9 ms·

> Women can bear children, men can't. This gives women the first choice to spend time with those children, and also gives them bargaining power in relationships

by mklim 11y ago

> Women can bear children, men can't. This gives women the first choice to spend time with those children, and also gives them bargaining power in relationships. Your second sentence doesn't follow from your first. There isn't anything inherent in the ability to give birth that gives mothers "first choice" of spending time with their children forevermore or more "bargaining power" in their romantic relationships than their partner. The only thing biologically inherent to childbirth is the ability to carry and birth children.

jazzyk 11y ago
You know perfectly well that mother's presence is ESSENTIAL to baby's proper development. Whose belly do doctors put fresh-born babies on, their fathers? And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try.
- mklim 11y ago
  > Whose belly do doctors put fresh-born babies on, their fathers? I wasn't the one who downvoted you, but I think it's unfortunate that you're citing a social practice to try and establish biological fact and claiming to understand what I "know." Nothing about a distinctly female presence is necessary for a child's proper development, much less the specific woman that birthed the baby originally. All the major psychological associations that I know of support gay adoption as healthy for children. The biologically necessary thing is a loving parental presence, gender non specific. Formula exists and can be given to children, midwives existed to feed babies before that.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    There is one more thing I did not mention. The 9-month-long mother-child bonding time, unavailable to the father, the midwife and whoever else. For older children , any loving adult care is fine. But the original post was about the priority the mother has, indicating post-birth.
    - mklim 11y ago
      My impression that the first post I replied to was speaking of things in general, not locked to any kind of specific post-birth time frame. Even if it was though, I disagree with the mother's presence specifically being "ESSENTIAL" for the baby's health. Do babies' whose mothers die during childbirth suffer severe developmental disorders or other problems? What about babies that are immediately given to their adoptive parents instead of their biological mother after being born? My understanding is that as long as they receive love, support, and nutrition from an adult of either gender they grow up fine, with single parents being generally less effective than pairs.
      - jazzyk 11y ago
        Just a few quick points, this is going off-topic: 1. Let's replace "essential" with "optimal". The original point still stands. 2. You conveniently omitted the 9-month bonding time. 3. Formula is good enough, but breast milk is optimal. Never heard of midwives breastfeeding other women's babies in 21st century. 4. Researchers have long known that newborns recognize – and prefer – their mom's voice. http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-can-recognize-their-mothers-voice-at_10323727.bc http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-can-rec...
        mklim 11y ago
        1. No it doesn't still stand. If a mother's presence is biologically necessary for her child's development in the same way her uterus is necessary for fetal development, then the OP is right and childbirth does innately biologically necessitate that women spend more time with their children than their male partners in the same way that it's a biological fact that fathers do not carry fetuses to term and give birth to them. If their presence is, instead of "ESSENTIAL", "optimal" then my question becomes: "optimal" for what compared to what and for whom? It becomes a case of people and the groups they form making decisions to optimize for certain goals by behaving in a particular way, not raw biology empirically operating. 2. Yes, I did. It didn't seem relevant to the point I was arguing, see #1. 3. For optimal, see 1, and for midwives—yes, and that's a societal trend rather than a biological fact. 4. True but still irrelevant, see #1. I'm not arguing that biological mothers aren't generally inclined to want to spend more time with their children than their male partners, or that newly born infants aren't going to instinctively want to spend time with their mothers. It's just OP's original claim didn't logically follow from the evidence he presented—nothing about childbirth necessitates women having "the first choice to spend time with those children, and [...] bargaining power in relationships."
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try. My understanding is that they can lactate. Normally this is the result of certain medications, but I think all the necessary equipment is there and stimulation alone could cause it. But I don't suspect it would provide enough nutrients.
- kaitai 11y ago
  For centuries we've taken kids away from their moms and handed them off to wet nurses. A woman is useful, but society has developed a lot of ways of making sure the bio-mom isn't the only one (very logically given our historically high maternal mortality rate). Our current nuclear-family setup is only possible because of improvements in sanitation and medicine.
facepalm 11y ago
Bargaining power is obvious: unless women are being enslaved or raped (not the norm in the first world), they control who gets to procreate. Wombs are a limited resource, sperm is not. So that gives women bargaining power (limited resources have a price). The first (option to spend time with children): maybe that just follows from the bargaining power. But if you have been present at the birth of your kids, maybe you can agree that it seems ridiculous to take children away from their mother shortly after birth, after all they have been through. The importance of breast feeding is another aspect, although obviously children can also grow up without that. It's only feminism that needs to frame mothering as a form of suppression, because otherwise their narrative would fall apart. The reality is that it is usually a privilege (a fair privilege, but still) that women gladly accept. (Yes, women who don't enjoy spending time with their children exist, ask your local feminist for a bunch of anecdotes. They are still a minority).
- mklim 11y ago
  I mostly agree with the idea that women in modern society are given general priority/encouraged to spend time with their children vs their male partners. What I disagree with is that this fact of modern society is biologically inherent to the ability to give birth itself. (Maybe related to biology in other ways, I could see an argument for hormone-based brain differences, but that wasn't what I was nitpicking in your first post.) The multiplicity of options that women currently have (stay at home mom without shame and/or a career), is a result of how our society reacts to the biological fact of childbirth (among other things), not an innate result inherent to the fact itself. You suggest this yourself by saying "unless women are being enslaved or raped (not the norm in the first world), they control who gets to procreate." In other societies, the ability to give birth could result in widely different outcomes for women. Additional edit: Even accepting your premise that women have more "bargaining power" than men in interpersonal relationships, that would again be a function of society's reaction to biology rather than biology itself. It's true that bearing a child to term takes several orders of magnitude more time and resources than the act of impregnating someone. But the idea that "limited resources have a price" and so the people who can become pregnant have leverage against the ones who don't isn't biological. Limited resources could just as well be seized and then redistributed by the government to the general population for free. The fact of childbirth is biological, but the reaction is societal.

by mklim 11y ago

jazzyk 11y ago

You know perfectly well that mother's presence is ESSENTIAL to baby's proper development. Whose belly do doctors put fresh-born babies on, their fathers? And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try.

mklim 11y ago
> Whose belly do doctors put fresh-born babies on, their fathers? I wasn't the one who downvoted you, but I think it's unfortunate that you're citing a social practice to try and establish biological fact and claiming to understand what I "know." Nothing about a distinctly female presence is necessary for a child's proper development, much less the specific woman that birthed the baby originally. All the major psychological associations that I know of support gay adoption as healthy for children. The biologically necessary thing is a loving parental presence, gender non specific. Formula exists and can be given to children, midwives existed to feed babies before that.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  There is one more thing I did not mention. The 9-month-long mother-child bonding time, unavailable to the father, the midwife and whoever else. For older children , any loving adult care is fine. But the original post was about the priority the mother has, indicating post-birth.
  - mklim 11y ago
    My impression that the first post I replied to was speaking of things in general, not locked to any kind of specific post-birth time frame. Even if it was though, I disagree with the mother's presence specifically being "ESSENTIAL" for the baby's health. Do babies' whose mothers die during childbirth suffer severe developmental disorders or other problems? What about babies that are immediately given to their adoptive parents instead of their biological mother after being born? My understanding is that as long as they receive love, support, and nutrition from an adult of either gender they grow up fine, with single parents being generally less effective than pairs.
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      Just a few quick points, this is going off-topic: 1. Let's replace "essential" with "optimal". The original point still stands. 2. You conveniently omitted the 9-month bonding time. 3. Formula is good enough, but breast milk is optimal. Never heard of midwives breastfeeding other women's babies in 21st century. 4. Researchers have long known that newborns recognize – and prefer – their mom's voice. http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-can-recognize-their-mothers-voice-at_10323727.bc http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-can-rec...
      - mklim 11y ago
        1. No it doesn't still stand. If a mother's presence is biologically necessary for her child's development in the same way her uterus is necessary for fetal development, then the OP is right and childbirth does innately biologically necessitate that women spend more time with their children than their male partners in the same way that it's a biological fact that fathers do not carry fetuses to term and give birth to them. If their presence is, instead of "ESSENTIAL", "optimal" then my question becomes: "optimal" for what compared to what and for whom? It becomes a case of people and the groups they form making decisions to optimize for certain goals by behaving in a particular way, not raw biology empirically operating. 2. Yes, I did. It didn't seem relevant to the point I was arguing, see #1. 3. For optimal, see 1, and for midwives—yes, and that's a societal trend rather than a biological fact. 4. True but still irrelevant, see #1. I'm not arguing that biological mothers aren't generally inclined to want to spend more time with their children than their male partners, or that newly born infants aren't going to instinctively want to spend time with their mothers. It's just OP's original claim didn't logically follow from the evidence he presented—nothing about childbirth necessitates women having "the first choice to spend time with those children, and [...] bargaining power in relationships."
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try. My understanding is that they can lactate. Normally this is the result of certain medications, but I think all the necessary equipment is there and stimulation alone could cause it. But I don't suspect it would provide enough nutrients.
kaitai 11y ago
For centuries we've taken kids away from their moms and handed them off to wet nurses. A woman is useful, but society has developed a lot of ways of making sure the bio-mom isn't the only one (very logically given our historically high maternal mortality rate). Our current nuclear-family setup is only possible because of improvements in sanitation and medicine.

facepalm 11y ago

Bargaining power is obvious: unless women are being enslaved or raped (not the norm in the first world), they control who gets to procreate. Wombs are a limited resource, sperm is not. So that gives women bargaining power (limited resources have a price). The first (option to spend time with children): maybe that just follows from the bargaining power. But if you have been present at the birth of your kids, maybe you can agree that it seems ridiculous to take children away from their mother shortly after birth, after all they have been through. The importance of breast feeding is another aspect, although obviously children can also grow up without that. It's only feminism that needs to frame mothering as a form of suppression, because otherwise their narrative would fall apart. The reality is that it is usually a privilege (a fair privilege, but still) that women gladly accept. (Yes, women who don't enjoy spending time with their children exist, ask your local feminist for a bunch of anecdotes. They are still a minority).

mklim 11y ago
I mostly agree with the idea that women in modern society are given general priority/encouraged to spend time with their children vs their male partners. What I disagree with is that this fact of modern society is biologically inherent to the ability to give birth itself. (Maybe related to biology in other ways, I could see an argument for hormone-based brain differences, but that wasn't what I was nitpicking in your first post.) The multiplicity of options that women currently have (stay at home mom without shame and/or a career), is a result of how our society reacts to the biological fact of childbirth (among other things), not an innate result inherent to the fact itself. You suggest this yourself by saying "unless women are being enslaved or raped (not the norm in the first world), they control who gets to procreate." In other societies, the ability to give birth could result in widely different outcomes for women. Additional edit: Even accepting your premise that women have more "bargaining power" than men in interpersonal relationships, that would again be a function of society's reaction to biology rather than biology itself. It's true that bearing a child to term takes several orders of magnitude more time and resources than the act of impregnating someone. But the idea that "limited resources have a price" and so the people who can become pregnant have leverage against the ones who don't isn't biological. Limited resources could just as well be seized and then redistributed by the government to the general population for free. The fact of childbirth is biological, but the reaction is societal.