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I'm always iffy about articles like this because so much of the ground has been utterly salted by online "men's rights" activists that are more motivated by mis

by Pxtl 10y ago

I'm always iffy about articles like this because so much of the ground has been utterly salted by online "men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. It seems like a good read, but I would loved more data to crunch. The numerics of working long hours was a great example of how the mathematics of the situation make this stuff happen. Anyhow, my wife and I actually do the fully-equal thing - she makes a bit more than me (teaching in Ontario is paid well and I'm not working in one of the Big Tech Market cities) so we have get to split things 50/50. This actually presented a great opportunity: She wanted to go back to work early from her parental leave after the birth of our 3rd kid. So I did something new: I took the other half of the leave. 7 months off with my kids. If you have the opportunity, do this. It actually made more money for us, in terms of strict income. Both of our employers provided a several weeks of top-up parental leave in which the government unemployment-insurance benefit is supplemented up to your full weekly paycheck. So by both of us taking time off, we got to double-dip on this. And the experience with the kids was fantastic. I got to play boardgames with my son and teach him to ride his bike, and took my two daughters jogging in a double-stroller every other day. I practically lived in a ring-sling, even getting the stink-eye from greasy guys on a family trip to Manhattan. I got to properly get to know the parents of all my son's best friends and we're all still close. I was in the best shape of my life and had a great time, and my wife likes her job so she was happy to be at work. I'd considered doing it on our 2nd kid, but friends and family had talked me out of it because of worries about my career. I don't even work in the same place I did when my 2nd was born. I quit that job later on anyways, so I missed out on that time for nothing. To me, the biggest tragedy is the every-upwards climb of working hours for the household. There was a time when a family would live on a single 40 hour workweek. And what have we gained? I mean, for people who work retail, does the fact that they work on Sundays and every night to 10PM mean they actually sell more goods? Or does it just mean that retailers need to pay staff less per-hour because they're selling for more hours?

emsy 10y ago
>"men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. What you think or told they are motivated by and their actual motivations are different things.
- vacri 10y ago
  If MRAs were primarily motivated by actual concern for men's lot in life, they'd do more proactive work. Instead they are mostly reactive, coming out of the woodwork when something is mentioned about women. They bitch about how bad men have it in order to deflate the issue de jour, then are not to be seen until the next time someone talks about women. The OP is utterly right in saying that the ground has been salted by these man-children. Men do face problems, but MRAs do little work and mostly just armchair whine. How many of them create working groups or petition politicians or similar? Compare to feminism, where while it has a share of whiners, is mostly pro-active; organising events, talking to stakeholders, starting discussions instead of derailing them. You see it here on HN, where a topic is about women, and the whiners come out to derail... yet these same MRAs don't post their own articles about men.
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    I always like to point at Movember. A solid men's-issue foundation with no whining, no association with mras, and it generates an pantsload of money for a good men's-issue cause with relentless positivity. MRAs complain while the real men concerned by men's issues are actually doing something. Worried about the discrepancy between funding for breast cancer vs prostate cancer? Well you can moan about the nasty feminists and how society cares about women's suffering more than men's, or you can make a difference.
    - ar15saveslives 10y ago
      How to be "proactive" with widely accepted discriminatory practices and affirmative action?
  - emsy 10y ago
    >and the whiners come out to derail Do they identify as MRAs though? You and the OP are generalizing. You should apply the same nuance you show for feminisim to MRAs.
    - pyre 9y ago
koverstreet 10y ago
> I'm always iffy about articles like this because so much of the ground has been utterly salted by online "men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. That's in large part a result of the mainstream completely ceding ground to MRAs. When it's become socially unacceptable to talk about issues affecting men, because so much of the discussion has become framed in terms of privilige and patriarchy - what you're left with is the only groups willing to talk about issues that affect men in public are the socially unacceptable ones (and indeed, MRAs tend to be a nasty bunch). But that doesn't change the fact that there's real issues, and when no one else is willing to talk about them that's what sustains the MRA groups. The reality is, gender norms screw everyone over. And gender norms aren't the result of men today trying to screw over women; gender norms are perpetuated by society as a whole, men and women alike. And you and your wife might have it all figured out; more power to you! But please recognize it ain't so easy for most people. The way you describe it you're living a lot of guy's dream/fantasy, _very_ few men have the option of taking 7 months of leave to be with their kids - or anything like a fully equal household, whether they want it or not. You may have it made, but a lot of men feel trapped and unable to even talk about these issues.
dionidium 10y ago
"Men's rights," like feminism, has adherents with beliefs across a spectrum, from "reasonable things most people can agree with" to "wild and perverse antipathy toward the other sex." Which is just to say that both groups consist of people and people vary.
greglindahl 10y ago
When you say that there was a time that a family lived on a single 40-hour workweek... are you including housework and child-raising, or just paid work?
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Of course just paid work. But also the amount of manpower needed to raise children has gone up as our expectations for supervision have increased. Letting a 7 year old walk themselves to school is no longer okay, for example.
  - edraferi 10y ago
    > Letting a 7 year old walk themselves to school is no longer okay, for example. This is the worst. Kids need to accrue independent skills early or you wind up with pathetically helpless college students. Self-sufficient kids is the whole point of parenting.
    - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
      In the US at least, there are very few places where a 7 year old could walk to school. The town I grew up in the elementary school was ~20 minutes away by car for example. "Kids these days" as a whole tend to be more self sufficient (as a result of more dual working households etc); not less.
  - adiabatty 10y ago
    > Letting a 7 year old walk themselves to school is no longer okay, for example. Why not? What's changed?
    - flukus 10y ago
      As the world got safer it somehow got more scary.
      - grkvlt 10y ago

by Pxtl 10y ago

emsy 10y ago

>"men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. What you think or told they are motivated by and their actual motivations are different things.

vacri 10y ago
If MRAs were primarily motivated by actual concern for men's lot in life, they'd do more proactive work. Instead they are mostly reactive, coming out of the woodwork when something is mentioned about women. They bitch about how bad men have it in order to deflate the issue de jour, then are not to be seen until the next time someone talks about women. The OP is utterly right in saying that the ground has been salted by these man-children. Men do face problems, but MRAs do little work and mostly just armchair whine. How many of them create working groups or petition politicians or similar? Compare to feminism, where while it has a share of whiners, is mostly pro-active; organising events, talking to stakeholders, starting discussions instead of derailing them. You see it here on HN, where a topic is about women, and the whiners come out to derail... yet these same MRAs don't post their own articles about men.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  I always like to point at Movember. A solid men's-issue foundation with no whining, no association with mras, and it generates an pantsload of money for a good men's-issue cause with relentless positivity. MRAs complain while the real men concerned by men's issues are actually doing something. Worried about the discrepancy between funding for breast cancer vs prostate cancer? Well you can moan about the nasty feminists and how society cares about women's suffering more than men's, or you can make a difference.
  - ar15saveslives 10y ago
    How to be "proactive" with widely accepted discriminatory practices and affirmative action?
- emsy 10y ago
  >and the whiners come out to derail Do they identify as MRAs though? You and the OP are generalizing. You should apply the same nuance you show for feminisim to MRAs.
  - pyre 9y ago

koverstreet 10y ago

> I'm always iffy about articles like this because so much of the ground has been utterly salted by online "men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. That's in large part a result of the mainstream completely ceding ground to MRAs. When it's become socially unacceptable to talk about issues affecting men, because so much of the discussion has become framed in terms of privilige and patriarchy - what you're left with is the only groups willing to talk about issues that affect men in public are the socially unacceptable ones (and indeed, MRAs tend to be a nasty bunch). But that doesn't change the fact that there's real issues, and when no one else is willing to talk about them that's what sustains the MRA groups. The reality is, gender norms screw everyone over. And gender norms aren't the result of men today trying to screw over women; gender norms are perpetuated by society as a whole, men and women alike. And you and your wife might have it all figured out; more power to you! But please recognize it ain't so easy for most people. The way you describe it you're living a lot of guy's dream/fantasy, _very_ few men have the option of taking 7 months of leave to be with their kids - or anything like a fully equal household, whether they want it or not. You may have it made, but a lot of men feel trapped and unable to even talk about these issues.

dionidium 10y ago

"Men's rights," like feminism, has adherents with beliefs across a spectrum, from "reasonable things most people can agree with" to "wild and perverse antipathy toward the other sex." Which is just to say that both groups consist of people and people vary.

greglindahl 10y ago

When you say that there was a time that a family lived on a single 40-hour workweek... are you including housework and child-raising, or just paid work?

Pxtl 10y ago
Of course just paid work. But also the amount of manpower needed to raise children has gone up as our expectations for supervision have increased. Letting a 7 year old walk themselves to school is no longer okay, for example.
- edraferi 10y ago
  > Letting a 7 year old walk themselves to school is no longer okay, for example. This is the worst. Kids need to accrue independent skills early or you wind up with pathetically helpless college students. Self-sufficient kids is the whole point of parenting.
  - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    In the US at least, there are very few places where a 7 year old could walk to school. The town I grew up in the elementary school was ~20 minutes away by car for example. "Kids these days" as a whole tend to be more self sufficient (as a result of more dual working households etc); not less.
- adiabatty 10y ago
  > Letting a 7 year old walk themselves to school is no longer okay, for example. Why not? What's changed?
  - flukus 10y ago
    As the world got safer it somehow got more scary.
    - grkvlt 10y ago