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Comment by tylermenezes | Hacker News Reader

I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to care for a child. That's something that very few diversity-in-STEM folks are really thinking about.

Many years ago an ex-girlfriend, who works in STEM academia (and is otherwise a liberal, progressive feminist), expressed concerns similar to the author about having kids. When I brought up that it wasn't written in stone that she would need to be the primary caregiver, she said she'd never even thought of the alternative!

(Anne-Marie Slaughter touched on this in a 2012 Atlantic article called "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" for anyone who's interested.)

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It is almost never mentioned but most men won't respect other men who are stay at home parent. So there is also an expectation on the man to be the bread winner.

Also many women tend not to want men who earn less then them:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/rich-women-like-rich-men-a...

>> It is almost never mentioned but most men won't respect other men who are stay at home parent. So there is also an expectation on the man to be the bread winner.

That too, is sexism, of course. Sexism also harms men.

I don't agree it is sexism. It is the simple fact that our species is sexually dimorphic. This guarantees that there will be asymmetry between the genders regardless of the social engineering that is attempted.

There is about 4 billion years of evolution and the thinking that it can be socially engineered away is a folly.

> Sexism also harms men.

Yes it does. But this is not one of those circumstances. However that is a completely different conversation.

How is it not one of those circumstances? Men find it extremely difficult to make a career as a nursery teacher, for example, because nursery schools and parents of young children don't trust men as a nurturing caregiver. It's a clear cut example of how a sexist view of men - biologically inspired or otherwise - is harmful to men.

That isn't sexism. There is a far higher likelihood that a sex offender is a man rather than a woman. While unfair it isn't unfounded fear and parents are naturally protective of their children.

That doesn't justify that sort of systematic pressure. An African American is much more likely to be a [edit: convicted] murderer than a white American, but that doesn't make it ok to cross the road whenever you see one.

> That doesn't justify that sort of systematic pressure.

If I were a parent I would be trying to mitigate the risk to my child. As I previously stated it is unfair but not unfounded.

It cannot be sexism if it is based in fact.

> An African American is much more likely to be a murderer than a white American, but that doesn't make it ok to cross the road whenever you see one.

* I don't live in the US, I am from the UK. The term African American doesn't really mean much here.

* If there was a young guy dressed in sports gear and appeared to be somewhat of a lout, no matter what the colour of his skin I would cross the road.

It is unfair. Sure. But when I was a younger man (I am almost 40 now), I used to be followed about and stopped by police and security because I was simple 1) Male 2) Under 25. People are simply mitigating the amount of risk to themselves, business and family.

The statistic for how likely a sex offender is to be male strikes me as unjustified here in three ways.

Firstly, I doubt many parents actually do do their research on this and use such a statistic to inform their decision. More likely it will be based on gut feeling.

Secondly, the probabilities are the wrong way round. More relevant how likely a given man is to be a sex offender, vs the likelihood for a given woman. If both probabilities are very tiny then despite their relative magnitudes there are other things to worry about.

Thirdly, "sex offender" is an extremely broad term and the great majority of those offenses would not have involved nursery age children.

Your bizarre line about sports gear is racism, or bigotry at least. Black people are mentioned so let’s talk about “louts” dressed poorly?

> If there was a young guy dressed in sports gear and appeared to be somewhat of a lout, no matter what the colour of his skin I would cross the road.

I didn't say anything about Black men. I said if I saw young men in General that looked like louts I would be wary.

Oh, give me a break please. You explicitly brought up young, shadily-dressed men on the street as a subpoint in the context of talking about black people.

No you are accusing me of racism when I made no comment about race what-so-ever. This "well you are secretly talking about black men" is you inserting your own prejudices and assumptions into something I've never said.

This maybe be an American thing. I am not from the US, I've never been to the US so I don't know. There are plenty of groups of yobs in the UK in poorer areas. Outside of London and the big cities these tend to be white. In my own home town (which is 99% white) there are 4 or 5 problem areas where you don't walk through at night because you get surrounded by youths. It happened to me at least once or twice when I was in my 20s and I only got left alone because one of the guys knew my brother.

I get so bored of this "well you secretly meant something else because I want to label you a bad person".

>> It cannot be sexism if it is based in fact.

As usual, it's not the facts that are in dispute here, but their interpretation.

> An African American is much more likely to be a murderer than a white American

[citation needed]

It is true that a black man is more likely to be prosecuted for murder but that’s a wholly different statistic.

~90% murders happen within the same ethnic group.

In a given year, there are about as many black bodies as white bodies, while the population ratio is 1 : 6.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-hom...

> Of the 13,455 cases from last year in which the FBI listed a victim's racial information, 7,039 victims – or 52.3 percent – were black. That compares with 5,854 cases – or 43.5 percent – in which the victim was white, an increase of about 8 percent from last year.

> It's a disparity that becomes more pronounced in the context of population, as 2015 Census estimates suggest that whites account for 77.1 percent of the overall U.S. population of roughly 321 million, while blacks comprise 13.3 percent.

A majority of murders are solved so there is no room for the kind of bias you are suggesting.

Fair point, but it equally applies to OP's assertion about men being more likely to be prosecuted for sex offenses.

It isn't my assertion. The crime statistics in both the UK and the USA back this up. It is something like 96% of all prosecutions of sexual assault are men.

EDIT: In fact it is higher at least in the UK

> In 2011, males accounted for the vast majority of prosecutions for sexual offences (98.2 per cent).

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Sorry, wasn't questioning the statement, but by definition it is something you're asserting.

Fair enough.

Bad take! There's no distinction between "biology" and "social engineering". Our biology underpins us having these discussions. Our biology underpins our society. Our biology underpins our thinking that things can be better. Our biology encourages us to improve our own quality of life and that of others in ever larger social groups. Everything we do is true to our biology.

There is an obvious distinction between people trying to socially arrange society and our biology. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

Woman give birth, men cannot breastfeed. That are indeed biology. Kids being picked up from school predominately by woman is a social arrangement, the kind we hopefully at least try to change if we consider there to be better options.

But yes, many kinds of social arrangements come up naturally and woman taking care of house and kids seems to be one of them. Another one is "the powerful rule over the weak"... something we nowadays generally think should be kept in check to the benefit of society and thus spend effort doing so. But spending effort to keep pre-defined gender roles in check must be somehow bad?

> Kids being picked up from school predominately by woman is a social arrangement, the kind we hopefully at least try to change if we consider there to be better options.

Define "Better". Why should we be trying to change it? Why should we be meddling with other people's lives? People aren't being harmed here.

> But spending effort to keep pre-defined gender roles in check must be somehow bad?

Both men and women at least in the western world enjoy the same rights and discrimination by gender is not only frowned upon but can be brought before a court. I seems to me that they are already kept in check.

>> People aren't being harmed here.

Well, the author is saying that she is considering giving up her career in reearch which she very much wants to pursue to have children because she can't find a way to reconcile the two.

That is clearly harmful and if it is affecting women at a large scale as the author suggests then it is definitely something that should be corrected.

> Well, the author is saying that she is considering giving up her career in reearch which she very much wants to pursue to have children because she can't find a way to reconcile the two.

I disagree. Unfortunately you have to make decisions in life on what you want to prioritise. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Also I don't consider having to make a choice harmful. Being harmed mean things like being assaulted, having your house robbed, being abused by your spouse. What it does not mean is coming to realisation that you may have to make a choice between family and career.

You know what does allow you to have both, wealth.

> You can't have your cake and eat it.

Unless you're a man.

Not at all. I should have expected such a reply though tbh.

Many men work long hours and miss out on their family time. Also men typically work more dangerous jobs and are more likely to die on the job. They are also more less likely to win custody in separation. Men are more likely to commit suicide. Nobody has it easy and your sort of glib remark that ignores all the issues men currently face isn't helpful.

> I seems to me that they are already kept in check.

To a degree, yes. But are you really trying to pretend it's already perfect?

Though you seem to not believe in systemic injustice, so I doubt we will be able to find a shared consensus.

Custody is a more widely known example were us men fight an uphill battle. Obviously not everyone is unsatisfied with societies default roles, but I'd certainly consider this a harm, if I ever end up in such a situation.

Again, it could be worse. And I'm not trying to meddle in your life. If you and your SO want to live by traditional roles, that's great. But I don't want those thrust on (and thus being meddled with) my life. And I don't want to live in a society that doesn't even try to improve anymore.

> To a degree, yes. But are you really trying to pretend it's already perfect?

Perfect is the enemy of Good.

> Again, it could be worse. And I'm not trying to meddle in your life. If you and your SO want to live by traditional roles, that's great. But I don't want those thrust on (and thus being meddled with) my life. And I don't want to live in a society that doesn't even try to improve anymore.

Everyone is trying to pin an opinion to me here because I am just questioning the underlying assumptions. I don't really have one other than "You can't have it all" unless you are extremely wealthy or extremely gifted.

> But I don't want those thrust on (and thus being meddled with) my life. And I don't want to live in a society that doesn't even try to improve anymore.

Neither do I. However there will never be a utopia. I find it actually pretty immature to think that you can make everything perfect, there are trade offs to everything.

Gender norms are partly genetic. Historically women were either breastfeeding or late-stage pregnant their entire adult lives and so to survive they needed men to work, so that is what our gender norms reflect. For example, men who doesn't take care of their women are still seen as scum. Not because there is any need for that any longer, but because our genes tells us that such men are trash and should be shunned. So you wont find any society which doesn't pressure men to become a provider and take care of women.

Some norms are generic indeed like breastfeeding, some are not like "being seen as scum". Do not undervalue the power of cultural norms, they shape us social apes as importantly as genes. Indeed, it's been said (by paleontologists and ethnologists alike) that for humans (a social ape with complex language) cultural evolution have been more influencial than generic evolution. So bad we learn so much about genetics at school and comparatively so little about sociology and/or primatology.

You're suggesting we should arrange society a specific way because of some connection to "biology". I am saying that the arrangements you seem to be for are no more rooted in biology than the arrangements you seem to be against.

> You're suggesting we should arrange society a specific way because of some connection to "biology".

Nope. I didn't say that.

> There is about 4 billion years of evolution and the thinking that it can be socially engineered away is a folly.

I didn't make any statement on how to arrange society. I simply stated that I believe they would all eventually fail.

You called the expectation of men to be breadwinners a natural consequence of sexual dimorphism, and said it was folly to "engineer" it away. That is a statement about how you think society should be arranged and why.

Also, if you believe _all_ arrangements of society will eventually fall, then wouldn't that make any arrangement acceptable to you? Including the one you were dismissing?

> You called the expectation of men to be breadwinners a natural consequence of sexual dimorphism, and said it was folly to "engineer" it away. That is a statement about how you think society should be arranged and why.

No it isn't. It is a statement of what I believe to be the truth. All the evidence and arguments around the topic I have seen and heard seem to lead in that direction. If you disagree with that conclusion that is fine.

However it doesn't mean that I believe that things should arranged in such a manner.

> Also, if you believe _all_ arrangements of society will eventually fall, then wouldn't that make any arrangement acceptable to you? Including the one you were dismissing?

I don't know. I wasn't saying anything about that. I was simply disagree that it is sexism. I don't buy into this the notion of "unconscious sexism".

Maybe we are talking past each other because we have different definitions here. How do you define sexism (in this context, for you)?

Which aspect of sexual dimorphism causes men to disrespect other men who care for children?

The competitive aspect? Males in plenty of species compete for status and low status males are getting chased away from the pack, so evidently genes are expressive enough to encode gender norms.

You probably believe that your views about genders is coming from observations of "males in plenty of species", but have you considered that maybe your views about "plenty of species" could come from your views on genders?

How is competition between males a consequence of sexual dimorphism?

Note that males in species with low sexual dimorphism compete for mates as fiercely as males in species with high sexual dimorphism.

Also note that the human species has very low sexual dimorphism relative to other species. E.g. our females are not many times the size of males, as they are in Black Widow spiders, our males don't have different colours of body coverage, like many species of birds do, etc etc. And of course many humans can easily pass for the other sex by changing their hair-style and clothing as evidenced by numerous cases in history where females passed as males by cutting their hair short and wearing pantaloons etc.

It isn't seen as "real" work by other men. Men have been the bread winners for almost all of human history and thus other men don't think they are doing their bit.

The flip side of the coin is that women overwhelmingly prefer higher-paid, more successful, higher-status, equally-or-more-educated men as partners. Then the choice of who should stay at home is pretty obvious (or no choice but necessity brought to you by brutal economic reality).

I became the primary care giver for my daughter for a number of years (My wife died - some years ago). My experience is that there is no flexibility in IT jobs - if you want to work not 9-5 5 days a week then tough luck, when you have a kid to look after, pick up from after school etc this just isn't possible.

I envied doctors at the time, they could just name their hours, some other professions can - but not STEM fields for some reason. I'd say the reason is sexism - its a bunch of guys who are married to women who look after the children, so flexibility is not built in to the system.

That does not sounds like IT jobs, it sounds like most jobs. In every sector, I'm sure you can find employers who are more flexible than others. I work at a software company and there are single parents leaving early or coming in late or both due to raising their kids. Consider finding a better employer.

Yes, I used to say that before I experienced it - but the system is built around workers that will work long continuous hours - you have to beg for the exception, and you take a pay hit - forget any thoughts of promotion - the glass ceiling women complain about. The attitude is oh yes we're being generous by letting you leave early - it shouldn't be that way, work should be planned around life.

While the plural of anecdote is not data, my director of engineering started as an individual contributor on my team. As a single mom, she has been promoted multiple times. She works two days from home and leaves early to beat traffic so she can do kid stuff. She is also very good at each role she has had.

Thats great it may be changing - my story was about 10 - 15 years ago now. I was sharing my experience, and I still see it everywhere. I would imagine that it takes extreme time management for her to achieve this, which is great, and kudos to her but this is definitely the exception. I have known people that can do this, they usually have very impressive Filofaxes with things scheduled to the minute in my experience. While there are people who can do this, and who want to - they are the minority.

I was thinking more along the lines of shared half time jobs, or 3 or 4 day a week jobs, jobs that allow women (or men) to work, look after their kids without becoming automatons. They exist in medicine, in law, in accounting, I've known a number of doctors that do 4 hour days in the office, and a bit at home. The only other choice I've seen is cafe jobs, or minor admin jobs. I don't see any reason that a lot of IT jobs couldn't be structured this way. As has been said many times - there's an IT shortage - of young white males who'll work cheap.

Totally agree. Nothing aside from "that's the way it works" is preventing what you described.

I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to care for a child.

They're definitely the only ones who can breastfeed(at any practical rate anyway).

One may, of course, elect not to do that, but it does make a difference for the child.

Why is 6 months of time dictating the entirety of childcare?

It's not six months, it's 9 months of pregnancy + ideally another year to recuperate, bond with the child and care for them.

Children don't magically become independent when they turn 1 either, they need a lot of investment from both parents in order to develop harmoniously.

Starting at this point one could wonder if fathers couldn't spend the same amount of effort as mothers. Technically they could, but by that point they probably aren't very good at some kinds of care and bonding, nor is the baby used to them in that way, unless they already did it during the first year.

It's also not something that is appreciated by others, except maybe the mother, if she can get over their clumsiness and has the patience to teach them what to do. All in all, there's no benefit for the family if the fathers instead of the mothers work part time or stay at hole.

You can work during a good deal of those nine months on pregnancy with only minor adjustments towards the second trimester.

> they need a lot of investment from both parents in order to develop harmoniously

Completely agreed, I said nothing against this except that the assumption that the mother had to be the one to stay home was odd.

> Technically they could, but by that point they probably aren't very good at some kinds of care and bonding

No citation here, this really just seems like repackaging assumptions as fact.

> It's also not something that is appreciated by others, except maybe the mother, if she can get over their clumsiness and has the patience to teach them what to do. All in all, there's no benefit for the family if the fathers instead of the mothers work part time or stay at hole.

I am positive many fathers and close family would beg to differ.

The benefits of breastfeeding are massively oversold (to say the least): https://www.skepticalob.com/2018/07/what-breastfeeding-resea...

A woman would still need almost a year of special work consideration for the pregnancy, appointments, and post-birth recovery, even if they're not a primary care giver afterwards.

That's a really small part of the problem. The article actually cites data from Italy, which already requires 5 months of maternity leave.

That's per child. It's really not a small part of the problem.

Your point (and there is truth to it) might work in industry, but in academia there is an expectation (as is mentioned in the OP) that you move around a lot.

Even if the husband takes care of the child, doing your masters in LA, your PhD in London, and a postdoc in Sidney, why on earth would anyone want to drag a child along with them?

I’d just like to echo some of the other comments; my wife is currently pregnant and it’s already clear that the burden is largely with her. I simply cannot get the vaccines and blood tests she needs, my hormones aren’t loosening all of my joints and I’m not exhausted most of the time. The challenge isn’t just who is going to look after them once they’re born.

It's becoming more acceptable that whomever is the lower-income partner is the one who is the primary caregiver of children (man or woman).

From what I can see, working in STEM academia definitely means you are likely to be the lower-income partner.

Where is it becoming more acceptable? In Germany I read an article about a stay at home dad and their life sounded quite miserable. They couldn't even hang around with other mothers because their husbands became suspicious.

> I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to care for a child.

Well, certainly nature is sexist in that only one of the sexes is able to gestate a child. Perhaps that will change someday. However, for now, (biological) women face a unique reproductive burden that is worth recognising and compensating for.

Biology aside, there is an important difference between assuming women must bear a disproportionate responsibility for childcare, and recognising that women do bear a disproportionate responsibility for childcare. The former is sexism, the latter is pragmatism. Saying "my house is on fire" doesn't make you pro-fire.

> That's something that very few diversity-in-STEM folks are really thinking about.

I'm not sure how that can be true. What you're describing, the assumption that men work and women stay home, is the foundational stereotype that sparked second-wave feminism. Unless the argument is that "diversity-in-STEM folks" aren't familiar with basic feminist ideas like gender roles?

In any event, here is some evidence that this is, in fact, something that people are really thinking about:

> The boundaries of the gender division of labour between productive and reproductive roles are gradually being crossed as women have started to enter formerly male-dominated areas of work and men have started to accept greater responsibility for domestic tasks, including child care. However, changes in women’s roles have been greater and much more rapid than changes in men’s roles.

— Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action – Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) https://www.un.org/en/events/pastevents/pdfs/Beijing_Declara...

> Take measures to increase the participation of men in caregiving both within households and in care professions, such as information and awareness campaigns, education and training, school curriculum, peer programmes and government policies to promote men’s participation and responsibilities as fathers and caregivers, and to encourage men and boys to become agents of change in promoting the human rights of women and in challenging gender stereotypes, in particular as they relate to men’s roles in parenting and infant development

— Agreed Conclusions of the 53rd Commission on the Status of Women (2009) https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sec...

> Labour market policies that offer men access to paternity and parental leave, especially when coupled with Scandinavian-style incentives which encourage men to actually take leave, are a critical signal that men have responsibility for their children. However, gender norms are strong and pervasive. [...] Through community-based organisations and educational sessions supported by social protection programmes, health clinics and schools, fathers should be actively integrated into childcare activities and helped to see themselves as central to their children’s development.

— Women's Work: Mothers, children, and the global childcare crisis – Overseas Development Institute (2016) https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/public...

> The time-use and labour force data presented in this chapter make a compelling case for inequalities in unpaid care work and inequalities in the labour force being deeply interrelated. This not only confirms the “unpaid care work–paid care work” connection discussed in Chapter 1, but demonstrates also that no substantive progress can be made in achieving all dimensions of gender equality in the labour force before inequalities in unpaid work are tackled through their effective recognition, reduction and redistribution between women and men, as well as between families and the State.

— Care Work and Care Jobs – International Labour Organization (2018) https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dco...

> Rather than focusing only on increasing women’s workforce participation, it is also important to increase men’s participation in caring responsibilities. In countries where family policies incentivise men to take caring roles, the impact is seen both in the rate of men accessing leave and in societal attitudes towards parenting.

— Women in STEM Decadal Plan – Australian Academy of Science (2019) https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/reports-a...

Women are more likely to want to be the primary caregiver to something that actually came out of them. It's biological and there's nothing sexist about it.

It's partly biological but there are still many existing cultural attitudes that discourage husbands from performining traditionally "feminine" roles/tasks when caring for their kids.

The author's point about being over-critical of sexism is well-taken, but by reducing the sexist attitudes towards, for example, stay-at-home dads, it may be possible to help more women in STEM have fully productive careers.

> it's biological

"It's biology" has a long history of being used to justify everything from sexism to racism to genocide. Please provide a source for your claim (and for the implied claim that men do not have the same drive).

The source is looking at nature and all the species?

But that doesn't mean we, the smartest of them all, can't make some changes. Nature is also killing the weaker etc, things that we don't agree on as humans.

And of course you were downvoted, while the one claiming "biology!" based on no arguments wasn't.

It is sexist because you are dismissing women being treated as lesser beings with some armchair analysis.

I disagree with the poster you are replying to, but I also disagree with what seem to be the implications of you comment -- that someone who prefers performing childcare over STEM work is a "lesser being"?

No no, lesser being as in "we decide your duties and remobe your opportunities".

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