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Comment by henrikschroder | Hacker News Reader

> and make room for Mothers to take care of their own children.

Whoa, 50's regression much? Why not make room for fathers to take care of their own children?

> in the care of poorly paid strangers

Or you could leave your children in the care of educated professionals in child development, who will ensure your children gets age- and stage-appropriate stimulation, as well as socialization with other children in a safe environment, something that very neatly complements caring for children at home.

> And have the gall to call this arrangement "female empowerment".

Actual studies from countries that have a longer and better history of this than the US show that it does increase gender equality by quite a lot.

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> you could leave your children in the care of educated professionals in child development...

That sounds wonderful, but it's economically impossible, except for the rich. The cost would be near or exceed what most people clear working a job.

> That sounds wonderful, but it's economically impossible, except for the rich.

In the US, sure, but there are other countries with other models...

Yup. My wife and I were faced with the option of her contributing financially to the home and we pay for child care, or her being an at home mom. If she went to work, she would net $20 a week after paying for child care. Yeah, nope.

When we had just one kid, the math of my wife working or not worked out to basically what you found. If she was feeling engaged in what she was doing, we probably would have found someone to watch our daughter. But she wasn't really, so she stayed home.

Then we had twins.

There is a daycare just down the street that we looked into just for shits and giggles. A mere $550 / week if we wanted all three there full time.

That's a real big "hell no".

My wife earned negative income for a few years but kept with it. I didn't agree with her decision but supported her in it. She just didn't want to be out of the work force so long that she would have trouble getting back in once the kids were in school.

How much does an "educated professional in child care dev" cost?

Considering you usually have better salary with 2-4 years extra experience there is more to it than that. I guess universal daycare is a non starter in the US, and even though we have that here in Sweden women still opt to stay at home more than men, but that difference getting smaller every year. One of the measures says 30% of childcare days are used by fathers, but that is only paid time. The statistics for the unpaid time is usually a lot worse.

It wouldn’t be if society recognised the importance of the next generation and pooled together collectively.

> Whoa, 50's regression much? Why not make room for fathers to take care of their own children?

Nothing wrong with that, but mother goes first for obvious biological reasons.

After pregancy and the very first months of life, I fail to see any "obvious biological reasons".

WHO recommends breast feeding until age of 2, so that's at least one thing that seems not readily changeable across sexes.

you can bottle feed breast milk.

But that means the mother needs time and a discreet place to pump at work. If it’s a job where she’s on her feet all day, that may not be possible.

Short of some form of difficult manual labor, I've never experienced a workplace that doesn't allow a woman to pump.

This is certainly not going to be the norm.

It's not a matter of being disallowed, it's a matter of convenience and comfort. If a woman is working a factory or a large department store, she may have to pump in the restroom. That's not exactly a comfortable or convenient place for it. Far different from an office which offers a quiet room with a comfortable chair or couch for her use.

Beyond that, there's also the matter of storage. Breastmilk is unpasteurized and needs to be refrigerated immediately for safety reasons. In an office, it can be as easy as putting the bottle in the fridge in the staff room. A fridge may not be available in other workplaces.

There is actually a 4/4/4 rule of thumb; 4 hours at room temp, 4 days in fridge, 4 months in freezer (source: newborn baby care class at large hospital in CA)

Still agree with the rest of your thoughts about other hurdles to overcome in the work place

There are a lot of things in life that aren't perfect, yet they're still solutions.

They are solutions, but would people choose them? This story is about what women are choosing to do with their lives. From what I gather, they’re not choosing the hard, inconvenient, uncomfortable way without a good reason.

this is so disingenous. You're trying to imply that the reason women leave STEM is because they'll have to pump at work.

that's ridiculous.

And I've personally seen plenty of women pump at work.

That is associated with less diverse milk microbiota.

https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(1...

That’s because people in many countries don’t have access to clean water. There’s no reason to pressure women in developed countries to breastfeed for 2 years.

Unless you’d like to push them out of the workforce.

No, it's because there are a lot of scientific results correlating it to all kinds of better health outcomes both for the child and the mother, also in developed countries.

Whether this benefit is worth the great burden two years of breastfeeding imposes on women is, of course, debatable, and each woman should choose and not be questioned on their decision (as people often do). But sweeping the issue under the rug by denying the proven benefits of extended breastfeeding is not helpful.

Not when you adjust for education and SES and nothing beyond one year. Which is great news, because as you say, it can be burdensome.

(Not a knock on extended breastfeeding itself. I think mother and baby should breastfeed as long as it’s working for both of them - well into the toddler+ years if that’s what mom wants. But claiming unproven benefits is actively harmful to women.)

That is excessive, and is a troublesome outcome from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé_boycott I only have anecdotal data but this advice does not help families that have problems with breast feeding.

That's not what they recommend

https://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/

>Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended up to 6 months of age, with continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods up to two years of age or beyond.

Sorry if I'm just missing it, but isn't that exactly what they're recommending there, if not more?

Their point presumably was that once the kids don't breastfeed exclusively, the mother doesn't need to stay home to perform that task.

It doesn't work like that, because the "complementary food" is just that: complementary. The main source of nutrition according to the WHO should still be breastfeeding until two years old. The typical recommendation is to start each meal by breastfeeding first, and then give some food afterwards as a "second course".

The mother can still go to work by using a breast pump to extract milk and leave it refrigerated or frozen, but the logistics are quite hellish and breast pumps not even always work.

All in all, and I say this as a parent that ideologically supports equality and believes that both parents should share parenting efforts equally... nature just doesn't work that way. At all. :(

Worked nicely just breastfeeding during the nights/mornings for us and most people I know after 12 months, and earlier should not be much of a problem IMHO, it's something you should be able decide on your own. It's not something to demand from mothers, because the stigma of not breast feeding can be pretty hard for a new mother and it is completly unnecessary to put that psychological pressure on someone..

Mothers have the first pick because they invested more into the kid coming into being. They risked their life and invested 9 months into bearing the child. So they get first pick to also be the person spending time with the child.

The strange thing about arguing that its a trade is that you have to consider the trade is fair and consider nothing else.

Not sure what you mean, tbh.

If the birth and childbearing is being compensated by being able to spend time with the child, why give any consideration in any other field (say custody, parental leave, etc) if its already paid for.

Sorry, still not quite sure what you mean (I'm not a native speaker, maybe that's why).

Childbearing is of course not the only cost of having a child. Custody and parental leave just make it a bit less expensive (at least for some).

However, the initial investment is usually mostly by the mother. Other expenses come later. I think you could discuss who has the right to the kid if, say, the mother abandons it after birth and the father lovingly raises it for 10 years. I suppose that is also what happens in custody lawsuits?

I like this comparison, but only because I haven't found a better one yet:

Suppose you dream of sailing, and you start building a sailing boat. You work on it for a year, building the boat with your own hands.

The day the sailing boat is ready, your husband takes it from you, says "thank you, now you may go back to your normal career again", and sails off to unknown lands with your ship, while society applauds his sacrifice for the sake of your career.

It's incredibly offensive and dumb to say that women don't know how to raise children, considering the millennia long track record.

That millennia long track record contains very high numbers of infant death, and the only thing pushing those numbers down is our ever-expanding collective knowledge of best practices regarding child-rearing.

Women aren't born with innate genetic knowledge of how to prevent SIDS, it's taken generations of studies to figure out causes and develop working practices to counter it.

I you put a baby in safe environment and you don't touch it, don't play with it he widdle and die. Think about that for a moment. One thing for sure we were able to reproduce for millennia but let science do it for a while and see what happen.

The only thing? What about progress in medicine and hygiene? SIDS is a very minor factor in child mortality.

...for example...

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