8 ms·

Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

72 points by curtis 9y ago

Spooky23 9y ago
It’s hard to have this debate in terms dollars exclusively. People who are high powered execs and other top tier professionals sacrifice life for profession. I’ve yet to meet a prominent executive, lawyer or physician whose home life isn’t a bit of a shitshow. If you want to look at equality and making the lives of mothers better, you need to look at everyone. If my wife and I were able to work 25 hours weeks in the same pay envelope, we would have made very different decisions about how to raise our child.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  I don't think it's about equality of pay. If I asked for the same terms as my wife, I would earn significantly less, and I doubt I would have much responsibility beyond a "normal" software developer, i.e. I work on what I'm told to.
tabeth 9y ago
It's not that children are career killers, but rather taking significant amounts of time off is. It's also unclear if harming your career is even a bad thing to begin, considering the options given (e.g. Don't have children, have children but neglect them, have children and take care of them, but have lower income when the caregiver returns to the work force). Perhaps spending proper time with children, even if it is at the cost of potential income, is worth it. --- I wonder if mandating that caregivers be able to work while raising their child somehow (perhaps a combination of remote work, daycare and in laws) would be enough to negate the negative effect while preserving the benefits.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  In my experience, it's not the time away from work that is the issue. It's that they ask for less and more flexible hours. They simply put their career on hold until the child becomes a teenager.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  There does seem to be a element of: "people who value their careers more than children end up making more money" here, which seems pretty obvious when you think about it. From a social and corporate perspective we have a choice though: should be allow incentive systems that reward people who value their careers over their children to continue? Or should we change our incentive systems so that people who value children over career earn equal wages or even more? Which group of people is actually more valuable to society?
  - 09bjb 9y ago
    Teachers, full-time mothers and fathers, and generally anyone who's in charge of raising the next generation properly, are all underpaid and arguably undervalued. However, when you legislate away any reward for risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives...then you end up in a society where nobody tries, nothing happens, and everyone's pretty well subsumed into an existential crisis -like existence. What's the point of trying if it's guaranteed not to make a difference? "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work." - Soviet-era saying
    - indrax 9y ago
      > risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives. Given just that description, you could be talking about parents. The consequences you list for not rewarding them aren't off the mark either.
- eecc 9y ago
  Fathers can take - plenty do here in NL - take a day off to mess around with junior...
hvidgaard 9y ago
From experience, primary caretakers of children tend to favor less weekly work hours, flexible schedules, ect. All things that doesn't exactly lend itself to a "high-powered career". So the question I'd like answered is not if women should have the same earning as their male part, they should have the same oppotunity. But if they want it at the cost of the flexibility and hours they ask for?
- watwut 9y ago
  Women on average have less flexible hours and female dominated occupations have less flex time then male dominated occupations. Otherwise said, nurse, psychologist or teacher must be there at time. Same with service workers, call center and pretty much anyone who works with people in person. Female dominated professions that could work from home or could be flexible are not. Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
    > Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right. Why frame it in this inflammatory way? The fact that programmers can choose their work hours is a privilege and a job-perk. What is the point of guilt-tripping them about it? Surely an ideal world is where more people can work when they please rather than one where everyone is forced to clock fixed hours just because there exist some workers who don't have that freedom?
    - watwut 9y ago
      That is not guilt tripping. I am programmer. The flexible work is seen as a right and company that does not provide it as overly controlling and bad place for work - that is quite universal in both real life and online. And it is not just that, occasional work from home is also seen as basic perk you totally expect. And my colleges are using that right - and that is not blame, just a statement of fact. The fact is, majority of female dominated jobs are on the opposite of the spectrum. And those jobs are even thrown into every damm discussion about men/women differences while also the very same discussion talk about women having more flexibility. Because women are supposed to be primary care giver and primary care giver is supposed to want flexibility. It just so happen that wanting something does not necessary gives you that. My point is not that programmer should feel guilty. My point is that arguing that women=flexible hours is wrong, faulty argument based on some romantic idealized dream. The argument completely ignores the kind of work women do.
acd 9y ago
Some parents choose to work 75% after having kids its a legal right in Scandinavian countries. From my own experience as a parent its hard to balance being good at home and work. Simply put your customer will not come and thank you in 20-30 years from now but your children might/will.
se30b 9y ago
If you choose to have children then your career is raising children. You have to choose to prioritize one or the other, the idea that you can take large amounts of time off and still be at the same level as people who kept working is insane. There isn't any injustice going on here. Juggling an intense career path with raising children is a bad idea. Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development.
- 09bjb 9y ago
  Instinctually, I agree with you on the effects of years of daycare on development...could you point me to one or two of your sources? I hate to be that guy on HN, just looking for some confirmation for my bias here :)
  - se30b 9y ago
    most sources seem to be paywalled.. I am not an expert on this subject. http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001 thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/familyfacts/briefs/FF_Brief_43.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s
    - eesmith 9y ago
      For this type of task, I find it best to go to Google Scholar. If you put in the title of the paper behind the first link you'll find the 1991 paper available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nazli_Baydar/publication/232575381_Effects_of_Maternal_Employment_and_Child-Care_Arrangements_on_Preschoolers%27_Cognitive_and_Behavioral_Outcomes_Evidence_From_the_Children_of_the_National_Longitudinal_Survey_of_Youth/links/59e56e25aca272390ed64f13/Effects-of-Maternal-Employment-and-Child-Care-Arrangements-on-Preschoolers-Cognitive-and-Behavioral-Outcomes-Evidence-From-the-Children-of-the-National-Longitudinal-Survey-of-Youth.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nazli_Baydar/publicatio... . You'll also see that it's been cited by 611 papers. It's usually a bit odd to reference a 27 year old paper as a source because additional research since then has likely given more insight into the problem. Pulling one out at semi-random, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cch.12238/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cch.12238/full argues "more hours in non-parental child care were associated with better language abilities. However, more hours in care in the first year of life were associated with less language proficiency at ages 1 to 1.5. At later ages, this effect disappeared and language proficiency increased. Furthermore, children who spent more hours in centre-based care had better language scores than children in home-based care." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.704.9791&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.704... summarizes a number of related reports: > O’Brien Caughy et al. (1994) report that entrance into daycare before the first birthday was associated with higher test scores (Peabody Individual Achievement Tests) for lower income children and lower test scores for higher income children. For the U.K. Gregg et al. (2005) find that children who receive informal care from friends and relatives in the first 18 months of life combined with full time maternal employment have lower cognitive outcomes. ... Finally, Loeb et al. (2007) find that entry into non-parental center based care before the age of one can lead to problem behavior. Magnuson et al. (2007), Baker et al. (2008), Datta Gupta and Simonsen (2010), and the research summarized in Belsky (2006) provide further evidence that non-parental care can have negative behavioral effects in some contexts. Or there's https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11016559 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11016559 which says: > After adjusting for child care quality, cumulative experience in center-based care was associated with better outcomes than was participation in other types of care. The amount of time children spent in care was not related to outcomes. Children in exclusive maternal care did not differ systematically from children in child care. Tests for lagged relations of earlier child care experiences to later performance (adjusting for current child care) showed that language stimulation predicted subsequent cognitive and language performance 9 to 12 months later. Although children in center care at age 3 performed better than children in other types of care, earlier experience in child care homes was associated with better performance at age 3 than was experience in other types of care. These would appear to be counter to your statement that "Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development." More specifically, once the child is about 18 months old, there appears to be positive effects of daycare and non-parental care. That "Family Facts" link is from The Heritage Foundation, which has a mission to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." I can't help but think there is a bias in which topics to report and which evidence to present. One way to assuage my doubts would be if the reports had a link to the primary research literature. However, the only citation is to "a FamilyFacts.org Report by Jenet Jacob Erickson, researcher specializing in maternal and child wellbeing and former assistant professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. Her report reviewed key findings from 30 years of research on child care and children’s social– emotional development." This does not appear to be a peer-reviewed report. While peer-review has its problems, I again can't help but wonder about any possible cherry picking. Given the editorials by the author, at https://www.deseretnews.com/author/23012/Jenet-Jacob-Erickson.html https://www.deseretnews.com/author/23012/Jenet-Jacob-Erickso... , I know that we have very different biases. The last link is to Stefan Molyneux, who is often characterized as "alt-right" or "far-right". As an anti-feminist, I suspect he is biased towards research which keeps middle-class women at home to raise children. In any case, unlike Erickson, he is (like both you and me) also not an expert on this subject.
jlg23 9y ago
The point of having to ~"force fathers to take time off" rings true to me, I'd even go as far as forcing both parents to take some minimum time (and maybe of equal length) off: It would relieve all parents of the pressure to justify why they "put family before career".
- zeveb 9y ago
  That's just the time off, though: once both parents are back at work, no law can force them both to devote equal mental & temporal resources to childraising. I suspect very strongly that even with forced equality of parental leave, we would see mothers devoting more attention to their children than do father.
- david38 9y ago
  Wow. You know there are sci-fi books written about a world were some people are not allowed to be better than others? If you have some advantage, you have to do extra so it's nullified. Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance is astonishing. I suppose if I don't push my kids just the right amount you're going to claim you know enough about how all children will turn out to revoke my parental rights? I had children when I was in college. I suppose I should have been forced to fail one of my semesters, or do only good and proper people who do things the right way count? My wife wanted to stay home for many years. I suppose I should tell her she was full of shit for not wanting to make more money? You think it would relieve pressure to justify putting family before career? Again, wow. These are ADULTS. If they are so fucking wrapped up in peer pressure they can't decide if they should take care of their own babies they don't deserve their own children. Seriously, at what point are people responsible for themselves? Where does the nanny state end? Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them.
  - jlg23 9y ago
    I was talking about making it accepted that people, no matter the gender, take time off after birth of a child. If one parent decides to stay at home for years, we are not talking about parental leave anymore. And of course everybody should be free to make that decision. But nobody should be forced to decide one or the other way because of gender-specific roles or a lack of affordable daycare. And finally I believe that, by forcing everyone to think about how to accommodate parents in work life, we, as a society, will find solutions that can benefit all.
09bjb 9y ago
Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose. Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...
- drb91 9y ago
  Is this equity vs equality, or are you making a deeper argument?
  - 09bjb 9y ago
    Equality. If the usual parlance were "Gender Inequity" then we'd be talking about that instead. But that's used so little that googling "Gender Inequity" actually redirects automatically to "Gender Inequality", so the former can't be very much in use.
    - drb91 9y ago
      I suggest using “verbatim” on google when google redirects you. Inequity and inequality are two different, precisely defined words. More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  Or, try saying that at Google.
- collyw 9y ago
ars 9y ago
Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? They are not. The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive. Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.
- shultays 9y ago
  Having a children does not automaticly make you a more likable person. Two is not related at all
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  > Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? Because, to a corporation and society's ruling class, all that matters is having productive workers. Having a life gets in the way of that.
- collyw 9y ago
  I think thats for each individual to decide for themselves. My career is more important to me than children, because I don't particularly want to raise a child and am not intending to have any. Plus I think there are already too many people on the planet. Doesn't mean I can't love others around me.
- lerchmo 9y ago
  The question of purpose is alot more nuanced than that. biologically it is hard to argue that reproduction is a significant part.
- mempko 9y ago
  Let's also consider that most jobs are bullshit jobs anyway. The children are literally the future of humanity and taking care of them is more important than anything else.
  - collyw 9y ago
    With the population levels at present not having kids seems like a good choice.
Xeoncross 9y ago
We need more information. Is the drop in pay because women: 1. No longer want to work in the higher-paying, overtime/dangerous/lots of travel/etc... positions? 2. Were discriminated when looking for new work? 3. Were discriminated when raises were handed out? etc...
imartin2k 9y ago
I guess this situation will only permanently change if all fathers are completely and truly happy and comfortable with doing exactly the same amount of house work and childcare work as the mothers of their children. As long as the idea of the men as the bigger breadwinner still lingers around for the average parent and boss (consciously or unconsciously, on an individual basis and culturally), it'll impact the decisions being made which then in turn lead to children being bigger career killers for working moms than for fathers. If that assumption is correct, then the actual question would be: Will this 50/50 (on average) state with truly happy and comfortable fathers ever happen, and will parents (on average) be happier or not? (this sounds like me questioning that they might be, but it's meant as an actual question). Personally, I am actually quite happy that I don't have specific plans to become a father right now, because truth be told, I wouldn't want to give up so much of my work/passion for taking care of a child (although maybe me saying this is more the consequence of lacking the desire to become a father, meaning that I'd speak differently if that desire would exist).
eecc 9y ago
Well, if the gap tends to 20% it may also indicate a strong tendency to 4-day week among parenting women while men won’t. The fact it approaches it from below suggests a career delay but other than that I don’t see signs of “career killer”. That men’s share of parent leave is so small may be more indicative, but the final datum would be scale promotion rates across genders (although that would restrict to collective bargaining contracts)
jtr1 9y ago
Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. Western cultures are still much more understanding of men being absent from their children's early lives than mothers. These sorts of cultural expectations and allowances are often taken for granted by the people who argue that "inequality of outcome != inequality of opportunity." If women are to take a career hit for raising their kids, why shouldn't the men who fathered them take that hit as well?
- thomasahle 9y ago
  > Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. I actually thought Sweden already had this, but apparently not. At least not perfectly so, the parents have 480 days in total, with 90 earmarked to each: https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/ https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/
- thescribe 9y ago
  Why mandatory? Why not let people do as they want?
  - jtr1 9y ago
    Just trying to put this in the most bare terms, there's obviously plenty of edge cases and caveats around gender, but: a) Society places a greater burden on women than men for child-rearing. b) Women who take leave lose out on career opportunities. c) Men receive greater opportunities to advance their careers relative to women, since they are expected to take less leave. Even in the presence of equal parental leave, men (or just as often, their employers) can lean on the social expectation to return to work sooner, disadvantaging women. This becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem since the culture and structure are mutually reinforcing. From a policy perspective, structure is easier to change than culture. In my view, that makes it a logical first step.
Balgair 9y ago
Oh man, this thread is going of the rails pretty quickly. Come on HN, be peaceful
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Meh. Seems to have enough substantive discussion.
stcredzero 9y ago
HP had some interesting policies which were of great benefit to women. I've been told that HP lets people share a position. Two people can work half time with full benefits, then they are evaluated and promoted as one unit. Many women who were raising families opted to do this. Tactically, this seems great, but the question that comes to my mind is, if such a practice were widely adopted throughout the industrialized world, would this have the effect of halving the power of women in internal workplace politics? The follow on question that comes to mind: What, exactly, is the effect on the power of women in internal workplace politics, of women taking time off work to raise children?
- JenBarb 9y ago
  Where/what is HP?
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    Hewlett Packard
tway11 9y ago
No one can have it all. Some things in life are just mutually exclusive. What about the men who work full time and miss out on spending time at home? Do they have it all? Of course not. Every hour spent at work is an hour not spent with family/friends. I don't know why we always seem to treat earning less as being this universally terrible, bad thing whenever gender comes up. There is a lot more to life and jobs than just earning money. Work life balance, stress, danger, physical wear. The general expectation for men seems to be: "Go get a good paying job". Obviously every family is different but where family economics allow I think woman generally have far more choice in terms of whether they stay home, work part time, work less stressful/demanding jobs than men do in today's society. I've seen a lot of relationships/marriages where the man works a shitty backbreaking/dangerous and/or stressful jobs that pay well while the woman works part time, not at all or a much less stressful job that pays less. I'm sure the inverse does happen as well but from what I've seen it is much rarer. These types of articles always frame earning less as being a negative for woman. In some cases I'm sure that is true. But what % of the gap is woman choosing to earn less because they have that choice?

72 points by curtis 9y ago

It’s hard to have this debate in terms dollars exclusively. People who are high powered execs and other top tier professionals sacrifice life for profession. I’ve yet to meet a prominent executive, lawyer or physician whose home life isn’t a bit of a shitshow. If you want to look at equality and making the lives of mothers better, you need to look at everyone. If my wife and I were able to work 25 hours weeks in the same pay envelope, we would have made very different decisions about how to raise our child.

hvidgaard 9y ago
I don't think it's about equality of pay. If I asked for the same terms as my wife, I would earn significantly less, and I doubt I would have much responsibility beyond a "normal" software developer, i.e. I work on what I'm told to.

tabeth 9y ago

It's not that children are career killers, but rather taking significant amounts of time off is. It's also unclear if harming your career is even a bad thing to begin, considering the options given (e.g. Don't have children, have children but neglect them, have children and take care of them, but have lower income when the caregiver returns to the work force). Perhaps spending proper time with children, even if it is at the cost of potential income, is worth it. --- I wonder if mandating that caregivers be able to work while raising their child somehow (perhaps a combination of remote work, daycare and in laws) would be enough to negate the negative effect while preserving the benefits.

hvidgaard 9y ago
In my experience, it's not the time away from work that is the issue. It's that they ask for less and more flexible hours. They simply put their career on hold until the child becomes a teenager.
saas_co_de 9y ago
There does seem to be a element of: "people who value their careers more than children end up making more money" here, which seems pretty obvious when you think about it. From a social and corporate perspective we have a choice though: should be allow incentive systems that reward people who value their careers over their children to continue? Or should we change our incentive systems so that people who value children over career earn equal wages or even more? Which group of people is actually more valuable to society?
- 09bjb 9y ago
  Teachers, full-time mothers and fathers, and generally anyone who's in charge of raising the next generation properly, are all underpaid and arguably undervalued. However, when you legislate away any reward for risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives...then you end up in a society where nobody tries, nothing happens, and everyone's pretty well subsumed into an existential crisis -like existence. What's the point of trying if it's guaranteed not to make a difference? "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work." - Soviet-era saying
  - indrax 9y ago
    > risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives. Given just that description, you could be talking about parents. The consequences you list for not rewarding them aren't off the mark either.
eecc 9y ago
Fathers can take - plenty do here in NL - take a day off to mess around with junior...

hvidgaard 9y ago

From experience, primary caretakers of children tend to favor less weekly work hours, flexible schedules, ect. All things that doesn't exactly lend itself to a "high-powered career". So the question I'd like answered is not if women should have the same earning as their male part, they should have the same oppotunity. But if they want it at the cost of the flexibility and hours they ask for?

watwut 9y ago
Women on average have less flexible hours and female dominated occupations have less flex time then male dominated occupations. Otherwise said, nurse, psychologist or teacher must be there at time. Same with service workers, call center and pretty much anyone who works with people in person. Female dominated professions that could work from home or could be flexible are not. Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  > Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right. Why frame it in this inflammatory way? The fact that programmers can choose their work hours is a privilege and a job-perk. What is the point of guilt-tripping them about it? Surely an ideal world is where more people can work when they please rather than one where everyone is forced to clock fixed hours just because there exist some workers who don't have that freedom?
  - watwut 9y ago
    That is not guilt tripping. I am programmer. The flexible work is seen as a right and company that does not provide it as overly controlling and bad place for work - that is quite universal in both real life and online. And it is not just that, occasional work from home is also seen as basic perk you totally expect. And my colleges are using that right - and that is not blame, just a statement of fact. The fact is, majority of female dominated jobs are on the opposite of the spectrum. And those jobs are even thrown into every damm discussion about men/women differences while also the very same discussion talk about women having more flexibility. Because women are supposed to be primary care giver and primary care giver is supposed to want flexibility. It just so happen that wanting something does not necessary gives you that. My point is not that programmer should feel guilty. My point is that arguing that women=flexible hours is wrong, faulty argument based on some romantic idealized dream. The argument completely ignores the kind of work women do.

acd 9y ago

Some parents choose to work 75% after having kids its a legal right in Scandinavian countries. From my own experience as a parent its hard to balance being good at home and work. Simply put your customer will not come and thank you in 20-30 years from now but your children might/will.

se30b 9y ago

If you choose to have children then your career is raising children. You have to choose to prioritize one or the other, the idea that you can take large amounts of time off and still be at the same level as people who kept working is insane. There isn't any injustice going on here. Juggling an intense career path with raising children is a bad idea. Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development.

09bjb 9y ago
Instinctually, I agree with you on the effects of years of daycare on development...could you point me to one or two of your sources? I hate to be that guy on HN, just looking for some confirmation for my bias here :)
- se30b 9y ago
  most sources seem to be paywalled.. I am not an expert on this subject. http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-08554-001 thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/familyfacts/briefs/FF_Brief_43.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s
  - eesmith 9y ago
    For this type of task, I find it best to go to Google Scholar. If you put in the title of the paper behind the first link you'll find the 1991 paper available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nazli_Baydar/publication/232575381_Effects_of_Maternal_Employment_and_Child-Care_Arrangements_on_Preschoolers%27_Cognitive_and_Behavioral_Outcomes_Evidence_From_the_Children_of_the_National_Longitudinal_Survey_of_Youth/links/59e56e25aca272390ed64f13/Effects-of-Maternal-Employment-and-Child-Care-Arrangements-on-Preschoolers-Cognitive-and-Behavioral-Outcomes-Evidence-From-the-Children-of-the-National-Longitudinal-Survey-of-Youth.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nazli_Baydar/publicatio... . You'll also see that it's been cited by 611 papers. It's usually a bit odd to reference a 27 year old paper as a source because additional research since then has likely given more insight into the problem. Pulling one out at semi-random, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cch.12238/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cch.12238/full argues "more hours in non-parental child care were associated with better language abilities. However, more hours in care in the first year of life were associated with less language proficiency at ages 1 to 1.5. At later ages, this effect disappeared and language proficiency increased. Furthermore, children who spent more hours in centre-based care had better language scores than children in home-based care." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.704.9791&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.704... summarizes a number of related reports: > O’Brien Caughy et al. (1994) report that entrance into daycare before the first birthday was associated with higher test scores (Peabody Individual Achievement Tests) for lower income children and lower test scores for higher income children. For the U.K. Gregg et al. (2005) find that children who receive informal care from friends and relatives in the first 18 months of life combined with full time maternal employment have lower cognitive outcomes. ... Finally, Loeb et al. (2007) find that entry into non-parental center based care before the age of one can lead to problem behavior. Magnuson et al. (2007), Baker et al. (2008), Datta Gupta and Simonsen (2010), and the research summarized in Belsky (2006) provide further evidence that non-parental care can have negative behavioral effects in some contexts. Or there's https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11016559 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11016559 which says: > After adjusting for child care quality, cumulative experience in center-based care was associated with better outcomes than was participation in other types of care. The amount of time children spent in care was not related to outcomes. Children in exclusive maternal care did not differ systematically from children in child care. Tests for lagged relations of earlier child care experiences to later performance (adjusting for current child care) showed that language stimulation predicted subsequent cognitive and language performance 9 to 12 months later. Although children in center care at age 3 performed better than children in other types of care, earlier experience in child care homes was associated with better performance at age 3 than was experience in other types of care. These would appear to be counter to your statement that "Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development." More specifically, once the child is about 18 months old, there appears to be positive effects of daycare and non-parental care. That "Family Facts" link is from The Heritage Foundation, which has a mission to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." I can't help but think there is a bias in which topics to report and which evidence to present. One way to assuage my doubts would be if the reports had a link to the primary research literature. However, the only citation is to "a FamilyFacts.org Report by Jenet Jacob Erickson, researcher specializing in maternal and child wellbeing and former assistant professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. Her report reviewed key findings from 30 years of research on child care and children’s social– emotional development." This does not appear to be a peer-reviewed report. While peer-review has its problems, I again can't help but wonder about any possible cherry picking. Given the editorials by the author, at https://www.deseretnews.com/author/23012/Jenet-Jacob-Erickson.html https://www.deseretnews.com/author/23012/Jenet-Jacob-Erickso... , I know that we have very different biases. The last link is to Stefan Molyneux, who is often characterized as "alt-right" or "far-right". As an anti-feminist, I suspect he is biased towards research which keeps middle-class women at home to raise children. In any case, unlike Erickson, he is (like both you and me) also not an expert on this subject.

jlg23 9y ago

The point of having to ~"force fathers to take time off" rings true to me, I'd even go as far as forcing both parents to take some minimum time (and maybe of equal length) off: It would relieve all parents of the pressure to justify why they "put family before career".

zeveb 9y ago
That's just the time off, though: once both parents are back at work, no law can force them both to devote equal mental & temporal resources to childraising. I suspect very strongly that even with forced equality of parental leave, we would see mothers devoting more attention to their children than do father.
david38 9y ago
Wow. You know there are sci-fi books written about a world were some people are not allowed to be better than others? If you have some advantage, you have to do extra so it's nullified. Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance is astonishing. I suppose if I don't push my kids just the right amount you're going to claim you know enough about how all children will turn out to revoke my parental rights? I had children when I was in college. I suppose I should have been forced to fail one of my semesters, or do only good and proper people who do things the right way count? My wife wanted to stay home for many years. I suppose I should tell her she was full of shit for not wanting to make more money? You think it would relieve pressure to justify putting family before career? Again, wow. These are ADULTS. If they are so fucking wrapped up in peer pressure they can't decide if they should take care of their own babies they don't deserve their own children. Seriously, at what point are people responsible for themselves? Where does the nanny state end? Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them.
- jlg23 9y ago
  I was talking about making it accepted that people, no matter the gender, take time off after birth of a child. If one parent decides to stay at home for years, we are not talking about parental leave anymore. And of course everybody should be free to make that decision. But nobody should be forced to decide one or the other way because of gender-specific roles or a lack of affordable daycare. And finally I believe that, by forcing everyone to think about how to accommodate parents in work life, we, as a society, will find solutions that can benefit all.

09bjb 9y ago

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose. Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...

drb91 9y ago
Is this equity vs equality, or are you making a deeper argument?
- 09bjb 9y ago
  Equality. If the usual parlance were "Gender Inequity" then we'd be talking about that instead. But that's used so little that googling "Gender Inequity" actually redirects automatically to "Gender Inequality", so the former can't be very much in use.
  - drb91 9y ago
    I suggest using “verbatim” on google when google redirects you. Inequity and inequality are two different, precisely defined words. More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.
BadassFractal 9y ago
Or, try saying that at Google.
collyw 9y ago

ars 9y ago

Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? They are not. The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive. Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.

shultays 9y ago
Having a children does not automaticly make you a more likable person. Two is not related at all
Mikeb85 9y ago
> Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? Because, to a corporation and society's ruling class, all that matters is having productive workers. Having a life gets in the way of that.
collyw 9y ago
I think thats for each individual to decide for themselves. My career is more important to me than children, because I don't particularly want to raise a child and am not intending to have any. Plus I think there are already too many people on the planet. Doesn't mean I can't love others around me.
lerchmo 9y ago
The question of purpose is alot more nuanced than that. biologically it is hard to argue that reproduction is a significant part.
mempko 9y ago
Let's also consider that most jobs are bullshit jobs anyway. The children are literally the future of humanity and taking care of them is more important than anything else.
- collyw 9y ago
  With the population levels at present not having kids seems like a good choice.

Xeoncross 9y ago

We need more information. Is the drop in pay because women: 1. No longer want to work in the higher-paying, overtime/dangerous/lots of travel/etc... positions? 2. Were discriminated when looking for new work? 3. Were discriminated when raises were handed out? etc...

imartin2k 9y ago

I guess this situation will only permanently change if all fathers are completely and truly happy and comfortable with doing exactly the same amount of house work and childcare work as the mothers of their children. As long as the idea of the men as the bigger breadwinner still lingers around for the average parent and boss (consciously or unconsciously, on an individual basis and culturally), it'll impact the decisions being made which then in turn lead to children being bigger career killers for working moms than for fathers. If that assumption is correct, then the actual question would be: Will this 50/50 (on average) state with truly happy and comfortable fathers ever happen, and will parents (on average) be happier or not? (this sounds like me questioning that they might be, but it's meant as an actual question). Personally, I am actually quite happy that I don't have specific plans to become a father right now, because truth be told, I wouldn't want to give up so much of my work/passion for taking care of a child (although maybe me saying this is more the consequence of lacking the desire to become a father, meaning that I'd speak differently if that desire would exist).

eecc 9y ago

Well, if the gap tends to 20% it may also indicate a strong tendency to 4-day week among parenting women while men won’t. The fact it approaches it from below suggests a career delay but other than that I don’t see signs of “career killer”. That men’s share of parent leave is so small may be more indicative, but the final datum would be scale promotion rates across genders (although that would restrict to collective bargaining contracts)

jtr1 9y ago

Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. Western cultures are still much more understanding of men being absent from their children's early lives than mothers. These sorts of cultural expectations and allowances are often taken for granted by the people who argue that "inequality of outcome != inequality of opportunity." If women are to take a career hit for raising their kids, why shouldn't the men who fathered them take that hit as well?

thomasahle 9y ago
> Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. I actually thought Sweden already had this, but apparently not. At least not perfectly so, the parents have 480 days in total, with 90 earmarked to each: https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/ https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/
thescribe 9y ago
Why mandatory? Why not let people do as they want?
- jtr1 9y ago
  Just trying to put this in the most bare terms, there's obviously plenty of edge cases and caveats around gender, but: a) Society places a greater burden on women than men for child-rearing. b) Women who take leave lose out on career opportunities. c) Men receive greater opportunities to advance their careers relative to women, since they are expected to take less leave. Even in the presence of equal parental leave, men (or just as often, their employers) can lean on the social expectation to return to work sooner, disadvantaging women. This becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem since the culture and structure are mutually reinforcing. From a policy perspective, structure is easier to change than culture. In my view, that makes it a logical first step.

Balgair 9y ago

Oh man, this thread is going of the rails pretty quickly. Come on HN, be peaceful

stcredzero 9y ago
Meh. Seems to have enough substantive discussion.

stcredzero 9y ago

HP had some interesting policies which were of great benefit to women. I've been told that HP lets people share a position. Two people can work half time with full benefits, then they are evaluated and promoted as one unit. Many women who were raising families opted to do this. Tactically, this seems great, but the question that comes to my mind is, if such a practice were widely adopted throughout the industrialized world, would this have the effect of halving the power of women in internal workplace politics? The follow on question that comes to mind: What, exactly, is the effect on the power of women in internal workplace politics, of women taking time off work to raise children?

JenBarb 9y ago
Where/what is HP?
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Hewlett Packard

tway11 9y ago

No one can have it all. Some things in life are just mutually exclusive. What about the men who work full time and miss out on spending time at home? Do they have it all? Of course not. Every hour spent at work is an hour not spent with family/friends. I don't know why we always seem to treat earning less as being this universally terrible, bad thing whenever gender comes up. There is a lot more to life and jobs than just earning money. Work life balance, stress, danger, physical wear. The general expectation for men seems to be: "Go get a good paying job". Obviously every family is different but where family economics allow I think woman generally have far more choice in terms of whether they stay home, work part time, work less stressful/demanding jobs than men do in today's society. I've seen a lot of relationships/marriages where the man works a shitty backbreaking/dangerous and/or stressful jobs that pay well while the woman works part time, not at all or a much less stressful job that pays less. I'm sure the inverse does happen as well but from what I've seen it is much rarer. These types of articles always frame earning less as being a negative for woman. In some cases I'm sure that is true. But what % of the gap is woman choosing to earn less because they have that choice?