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Comment by leftyted | Hacker News Reader

You can view this as the result of the emancipation of women.

Or you can view it as the sacrifice of the private sphere (family, children, home and hearth) at the altar of the economic sphere.

I suppose I view it as a bit of both. I certainly don't like the idea of people being forced into marriage. But I'm also skeptical of the rejection of marriage. I don't think a career can replace a family. The reason I have a career is so I can have a family.

A lot of people in their 20s seem to think that their dayjob is actively involved with "making the world a better place" and will lead to fulfillment. I think "brainwashing" is a fairly accurate word to describe that mentality.

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> You can view this as the result of the emancipation of women

Or you can view this as a result of men treating their wives like their caretakers.

For all the problems the US has, one very good thing it has going for it is that, in many (most?) social circles, it is expected that men will help out and support their wives and families beyond just earning a paycheck. This chart comes from a study that shows how men do about twice as much housework as they did in 1976, while women do less: https://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/media/images/housework2_h.jpg . Many companies now give as much time for paternity leave as for maternity leave. TBH when that trend first started I didn't understand it: "But men didn't actually have the baby!" I thought. But by equalizing the time off, it takes the burden (and expectation) off the woman for doing all the childcare, with the related harm this can do to a woman's career.

If having children is so wonderful one must wonder why men still haven’t by large decided to pitch in when it comes to the nuts and bolts of child rearing. While I would agree that any vocational claim of making the world a better place is dubious, certainly that is equally true if not more so of bringing more people into the world.

> If having children is so wonderful one must wonder why men still haven’t by large decided to pitch in when it comes to the nuts and bolts of child rearing.

It's, by and large, because those are not the men that women select to have children with. When women consistently choose the man with the six figure salary, but that implies working long hours, what follows is predictable.

There is also a high degree of adverse selection there because a woman can't tell how much a man will help with the children before she has the children, by which point the father is already chosen. So they choose based on what they do know (e.g. salary) which is inversely correlated with that.

Bingo. I was on the kind of career trajectory for a million dollar salary. The most famous school, name brand employers, etc. But when we had a kid I fell in love and I wanted to spend tons of time with him. It’s my wife who had to be OK with moving out of the Bay Area, cutting our expenses, while I transitioned to a job where I basically work 5 hours a day and make less than $200K. Most wives would have said no fucking way. We are going to have more kids and I may even go full stay at home dad.

Incentive models are usually very easily explained by comparing groups that take either road A or road B and see the results.

If we look at top 50% highest earners among men and compare with the bottom 50%, who has:

Highest Social status. Has more children. Bigger social support system. Live longer. Better health. Feeling of happiness and fulfillment.

For comparison do the same with women and take the top and bottom 50% and collect the same data.

From this simple data driven study we can prove if there exist an incentive in the form of pure outcomes between focusing on activities that raise income compared to activities of social value but without any monetary rewards. We also get a gendered perspective on the question.

I suspect this is a bit like people in the 50s asking why, if having a career is so great, have women still not decided to pitch in and club the corporate ladder.

> A lot of people in their 20s seem to think that their dayjob is actively involved with "making the world a better place" and will lead to fulfillment. I think "brainwashing" is a fairly accurate word to describe that mentality.

Could you expand on what you mean by this? Are you referring to private corporations "making the world a better place" by selling products?

I work in public health research, and my day job indirectly (but not that indirectly) leads to reductions in infant mortality rates. Should that not be fulfilling?

If you re-read your parent comment, it says "A lot of people in their 20s". That's clearly different from "All of the people in their 20s".

To your point, there's a quote I've seen with increasing frequency along the lines of:

Devoting your life to your family? That's slavery. Devoting your life to a corporation? That's emancipation.

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