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I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this. Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son what he wants to become when h

I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this. Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son what he wants to become when he's older, he says he wants to be a police officer. When I ask my 2 girls, they both want to become a mom. My social engineered response to this was "maybe you should become a school teacher, that way you can work with kids and be home when your kids are home". Because let's face it, being only a mom as a girl is not socially acceptable. It's a weak position to be in. We are told to push them into engineering, STEM fields, becoming CEO's, world leaders, whatever. That's what we should do. But my girls, at this age, just want to become a mom. Western society is trying to make boys out of girls, and girls out of boys. I have no problem with women working in tech fields, and I worked with many great ones. But the question needs to be asked is if our society will survive such a thing. On one hand it's great that women have all these new rights, are getting more "equal" to men. But if your own culture is unable to produce enough children, and you have to import families and children from regions where womens rights are questionable, you need to ask how sustainable your democratic equal society is. This is still a big question for myself, so any real discussion is welcome, because maybe I'm overlooking something (so please don't just downvote). Maybe if we want our society to survive, we need to accept that although women are equal to men, they are very different. A family is made up of a man and a women, who support each other in their strengths and interests, and raise children together. Maybe our society should steer away from pushing women into a 'male' role that on one hands makes sense, but on the other hand is questionable. Maybe instead of pushing women into 'male' roles, we should support them better in how they benefit our society. I know this comes across as really terrible, because history has shown that stay at home moms are in a really weak position. But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids, and so import people from 'stay at home mom' cultures. Any constructive discussion is welcome.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walking in and taking over? Enough kids to take care of the older people and the rest of the country’s infrastructure and still make advancements? I don’t know what all the answers are, but it’s super complicated. From what I can tell though in my peer group, the biggest thing stopping people from having kids is lack of funds, job security, lack of parental leave, and an inability to find what they consider suitable partners within child bearing ages. How much of that is due to women entering the workforce versus other things such as declining real wages and job opportunities, I don’t know.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  The big problem we have is social programs. They redistribute wealth from young people right now to old people right now, but they are sold to young people as though they are investing into their future. As the ratio of young people to old people shrinks our social programs end up in more and more trouble. The fiscal gap is a problem in most developed countries.
  - wtdata 8y ago
    Well, the issue is not taking from young to old, but taking from workers to non workers. The solution is not so complicated and impossible has some people try to put it, you just have to increase the retirement age accordingly. If you live moderately healthy to 95, than it should be perfectly acceptable for you to work until you are 75.
  - logicchains 8y ago
    This program is solvable, with something like Australia's mandatory superannuation or Singapore's Central Provident Fund, where people are forced to save a certain percentage of their income for retirement (and the money is actually saved, they're not just given IOUs for money that will be taken from future young people).
    - iguy 8y ago
      But the discipline to stick to such a solution is difficult. Bending the rules just a little more to spend more money this election cycle is always going to be extremely tempting. In addition, the situation is a bit better in this regard for small countries, who can just invest elsewhere. If the whole world tried to do this, it's not clear what they could invest in, as what they want to withdraw in 30 years time is actually the services of cooks and nursing staff etc. who must be of working age at that time.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      Why force it though? Shouldn't it be up to the people whether they want to save it or not? In Eastern Europe this is a concern because many people have lived through their savings evaporating. What's to say that something similar doesn't happen in the future? Furthermore, how would you even implement it? Do young people right now have to pay for the upkeep of the old generation right now and will then have to additionally pay for their own retirement fund? It seems to me that somebody's going to get screwed here.
ferrous69 8y ago
What are your ideas about more sustainable alternatives to our "democratic, equal" society? It seems to me a social movement that we cannot put the lid back on. It appeals ideologically (at its base level of "everyone is equal") and pragmatically to most people. Your points about sustainability are valid and we need to think about them, but what else can we do aside from progress towards a more egalitarian society with a more even distrubition of demographic groups throughout societal roles?
- xixixao 8y ago
  I only just thought about this, so it might be a crazy idea but: States could pay parents caring after children. In fact this already happens in modern western societies with some resemblence of a social state. But I think the problem is that a "family" gets the benefit. And the "family" shares the benefit. And then the mentality is: I spend all day at work, and if I lose my job, we will lose my income. But no one is seriously thinking: If a stay-at-home mom/dad stopped caring for their child, they would stop getting the state benefit. Of course these benefits are usually comparatively small to the full-time salary of a working person. But we could adjust those values. And we could say: This money belongs to the stay-at-home parent. They contribute: by caring for the children. Society should value this equally. It's a bit of social engineering, but it could work quite well. It's related to the idea of universal income, in some ways. I think the main problem with continued population growth is our unwillingness to build cities, tearing down old buildings. This is a serious problem that is causing unsustainable hike in cost of living. We also build expensively, compared to the 50s (in some parts of the world). VR and remote-working might counterbalance this somewhat. Maybe new cities will be build. It all needs really visionary leadership, and increased willingness to move forward, a-like to the pink-glassed 50s.
  - 14 8y ago
    As a Canadian I already receive money for my kids. Single dad and kids see mom on weekend I get the child benefits as it is called around here as I have the kids more then 60% if the time. If the children are shared equally then we would split the child tax. The amount changes as kids age but for 3 kids I get something like 1370$ a months to help me support those kids. This has improved the quality of my life hugely. It is the difference between I wonder if I can afford rent or food to now that we have rent and food maybe we can afford to go to the local pool. But here is the kicker, in Canada, we have come a long way but, they are sexist towards men and the woman still have the slight advantage. As in the child benefits are automatically given to the mother of the child. It is up to them to use that money for the kids. When my wife and I split up they were paying her but I had the kids. They wanted me to prove I had the kids so I could get the benefits. Luckily my wife and I were cooperative during the divorce so she confirmed with them I have primary custody so the money was switched into my name. But had she not I would of had to go to court and it is a pain. Anyways I get paid for my kids each month. Plus a huge tax break at the end of the year and get most of my income tax back. Last 2 years that has been a 5k tax return. I don’t know what other countries are doing but feel supported here in Canada.
trabant00 8y ago
As I see it, in the complexity of modern life a family would greatly benefit from a dedicated administrator. There is simply no time after work to keep a grip on all the developing situations regarding issues that greatly impact us like: health, finances, laws rules and regulations, family ties, housing, etc, etc. In practice we seem to sacrifice everything for work. I made up my mind a long time ago about "more women in tech". It's the same as "teach everybody to code". It's big co looking to get supply higher than demand so they can cut costs.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  You mean like your stereotypical 1950s head of household who receives information from all the other family members and decides on a course of action which is mostly non-negotiable?
  - trabant00 8y ago
    Not everything old is bad and not everything new is good. Secondly I think that women are better at this thing, so no, not like 1950. And thirdly an administrator isn't even a boss, let alone a dictator. It's quite a hands on, pay attention to everything, balance opposites kind of thing. I am one professionally.
threeseed 8y ago
Words fail me reading comments like this. To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages. It's sexist. It's degrading. It treats women like mindless children who can't make their own choices about what work they want to do. Nobody is forcing women to go into STEM. We are encouraging them because unfortunately they have to deal with toxic attitudes all the time and simply don't stick around. And seriously to act like western society is forcing transgenderism is utterly ridiculous and ridicules the stressful and tough choices these people have to make.
- wtdata 8y ago
  > To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages. It's sexist. It's degrading. It treats women like mindless children who can't make their own choices about what work they want to do. The OP says nothing of the kind. It's quite scary that so many people try to shut down any proper discussion about gender roles these days, with comments like this.
- trabant00 8y ago
  We should support any woman that wants to work in STEM. We should NOT encourage anybody to work in STEM. Women are more likely to want to work with people, not sit in a chair looking at a screen, droning for the corporation 8 hours per day. The "toxic environment" is just what the field is. Dehumanizing by definition. It's got nothing to do with patriarchy or whatever else trending buzzword corporations push promoting more people take a career path working for them. > To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages We need more women on construction sites, mines, fighting on the front line, fighting men in MMA, etc. If you say no you are soooo dark ages. /s
  - paulryanrogers 8y ago
    Which part is meant to be sarcasm? If all of it then can you rephrase it without?
    - 8y ago
seer 8y ago
I find the Kibbutz experiments by the Israelis to be fascinating in that regard. Thats where they tried to create egalitarian "all are equal" mini-societies. But they really tried to think it through and make it work. For example care for the kids was sort-of-centralized, so that women would not feel burdened to perform more tasks than men, boys and girls were thought the exact same things throughout their lives, that kinda thing. And it worked, kinda. People from those Kubbitz contribute disproportionately more to the economy, and those things are still going with several generations of people living in them. However newer generations became much less strict about the egalitarian aspect, as a lot of women preferred just to take care of the kids and leave the men to go out and start companies. Leading to funny confrontations between girls and their grandmothers :) Anyway I'm sure I'm grossing over a ton of stuff and its best to research on your own, but what I wanted to add is that different types of societies are possible, both free egalitarian capitalistic and even natural.
patentatt 8y ago
I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again). I got two weeks parental leave when my child was born. Civilized nations provide 6 months or more for both mother and father. My wife could take a couple years off of work, but then her career would be set back to square one. I elected to seriously downshift my own career just so I could see my kids on a daily basis. By that I mean not work so long that I literally don’t see my children M-F. Work culture is what is destroying families, not women’s rights. I remember sitting in the office of my boss once, she was sobbing over a mountain of paperwork to do, her kid had been injured at school and sent to the ER (ankle sprain or something). She couldn’t leave. She could, but then some “important” papers in some “important” case wouldn’t be filed on time. The whole squeezing of the middle (and upper-middle) class over the last 50 years is what’s making it really hard to have kids. And as more and more colleagues opt to be child-free, the 24/7 100% dedication to work becomes normalized and makes it even harder for working parents. I think the way forward is serious social investment in supporting families and enabling parents, both men and women, to have careers and aspirations but also be parents.
- iguy 8y ago
  I'd be curious to hear more precisely what you'd propose here. My impression that, unfortunately, many such attempts to (essentially) make life better for working mothers appear to have pushed us away from families-with-kids, and towards ever more singletons (including single mothers). They tend, I think, to move us from a system in which the family is the economic unit, to one in which its personal compromises are not necessary.
  - gumby 8y ago
    Why do you say that is unfortunate?
    - iguy 8y ago
      Because I think nearly everyone involved in attempting to change how things work was sincere in their hope that this would only lead to improvement. Yet on some pretty important measures, like the proportion of lower-class kids who get to grow up with a father, we've done very badly indeed.
fifnir 8y ago
> Any constructive discussion is welcome. I want to attack the premise that a shrinking population is inherently a problem. The only clearly stated problem that I've seen is how social security will likely crumble since the fewer younger people won't be able to support the large aging population. But this ignores how productivity has been and will continue to rise thanks to machines. I think we can easily take care of an aging population if we make proper use of new technology. In fact I think that reducing our numbers is necessary for our survival. We live in a capitalist world, where constant growth is assumed and expected, but the earth is a relatively closed system and you know what happens with bacteria in closed systems? They reproduce until they exhaust the system's resources and then they all die.
- chr1 8y ago
  That's a poor analogy, unlike bacteria we keep finding more and more efficient ways of using resources we have. And more importantly we can colonize deserts, ocean and nearby planets. So we have space for quite a few doublings before facing any real problems with population size.
- koonsolo 8y ago
  > I want to attack the premise that a shrinking population is inherently a problem. It's not really a problem, it survival. Not having kids is not really a problem, but the fact is that you genes will die along with you. Same for culture. Your own culture dying might not be a problem, but it means that your values will die along with it. Having equality between individuals is something to strive for (in my western opinion), but does this same value mean that your culture will die out, together with its values? Another culture might survive, because they have less 'favorable' values.
  - fifnir 8y ago
    > you genes will die along with you I get it, this is why I haven't already had a vasectomy, but your genes are nothing special, just a sample of the alleles in the population. I'm much more concerned about producing ideas that will outlive me and spreading those. Newton died a virgin yet he profoundly influenced the world. Similar with cultures, ancient greeks are long gone but their culture shaped the world.
microtherion 8y ago
> A family is made up of a man and a women, who support each other in their strengths and interests, and raise children together. So why not focus on the "together" part instead of trying to force partners into segregated roles? As you note yourself, stay at home mothers are in a precarious position (and, curiously, enthusiasm among males for traditional motherhood is NOT correlated with enthusiasm for lifelong alimony payments, or for generous government benefits for stay at home single mothers). And as far as the children are concerned, I don't think even the most conservative advocate of traditional gender roles would argue that they are better off being raised almost exclusively by one parent, and having the other confine themselves to cutting checks. So the solution, it seems to me, is to build a society that helps BOTH parents to spend time raising their children.
- pabl0rg 8y ago
  As a recent parent, view makes a lot of sense to me. Two weeks of parental leave is absolutely insufficient. There are probably a lot of other variables at play but Norway, which I’m sure encourages women to enter ‘male’ lines of work has a more sustainable population than Italy, which has a weaker social net. https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2017/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2017/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2017/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2017/
- c0vfefe 8y ago
  > being raised almost exclusively by one parent, and having the other confine themselves to cutting checks. If that's how you see the environment that a stay-at-home parent produces, with a full-time employed parent functioning only as a vending machine, then how could two working parents be an improvement?
  - microtherion 8y ago
    Two part time working parents, BOTH engaged with domestic tasks.
    - c0vfefe 8y ago
larrydag 8y ago
Much isn't said enough about modern fertility rates and how they are shrinking rapidly. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/?from=world#$state$marker$axis_y$which=children_per_woman_total_fertility&domainMin:null&domainMax:null&zoomedMin:null&zoomedMax:null&spaceRef:null;;;&chart-type=bubbles https://www.gapminder.org/tools/?from=world#$state$marker$ax...
mr_overalls 8y ago
> On one hand it's great that women have all these new rights. . . Do you mind if I ask how old you are? The rights of women to freely choose careers, and to make their own reproductive decisions, are at least several decades old. > Western society is trying to make boys out of girls, and girls out of boys. . . Can you provide examples of this? Not to preempt your arguments, but this is an oft-repeated conservative platitude that is mostly code for, "I wish women would stay out of the workforce and bear children."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- anyanswers 8y ago
  > Do you mind if I ask how old you are? The rights of women to freely choose careers, and to make their own reproductive decisions, are at least several decades old. i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history.
  - bhaak 8y ago
    > i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history. The "woman stays at home taking care of the children and the man goes out and earns enough to feed the family" concept is also new if you take into account human history. It got introduced for the most part during the 19th century. Before that you couldn't afford to not let the women work anyway. Actually, during the industrial revolution and the growing social disorder there, you also couldn't afford to not let women and children work but often you had to. And if you look at the whole of human history, the most common model of raising children was by a whole community. From groups of 5-10 individuals to even larger communities, all were somewhat responsible for and watching the growing children. The idea that everybody could raise a child with only two or even worse just one parent is laughable if it weren't so sad that it's a common view.
    - 8y ago
c0vfefe 8y ago
Perhaps the convenience of modern life discourages having lots of kids. Since they're no longer needed to work the family farm, and are more likely to live past infancy, and will almost always function as a huge liability of time & money, why would a modern couple try to have more kids than are necessary for their own emotional fulfillment? That seems to be most people's unconscious driving factor in reproduction.
selimthegrim 8y ago
If all we encourage is for them to become mothers, then unfortunately in America some ethnic groups are judged for that choice and some aren’t. Source: Call in to any talk radio station in LA and listen
fullshark 8y ago
I find it bizarre culturally that being a stay at home mom is so frowned upon in many circles. The idea that working 9-5 for some corporation is one’s highest calling seems silly. Perhaps one day we will respect mothers again.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  I find it bizarre that you automatically assume that it should be the mother who stays home and takes care of the kids, rather than the father.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  At what point were mothers respected in the western culture? (Respected == given as many resources as a corporate income would enable)
modernDads 8y ago
Maybe you should try to do ALL of the things your wife does in the house and your son will want to become a dad? (And your girls will want to be whatever your wife has now the time to achieve, like becoming CEO?) There is no such thing as girls becoming boys and boys becoming girls. It all starts in the house with sharing the childcare, housecare jobs and the mental load.
- koonsolo 8y ago
  Haha, I know what you try to prove here, but you are 100% wrong. I'm the one who spends most of the time with the kids. Their mom has a serious career. So no, this doesn't influence their preference. Actually my kids don't want to do the job their mom is doing, since she's away/abroad all the time. Nice try, but you are talking to the wrong person for that argument.
bluntfang 8y ago
If it comes to it, we will have no problem adopting a Brave New World style procreation strategy. Creating humans out of other human's blood/cells/dna/etc is either already here or imminent. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/babies-from-bone-marrow http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/babies-from-bone-marrow
- SeanAppleby 8y ago
  I don't think the problem is that people don't want to go through the mechanics of having kids, it's that they have other priorities that trump wanting to commit the massive amount of time and resources necessary to raise kids. That's a much more complex problem. I'd be highly skeptical that we could scale an alternative development environment that even approximated the benefits of having a loving family that wanted to commit to your upbringing being their main focus in life.
  - bluntfang 8y ago
    I suggest you give Brave New World, which i mentioned in the previous comment, a look. Huxley solves this problem with communal child rearing. Basically it's public school, but from child birth without the nuclear family model. The idea that you need a mom and dad (or even 2 parents) to love and raise a child is becoming obsolete.
- screye 8y ago
  Creating babies is the least of our problems. It is what happens to them between baby-adult is the part that keeps them from being produced at the desirable rate.
lumost 8y ago
Cost disease is one possible explanation for this process. As everything gets more expensive the risk of not keeping up grows, this manifests in somewhat exotic ways such as the tent cities of Hawaii having full parking lots for people to drive to work. Having children directly increases the risk of falling out of a financially stable position, as well as the negative effects of falling out such as raising a child in a tent City. Considering that most of our young population is either fighting against stagnant wages or student loan debt, it's not surprising that child birth rates have also fallen.
ncmncm 8y ago
This definition of a "family" is a problem. It is how Americans define the term, and administer resources, but it has never in previous history been an meaningful description. It is a problem because it is a very fragile construct. The definition we evolved with is what is lately called the "extended family", stripped of significance in the modern US. Its fragility is a consequence of the small number of roles and participants. One health problem is an instant crisis.

lotsofpulp 8y ago

>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walking in and taking over? Enough kids to take care of the older people and the rest of the country’s infrastructure and still make advancements? I don’t know what all the answers are, but it’s super complicated. From what I can tell though in my peer group, the biggest thing stopping people from having kids is lack of funds, job security, lack of parental leave, and an inability to find what they consider suitable partners within child bearing ages. How much of that is due to women entering the workforce versus other things such as declining real wages and job opportunities, I don’t know.

Mirioron 8y ago
The big problem we have is social programs. They redistribute wealth from young people right now to old people right now, but they are sold to young people as though they are investing into their future. As the ratio of young people to old people shrinks our social programs end up in more and more trouble. The fiscal gap is a problem in most developed countries.
- wtdata 8y ago
  Well, the issue is not taking from young to old, but taking from workers to non workers. The solution is not so complicated and impossible has some people try to put it, you just have to increase the retirement age accordingly. If you live moderately healthy to 95, than it should be perfectly acceptable for you to work until you are 75.
- logicchains 8y ago
  This program is solvable, with something like Australia's mandatory superannuation or Singapore's Central Provident Fund, where people are forced to save a certain percentage of their income for retirement (and the money is actually saved, they're not just given IOUs for money that will be taken from future young people).
  - iguy 8y ago
    But the discipline to stick to such a solution is difficult. Bending the rules just a little more to spend more money this election cycle is always going to be extremely tempting. In addition, the situation is a bit better in this regard for small countries, who can just invest elsewhere. If the whole world tried to do this, it's not clear what they could invest in, as what they want to withdraw in 30 years time is actually the services of cooks and nursing staff etc. who must be of working age at that time.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    Why force it though? Shouldn't it be up to the people whether they want to save it or not? In Eastern Europe this is a concern because many people have lived through their savings evaporating. What's to say that something similar doesn't happen in the future? Furthermore, how would you even implement it? Do young people right now have to pay for the upkeep of the old generation right now and will then have to additionally pay for their own retirement fund? It seems to me that somebody's going to get screwed here.

ferrous69 8y ago

What are your ideas about more sustainable alternatives to our "democratic, equal" society? It seems to me a social movement that we cannot put the lid back on. It appeals ideologically (at its base level of "everyone is equal") and pragmatically to most people. Your points about sustainability are valid and we need to think about them, but what else can we do aside from progress towards a more egalitarian society with a more even distrubition of demographic groups throughout societal roles?

xixixao 8y ago
I only just thought about this, so it might be a crazy idea but: States could pay parents caring after children. In fact this already happens in modern western societies with some resemblence of a social state. But I think the problem is that a "family" gets the benefit. And the "family" shares the benefit. And then the mentality is: I spend all day at work, and if I lose my job, we will lose my income. But no one is seriously thinking: If a stay-at-home mom/dad stopped caring for their child, they would stop getting the state benefit. Of course these benefits are usually comparatively small to the full-time salary of a working person. But we could adjust those values. And we could say: This money belongs to the stay-at-home parent. They contribute: by caring for the children. Society should value this equally. It's a bit of social engineering, but it could work quite well. It's related to the idea of universal income, in some ways. I think the main problem with continued population growth is our unwillingness to build cities, tearing down old buildings. This is a serious problem that is causing unsustainable hike in cost of living. We also build expensively, compared to the 50s (in some parts of the world). VR and remote-working might counterbalance this somewhat. Maybe new cities will be build. It all needs really visionary leadership, and increased willingness to move forward, a-like to the pink-glassed 50s.
- 14 8y ago
  As a Canadian I already receive money for my kids. Single dad and kids see mom on weekend I get the child benefits as it is called around here as I have the kids more then 60% if the time. If the children are shared equally then we would split the child tax. The amount changes as kids age but for 3 kids I get something like 1370$ a months to help me support those kids. This has improved the quality of my life hugely. It is the difference between I wonder if I can afford rent or food to now that we have rent and food maybe we can afford to go to the local pool. But here is the kicker, in Canada, we have come a long way but, they are sexist towards men and the woman still have the slight advantage. As in the child benefits are automatically given to the mother of the child. It is up to them to use that money for the kids. When my wife and I split up they were paying her but I had the kids. They wanted me to prove I had the kids so I could get the benefits. Luckily my wife and I were cooperative during the divorce so she confirmed with them I have primary custody so the money was switched into my name. But had she not I would of had to go to court and it is a pain. Anyways I get paid for my kids each month. Plus a huge tax break at the end of the year and get most of my income tax back. Last 2 years that has been a 5k tax return. I don’t know what other countries are doing but feel supported here in Canada.

trabant00 8y ago

As I see it, in the complexity of modern life a family would greatly benefit from a dedicated administrator. There is simply no time after work to keep a grip on all the developing situations regarding issues that greatly impact us like: health, finances, laws rules and regulations, family ties, housing, etc, etc. In practice we seem to sacrifice everything for work. I made up my mind a long time ago about "more women in tech". It's the same as "teach everybody to code". It's big co looking to get supply higher than demand so they can cut costs.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
You mean like your stereotypical 1950s head of household who receives information from all the other family members and decides on a course of action which is mostly non-negotiable?
- trabant00 8y ago
  Not everything old is bad and not everything new is good. Secondly I think that women are better at this thing, so no, not like 1950. And thirdly an administrator isn't even a boss, let alone a dictator. It's quite a hands on, pay attention to everything, balance opposites kind of thing. I am one professionally.

threeseed 8y ago

Words fail me reading comments like this. To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages. It's sexist. It's degrading. It treats women like mindless children who can't make their own choices about what work they want to do. Nobody is forcing women to go into STEM. We are encouraging them because unfortunately they have to deal with toxic attitudes all the time and simply don't stick around. And seriously to act like western society is forcing transgenderism is utterly ridiculous and ridicules the stressful and tough choices these people have to make.

wtdata 8y ago
> To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages. It's sexist. It's degrading. It treats women like mindless children who can't make their own choices about what work they want to do. The OP says nothing of the kind. It's quite scary that so many people try to shut down any proper discussion about gender roles these days, with comments like this.
trabant00 8y ago
We should support any woman that wants to work in STEM. We should NOT encourage anybody to work in STEM. Women are more likely to want to work with people, not sit in a chair looking at a screen, droning for the corporation 8 hours per day. The "toxic environment" is just what the field is. Dehumanizing by definition. It's got nothing to do with patriarchy or whatever else trending buzzword corporations push promoting more people take a career path working for them. > To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages We need more women on construction sites, mines, fighting on the front line, fighting men in MMA, etc. If you say no you are soooo dark ages. /s
- paulryanrogers 8y ago
  Which part is meant to be sarcasm? If all of it then can you rephrase it without?
  - 8y ago

seer 8y ago

I find the Kibbutz experiments by the Israelis to be fascinating in that regard. Thats where they tried to create egalitarian "all are equal" mini-societies. But they really tried to think it through and make it work. For example care for the kids was sort-of-centralized, so that women would not feel burdened to perform more tasks than men, boys and girls were thought the exact same things throughout their lives, that kinda thing. And it worked, kinda. People from those Kubbitz contribute disproportionately more to the economy, and those things are still going with several generations of people living in them. However newer generations became much less strict about the egalitarian aspect, as a lot of women preferred just to take care of the kids and leave the men to go out and start companies. Leading to funny confrontations between girls and their grandmothers :) Anyway I'm sure I'm grossing over a ton of stuff and its best to research on your own, but what I wanted to add is that different types of societies are possible, both free egalitarian capitalistic and even natural.

patentatt 8y ago

I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again). I got two weeks parental leave when my child was born. Civilized nations provide 6 months or more for both mother and father. My wife could take a couple years off of work, but then her career would be set back to square one. I elected to seriously downshift my own career just so I could see my kids on a daily basis. By that I mean not work so long that I literally don’t see my children M-F. Work culture is what is destroying families, not women’s rights. I remember sitting in the office of my boss once, she was sobbing over a mountain of paperwork to do, her kid had been injured at school and sent to the ER (ankle sprain or something). She couldn’t leave. She could, but then some “important” papers in some “important” case wouldn’t be filed on time. The whole squeezing of the middle (and upper-middle) class over the last 50 years is what’s making it really hard to have kids. And as more and more colleagues opt to be child-free, the 24/7 100% dedication to work becomes normalized and makes it even harder for working parents. I think the way forward is serious social investment in supporting families and enabling parents, both men and women, to have careers and aspirations but also be parents.

iguy 8y ago
I'd be curious to hear more precisely what you'd propose here. My impression that, unfortunately, many such attempts to (essentially) make life better for working mothers appear to have pushed us away from families-with-kids, and towards ever more singletons (including single mothers). They tend, I think, to move us from a system in which the family is the economic unit, to one in which its personal compromises are not necessary.
- gumby 8y ago
  Why do you say that is unfortunate?
  - iguy 8y ago
    Because I think nearly everyone involved in attempting to change how things work was sincere in their hope that this would only lead to improvement. Yet on some pretty important measures, like the proportion of lower-class kids who get to grow up with a father, we've done very badly indeed.

fifnir 8y ago

> Any constructive discussion is welcome. I want to attack the premise that a shrinking population is inherently a problem. The only clearly stated problem that I've seen is how social security will likely crumble since the fewer younger people won't be able to support the large aging population. But this ignores how productivity has been and will continue to rise thanks to machines. I think we can easily take care of an aging population if we make proper use of new technology. In fact I think that reducing our numbers is necessary for our survival. We live in a capitalist world, where constant growth is assumed and expected, but the earth is a relatively closed system and you know what happens with bacteria in closed systems? They reproduce until they exhaust the system's resources and then they all die.

chr1 8y ago
That's a poor analogy, unlike bacteria we keep finding more and more efficient ways of using resources we have. And more importantly we can colonize deserts, ocean and nearby planets. So we have space for quite a few doublings before facing any real problems with population size.
koonsolo 8y ago
> I want to attack the premise that a shrinking population is inherently a problem. It's not really a problem, it survival. Not having kids is not really a problem, but the fact is that you genes will die along with you. Same for culture. Your own culture dying might not be a problem, but it means that your values will die along with it. Having equality between individuals is something to strive for (in my western opinion), but does this same value mean that your culture will die out, together with its values? Another culture might survive, because they have less 'favorable' values.
- fifnir 8y ago
  > you genes will die along with you I get it, this is why I haven't already had a vasectomy, but your genes are nothing special, just a sample of the alleles in the population. I'm much more concerned about producing ideas that will outlive me and spreading those. Newton died a virgin yet he profoundly influenced the world. Similar with cultures, ancient greeks are long gone but their culture shaped the world.

microtherion 8y ago

> A family is made up of a man and a women, who support each other in their strengths and interests, and raise children together. So why not focus on the "together" part instead of trying to force partners into segregated roles? As you note yourself, stay at home mothers are in a precarious position (and, curiously, enthusiasm among males for traditional motherhood is NOT correlated with enthusiasm for lifelong alimony payments, or for generous government benefits for stay at home single mothers). And as far as the children are concerned, I don't think even the most conservative advocate of traditional gender roles would argue that they are better off being raised almost exclusively by one parent, and having the other confine themselves to cutting checks. So the solution, it seems to me, is to build a society that helps BOTH parents to spend time raising their children.

pabl0rg 8y ago
As a recent parent, view makes a lot of sense to me. Two weeks of parental leave is absolutely insufficient. There are probably a lot of other variables at play but Norway, which I’m sure encourages women to enter ‘male’ lines of work has a more sustainable population than Italy, which has a weaker social net. https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2017/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2017/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2017/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2017/
c0vfefe 8y ago
> being raised almost exclusively by one parent, and having the other confine themselves to cutting checks. If that's how you see the environment that a stay-at-home parent produces, with a full-time employed parent functioning only as a vending machine, then how could two working parents be an improvement?
- microtherion 8y ago
  Two part time working parents, BOTH engaged with domestic tasks.
  - c0vfefe 8y ago

larrydag 8y ago

Much isn't said enough about modern fertility rates and how they are shrinking rapidly. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/?from=world#$state$marker$axis_y$which=children_per_woman_total_fertility&domainMin:null&domainMax:null&zoomedMin:null&zoomedMax:null&spaceRef:null;;;&chart-type=bubbles https://www.gapminder.org/tools/?from=world#$state$marker$ax...

mr_overalls 8y ago

> On one hand it's great that women have all these new rights. . . Do you mind if I ask how old you are? The rights of women to freely choose careers, and to make their own reproductive decisions, are at least several decades old. > Western society is trying to make boys out of girls, and girls out of boys. . . Can you provide examples of this? Not to preempt your arguments, but this is an oft-repeated conservative platitude that is mostly code for, "I wish women would stay out of the workforce and bear children."

deleted 8y ago
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anyanswers 8y ago
> Do you mind if I ask how old you are? The rights of women to freely choose careers, and to make their own reproductive decisions, are at least several decades old. i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history.
- bhaak 8y ago
  > i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history. The "woman stays at home taking care of the children and the man goes out and earns enough to feed the family" concept is also new if you take into account human history. It got introduced for the most part during the 19th century. Before that you couldn't afford to not let the women work anyway. Actually, during the industrial revolution and the growing social disorder there, you also couldn't afford to not let women and children work but often you had to. And if you look at the whole of human history, the most common model of raising children was by a whole community. From groups of 5-10 individuals to even larger communities, all were somewhat responsible for and watching the growing children. The idea that everybody could raise a child with only two or even worse just one parent is laughable if it weren't so sad that it's a common view.
  - 8y ago

c0vfefe 8y ago

Perhaps the convenience of modern life discourages having lots of kids. Since they're no longer needed to work the family farm, and are more likely to live past infancy, and will almost always function as a huge liability of time & money, why would a modern couple try to have more kids than are necessary for their own emotional fulfillment? That seems to be most people's unconscious driving factor in reproduction.

selimthegrim 8y ago

If all we encourage is for them to become mothers, then unfortunately in America some ethnic groups are judged for that choice and some aren’t. Source: Call in to any talk radio station in LA and listen

fullshark 8y ago

I find it bizarre culturally that being a stay at home mom is so frowned upon in many circles. The idea that working 9-5 for some corporation is one’s highest calling seems silly. Perhaps one day we will respect mothers again.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
I find it bizarre that you automatically assume that it should be the mother who stays home and takes care of the kids, rather than the father.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
At what point were mothers respected in the western culture? (Respected == given as many resources as a corporate income would enable)

modernDads 8y ago

Maybe you should try to do ALL of the things your wife does in the house and your son will want to become a dad? (And your girls will want to be whatever your wife has now the time to achieve, like becoming CEO?) There is no such thing as girls becoming boys and boys becoming girls. It all starts in the house with sharing the childcare, housecare jobs and the mental load.

koonsolo 8y ago
Haha, I know what you try to prove here, but you are 100% wrong. I'm the one who spends most of the time with the kids. Their mom has a serious career. So no, this doesn't influence their preference. Actually my kids don't want to do the job their mom is doing, since she's away/abroad all the time. Nice try, but you are talking to the wrong person for that argument.

bluntfang 8y ago

If it comes to it, we will have no problem adopting a Brave New World style procreation strategy. Creating humans out of other human's blood/cells/dna/etc is either already here or imminent. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/babies-from-bone-marrow http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/babies-from-bone-marrow

SeanAppleby 8y ago
I don't think the problem is that people don't want to go through the mechanics of having kids, it's that they have other priorities that trump wanting to commit the massive amount of time and resources necessary to raise kids. That's a much more complex problem. I'd be highly skeptical that we could scale an alternative development environment that even approximated the benefits of having a loving family that wanted to commit to your upbringing being their main focus in life.
- bluntfang 8y ago
  I suggest you give Brave New World, which i mentioned in the previous comment, a look. Huxley solves this problem with communal child rearing. Basically it's public school, but from child birth without the nuclear family model. The idea that you need a mom and dad (or even 2 parents) to love and raise a child is becoming obsolete.
screye 8y ago
Creating babies is the least of our problems. It is what happens to them between baby-adult is the part that keeps them from being produced at the desirable rate.

lumost 8y ago

Cost disease is one possible explanation for this process. As everything gets more expensive the risk of not keeping up grows, this manifests in somewhat exotic ways such as the tent cities of Hawaii having full parking lots for people to drive to work. Having children directly increases the risk of falling out of a financially stable position, as well as the negative effects of falling out such as raising a child in a tent City. Considering that most of our young population is either fighting against stagnant wages or student loan debt, it's not surprising that child birth rates have also fallen.

ncmncm 8y ago

This definition of a "family" is a problem. It is how Americans define the term, and administer resources, but it has never in previous history been an meaningful description. It is a problem because it is a very fragile construct. The definition we evolved with is what is lately called the "extended family", stripped of significance in the modern US. Its fragility is a consequence of the small number of roles and participants. One health problem is an instant crisis.