Comment by patentatt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patentatt | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again). I got two weeks parental leave when my child was born. Civilized nations provide 6 months or more for both mother and father. My wife could take a couple years off of work, but then her career would be set back to square one. I elected to seriously downshift my own career just so I could see my kids on a daily basis. By that I mean not work so long that I literally don’t see my children M-F. Work culture is what is destroying families, not women’s rights. I remember sitting in the office of my boss once, she was sobbing over a mountain of paperwork to do, her kid had been injured at school and sent to the ER (ankle sprain or something). She couldn’t leave. She could, but then some “important” papers in some “important” case wouldn’t be filed on time. The whole squeezing of the middle (and upper-middle) class over the last 50 years is what’s making it really hard to have kids. And as more and more colleagues opt to be child-free, the 24/7 100% dedication to work becomes normalized and makes it even harder for working parents. I think the way forward is serious social investment in supporting families and enabling parents, both men and women, to have careers and aspirations but also be parents.

> I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again).

I don't understand how supporting families means devaluing women. What exactly do you mean by "devalue"? If motherhood is the stated goal of a woman, and she achieves it, how/why is she "devalued"? If it brings her meaning and fulfillment, isn't that something to be celebrated and respected?

I'm also bothered by your swipe against traditional families. Children who grow up in two parent homes are overwhelmingly biased towards success than children in single parent homes. Traditional families have been the norm for the entirety of human existence (until very recently). We discard them at our peril.

I agree with the thrust of your comment, I think I just didn’t frame it properly. The comment I was responding to seemed (to me) to suggest that we go back to the 1950s when a woman didn’t have a right as a matter of law or de facto to have a career and aspirations of her own. I read the comment as suggesting that women’s empowerment was a proximate cause to the degradation of the family. I think electing to be a parent is not “devaluing” (as I myself, as a father, have done so) but that removing the option and making the decision for all women is devaluing. Not sure I track the comment re: swipe against traditional families? If I suggested that then I was inarticulate or misinterpreted.

Edit: also to the gp comment, which suggests that women are ‘naturally’ better at parenting. Fuck all that, I’m a kickass dad, I’ll go toe to toe any day with any mother.

How does the GP comment suggest that?

It's not clear to me. It seemed to suggest that there are complementary roles that cannot be completely subsumed by either individually.

The undertone is that women are better at being parents than men. I don’t agree with that.

Can you elaborate and explain how this "undertone" is present?

How do you see the GP comparing two mutually exclusive roles in child rearing?

From a purely economic perspective, staying at home raising kids isn't going to generate you any income. We should perhaps value mothers in other ways, but money is the principal indicator of value in our current society.

Is our culture so blind as to see no distinction between moral value and economic value? This doesn't make sense on an intuitive human level, which is why people will often help out their fellow man without being motivated by profit. Similarly, a stay-at-home parent is (most often) working for the good of their children at the expense of creating economic value, and we as a society need to recognize the moral value of that.

Try to pay your mortgage with moral value. Or, as my grandfather was known to say: wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. No, the virulent strain of capitalism that has gripped the western world over the last century does not value anything but currency. Full stop.

Some of these comments from today might help brighten your worldview. Human beings do feel love and and act on it, regardless of how virulent your perception of capitalism.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19727156

Many countries with strong social support systems have a baby bonus program where people are literally paid to have kids.

In Canada, it's based on household income. In 2016, the max was $6,496 per child under age 6 and $5,481 per child age 6 through 17.

If you have two kids (2 years old and 10 years old) with a household income of $50k, that works out to roughly $10k per year. When you consider that you don't need to pay for childcare (which could be more than $20k per year for a 2-year old in Toronto) and the constant care and support those children will receive, that's actually pretty good. And once the kids get a bit older and can be trusted to care for themselves once they get home from school, the stay-at-home parent can easily start working full-time again.

"I don't understand how supporting families means devaluing women. What exactly do you mean by "devalue"? If motherhood is the stated goal of a woman, and she achieves it, how/why is she "devalued"? If it brings her meaning and fulfillment, isn't that something to be celebrated and respected?"

I believe the query here is to devalue women in order to support the idea of a nuclear family. Traditional nuclear families (as mother stays home to raise the children) have never been the norm. I'm Chinese and where I am from the is the grandparents that raise the children while both parents work! From what I understand stay-at-home-motherhood has only ever been possible within a single generation in "western" society.

I believe the devaluation comment is associated with the fact our society is capitalist, and one has to purchase basic living and education with money. Income and quality of life have a correlated effect which peters out well above median wage, and many fields that offer the flexibility required for motherhood are less high paying, which often means if one wishes to become a mother they may need to take a less well paying job and thus have a lower quality of life.

Of course, this also means a SAHM who does not bring income is culturally not valued because their work does not directly bring in income (even though attempting to outsource this work would be often equivalent to the salary of a single laborer!). I would argue this is not a problem specifically on the shoulders of women but the shoulders of society as a whole not putting in the framework to support parenting- this would include generous parental leave, flexible work hours, opportunity to WFH, lower medical expenses for children, etc.

I also agree with much of this. To the extent that there is a “devaluation” of full-time parenting it’s in the context of a capitalistic society. Again though, to the original response, I don’t find parenting to be low value myself, just the idea that as a society we should mandate that all people of one gender must be stay at home parents. I think that idea from a few generations ago reflects a sexist bias.

I'd be curious to hear more precisely what you'd propose here.

My impression that, unfortunately, many such attempts to (essentially) make life better for working mothers appear to have pushed us away from families-with-kids, and towards ever more singletons (including single mothers). They tend, I think, to move us from a system in which the family is the economic unit, to one in which its personal compromises are not necessary.

This is true especially regarding divorce. Biasing divorce renumerations overwhelmingly towards one gender has greatly weakened the shared financial incentive to keep families intact.

A lot of that is due to historical societal reasons. In a society where one gender makes money and the other takes care of kids, I don't know how it could have been any other way.

In today's society, what's fair is for the non-custody parent to help support the children by reimbursing the custody parent. Or in cases of joint custody, the one with higher income reimburses the one with lower income. Which I believe is the way it's done in my state.

Historically, you are wrong.

Custody of Infants Act 1839. Prior to this, men both "made the money" and received custody of the children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custody_of_Infants_Act_1839

FredW

Not sure where you’re going with this, but for starters I’d give new parents (both parents) like 5 years paid parental leave. Yeah, I suggested 5 years. With some sort of workforce reentry rights or support to facilitate getting back in the workforce. I’d start the discussions there.

Why do you say that is unfortunate?

Because I think nearly everyone involved in attempting to change how things work was sincere in their hope that this would only lead to improvement. Yet on some pretty important measures, like the proportion of lower-class kids who get to grow up with a father, we've done very badly indeed.

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