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Comment by TheAdamAndChe | Hacker News Reader

This assumes that men and women en masse want equal roles in raising children. I'm not convinced that this is the case.

Sure, many more women may choose to take the more active role, but it’s important to consider that these conscious choices are affected by implicit social pressures and expectations that are placed on men and women from childhood onwards, such as men being expected to be breadwinners and women being expected to be caregivers. These are pretty arbitrary social constructs that are not universal or intrinsic to nature or even human societies. So it follows that what men and women would say they desire is not the full picture, since they may be unaware of the implicit forces acting on them.

It's true that these social pressures exist, and they are certainly sexist. But I think it's important to distinguish that the pressure is what's sexist, not the impact of the choice.

Then let’s make an effort to expose and reform these sexist structures! That is the goal of people trying to reform the mindset of STEM institutions. These structures are not fixed, and so can be changed.

I'd love to spend more time with my kids and my wife would prefer to spend more time at work. I make 3 times her salary, though, so it's not really economically feasible for us to switch roles. She could afford to not work or work part time for 2 years. We couldn't afford it if I did it.

Although I love my kids I would go clinically insane if I had to do the stay-at-home raising of them full time. My wife OTOH loves it and would rather do nothing else. I know that this is swapped for many couples, but I still argue that reality is more skewed this way than the other. Maybe that will change over time.

People downvote but I assure you many dads agree.

IMO dads don't achieve the same level of bonding as women do to their babies and therefore we are able to tolerate less of the crap babies get into during the day.

Its not sexism, its just biology.

If I had a project I worked on for 9 months I would have more desire to continue working on it into the future. My investor is an interested party, but ultimately its entirely my drive which moves the project forward

What does? I made a few claims.

I was responding to the main premise of your comment, that "the fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism." This implies discrimination due to external forces that make men and women behave differently.

What do you mean by external forces? These are all interactions between human beings. We behave that we do in large part based on our interactions with others. Would you say that it is "external forces" that cause us two to communicate in English?

What is the alternative position you're suggesting?

"Structural sexism" implies nonintrinsic forces causing discrimination, hence why I called it an external force, as it's a force not generated internally.

I think the effects of evolutionary biology need to be considered when looking at behavioral differences. Evolutionarily speaking, women invest much more energy into growing, giving birth to, and caring for children than men. This leads to innate differences in behavior separate from social forces you are describing.

Then how come some women don't want children and even dislike children?

The reason why women are more involved in childcare after giving birth/nursery years is purely societal factors. It's expected of them to behave in that way in more conservative places and it's strongly implied in other places.

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