Why Some Dads Don’t Take Leave: They Think They’ll Be Punished | Hacker News Reader

Why Some Dads Don’t Take Leave: They Think They’ll Be Punished

nytimes.com

23 pointsJonathanBuchh28 comments

Or they just don’t want to… I love my kids but I would prefer work to the tedium of dealing with small children or an infant any day. Most men I know just aren’t wired with the ability to tolerate child care. The last few years of “wokeness” can’t undo a few hundred thousand years of evolutionary biology.

Or everyone struggles with childcare, men and women both, but men manage to avoid it more in our culture. Obviously there's some biology involved (men can't breastfeed, but bottles are a thing). Doesn't seem crazy that anyone might worry they'll be punished by their bosses for "slacking off" taking care of their kids though, it's pretty well-documented that it certainly takes a bite out of many women's careers[1].

1: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/women-children-earnings-1.5...

I'm a software engineer and my peers have always typically been men. I've actually had a different experience where I find being a father rather difficult and outside my comfort zone however most of my male peers don't. They go googly eyed every time a colleague brings their new baby into the office.

I've had to work hard to learn how to be a father including taking the rare opportunity to be a stay at home dad while my wife temporarily returned to work for 14 weeks. Interestingly some of my fellow engineer dads lamented the fact that they couldn't be stay at home parents, even if only for the early years, since they typically earned a lot more than their wives. It just didn't make sense financially for them.

Men taking care of their kids isn't some fad or temporary woke trend. Men have always taken care of their kids but changes in society are now opening up different ways for them to do that.

Pardon my saying so, but what a bunch of horseshit. Don’t blame “evolutionary biology” for your own preferences or those of people around you.

Source: am a dad (on parental leave) who loves spending time with his young kids.

Unlike new mothers, there is no sound biological reason for fathers to require extended paternity leave. Throughout human history, fathers have had an imperative to provide for their families and generally couldn’t afford the opportunity cost of taking an extended paternity leave. If there was a biological reason for this, it would have become culturally enshrined a long time ago there would be no debate on its merits. This a “nice to have” not a “need to have”. Our needs fundamentally arise from biology and thus have evolutionary origins. Saying otherwise because it isn’t convenient is “horseshit”.

Im really struggling to wrap my head around "not being wired for child care". We live in a world full of things that we as humans are obviously not "wired" for as we have created them in the past few hundred years, but the line gets drawn at child care for men?

Evidence from the other half of the population suggests they are correct.

Mandatory leave is probably going to be deemed too heavy handed, but much more non-transferable use-it-or-lose-it time off should be available so that people feel inclined to use at least some of it.

Suppose four identically skilled and driven people: Adam, Betty, Charlie, and Debby all started their careers at the same firm and time. Adam and Betty each took four months of parental leave for each of their two kids while Charlie and Debby continuously worked on their career. The company eagerly and warmly welcomed Adam and Betty back each time (as is proper).

At three years in, it would seem a little weird if Charlie and Debby didn’t make more progress in their career than Adam and Betty across that time period. They’ve got almost 30% more experience on the job.

For knowledge workers, proficiency doesn't go up linearly with time on the job.

Continuing the hypothetical situation, let's say the company closes one major deal per month. The people who did not go on leave participated in 8 more deals. It's not discrimination, just being present should improve their future job prospects. Every deal means more contact with customers (who might later want to poach them), more likely they participated in some last-minute crunch time projects under the boss's eye, more unique circumstances/negotiations they had to navigate. Of course, if they are incompetent, more chance for that to be revealed as well.

I don't really disagree with your point, but personal experience tells me that inherent competence and motivation have far more impact on the value an employee can deliver than raw experience (on the timescales of weeks or months, which is the point we are focused on here).

How is "inherent competence" demonstrated? On that one deal when the boss needed the PowerPoint updated the night before a big presentation, Charlie was in the office and got it done. Nothing against Adam, but he happened to be on leave. Now the boss is deciding who to promote... it's just natural he's going to remember Charlie coming through and getting the job done when necessary. This is a simple example but multiply by lots of projects and lots of tasks and lots of meetings that Charlie participated in and Adam didn't, and the gap, in the boss's mind, likely widens.

Entirely agree, which is why I specified that all four are equal on those points in the premise. Once those are held equal, time, experience, reps, or whatever you want to call it, matters (or you have to find another explanation of how Charlie and Debby didn’t develop in work-related dimensions given the extra time, experience, and reps).

I've never met two people I'd describe as equally competent across the board, so it seems like an irrelevant exercise. We have also not touched on what personal growth and emotional maturity a person can gain in a few months away from work.

I suppose my conclusion is that as you argue, people probably will discriminate - but it is that part we should be pushing back against in order to make this proposal work, rather than just accepting it as an unavoidable consequence of parenting.

I want to also add that I have no children and no intent to have them; but I like the idea of the work culture we are describing here for other reasons. For example, acceptance that taking a sabbatical might be a significant positive step for some professionals if we can step back from the evaluation grind.

I took the max (paid) paternity leave for both my kids and am confident that my subsequent promotions were as they should be: against the standards for the next level without regard to whether or not I took any type of leave along the way.

The purpose of thought experiments is to examine some situations without bringing irrelevant factors in. We don’t need to literally know the same Adam and Charlie in order to reason about what matters and what should be disregarded in a given situation.

There are very few workers for whom it's linear. For most knowledge workers, proficiency is monotonic at least.

There is only one solution to this, and it’s mandatory paid parental leave for both parents. We already have a system in place for this for jury duty and this is more important. Far more important.

At least in Spain, when fathers were given the same leave as mothers, they opted to have fewer children. It makes sense of course; you want less of something when you’re fully exposed to the costs (in this case, the child care work requires while on leave) of that thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity...

Obvious counter-move by a company that actually punishes employees taking paternity / maternity leave - punish employees having children.

Pretty sure they're already on it.

I’m taking paternity leave now and it’s so great and rewarding. As the article mentions, caring for a child is a skill that needs to be learned over multiple weeks. It also takes a while for a baby to be comfortable with a new caregiver. If a man doesn’t take that time, then it’s really unfair to the mother who now has so much more responsibility on their shoulders. It’s sad to me that the push for profit in so many industries has driven margins so low that companies can’t survive if workers take leave. I guess that’s ruthless capitalism for you.

It's not the "push for profits" that reduces margins, it's normal competition. If an industry is making someone rich, other people will notice and jump in. Some industries, like airlines or chip making have high barriers to entry and can keep a lot of competitive threats at bay. Catering, which the interviewee works in, essentially has zero barriers, further, because it is labor intensive, most catering companies are quite small and restricted to a local area. Hard to tell these caterers (perhaps the original "gig economy" jobs) that they need to continue paying people who aren't available for catering jobs, regardless of circumstances.

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