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Comment by gtk40 | Hacker News Reader

I'm from a blue class family in a non-affluent area and I could already read going into Kindergarten because my mom spent a lot of time reading with me before I got to school. This was 25+ years ago.

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You touch upon an issue near to my heart but I am loathe to utter it: women in workforce is robbing our children and country of a future.

Disagree if you will.

You probably get disagreement becasue your focused on one gender. No reason why we can't have stay at home dads.

Unless you think that men can't be good caretakers or something about it being a women's job, then good luck, your on your own lol

Men are pretty bad at breast feeding or carrying a pregnancy.

You can formula feed or feed with pumped milk. Father's are capable of feeding children.

Formula is not as nutritious as human breast milk. Bottle feeding leads to long lasting anatomical changes. You can look at the research confirming these uncomfortable and inconvenient truths.

What are the long lasting anatomical changes? Would love to learn more because my kids were bottle fed.

Narrowing of jaws, airway, and higher change of sleep apnea into adulthood. You can see the difference even as a lay person.

This is false.

Whooaa! You're going to give people whiplash with how quickly you're changing what's being discussed. Men are perfectly capable of reading to kids! That you use things men are perfectly able to do, rather than the things they're not, as justification for why women should not be in the workplace makes me think you're not nearly so loathe to utter it as you say.

I was responding to someone claiming dads are just as good caretakers as moms. Clearly false.

Relitigating what's always been said seem like a waste of everyone's time, especially when you're already going to ignore the context in which you're having a discussion.

I have no idea what you’re saying. You could interact with the claims made instead of making a meta point using corporate speak.

You are being intellectually dishonest. What do carrying pregnancy and breastfeeding have to do with caring for a kindergarten age child?

1. Younger siblings 2. Spending enough time to teach reading and arithmetic BEFORE kindergarten.

So actually in this sub thread the relevant age is 0 to 5.

Breastfeeding generally stops at age 2 (or earlier). Your contention is that literacy is significantly affected by whether the mom or the dad is taking care of the child at age 2 and below?

Not just literacy but everything is significantly affected by the care rendered from 0 to 4. My concern was broader: the children’s and society’s future.

By your own admission, a father cannot alone provide care for an infant. And if there are siblings then the critical time period will stretch - perhaps to 3 or 4 years.

Apparently the eldest would be reading chapter books by then, according to other comments in this thread. But I do not understand it.

It is a bitter choice. For mothers to have a life outside of motherhood it is the children who are deprived.

Fathers can't care for an infant alone? Damn shame that every single child with a mother who died in child birth never survived to adulthood. Damn shame. Also, just so tragic that a gay couple will never know the joy of raise a child from infancy. Pete Buttigieg has a hell of a fine imitation of an infant.

Cmon what you are saying is 100% false. Men are 100% capable of caring for infants and toddlers. Formula exists and there has been no large scale study that has shown a significant long term impact for formula usage. All benefits of breastfeeding are minor or unable to be separated from characteristics of the mother.

Women entering the workforce is not the death of child achievement. It is not even parents having time since there was only an extremely narrow window where the one parent household was a thing and it wasn't even the majority of the population. Income has always correlated with achievement and wealthy parents pay money for their child's enrichment not particularly engage with the children themselves. There are kindergarteners at my kid's school in tutoring to get them ahead. These kids are not even behind. That's not the mother spending time on their kid that's boosting the test scores in my district. It's wealth.

There are plenty of studies. Formula is convenient but it is deficient. If it were such a perfect replacement, why do parents go to such length as breast feed, pump, or get donor milk?

Breast feeding increases IQ: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26211556/

Formula causes obesity and diabetes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2812877/

Breast feeding decreases infant mortality: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1...

You can do more of your own research if you want to be convinced. You can ignore it if you don’t like the sound of it.

Because American culture has for 30 years told them to do so. It may be a valid impulse or it may not be but it's not evidence in itself.

Did you look at my references?

women are better than men at housekeeping and raising children. why do women take this as an insult? its a compliment.

I take it as an insult as a guy! Theres nothing in my gender that precludes me from being as good at housekeeping (cleaning, cooking). Unscientific drivel!

I never mentioned housekeeping.

What do you mean? Fathers can teach their kids to read too right? In what sense are mothers specifically at fault?

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