Comment by furi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by furi | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it's particularly a women-centric issue and you're never going to have a real discussion about it while it's posed as one. The majority of the burden of children obviously falls on women but time wise it's a small component, mostly concentrated in the first year or two, versus the 20 years of needing to maintain a household, take the kids to school, etc. that follow. The woman is always going to need take a half a year or more off (ideally) for each child, that's fixed, but who takes the following 20 off is up to the couple.

The question is really whether or not two income households are unquestionably a good thing, to which the answer seems like a strong "No". Even without the birth rate issue I struggle to conceive of mechanism by which it isn't a vicious circle of more people entering the workforce, driving incomes down (and driving the cost of scarce resources like certain housing up), forcing more households to become two income to keep up with no obvious benefit for anyone but the people doing the employing.

>I don't think it's particularly a women-centric issue and you're never going to have a real discussion about it while it's posed as one

Sure it is. Unless men start having babies, then women working and the birth rate consequently decreasing is a women-centric issue.

If you take it as a given that all the men work and will continue to work then yes, women entering workforce means the birth rate declines. But that isn't a given, men can leave the workforce just as women can enter it. My point is that I think it has less to do with women working and more to do with both partners working simultaneously.

I think women working and both partners needing to work simultaneously are inextricably linked though. While this could be a gross oversimplification, adding 1/2 of the population to the workforce would, through the laws of supplyand demand, decrease wages by 1/2 (assuming that all women were not already dedicated to raising children). Yes, men can also leave the workforce just as women can enter it, but would a man be more inclined to leave if he was the only breadwinner because the woman was already raising his children? Sorry I know a lot of this may be considered inflammatory but I don't think these questions are being asked (precisely because they may be seen as inflammatory, though my intention really is not to be controversial).

I think that's true in a historical sense, it was women who joined the workforce as the second household income and started the vicious cycle I proposed (if such a thing exists, what do I know about economics).

But you can still construe the problem both ways, is it women increasingly working outside the home that society takes as an unhealthy unquestionable good or men almost exclusively working outside the home which has been taken as good (or at least normal) since time immemorial.

And it's the same thing with the solution, if we come to the conclusion that somebody should take a smaller part in the workforce to help correct the birth rate and other problems two income households produce, the historical role of women in "creating" the problem doesn't imply they should be the ones to go.

> While this could be a gross oversimplification, adding 1/2 of the population to the workforce would, through the laws of supplyand demand, decrease wages by 1/2

This presumes zero-sum. That is, it presumes that this growth of the workforce does not affect the total productivity. If instead, more people working means more productivity, then part of that productivity can go to paying wages.

Whether this increase of productivity actually goes towards wages is difficult to say. I think that most of the recent productivity increase have been to the benefit of investors rather than labor.

Just because men cannot physically give birth doesn't mean it isn't their issue too. It just happens that it always affects a women due to pregnancy and childbirth and doesn't necessarily affect a father at all, but it can. In fact, including and affecting fathers tends to improve things for women.

People in all sorts of relationships adopt or otherwise have children. Folks die during childbirth. And while men cannot physically give birth, I've met plenty that enjoy child-rearing. If it were possible with my spouse and I, I'd happily work while he stays home. (He legally has to support me due to immigration laws). My ex stayed home while I worked, though to be fair, he was on disability. I do not have children (and have no plans to), but we have discussed adoption of an non-infant/toddler child (along with their siblings if they have any). While I see plenty of reasons for one of us to take parental leave, I don't see any reason why that would absolutely have to be me instead of him.

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