unfortunate and should be shunned if possible.

> Additionally the world health organisation recommends breast feeding for two years.

Yes, but the APA in the US recommends 6 months exclusive/at least 1 year. In our case, it was a bit over 1 year for the first child (she wanted to stop), and almost 2 years for the second (had to be weaned, imagine he would have kept going until adolescence had we permitted /s).

A major reason the WHO recommends breast-feeding for two years is because of water quality issues in developing countries. We are fortunate (for the most part) to have water here in the US free of those pathogens that cause early childhood mortality.

EDIT: I'm rate-limited at the moment, but after carefully reading your reply below, I'd say we probably agree on most parts of the issue posed in TFA. However, unless I'm misreading your position, we appear to disagree on the relative fitness of men and women to raise young children (My position: thanks to technology, both men and women in the West are equally capable of raising infants and young children. In my opinion, their fitness for that task depends on the person).

> That's true. Most jobs in the U.S. allow women to do this, and those that don't are unfortunate and should be shunned if possible.

If only the majority of the US population had that kind of choice.

We are arguing on the same side on this one just quibbling over semantics, "the pay gap" is in my opinion a reflection of the asymmetric nature of raising children between employees and companies, this manifests by women choosing careers on average that are more flexible and have better non monetary benefits, these benefits dont have a positive effect on profitability of the companies/industries that offer them, therefore they have lower average incomes than others. until that burden is equally placed on all companies we wont see any change in the choices females and males make because they will be constrained by their situation (family etc) and that will influence their decisions. To suggest this situation is because of sexism and not capitalism is intellectual fraud the statistics just dont back it up.

If anything, you confirm the parent's argument. Instead of your wife breastfeeding your children and "wasting" time t for that, she first pumps her milk, after which you feed them, hence taking about time 2t. Hence, everything else being equal, you're worse off (in economic terms, because time is money) with her not breastfeeding.

"Women have shown a tendency to favor work life balance over income on average which means if you want to increase female mobility in male dominated jobs you need to increase working conditions for men, like equal entitlements for paternity and maternity leave."

This is very true. Though I'm not sure that any country has equal entitlements for paternity leave... men get less mostly because of the physical difficulty of birth and breastfeeding, but more than is entitled there. It helps if the employer isn't forced to pay for the maternity leave, only keep the job open for when she/he returns. (social benefit). Plus laws that protect parents taking time off for sick children, etc.

In countries where child raising is much more equal between the sexes, however, you still see pay differences tied to career choices. Teachers and nurses (which are often female-dominated) often get paid less than male-dominated career choices with equal education requirements. Even when there is a shortage of nurses and teachers... they still pay less.

And I have no clue what the solution to such things are without simply having a different system to pay folks. For example, some sort of equation that combines experience, amount of education required, stress levels and 'untraditional' worktimes, experience, etc. But I also think this would be pushed against greatly.

You cant have free market where jobs are paid based on profit and a system that treats people equally. The reality is your examples are incredibly unionized jobs (teachers/nurses etc), these sorts of jobs tend have more normalized rates of income regardless of ability or performance, they also tend to have the best non monetary benefits. From my own experiences and observations I would say as income increases non monetary benefits decrease.

Or, you know, you can get the non monetary benefits written into law so they must be followed, funded from somewhere else, and things like that. Especially health care. And let union membership be an actual choice.

I agree, lets make the debate about this then and not the "pay gap, sexism!" which is largely distracting and unproductive.

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