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Comment by number6 | Hacker News Reader

I am on parental leave right now together with my wife. Financially it's OK- we had some time to prepare. The most basic issue is breastfeeding. A newborn wants to drink about every two hours. My wife just can't leave the house if she wants to breastfeed. Bottled up milk is an option when the child is about 4 months old.

At this stage the bond between them both is so thick, that they are basically inseparable. As man you basically spend a whole year to catch up.

So even with enough money and leeway from my employer to take parental leave there are still issues why childcare is mainly the part of the mothers. I guess most of the feminists don't have children. Oh and try to have two children. Guess what: it does not scale well! And it takes more than two persons to even raise one child. I would encourage you all to try it yourself. It is really rewarding to be a parent and also so exhausting - even with all the privileges in the world.

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I'm not so sure that fathers need to "catch up", but I guess it depends on the child/family. I know I was always better at calming our child, mostly because it was bloody difficult to learn what he liked and how to help in all the various situations.

My wife never really learned that, she'd give him boobs and he'd feed/sleep. That worked perfectly for the first six-ten months, and then it didn't.

I'd never had those to fall back on, and was always the one who took over when he was being "difficult". Then again I was also the one that pushed him in his pram for a walk around the block at 2AM, in sub-zero temperatures, to help him fall back to sleep. They were hell on my sleeping patterns, but also some of the best early memories I have. Talking and singing as the snow fell .. magical.

Same here! This times where great and terrible - I took our boy for walks in his pram for hours for here to catch some sleep. With two kids this obviously doesn't work anymore.

Sometimes when I returned my wife told me she couldn't sleep cause she missed him. I guess they just where very close. Sometimes I envied that - now that he is bigger we have a lot father- son activities, so that makes up for that.

Men and women are just different parents and I believe kids need both parts or even more. Grandparents and aunts and cousins, friends and teachers. The kids are always happier in a crowd that just with one parent or even both parents. Nowadays everyone threats parenting as a two person job but everyone will agree the saying that it takes a village to raise a child...

> takes more than two persons to even raise one child

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village

I didn't have the same experience. I took a lot of time off and think/hope I bonded just fine. I feel I was privileged to be ale to afford it, or rather, I just decided to afford it to dismay of my wife. That is another underrated factor: mothers actually WANT security, including financial security. Another factor is that it can get annoying if the other parent injects their opinions on rising children. It is not as if mothers in general are keen for the fathers to be around all the time. The feminist narrative (as usual) is absurdly wrong.

Breastfeeding is another example of why it is more "natural" for mothers to stay home than fathers, though.

I don't understand why you got downvoted. Much of the ideology does not translate on to the real world. Not everyone will fit in the narrative. Mothers and Fathers usually enjoy being with their children. In our society one has to work for a living. So one parent has to do it. This has nothing to do with feminism. Why should men or women be defined by their jobs? Why is money defining the worth of a women or a man? Feminism is just a strawman for the underlying problem that we are fixated on money

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