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Comment by wow_hn | Hacker News Reader

> 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).

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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.

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.

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