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Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

Well, if the parents are married all the earnings typically accumulate as common assets. In the event of a divorce those common assets are divided, and usually for a period of several years or more the higher earner is required to transfer further income from their paycheck to the lower earner. This doesn’t show up in the statistics I assume.

It’s possible this doesn’t create a 100% balance, but it’s also not 100% balanced that one partner was able to spend far more time with the children (and usually both parents want to despite what some debate participants will say), and other non financial costs and benefits.

One way to solve this would be to require all marriages to have a pre negotiated divorce agreement with experienced advisors on both sides to discuss what would be fair compensation in case of divorce.

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> but it’s also not 100% balanced that one partner was able to spend far more time with the children

That can easily be balanced via legislation. What cannot be balanced is one partner having to take on all the health risks and lifelong consequences of childbirth and breastfeeding, etc.

In general, men get the short end of the stick with the current setup of household gender roles. They work more hours, at jobs they like less and are more stressed at, and experience far more on the job fatalities and permanent disabilities than women do.

The net result of this is that men are more likely to die any given year during their careers and have a life span shorter by several years than women do.

> one partner having to take on all the health risks

Sure, but let’s be careful not to cherry pick the statistics. It’s still true that the average life expectancy for men is about 5 years shorter than women.

I notice that there are attempts in our society to balance some areas of risk but not others. Breast cancer funding is much greater than prostate cancer funding despite the latter killing more people, etc.

Yeah if we really cared about equality of outcome we'd be funding men's health to the tune of trillions to reduce the life expectancy gap.

> What cannot be balanced is one partner having to take on all the health risks and lifelong consequences of childbirth and breastfeeding, etc.

Good thing it's opt-in. Why would you want to legislate opt-in behaviour?

So you are ok that Ukranian women atm to also not be able to leave the country and have to fight? Because there are also a lot of consequences for being a man that just keep being ignored (famous Hillary Clinton's quote that the real victims of war are the widows of the fallen soldiers springs to mind)

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