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Comment by superioritycplx | Hacker News Reader

If the Millennial Men have kids and want the best for them, then, yeah. Hard to argue that a mother is better than a baby sitter.

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I wonder how hard that is to argue? We can afford for one of us to stay home, and we can afford the best nanny we could find, but we've sent our kids to daycare because they can learn more from 4 teachers than one. Languages, cultural customs, social interactions. We see this again and again when they meet kids that have a single stay home parent or a nanny. They are more comfortable in social settings, they understand how to relate to other people, and they don't think people are strange for doing things differently.

I'd love to see some data that shows that a mother is better than a trained baby sitter, is better than group care of some kind.

There's a decent amount of developmental psychology research on the subject:

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/documents/seccyd...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200704/daycare-rais...

Interesting:

>the more their teachers later reported that they do not work independently, did not use their time wisely, and did not complete their work promptly in grade school.

I'm not raising kids to do homework. Real learning isn't copying from a book. It'd be interesting to look at this at a later date. Looks like these studies should have this data by now, since it started with kids in 1991.

Daycare/preschool isn't a baby sitter. Kids in this setting get a lot of interaction with their peers, which they generally love. They learn a lot from play, and kids are more likely to play with peers around than with just adults.

The men could just as easily be the one staying home.

Starting at 6 months after birth, at the earliest, yes. Breastfeeding is so important for health in later life that it should not be sacrificed for a couple months of work.

"just as easily" is not exactly true. Sure mom can pump and leave breastmilk (an inconvenience, some might say!), but there is at least one good reason that moms are moms, at least for the first year. Hard to argue with biology.

If a woman is only staying at home for the first year of an infant's life, I really wouldn't call that a "Stay-at-home-wife". That's more of an extended maternity leave. I've always seen "Stay-at-home" wife/mom used to describe women who choose to stay home long-term, usually in place of a full-time career.

As a "millennial man", I would like her to work while I stay home.

I enjoy housework, childcare, and my ideal career would work fine spending 4 or so hours a day working from home (and indeed, might work better).

So I think lots of Millennials want one of the couple to stay home for finance reasons or personal preference, but I think a lot of them pick who out of practical concerns, not gender roles.

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