Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms
slate.com
slate.com
It's also unclear if harming your career is even a bad thing to begin, considering the options given (e.g. Don't have children, have children but neglect them, have children and take care of them, but have lower income when the caregiver returns to the work force). Perhaps spending proper time with children, even if it is at the cost of potential income, is worth it.
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I wonder if mandating that caregivers be able to work while raising their child somehow (perhaps a combination of remote work, daycare and in laws) would be enough to negate the negative effect while preserving the benefits.
From a social and corporate perspective we have a choice though: should be allow incentive systems that reward people who value their careers over their children to continue? Or should we change our incentive systems so that people who value children over career earn equal wages or even more?
Which group of people is actually more valuable to society?
However, when you legislate away any reward for risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives...then you end up in a society where nobody tries, nothing happens, and everyone's pretty well subsumed into an existential crisis -like existence. What's the point of trying if it's guaranteed not to make a difference?
"They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work." - Soviet-era saying
Given just that description, you could be talking about parents. The consequences you list for not rewarding them aren't off the mark either.
What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose.
Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...
Not to say it's always 100% going to make them go towards those interests, before anybody accuses me of making that claim, but it's fairly apparent as far as I'm concerned that even given equal opportunity, people of different genders aren't attracted to the same fields in equal proportion. Gender in multiple senses determines how the brain develops, so it would be surprising if these fields were demographically equal.
I think making an equal opportunity approach is definitely the right thing, but equal outcome I think ends up holding people back and forcing others into fields they won't enjoy. It's working not on the idea of cultivating individual people's passions but forcing them to fit some ideal.
In any case, though, I don't think any of this means that women should be disproportionately affected by having a child. I'm willing to buy the argument that it's societally caused due to expectations and men taking less time off than women for their children.
No need to even mention gender.
For example, I suspect a similar argument could have been made a few decades ago about why women tend to be nurses not doctors, or why women tend to teach only in elementary but not university settings.
For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender."
To really challenge yourself, take your comment and swap out gender for race. Would you still feel as comfortable to suggest that, "... where all races have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that racial effects are actually maximized. Whites tend to choose professional careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and Mexicans tend to choose to become gardeners and low wage workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose."
If that feels uncomfortable, then perhaps your premise needs reevaluated.
Norway’s current and many of the previous prime ministers were female, there is generous social support for working parents, most women get a college degree, etc Women are still free to choose the kind of job they desire, and they do so.
It is incredibly undesirable to force women and men to choose different jobs because of an ideological desire for equal outcome. There is no way to achieve that without tyranny and without hurting equal opportunity.
With regards to high value jobs that women have chosen due to equal opportunity you have to look no further than doctors. It used to be a mainly male occupation in the western world, and it’s now dominated by women.
But for the opposite position to make sense, the more egalitarian a society becomes, the fewer gender differences would show. Studies show that the opposite is the case.
I don't, and I wouldn't! The Scandinavian countries are much further along on this, but probably still don't constitute a perfectly level playing field where being a man or a woman doesn't confer advantages in certain disciplines. I'm just not holding my breath for perfect equality of outcome once the playing fields are fully level; in fact, the science points to it being pretty likely that the only way you'll get men and women to do exactly the same things in exactly the same way in exactly the same proportions is by tyrannical force, which I don't think helps either sex.
> Would you still feel as comfortable to suggest that, "... where all races have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that racial effects are actually maximized.
Sure! This one is trickier as I can't point to any society that's very far along the path of actually leveling the playing fields between races. Certainly in the U.S. the stakes are stacked abhorrently high against blacks in particular (the drug war in particular is disgustingly deliberate legislative racism, in my opinion). Many Mexicans in the U.S. are not free to choose. However, we've already run a lot of well-designed experiments that show that race is not at all correlated with intelligence, drive, job choice independent of other factors (family, education, and level of poverty, for example). Gender, on the other hand, has been shown to correlate not at all with things like intelligence, and correlate fairly tightly with things that affect your work and your choice of occupation, such as: disagreeableness (one of the strongest predictors of ending up in a leadership position), empathy, interest in people vs. interest in ideas, etc.
All categories should be open for discussion, and additional good science will gradually wither the fields/distinctions that have no predictive ability or bearing on reality (phrenology, eugenics, antiquated theories of physics, etc.).
This last statement is subjective opinion, but my assessment of the science (plus my real-world experience and fallible human schemas) tell me that we won't find perfect equality between genders once we have perfect equity between genders. That equity is absolutely worth striving for but not at the expense of good science, healthy debate, and dialogue itself, things that are at times threatened in these emotionally-charged discussions.
Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Also, since 1990 the ratio of part-time workers lowered among women and went higher among men, so it’s false to claim that women choose more part-time than men now that they have equal "choice". [2]
> Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't
Women "choosing" to become doctors and nurses while men choose STEM careers has nothing to do with biology. Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions, and healthcare is no exception. [3] [4]
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[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144775
[2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/bld/rapporter...
Apparently graduation rates in medical fields favor women in some parts of the industrialized world.
"Women taking over as medical specialists"
http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialist...
Exactly. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.
A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.
Can't count the number of times I have seen people willingly (hopefully) misinterpret something in order to create drama.
That and "always assume negative intent" fallacy makes for an impossible task for anyone talking about certain subjects.
Bonus round, add "always defer to identity."
...metaphysically speaking, all categories distort, but good luck navigating the world with your eyes that wide open.
Not disagreeing that gender doesn't play a role in making such choices, but I think society, education, and culture play at least as big of a role. People want to be "seen" a certain way among their peers. A man doesn't want to be "seen" as a nurse, for instance...
This is not because of gender. It's a cultural/societal issue that a nurse job is not an "appropriate" job for a man. So the man "chooses" whatever is "more appropriate" for a man in his society to obtain. But was it really a true choice?
When there's equality of opportunity, then women tend to outscore men on average in Danish high schools (and this trend is true all over the world, given any equal-opportunity situation).
Since women are scoring higher, they have more choice in what fields they want to study since the grade average tend to determine this. In contrast, men have to pick the subjects they can "get" which tend to be the STEM fields. All the typical "female subjects" are the ones which usually requires unethically high grades in Denmark.
Now, to convince a young woman to study STEM not only requires you to convince her that it is an awesome field (which it is, and we should definitely encourage that!). It also requires you to argue why she shouldn't put all her high-grade-work into effect by gravitating to a subject which is women-dominated and the competition is fierce. And that she can live out her dream: she has worked hard and can be anything she wants!
Whereas the young boy who were lazy in school (because he had a hobby of playing a lot of computer games) has to pick one of the "boring fields" where they accept anyone because there are always space for more people.
It is a two-sided situation and as much as you want to focus on the women not picking a given area, you have to focus on why men are so friggin' outright obsessed with the same thing.
There is one type of study which determines part of this: namely that men are interested in things and women in people (on average: The split is something like 33/66 and there is a considerable overlap - but it is one of the strongest gender effects!).
Of course, reality is a mix between biology and environment. And thus also location: the strong welfare state of Denmark could easily play a role.
I think realizing this is a false paradigm will be the next phase in the evolution of this social issue, I just have no idea how it will happen or how it will play out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc
So a hiring rate of 40% would indicate a level playing field in hiring. 33/40 is around 82%. The doubling down policies of "The (metaphoric) beatings will continue until equality is achieved," would seem to be misplaced at the workplace level. If there is systemic bias, it would seem to exist at the educational level.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spic...
The general conclusion being that men tend to focus on ideas and woman gravitate towards people.
The issue is how you can really measure 'equality of opportunity'. There are so many ways hidden structures can make it seem like there is equality of opportunity without it being there in practice. With 'equality of outcome' it is at least easy to track how we are doing, though it could be leading us away from the goal.
In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot.
Weirdly enough, a Google and YouTube exec have made basically the same proposal:
Note, I'm not insisting on equality of outcomes, because to me that's really not the general objective, given a population can have individuals predisposed for different things. For example, in farming communities we don't expect to see the same interest in urban planning as in cities.
Do women with children really have the same opportunity to prioritize their career that men with children do? I doubt it.
Women face much more social ostracism than men do if they choose to spend prioritize time at work over time with their children. Men also face much more social ostracism if they choose take on the traditionally female role of staying home with their children as opposed to engaging in paying work.
Even if women do decide to prioritize work over child-rearing in spite of the social pressure, employers will often assume that their attention will be divided by child-rearing.
In particular they would say that women are not equal to men unless they hold equal power in society. They want women to be in >=50% of corporate executive roles and in >-50% of government positions.
"Those people" you mention say it's cultural, other people like you say it's... I don't know honestly...
More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.
Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? I am immensely grateful to my parents, who told me that I could do anything I wanted and put me in math and science camps as a kid. I am not surprised that little girls (and boys) who are not given that kind of support don't go into "competitive" "STEM" careers.
A woman should be considered equal to a man. All sentients should be considered equal, in a political and moral framework. However, this should not be conflated with women and men being exactly equal in every conceivable way. If there was ever false equivalence then it is exactly this kind of sloppy thinking.
Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field?
Actually, the extent to which biological factors vs. societal factors are at play is something we're still working out.
"Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differences in Mathematics Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls"
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
"The Gender Equality Paradox"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8
Google & YouTube execs claim that Google's hiring rate for women is the same as the Computer Science graduation rate for women, then go on to espouse James Damore's suggestions:
I always see people gasp when they hear things like this, but can you really disprove it? I'm genuinely curious.
Most people in the USA don't realize this but women only became full citizens only as recently as the 1970s when they were finally allowed to be on juries. That's less then 50 years ago.
I don't know why we always seem to treat earning less as being this universally terrible, bad thing whenever gender comes up. There is a lot more to life and jobs than just earning money. Work life balance, stress, danger, physical wear.
The general expectation for men seems to be: "Go get a good paying job". Obviously every family is different but where family economics allow I think woman generally have far more choice in terms of whether they stay home, work part time, work less stressful/demanding jobs than men do in today's society.
I've seen a lot of relationships/marriages where the man works a shitty backbreaking/dangerous and/or stressful jobs that pay well while the woman works part time, not at all or a much less stressful job that pays less. I'm sure the inverse does happen as well but from what I've seen it is much rarer.
These types of articles always frame earning less as being a negative for woman. In some cases I'm sure that is true. But what % of the gap is woman choosing to earn less because they have that choice?
Western cultures are still much more understanding of men being absent from their children's early lives than mothers. These sorts of cultural expectations and allowances are often taken for granted by the people who argue that "inequality of outcome != inequality of opportunity."
If women are to take a career hit for raising their kids, why shouldn't the men who fathered them take that hit as well?
I actually thought Sweden already had this, but apparently not. At least not perfectly so, the parents have 480 days in total, with 90 earmarked to each: https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/
a) Society places a greater burden on women than men for child-rearing. b) Women who take leave lose out on career opportunities. c) Men receive greater opportunities to advance their careers relative to women, since they are expected to take less leave.
Even in the presence of equal parental leave, men (or just as often, their employers) can lean on the social expectation to return to work sooner, disadvantaging women.
This becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem since the culture and structure are mutually reinforcing. From a policy perspective, structure is easier to change than culture. In my view, that makes it a logical first step.
Simply put your customer will not come and thank you in 20-30 years from now but your children might/will.
People who are high powered execs and other top tier professionals sacrifice life for profession. I’ve yet to meet a prominent executive, lawyer or physician whose home life isn’t a bit of a shitshow.
If you want to look at equality and making the lives of mothers better, you need to look at everyone. If my wife and I were able to work 25 hours weeks in the same pay envelope, we would have made very different decisions about how to raise our child.
Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance is astonishing. I suppose if I don't push my kids just the right amount you're going to claim you know enough about how all children will turn out to revoke my parental rights?
I had children when I was in college. I suppose I should have been forced to fail one of my semesters, or do only good and proper people who do things the right way count?
My wife wanted to stay home for many years. I suppose I should tell her she was full of shit for not wanting to make more money?
You think it would relieve pressure to justify putting family before career? Again, wow. These are ADULTS. If they are so fucking wrapped up in peer pressure they can't decide if they should take care of their own babies they don't deserve their own children. Seriously, at what point are people responsible for themselves? Where does the nanny state end? Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them.
The point of worker rights is to provide equal footing for everyone. Your boss would certainly like it if there were no mandatory holidays/PTO...
> Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them.
No, but in order to provide equal chances for the kids' development in early life. This is valuable for society as early child-parent bonding issues will lead to issues later on in life.
In addition, by forcing employers to provide PTO for fresh parents, they cannot (legally) force those who cannot object to work. Yes, it might be 6 months or whatever time out for a couple managers but an immediate benefit to millions of poor parents.
I assume you're from the US? Well, try to come over to Europe and work here, with such things as workers' rights, minimum PTO per year, proper health insurance systems... sounds socialist as hell but guess what? Our people are happier and more productive.
>Our people are happier and more productive.
The US ranks 14th in happiness ahead of the majority of European countries. Europe as a whole ranks between 42 and 43[0]
The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2017_Wo...
[1]https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/worlds-most-productive-...
The top 6 in said index is occupied by European countries - and all 8 European countries ranked before the US in said index are routinely bashed in the US as being prime examples of "socialist" hellholes.
> The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]
Well, it's not that hard to beat European countries if you're working 300 hours per year more than them... and the core question is: how much of the US "productivity" originates from the scamming going on at Wall Street, i.e. it has no meaningful human labor associated by which this "profit" was created?
The comment didn't say "these select 8 European countries that are a mere fraction of the overall European population", it said "Europe" which last I checked was a continent encompassing dozens of countries with hundreds of millions of people, the vast majority of which are below the US in the ranking. If the comment was meant to be restricted to a very small subset of Europe then it should have reflected that in the wording. To which I can easily select a small subset of US states that would still outrank those countries. Without getting overly specific, do you really think you are happier than the average person living in Hawaii? Really? Really?? As far as your second "point", I didn't say anything about socialist hellholes so you're straw manning me. Also FWIW, none of those countries are actually socialist so if you're asserting that, you're again, flat wrong.
>Well, it's not that hard to beat European countries if you're working 300 hours per year more than them...
So the statement that "Europe" was more productive than the US was wrong. Yes, that is what I said. As an aside to your other point, according to my research, Germans work the least of anybody and rank lower in happiness than the US. Not to mention the western European countries like Portugal and Ireland that actually work more hours than Americans. I don't see you mentioning that but then that would be inconvenient to your narrative..
> and the core question is: how much of the US "productivity" originates from the scamming going on at Wall Street, i.e. it has no meaningful human labor associated by which this "profit" was created?
Those weren't questions I responded to but erroneous statements. But on with the goalpost moving. I love this one. Within a few seconds you say we work 300 hours a year more thus the obviously superior productivity (which is a bit disingenuous since we are more productive per hour and many countries outwork us in total hours) then you follow up with it's all a scam cuz "Wall Street". So which is it and does it hurt talking out of both sides of your mouth like that? Basically you don't want to be enlightened and correct your errors. You want to argue and bully your way into being right no matter what. Of course, just between you and me, what you really want to do is bash the US and feel oh so superior which is just sad and pathetic. Sorry it doesn't work that way. Europe is overall less productive and less happy than the US. Period. The denial of this fact is precisely what I responded to. Choose a small subset of the continent and I can play that game too. Funny how you like to make your assertions as if they are fact when it's just a bunch of received internet wisdom that doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Just for fun, in the CIA world fact book, I looked up Liechtenstein which has the highest productivity per capita in not just Europe but the entire world and the District of Columbia which has the highest per capita productivity in America. Both are about the same size at 60 something square miles. I'll leave it to your imagination which has the higher stats. You guys think you are so much better than everybody else. You're wrong.
I apologize for not including links this time but why bother when you'll just try to move your intellectually dishonest goalposts again necessitating further refutation. Not that I'll bother. You were wrong then and you're wrong now. You base your new assertions on mutually exclusive statements that you wrote within 30 seconds of each other. You are laughable and not worth arguing with so go ahead and entertain other readers with your whining about how much """better""" you wish you were. I'm ignoring you since I have more "productive" things to do. Ha!
edit: I just happened to glance at the tag line in your profile and realized I've been sucked in to wasting 20 minutes debating an angsty teen.
If one parent decides to stay at home for years, we are not talking about parental leave anymore. And of course everybody should be free to make that decision. But nobody should be forced to decide one or the other way because of gender-specific roles or a lack of affordable daycare.
And finally I believe that, by forcing everyone to think about how to accommodate parents in work life, we, as a society, will find solutions that can benefit all.
If that assumption is correct, then the actual question would be: Will this 50/50 (on average) state with truly happy and comfortable fathers ever happen, and will parents (on average) be happier or not? (this sounds like me questioning that they might be, but it's meant as an actual question).
Personally, I am actually quite happy that I don't have specific plans to become a father right now, because truth be told, I wouldn't want to give up so much of my work/passion for taking care of a child (although maybe me saying this is more the consequence of lacking the desire to become a father, meaning that I'd speak differently if that desire would exist).
Otherwise said, nurse, psychologist or teacher must be there at time. Same with service workers, call center and pretty much anyone who works with people in person. Female dominated professions that could work from home or could be flexible are not. Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right.
Why frame it in this inflammatory way? The fact that programmers can choose their work hours is a privilege and a job-perk. What is the point of guilt-tripping them about it? Surely an ideal world is where more people can work when they please rather than one where everyone is forced to clock fixed hours just because there exist some workers who don't have that freedom?
The fact is, majority of female dominated jobs are on the opposite of the spectrum. And those jobs are even thrown into every damm discussion about men/women differences while also the very same discussion talk about women having more flexibility. Because women are supposed to be primary care giver and primary care giver is supposed to want flexibility.
It just so happen that wanting something does not necessary gives you that.
My point is not that programmer should feel guilty. My point is that arguing that women=flexible hours is wrong, faulty argument based on some romantic idealized dream. The argument completely ignores the kind of work women do.
But regardless, those kind jobs are unionized here and the pay is not something you negotiate. Not for women, or men. In other words, they don't represent the difference in wages, because they are fixed and they do, by design, not differ just because you become a parent.
Same with sick kids. When you can work from home or remote (my company does not allow much of it, husbands does a lot of it and people use it) then you do not need free time because kids are sick. You work from home or in evening.
There is no trade off between pay, perks and flexible time. People who get high salaries get perks too. Same with flexible time.
If flexibility was motivation when choosing jobs, women and men would choose completely different jobs to begin with.
Tactically, this seems great, but the question that comes to my mind is, if such a practice were widely adopted throughout the industrialized world, would this have the effect of halving the power of women in internal workplace politics? The follow on question that comes to mind: What, exactly, is the effect on the power of women in internal workplace politics, of women taking time off work to raise children?
1. No longer want to work in the higher-paying, overtime/dangerous/lots of travel/etc... positions?
2. Were discriminated when looking for new work?
3. Were discriminated when raises were handed out?
etc...
Obviously with unlimited resources this doesn’t have to be the case, but it will always be the average case.
This result isn’t surprising, nor does it seem something that society should be overly concerned with fixing. Choices have all sorts of positive and negative impacts, usually foreseeable ones at that. Work less to raise a family and someone in that household will earn less outside the household.
Economically both parents are still probably producing the same value, arguably the woman is producing significantly more economical value, just the economists aren’t accounting for and valuing properly the work being done inside the household so the graph is scewed.
You create a stacked line chart which tries to account for the net value of the cost-reducing housework performed by men and women in addition to the outside income producing activities, and I would bet the curve shows women driving significantly increased economic value after having children.
It’s the premise that the only metric we should be looking at is outside income which is completely flawed.
> the idea that you can take large amounts of time off and still be at the same level as people who kept working is insane
Here you talk about the "career of raising children"
> only women can get pregnant, give birth, and breast feed
And then you proceed to justify it with an activity that on average probably lasts for about a year and can in large part be made compatible with a professional life. The average SV hacker brags about taking longer sabbaticals than this.
After 20 years, compare the control with those families that successful follows the trial (and for fun, throw in people who take sabbaticals as a third group) and see the results. Have poll questions about the size of social support networks, social status, income, carer, stress, perception of self worth, and so on. Last make a follow up in 50 years for life span and final carer, pensions and social support networks.
I have some predictions for all of those, backed by the research I have seen so far, but it would make for a very interesting read if such study would be made.
Children take an enormous amount of time and money to raise. And the amount of time and money we spend raising our children has increased significantly, as the age of maturity continues to increase (anecdotally this has gone well past 18 years old now, it seems children on average are being taken care of by their parents well into their 20s now). Someone in the family needs to be able to get home to make dinner every night. If you mostly can't travel for your company, that's a big limiting factor for high paying jobs. If you can't stay past 5 oclock without it being an issue that needs to be planned for, that's a big limiting factor for high paying jobs. If you get called away from an important meeting because your child is sent home from school with a cold... It's reasonable for employers to pay more to employees which can offer a higher level of service and flexibility and accommodation for work schedule and travel requirements.
One (or more) parental figures in the household need to elect to be on-call, and whoever makes that choice is going to see less outside income because of it. Equality doesn't mean that men and women need to make the same choices, just that a man and woman who do make the same choice should see the same outcome. What the statistics are showing us is merely that men and women, on average, tend to have different preferences and make different choices.
Weirdly, there's still a household chore gap between men and women. My position on this is pretty well inline with John Green's: The pay gap is down to a single digit difference, but there is a difference in the unrenumerated work which goes into keeping society going in the context of raising children. (We might disagree on what to do about it.)
Most probably downvoted by men who refuse to acknowledge the value provided by unremunerated work to society.
> unrenumerated - you mean unremunerated, right?
(I'm what traditional/conservative society would call a "man")
If caregiving were split father-primary or mother-primary 50/50 among families, I'd expect we'd see the pay gap drop.
(Unfortunately, I suspect that because of gains from specialization, doing something more elaborate like both parents juggling career and childcare equally leads to net-worse outcomes in terms of both care given and revenue for household).
Is the best plan, to make money, then to pay other people to raise your children?
>The presence of children is associated with less accumulated job experience, more career interruptions, shorter work hours, and substantial earnings declines for female but not for male MBAs.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/dynamics_of_th...
What are your sources for this claim?
In Sweden 85% of 2 year olds are in day care enabling mothers to work. This has been the case for decades.
Source: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-...
If what you claim is true the entire country of Sweden should show adverse affects. It simply does not.
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001
thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/familyfacts/briefs/FF_Brief_43.pdf
You'll also see that it's been cited by 611 papers. It's usually a bit odd to reference a 27 year old paper as a source because additional research since then has likely given more insight into the problem.
Pulling one out at semi-random, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cch.12238/full argues "more hours in non-parental child care were associated with better language abilities. However, more hours in care in the first year of life were associated with less language proficiency at ages 1 to 1.5. At later ages, this effect disappeared and language proficiency increased. Furthermore, children who spent more hours in centre-based care had better language scores than children in home-based care."
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.704... summarizes a number of related reports:
> O’Brien Caughy et al. (1994) report that entrance into daycare before the first birthday was associated with higher test scores (Peabody Individual Achievement Tests) for lower income children and lower test scores for higher income children. For the U.K. Gregg et al. (2005) find that children who receive informal care from friends and relatives in the first 18 months of life combined with full time maternal employment have lower cognitive outcomes. ... Finally, Loeb et al. (2007) find that entry into non-parental center based care before the age of one can lead to problem behavior. Magnuson et al. (2007), Baker et al. (2008), Datta Gupta and Simonsen (2010), and the research summarized in Belsky (2006) provide further evidence that non-parental care can have negative behavioral effects in some contexts.
Or there's https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11016559 which says:
> After adjusting for child care quality, cumulative experience in center-based care was associated with better outcomes than was participation in other types of care. The amount of time children spent in care was not related to outcomes. Children in exclusive maternal care did not differ systematically from children in child care. Tests for lagged relations of earlier child care experiences to later performance (adjusting for current child care) showed that language stimulation predicted subsequent cognitive and language performance 9 to 12 months later. Although children in center care at age 3 performed better than children in other types of care, earlier experience in child care homes was associated with better performance at age 3 than was experience in other types of care.
These would appear to be counter to your statement that "Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development." More specifically, once the child is about 18 months old, there appears to be positive effects of daycare and non-parental care.
That "Family Facts" link is from The Heritage Foundation, which has a mission to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."
I can't help but think there is a bias in which topics to report and which evidence to present.
One way to assuage my doubts would be if the reports had a link to the primary research literature. However, the only citation is to "a FamilyFacts.org Report by Jenet Jacob Erickson, researcher specializing in maternal and child wellbeing and former assistant professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. Her report reviewed key findings from 30 years of research on child care and children’s social– emotional development."
This does not appear to be a peer-reviewed report. While peer-review has its problems, I again can't help but wonder about any possible cherry picking.
Given the editorials by the author, at https://www.deseretnews.com/author/23012/Jenet-Jacob-Erickso... , I know that we have very different biases.
The last link is to Stefan Molyneux, who is often characterized as "alt-right" or "far-right". As an anti-feminist, I suspect he is biased towards research which keeps middle-class women at home to raise children.
In any case, unlike Erickson, he is (like both you and me) also not an expert on this subject.
I don't think I'm a bad parent, but I definitely am not cut out for full-time parenting. My wife doesn't seem to be, either. If either of us were full-time caretakers, we'd honestly be fairly miserable, and I can't believe that wouldn't reflect poorly on our kid.
Can you give me a few links on this? Our child is in daycare, and we both work.
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001
thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/familyfacts/briefs/FF_Brief_43.pdf
Might that be because, even in countries devoted to gender equality to an extent previously unknown to mankind, women tend to devote relatively more of their time & concern to mothering than men do to fathering?
The obvious solution here is to convince women to stop having kids.
Now, I don't think this, but I also don't personally have a problem with women choosing kids over careers.
Fact is, having kids means taking time off. And while fathers can take time off if they want in many countries, most take less time than women so as to not interrupt their career.
They are not.
The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive.
Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.
My career is more important to me than children, because I don't particularly want to raise a child and am not intending to have any. Plus I think there are already too many people on the planet. Doesn't mean I can't love others around me.
You're argument is reminiscent of some who opposed the suffragettes, who argued that raising children is much more important than voting. Even if that's the case, that is no argument for injustice.
Some people will choose to be stay-at-home parents. There is nothing wrong with that. That is a career. The household income... is the household income, not the wage earner's, because for a couple with children the family is their life project, and the stay-at-home parent's "service" is "paid for" by the wage earner.
If we really want to compare apples to apples then we have to allocate a fraction (say, half) of the wage earner's income to the stay-at-home parent for the purpose of analysis. Alternatively compare singles' income to singles and childless couples' individuals, and separately analyze married-with-children-and-both-working couples, and then separately analyze married-with-children-and-one-stay-at-home-parent couples.
Things like raising children well, championing unfashionable but important positions, fighting injustice and poverty - the really worthwhile things in life - are often extraordinarily difficult and can cause more despair than pleasure. But I choose to believe that they are nonetheless important, and not only because there is the promise of the glow of contentment in the case of a possible future triumph.
Many in the tech industry achieve extraordinary success in modern society. But when someone rises to that position, the single-minded pursuit of stimulating one's own reward circuits can look quite callous in the eyes of those who haven't been able to rise to wealth and power. In the days of the hereditary aristocracy, there existed the idea of "noblesse oblige", or the obligation of the upper classes to be a positive force for all those who lived in their society. It might do us some good to revive that idea.
I'm not a very family oriented person. I really enjoy solving problems, learning, etc.
The measure of your life is following your dreams / passion. For some, that's interpersonal relationships. For others, it may be work.
Because, to a corporation and society's ruling class, all that matters is having productive workers. Having a life gets in the way of that.