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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

I made the same point in a less snarky way in my previous comment in this thread.

It is a very deeply embedded assumption that women are primary parents. Any man who has been an equal or primary carer for their kids will tell you that.

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> It is a very deeply embedded assumption that women are primary parents.

Because this is typically true, even in cases where both parents work.

That is a circular effect. Its true because people assume it and behave accordingly. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

it's true by biological necessity. parenting starts already while the child is still growing in the womb. the way the mother lives, experiences stress, what she consumes, all affect the child. breastfeeding is equally important and is much more than just feeding the child with milk.

Men cannot breast feed. In the first years, the mother is the primary parent, by biological instinct of the child alone. After that, both are parents and it depends if the mother or the father is the better parent. But you have to really hate your child (which many parents of course do) to try to force them to live against their biological instincts when they are infants.

Many women can not either. And some children simply will not. I have two boys. One would only breastfeed and never take the bottle. The other would only take a bottle and never breastfeed.

> But you have to really hate your child (which many parents of course do) to try to force them to live against their biological instincts when they are infants.

Is this a complaint against bottle feeding? If so, fuck right off. In the real world there are a lot of reasons not to breast feed, even though most people would love to be able to do it.

It's a complaint against dumping infants into daycare when it's the time of development that they are most dependent on being near their mother.

Why don't you tell your boss to fuck right off instead? Then you don't have to pent up your frustrations and then blow up on strangers online. Do you dare?

Very few women breastfeed for years. When breastfeeding they can express milk and keep a bottle in the fridge. The father can do literally everything else.

Other than that, what evidence do you have that there is a "biological instinct"?

You want me to give you evidence that infants have a biological instinct to suckle their mother's milk?

No, I want evidence that this means they have a "biological instinct" to regard the mother as the primary parent. One is a instinctive physical behaviour, the other is emotional, but you are claiming that the first proves the second.

That is something we need to fight.

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