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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

I would be very careful about making that large a generalization (that all else being equal, women would prefer to stay home over working).

Childcare is mind numbing work, especially with young kids. Sure, some women (and men) would prefer that, but a LOT of women prefer office work over raising children.

"why not to enjoy life instead of spending 50-60 hours at the office?" is really selling short how much work raising young kids is. It is NOT enjoying life to stay home with toddlers. Maybe once they start school and you get hours to yourself, but before that it is way more time consuming than working at an office.

I know, I have done both. I took long paternity leaves to care for both of my kids, and while I love being able to bond with the kids, I was so happy to be able to go back to work. The freedom I have at the office compared to being home with the kids was night and day. Just being able to go to the bathroom when I need to, to get food when I want..... young kids are non-stop work.

I LOVE being a dad, but the weekends are way more stressful than the weekdays. Wrangling kids is way harder than programming computers.

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> Childcare is mind numbing work

> It is NOT enjoying life to stay home with toddlers.

> I was so happy to be able to go back to work

> the weekends are way more stressful than the weekdays

I have to say, this kind of perspective on being a parent puzzles me, even though it's pretty widely held. Honestly, many parents I encounter seem almost as if they'd prefer to be their child's aunt or uncle than their mom or dad. Certainly not in title, but possibly in terms of responsibilities.

I get it, raising kids is HARD. But the sense of purpose I feel about writing code that helps my company's investors become slightly richer is totally unlike the sense of purpose I feel about teaching my child about the alphabet, even if many days it feels like a slog.

I like this quote from G.K. Chesterton about the importance of this work. Chesterton is talking specifically about a mother, but I think it holds true whether the primary caregiver is a father or a mother:

> To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

Think of it this way. Imagine if when you went to work, you only got to do the "fun stuff" for a hour a day, and the rest of the day you just filled out paperwork and moved things back and forth in a predetermined pattern. And work lasted from the time you woke up to the time you slept.

Being a parent is the greatest joy I've ever known, but the joyful parts are the punctuation on the mind-numbing toil. That toil is only bearable because of the fun bits, but it's still there.

Being a parent is very important work, and can bring great joy, but it's possible to both love the joy and hate the toil in between.

Can you be more specific?

What is the nature of this toil?

I've got two kids: 15 month old boy, 7 year old girl. With the boy, the toil is literally keeping him from killing himself. If you put him downstairs, he'll try to climb up the stairs. He'll climb on the couch and fall off the other side. He'll drop things in the toilet. He'll try to pull stuff off shelves. He'll climb up the chair onto the dining room table. He is not content to sit and eat. I gave him cornbread yesterday, and he insisted on eating with a fork. (Basically just crumbling up cornbread to go everwhere.) If you take the fork away from him he cries. He does this 16 hours a day non-stop. He doesn't nap, he doesn't watch TV, etc.

The girl has no internal monologue. She has to run every thought in her head by you. Most of them are pointless and incoherent, but you have to humor her. She will say "um..." just to keep warmed up for the next thing she might want to say. She requires constant attention and affirmation. She wants you to watch her do a cartwheel--identical the previous million cartwheels--and respond enthusiastically. She won't eat her vegetables. We have a rule that we eat vegetables before we eat the rest of the meal. Every meal becomes a bitter war of attrition where she fights to eat green beans as slowly as possible, hoping you will give up. (Between boy and girl, eating a meal peacefully is impossible.)

Meals--when I was single I once went three months eating a turkey sandwich every day for lunch. Your kids will not put up with this.

Getting them ready to go out is a huge effort. They have a million accessories (bottles, diapers, toys, etc.). They have no sense of urgency. You are trying to get to church on time while girl is starting a craft project.

They generate huge amounts of clutter. Markers, crayons, paper, toys, etc. Taking a hard line on toys is little help, because their school sends them home with piles of art, crafts projects, etc.

They are very rewarding. When they're sleepy and both snuggling on the couch, I hug them and think "I will never do anything better than this." My wife and I will look at the older one playing with the younger one and say: "this is the best part of life, it'll just go downhill from here." The only reason we don't have a third yet is accounting for private school tuition. At the same time, my wife and I relish going to work every Monday so we can deal with angry opposing counsel instead of picking up after the kids.

So true. I have only one kid, 20 months old son and I can relate to what @rayiner is saying. kids drain your mental & physical energy throughout the day, at the same time it is so rewarding experience to have kid.

My heart is so full but my mind is so tired!

I feel like a lot of this labor is generated by the fact that most kids in america can't go run out and play with other kids in the neighbourhood anymore.

Your 7 year old would not be asking for you to endlessly watch her cartwheel and interact with her out of bordem. They would be out playing 24/7 in the local forest, come back for food and boo-boos, be back before dark and be in bed a couple of hours after dinner / night time with an 8 or 9pm sleep time and a 6am wake time.

Kids were not meant to be a lot of work, our society makes them a lot of work.

Unfortunately for those of us who want to parent this way, we risk having the authorities called on us, because the other parents watch too much local news.

It's much safer to be a kid now than when I was growing up, but the news makes it seem like it isn't. I would let my seven year old walk to the park by herself, 1/2 a mile away, if I wasn't afraid of having the cops show up.

When I take her to the park now, I let her play on the structure about 100 yards away, within my line of sight. And still adults will come up to her and ask her where her mommy and daddy are.

That is really the saddest thing to me. I remember with great amounts of happiness when I was between 5 and 10 years old and would ride my bicycle around the neighborhood with my friends, go traipsing around the woods, and exercise my imagination. (Getting home and having to sit still while my mother dug through my hair and scalp for ticks was torture, but was worth it.)

My nephew is not yet four years old, so he's probably still too young to be outside playing on his own, but I fear he'll be in the same boat as your daughter in a few years, unable to do anything outside of his parents' line of sight.

Kids were not meant to be a lot of work, our society makes them a lot of work.

I think you’re right: in the past, each kid was much less work than they are today. The difference is that you also used to have 6 of them, and used to expect that not all of them might survive to adulthood. This is clearly not acceptable approach in today’s society.

Kids could play outside alone in the 40s, 50s and 60s too, and child mortality wasn't 1800s they might all die levels. And in some developed countries like germany and japan it still is possible today [0]. Everything that jedberg described wouldn't probably happen.

Around the 70s the workload ratchet started going up, with each decade adding more and more restrictions. Look at stranger things, today it's a bit iffy to let 12 year olds go out biking by themselves to see their friends. In the 80s you could!

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/reader-center/free-range-...

Virtually none of the labor Rayiner is describing is a consequence of his kids not being able to go out and play. As he related, and as anyone who's parented a 15-month-old knows in their bones, keeping them from killing themselves or destroying the house is indeed a full-time job.

I was talking more about the 7 year old than the 1 year old. Also grandparents, the village, other house spouses, etc helped with that early workload too.

That begs the question of the thread, whose premise is that the labor those grandparents or "the village" put in has a price, and it is surprisingly high.

You should give up on the vegetable thing, by the way. Just don't let your kids drink lots of liquid calories and don't feed them hyperpalatable packaged food and they'll be fine. My kids both eat better than anyone I knew at their age, myself very much included --- they're 20 and 18 now --- and they came to it naturally (or by getting bored at the options they had if they were picky).

I'd say every single thing one does in a day is 2-10x as difficult and 2-10x as time-consuming (usually some amount of both, but the two don't always scale in propotion) when youngish kids are involved. Things that might be quick & mindless become slow and mentally taxing, that sort of thing. Of course making mistakes in raising kids, or simply getting unlucky and having kids who are sick a lot or whatever, makes things even worse—in the best case everything's still much harder and takes longer.

And each extra kid bumps up the difficulty & time factors to some degree.

> the sense of purpose I feel about teaching my child about the alphabet

I don't think that's what parents find difficult. It's the other 99.9% of being a parent.

Like I said, I LOVE being a dad and wouldn't change it for the world. The overall reward, of having the bond I have with my kids, sharing with them this world I love so much, is absolutely worth it, and is my purpose in life.

That doesn't change the fact that the day to day is hard. Getting my toddler to eat anything healthy is hard. Getting her to sleep is hard. Cleaning up messes they make is hard. Getting them ready when they don't want to go is hard.

Just because something is really hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Raising kids is way up there on both measures; really hard and really worth it. However, the day to day is relentless, and the rewards are not felt with the same relentlessness that the work comes at you. I don't feel rewarded during the moment that I am cleaning my sick kids vomit, but I have to do it anyway.

Raising children is not unlike writing code. It's cool to design the architecture, gin up efficient algorithms, etc. But 90% of your time is spent yak shaving, debugging, responding to mundane feature requests, etc.

It was really cool yesterday to teach my kid long addition. It was a major slog to respond to "dad look at this" or "dad, I have a question" every five minutes because she lacks an internal monologue.

(Full disclosure: non-parent here.)

I think attitudes toward parenting are completely impossible to rationalize, so your puzzlement isn't at all surprising.

Consider that many (most?) people who have kids don't do so out of a 100% independent choice, with 100% foreknowledge as to what it will entail and be like.

People have kids because their parents pressure them to give them grandchildren. People have kids because their peer group is having them. People have kids because their religion wants them to. People have kids because they don't know enough about contraception to avoid getting pregnant, and then their religion or moral code prohibits an abortion.

People have kids because they really really do want to have kids. But they vastly underestimate the work required to raise a kid, and feel completely natural amounts of regret, even if they truly love their kids and want the best for them. But it's still a bit of a taboo to suggest out loud any regrets about becoming a parent, so they keep it bottled up.

So just remember that every parent arrived there due to different circumstances. And regardless, every person -- parent or not -- has different likes, dislikes, desires, and levels of patience. What gives you a sense of purpose could easily be someone else's tedious drudgery. That shouldn't diminish your happiness, or demonize their boredom; it just means that you and some other people are different. Which is basically what being human is about, no?

I think you've made a very good call-out. Not everyone enters parenthood with the same degree of willingness, and not everyone who was initially excited to be a parent continues that way indefinitely.

But I think there's a danger of indifferentism here:

> What gives you a sense of purpose could easily be someone else's tedious drudgery. That shouldn't diminish your happiness, or demonize their boredom; it just means that you and some other people are different.

I don't deny that there are different strokes for different folks, and I understand that not everybody is going to make the same choices as a parent as I do.

But from the point of view of the welfare of the child, I think it's pretty clear that having a loving, stable, attached relationship with an engaged parent is going to be better for that child's overall well-being and future success than a relationship with a parent who loves them but can really only stand being around them in small doses.

I'm painting an extreme there, and I'm not suggesting that a person who drops their kid off at daycare and breathes a sight of relief must be a bad parent or a disengaged parent.

But I do think that rather than treating engaged parents and disengaged parents as just normal human variations of likes, dislikes, desires, etc. we should recognize that it is better for the child to help the disengaged parent become more engaged. And fortunately, there are a wide variety of ways we can do that!

> But from the point of view of the welfare of the child, I think it's pretty clear that having a loving, stable, attached relationship with an engaged parent is going to be better for that child's overall well-being and future success than a relationship with a parent who loves them but can really only stand being around them in small doses.

Absolutely agree! And from the outside looking in, it makes me really sad to see -- for example -- parents who'd rather be buried in their phone all day than engaging with their kid.

But I think maybe that's where there's a slight disconnect between what you and I are saying... I personally don't feel like it constitutes lack of engagement for a parent to derive no joy out of doing something like cleaning up a kid's messes. I can't imagine a context where I'd have any positive feelings about cleaning up a paint spill on a carpet, even if it had nothing to do with a kid of my own.

Some of the other things that the original poster you replied to are maybe a bit borderline questionable. If it gets to the point where you'd much rather be at work than spending time with your kid, that's really bad for the kid, and the family as a whole. Not saying that poster actually feels that way; obviously we have only a teeny tiny bit of knowledge about their life. But I think if sometimes you just get so tired and drained where you feel like you need a break from being around your kid all the time, and your job is an escape from that feeling, that's just normal human needs and behavior... as long as that's the exception, and not the norm, I don't see anything red-flag-y about that.

> I would be very careful about making that large a generalization (that all else being equal, women would prefer to stay home over working).

Especially within earshot of my wife. Stuff like that pisses her off to no end, with good reason. She's smart and accomplished and very much enjoys the challenges of a professional career.

> I would be very careful about making that large a generalization (that all else being equal, women would prefer to stay home over working).

The conversation I rarely see people having is wether a people group (men or women, for example) has a long term positive/regret recollection of the choice. I understand that most of the messaging today is that women can (and should) pursue paid employment and so naturally that becomes the narrative that people repeat. But 30 yrs later do women generally regret entering the workforce to the detriment of having / raising children? Anecdotally I know many men regret spending so much time at work and not being more involved in their children's lives, could it also hold true for women?

So true. We have two kids under 3. I am far more drained taking care of them for a day than I am after a day in the office.

We pay $42,000 a year in childcare (2 kids, $1,750 /month, which is one of the cheapest options in our area). After taxes its 90%+ of my wife’s entire salary.

It doesn’t make financial sense for her to work, but she’s good at her job, and she’s in a career where taking years off is punishing (law). Honestly though, a big part of it is she wants to work, stress and all. It makes sense to me.

As for me, I would prefer to stay home with them instead of work, but I am the primary earner and am also in a career that punishes people severely who take time off (finance). So here we are.

I totally agree. I work from home programming so my dad office and my programming office is the same place. Taking conference calls and browsing HN is way easier than wrangling 3 kids 5 and younger.

> but a LOT of women prefer office work over raising children

Do you have any statistics about that? I once saw a map of Japan, which is a place were a good job can still provides for a while family, showing that in every prefectures of Japan except two, more than half of women preferred to be stay at home mom. In two more others it was half-half. Of course there is the cultural context, but it’s interesting that when given the choice for real, most of women would indeed chose not to work.

Also, if one look at jobs that are prized by women, teacher arrive in a very good position. And teaching is basically rising others people kids on an industrial scale.

...assuming that women in Japan can choose at all.

Japan has a paternalistic society that expects every woman to be married by age 30 and drop out of the work force. They aren't a model for other cultures to follow.

Your point about childcare being difficult is absolutely correct, but I don't know if you're correct that a "LOT" of women (I assume you mean counterintuitively more than the commentor implied) would not want to stay home to raise them, all things considered. Based on personal relationships with my wife, sisters, and close family and friends I believe it is very, very common for mothers to find returning to work very difficult (even though it's a lot of work to stay home). I don't think anyone intends to imply that there aren't men who feel this way, that there aren't women who don't feel this way, or that the reason for anyone feeling this way is because work is hard and staying home with kids is easy.

> I would be very careful about making that large a generalization

Sure - but then, lets also not generalize in the opposite direction. How many women get to work, versus how many have to work?

I think most parents are exhausted to their knees with kids. But they also ~all say that it's their life's blood (I mean the energy, not blood ties obv.).

A job rarely gives you that much meaning.

I know I think I am a much better parent having daycare during the week. I am able to give a lot more to my kids when I am with them since I get that break. I think overall, it improves our relationship.

well, somehow the society at large has no problem with exactly opposite generalization: that women prefer to work over staying home with their kids.

It is an individual matter, I agree. With most women definitely having the preference of staying at home. But for that the right partner is needed, i.e. one who provides enough resources for her and her kids. If this is not present she will go to work. We decided as a society to frame it different just not to face difficult truth, which is society becoming poorer. It's just so much easier to say that somehow nowadays women prefer working to following their maternal instinct.

As a man you are wired to compete with other males for resources to be brought to your partner and offspring. I'm sorry but this is just how it works. Women define male attractivness based on his socio-economic status. Of course if you don't want your wife (and other females and society at large) to look down at you, you will eventually go back to work and work your ass off. She on the other hand, can but she doesn't need to. It's not like you or pretty much anyone will look down at her for not working. Current social fashions aren't going to change five milion years of evolution of the species.

Women marched for right to work and education. It was not males forcing them to, it was literally movement by women.

Of course they did. So that they can work. But don't have too. Great deal if you ask me.

The right to do something is different from the want to do something. How many people have fought for their right to vote? And yet how abysmal is voter turnout every year?

The desire for education is very different from the desire for work.

I am not saying there are no women (or even the majority of women) who want to work because it is their choice. But I think we are making it a gender issue when really it isn't. Do most men want to work or do they have to? Social mores have dictated the man be the provider for centuries, if not millenia.

I think it depends on the individual more than the gender.

> Social mores have dictated the man be the provider for centuries, if not millenia.

That is kind of not true.

1.) That is what happens when there is no war, country is rich and when industrial revolutions take people to factories. When they worked on small family farm, both genders had to tend animals, do crafts and so on. Most of things had to be made. The work was gendered, physical strength mattered, but it was not women twiddling fingers at home painting pretty pictures out of boredom.

2.) During economically bad periods, women had to work to survive. Their chances and options were just inferior. Victorian england required male to provide for women, but economics was bad - marriages not happening. (A lot of prostitution tho.)

3.) Plenty male occupations killed males soon. Miners were old by 40 and dead. Women lived longer and used to live from crafts they made and sold.

4.) And obviously, as men die in wars (and some wars killed a lot of men) or are just away then you cant possibly have all women having male provider. Plus, women were raped making them less viable partners.

5.) Take California gold fever - demographics very heavily skewed toward males (and very violent). That means, other places necessary lack males. There is no way for all women to be provided by males, social mores or not. Because males are not there, they are in California and anyway are killing each other. Not coming back. Some women were provided for by family and brothers etc, but the less rich family was the more they had to figure out how to make themselves some money.

Those are all valid points, but aren't those all (edit: mostly) examples of women being forced to work instead of choosing to work? Also I'd say those are exceptions to the rule, not the norm. If anything I'd say you bolstered the top comment's argument (I do not know your stance and am not trying to be combative).

Aren't majority of men forced to work instead of choosing by that definition? These are examples women people living real lives. Wast populations. There was such a thing as idle lifestyle of aristocracy in places where the situation allowed that to male aristocrats. Spending most of their time socializing with each other.

Also, overall they easily make majority of population. Combination of family farms, non-aristocracy, poor people, war situations, dangerous or far away occupations for males, pre-industrial are largely majority of "centuries if not millenia". Can I add former slaves who would be significant part of population here?

The "we expect the half of population to be mostly idle and mostly unused" is unnatural exceptional situation. And in case of muslim countries considerable physical violence is used to keep it that way.

When you talk about what was happening and was feasible for centuries, you cant skip over such was populations. They did not had power, had less control over own lives, but they did existed and count.

Also, most of those feminists marches were middle class or rich women. Poor women worked already, they however had sucky jobs and had completely different needs. Turns out that when women are actually in that supposedly great optimal situation, they want to get out, significant percentage is discontent and unhappy.

> Aren't majority of men forced to work instead of choosing by that definition?

Yes, I never said or implied otherwise. I don't know why you think I'm fighting with you.

My entire point is people work because they have to more than they want to, and gender is irrelevant. What I originally said:

> I think it depends on the individual more than the gender.

I'm totally ignorant in all of that, but for me it just looks like out of sudden (historically) we have way too many males. They used to be killed during hunting, wars, competition with other males. Since 1945 we haven't had that. Men became not as hot commodity. This is the motor of the current social changes, isn't it?

For example: only 40% of all Homo Sapiens Sapiens males that have ever lived were able to have offspring. Compared to 80% females.

Your statistics would have 2 women to 1 male making the "norm is one male one female in marriage with children" completely impossible absurd standard.

Doesn't have to be at the same time, think of the case of a first wife dying during childbirth and father remarrying and having more children.

Yes, we have known it since human genome was decoded. The DNA tests always indicate that a person who took the test had twice as many female ancestors than male ancestors. There is no other way than twice as many females procreating than males for it to be true. I hope you are not one of the "DNA deniers"... leftists/marxists are capable of dismissing all types of knowledge to still believe in their rel... err... ideology.

I have a problem with either generalization. I think we, as a society, need to support all choices a family makes (both parents working, or either parent staying home with the kid), and not judge parents for making any choice that works for their family.

I find it very troublesome that you keep referring to women staying home to care for the kids as 'following their maternal instinct' and men working outside at an office as the natural state for men. Saying that "Women define male attractiveness based on his socio-economic status" is downright offensive, and is getting into red-pill incel territory.

There is nothing 'natural' or 'evolutionary' about how we divide up labor in our society. Up until 100 years or so ago, we didn't even have the idea of 'childhood' that we do now. Parenting was not a full time job, kids were just expected to basically raise themselves and tag along while mom and dad did real work. In evolutionary terms, men haven't 'evolved' to work away from home while women raised kids; both parents did work (varying by society type, e.g. hunter-gatherer or farming) to provide resources for the family. Both men and women worked to provide those resources, and kids just hung around. Obviously, women fed babies the first year or two, but after that kids were pretty much on their own.

Your view that men and women naturally live together like a family in the 1950s for all of our history is a great example of a 'just so' explanation for our current gender politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/women-really-do-pref...

> I'm sorry but this is just how it works

No this is not how any of it works. This is extremly sexist, and has no evidence to support it.

>Women define male attractivness based on his socio-economic status. Of course if you don't want your wife (and other females and society at large) to look down at you, you will eventually go back to work and work your ass off.

Yikes, what is wrong with me? One of my best friends quit his job to become a stay-at-home dad because his successful lawyer wife made more money and wanted to keep working. I've been supposed to look down on him this whole time? Sorry society at large, I guess I missed that memo.

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