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I would. I think, personally investing in people makes for better people. A lot of times, that's done with time and not money. Money is a poor man's substitute

I would. I think, personally investing in people makes for better people. A lot of times, that's done with time and not money. Money is a poor man's substitute for spending time with his children.

cperciva 7y ago
Women taking 10x as much leave as men is great if you want to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. Personally, I'd be happier if the 40 weeks of "parental" leave was required to be split 20/20 (subject to obvious exemptions if there is no second parent who is eligible for EI). This would still leave women with 75% more leave than men -- but I think that's a reasonable compromise given that the maternity leave is intended to cover time when a birth mother is medically unable to work, recovering from birth, etc.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Male here in the US who received paternity leave twice for my two kids; my spouse and I prescribe to traditional gender roles, we’re both happy with it, and I would forgo mandatory paternity leave if I had to split leave offered. I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I fully support leave, but leave it up to parents how they want to split it.
  - maxheadroom 7y ago
    >I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child-rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I apologise if this infers offence but the way that this reads is that you're not interested in child-rearing so one must ask the question that begs: "Is there a point in having children if you've no interest in their upbringing?"
    - michaelt 7y ago
      Same reason men serving in the military or working abroad or on oil rigs or in long-haul trucking have children?
      - maxheadroom 7y ago
        >Same reason men serving in the military or working abroad or on oil rigs or in long-haul trucking have children? I don't see how those two situations equate. One is an impossibility, due to circumstance (e.g.: on the battlefield), and other is the willful knowledge that you want nothing to do with their upbringing because, using the OC's words, "I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child-rearing...". Edit: In other words, there's no direct implication that everyone in the military, working abroad, or long-haul trucking wants nothing to do with child-raising. I'd imagine the situation is actually the inverse but the economic necessity for that work to be done (to provide a living) is what prevents that.
        michaelt 7y ago
        The equivocation I'm making is although it's unusual, it's far from unprecedented for a parent to make career choices that don't maximise time spent raising their children. If you don't like those examples, consider a family with two busy working parents sending their child to boarding school. If they can afford a boarding school, they've got plenty of income. One or both of them could simply switch to a normal 9-5 job. toomuchtodo would not be the first person to hand their child off for others to deal with, even if the decision to do so is hard for most people to understand :)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      > "Is there a point in having children if you've no interest in their upbringing?" It makes my partner happy, and as I said, I don't want to do it full time. I still make an active effort raising them when I'm not working my day job (mornings, nights, weekends).
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Are you aware men can’t breast feed? Fuck this idea that traditional gender roles are meaningless.
  - cperciva 7y ago
    Sure, men can't breast feed. But they can bottle feed (including with pumped breast milk); they can change diapers; they can wash and hold and play with babies; and they can attend to myriad other domestic chores while babies are being breast fed. Breast feeding is absolutely important, but if you think that's the only thing you need to do in order to take care of a newborn, you might be in for a shock.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - tathougies 7y ago
      > Breast feeding is absolutely important, but if you think that's the only thing you need to do in order to take care of a newborn, you might be in for a shock. Breastfeeding is a necessary part of taking care of a newborn that men cannot do. Women can do all the parts that you listed, plus the vital component of breastfeed. Hence, it makes sense to encourage moms to stay home with babies. Dads should stay home too, because the ideal is for mom and dad to be at home playing with babies (isn't that everyone's dream??). However, most people are not independently wealthy, so compromises are made, and dad goes to work.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
        The parent comment believes they have that problem solved by suggesting breast pumps (and formula, one supposes), but those don't work well for some people. To be fair, breastfeeding doesn't work well for some people and is part of the reason wet nurses were more popular in the past. My larger point is, we shouldn't throw the traditional gender role baby out with the breast milk bath water. People have different preferences / requirements, and they should be allowed to make the choice to conform to traditional gender roles if they so choose, rather than forcing a 50 / 50 split of parental leave where there is some clear biological differences. The obvious ones being men lack mammary glands and uterus / ovaries.
- djrobstep 7y ago
  It really isn't as simple as this, from a gender equality perspective. First, many women will take on more the childcare burden regardless of the financial incentives that exist. That domestic labor ought to be recognized as real labor, and as such, be paid. There's also a class angle: Many low income women would rather be doing childcare than crappy low wage work, because the oppression of a boss is worse than the oppression of their domestic arrangements.
  - TravHatesMe 7y ago
    Where do you live? Define oppression. Let's see a survey of your claims.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      The general interpretation is along the lines of: https://globalnews.ca/news/3230205/women-work-more-than-men-and-its-impacting-their-health-study-says/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3230205/women-work-more-than-men-... - "Women work more than men and it’s impacting their health, study says" "According to a recent study by the Australian National University, women (on average) work fewer hours at the office. But when taking unpaid domestic labour and care-giving into account, they’re going above and beyond their “workhour-health limits.”" ... "Men, the researchers say, are able to dedicate more time at work because they spend less time on housework, which gives them an edge in their career, co-author Lyndall Strazdins tells Broadly. In fact, men get 100 extra hours a year to advance their careers, she says." and https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gender-equality-women https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-ge... - "Forty years of feminism – but women still do most of the housework?" "Nick Pearce, director of IPPR. "Women still shoulder the overwhelming burden of household tasks, particularly after they have had children. When they earn more, their bargaining power with their partners increases, so closing the gender pay gap would help. Universal childcare, rather than tax relief for nannies or cleaners, is also the best way forward for a family-friendly, more equal Britain." And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework : "The International Wages for Housework Campaign was a feminist global social movement, which grew out of the International Feminist Collective in Italy in 1972 and organized resistance and public debate on the social formations produced by gendered labor and reproductive labor, for example domestic work such as housework, childcare, gender discrimination, and the socially reinforced performance of gender roles, gendered desire, and leisure inequality. The Campaign's platform included the women's right to work outside of the home, unemployment benefits, parental leave, and equal pay." The history section includes the term 'oppression' directly: "A number of early feminists focused women's economic independence along with the role of housewife in relation to women's oppression. In 1898 Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Women and Economics. This book argued for paid housework 74 years before the International Wages for Housework Campaign was founded as well as arguing to expand the definition of women in the home."
- HaloZero 7y ago
  I think the idea right now is to give flexibility to both parents to make their decisions instead of forcing a perceived cultural choice on them.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  I don’t think the main objective of women when they decide to take that leave is to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. But if your objective is to fight traditional roles about caregiving it makes sense that you’d prefer that other people didn’t have choices.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Going to get downvoted for this, but whatever. It is cruel to mother, father, and child to force a father to take care of a newborn or < 1 yr old without the mother. The newborn is used to the mother's body. A newborn gets stressed being away from its mother and source of food, even when with the dad. Breastfeeding from the breast is not just a source of nutrition but also a source of comfort for the baby, and healthy for the mom (both physically and mentally). Men do not have this need or ability. Putting a man at home with his newborn, without the mother, is a recipe for disaster. Not because a man cannot do the actions required to take care of a baby in this circumstance, but because, if the woman wants to do the recommended thing for her child (breastfeed him or her), then she would have to pump (which is a lot of work) and store her milk (a lot of work). Oh also, she'd have to do this at work, which again makes her unequal to her male colleagues. The man would have to disinfect and clean bottles, and be unable to soothe a child if he runs out of milk (unless he has formula on hand). The child doesn't get the human touch of breastfeeding. So to recap... the mother loses because, despite going to work for the sake of 'equality', she's stuck every few hours pumping milk, losing work time her male colleagues can use to further their career. The baby loses because it doesn't get the psychological security of suckling at the breast. The father loses because he is simply less able to calm the baby down and feed it than the mother. By all means, help men to stay home with their older children. This is great, but a father with a newborn is simply a bad idea, IMO. Formula is possible, but from a public health perspective, it should be discouraged unless necessary. I will never understand why people make parenting harder on themselves. Newborns are hard enough, but the human body has an easy way to fix it. Whenever my daughter is fussy, she goes straight back to her mom for comfort nursing, and then when she's done, she's back to me for fun times. This is easier for everyone involved, and fosters a positive father-child relationship. Both my wife and brother-in-law were breastfed whenever they were fussy, and it always calmed them down, according to MIL and FIL. Not being breastfed myself, I didn't believe it at first. But sure enough, with my daughter, literally all problems can be solved by suckling for a minute at her mother's breast. Why make this harder on ourselves? By the time she's back with me, she's happy, laughing, and ready for tickles and fun, and mom can get a well-deserved break.
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    I won't down vote you, but I hope you are wrong :-) I'd be very interested to see if you can come up with studies that back up your anecdotal evidence. I mean, what you say makes a certain amount of sense, but there are lots of things in the world that makes sense and are wrong ;-)
- sersi 7y ago
  Another reason I fully agree with you is that mandatory paternal leave would help reducing discrimination against women of child bearing age. Right now, employers are worried that women would take maternity leave and so are less likely to hire women than men, having men with a substantial paternity leave would level the playing field somewhat.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Women taking 10x as much leave as men is great if you want to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. That's a reasonable concern, but I think requiring the parental leave to be split isn't a reasonable solution. In a lot of families, that will just create serious problems without any real upside. I don't have a good solution to suggest, but there has to be some leeway for families to work those details out themselves without having to justify their choices so as to be granted an exception.

I would. I think, personally investing in people makes for better people. A lot of times, that's done with time and not money. Money is a poor man's substitute for spending time with his children.

cperciva 7y ago

Women taking 10x as much leave as men is great if you want to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. Personally, I'd be happier if the 40 weeks of "parental" leave was required to be split 20/20 (subject to obvious exemptions if there is no second parent who is eligible for EI). This would still leave women with 75% more leave than men -- but I think that's a reasonable compromise given that the maternity leave is intended to cover time when a birth mother is medically unable to work, recovering from birth, etc.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Male here in the US who received paternity leave twice for my two kids; my spouse and I prescribe to traditional gender roles, we’re both happy with it, and I would forgo mandatory paternity leave if I had to split leave offered. I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I fully support leave, but leave it up to parents how they want to split it.
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  >I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child-rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I apologise if this infers offence but the way that this reads is that you're not interested in child-rearing so one must ask the question that begs: "Is there a point in having children if you've no interest in their upbringing?"
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Same reason men serving in the military or working abroad or on oil rigs or in long-haul trucking have children?
    - maxheadroom 7y ago
      >Same reason men serving in the military or working abroad or on oil rigs or in long-haul trucking have children? I don't see how those two situations equate. One is an impossibility, due to circumstance (e.g.: on the battlefield), and other is the willful knowledge that you want nothing to do with their upbringing because, using the OC's words, "I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child-rearing...". Edit: In other words, there's no direct implication that everyone in the military, working abroad, or long-haul trucking wants nothing to do with child-raising. I'd imagine the situation is actually the inverse but the economic necessity for that work to be done (to provide a living) is what prevents that.
      - michaelt 7y ago
        The equivocation I'm making is although it's unusual, it's far from unprecedented for a parent to make career choices that don't maximise time spent raising their children. If you don't like those examples, consider a family with two busy working parents sending their child to boarding school. If they can afford a boarding school, they've got plenty of income. One or both of them could simply switch to a normal 9-5 job. toomuchtodo would not be the first person to hand their child off for others to deal with, even if the decision to do so is hard for most people to understand :)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    > "Is there a point in having children if you've no interest in their upbringing?" It makes my partner happy, and as I said, I don't want to do it full time. I still make an active effort raising them when I'm not working my day job (mornings, nights, weekends).
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Are you aware men can’t breast feed? Fuck this idea that traditional gender roles are meaningless.
- cperciva 7y ago
  Sure, men can't breast feed. But they can bottle feed (including with pumped breast milk); they can change diapers; they can wash and hold and play with babies; and they can attend to myriad other domestic chores while babies are being breast fed. Breast feeding is absolutely important, but if you think that's the only thing you need to do in order to take care of a newborn, you might be in for a shock.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > Breast feeding is absolutely important, but if you think that's the only thing you need to do in order to take care of a newborn, you might be in for a shock. Breastfeeding is a necessary part of taking care of a newborn that men cannot do. Women can do all the parts that you listed, plus the vital component of breastfeed. Hence, it makes sense to encourage moms to stay home with babies. Dads should stay home too, because the ideal is for mom and dad to be at home playing with babies (isn't that everyone's dream??). However, most people are not independently wealthy, so compromises are made, and dad goes to work.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      The parent comment believes they have that problem solved by suggesting breast pumps (and formula, one supposes), but those don't work well for some people. To be fair, breastfeeding doesn't work well for some people and is part of the reason wet nurses were more popular in the past. My larger point is, we shouldn't throw the traditional gender role baby out with the breast milk bath water. People have different preferences / requirements, and they should be allowed to make the choice to conform to traditional gender roles if they so choose, rather than forcing a 50 / 50 split of parental leave where there is some clear biological differences. The obvious ones being men lack mammary glands and uterus / ovaries.
djrobstep 7y ago
It really isn't as simple as this, from a gender equality perspective. First, many women will take on more the childcare burden regardless of the financial incentives that exist. That domestic labor ought to be recognized as real labor, and as such, be paid. There's also a class angle: Many low income women would rather be doing childcare than crappy low wage work, because the oppression of a boss is worse than the oppression of their domestic arrangements.
- TravHatesMe 7y ago
  Where do you live? Define oppression. Let's see a survey of your claims.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    The general interpretation is along the lines of: https://globalnews.ca/news/3230205/women-work-more-than-men-and-its-impacting-their-health-study-says/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3230205/women-work-more-than-men-... - "Women work more than men and it’s impacting their health, study says" "According to a recent study by the Australian National University, women (on average) work fewer hours at the office. But when taking unpaid domestic labour and care-giving into account, they’re going above and beyond their “workhour-health limits.”" ... "Men, the researchers say, are able to dedicate more time at work because they spend less time on housework, which gives them an edge in their career, co-author Lyndall Strazdins tells Broadly. In fact, men get 100 extra hours a year to advance their careers, she says." and https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gender-equality-women https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-ge... - "Forty years of feminism – but women still do most of the housework?" "Nick Pearce, director of IPPR. "Women still shoulder the overwhelming burden of household tasks, particularly after they have had children. When they earn more, their bargaining power with their partners increases, so closing the gender pay gap would help. Universal childcare, rather than tax relief for nannies or cleaners, is also the best way forward for a family-friendly, more equal Britain." And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework : "The International Wages for Housework Campaign was a feminist global social movement, which grew out of the International Feminist Collective in Italy in 1972 and organized resistance and public debate on the social formations produced by gendered labor and reproductive labor, for example domestic work such as housework, childcare, gender discrimination, and the socially reinforced performance of gender roles, gendered desire, and leisure inequality. The Campaign's platform included the women's right to work outside of the home, unemployment benefits, parental leave, and equal pay." The history section includes the term 'oppression' directly: "A number of early feminists focused women's economic independence along with the role of housewife in relation to women's oppression. In 1898 Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Women and Economics. This book argued for paid housework 74 years before the International Wages for Housework Campaign was founded as well as arguing to expand the definition of women in the home."
HaloZero 7y ago
I think the idea right now is to give flexibility to both parents to make their decisions instead of forcing a perceived cultural choice on them.
kgwgk 7y ago
I don’t think the main objective of women when they decide to take that leave is to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. But if your objective is to fight traditional roles about caregiving it makes sense that you’d prefer that other people didn’t have choices.
tathougies 7y ago
Going to get downvoted for this, but whatever. It is cruel to mother, father, and child to force a father to take care of a newborn or < 1 yr old without the mother. The newborn is used to the mother's body. A newborn gets stressed being away from its mother and source of food, even when with the dad. Breastfeeding from the breast is not just a source of nutrition but also a source of comfort for the baby, and healthy for the mom (both physically and mentally). Men do not have this need or ability. Putting a man at home with his newborn, without the mother, is a recipe for disaster. Not because a man cannot do the actions required to take care of a baby in this circumstance, but because, if the woman wants to do the recommended thing for her child (breastfeed him or her), then she would have to pump (which is a lot of work) and store her milk (a lot of work). Oh also, she'd have to do this at work, which again makes her unequal to her male colleagues. The man would have to disinfect and clean bottles, and be unable to soothe a child if he runs out of milk (unless he has formula on hand). The child doesn't get the human touch of breastfeeding. So to recap... the mother loses because, despite going to work for the sake of 'equality', she's stuck every few hours pumping milk, losing work time her male colleagues can use to further their career. The baby loses because it doesn't get the psychological security of suckling at the breast. The father loses because he is simply less able to calm the baby down and feed it than the mother. By all means, help men to stay home with their older children. This is great, but a father with a newborn is simply a bad idea, IMO. Formula is possible, but from a public health perspective, it should be discouraged unless necessary. I will never understand why people make parenting harder on themselves. Newborns are hard enough, but the human body has an easy way to fix it. Whenever my daughter is fussy, she goes straight back to her mom for comfort nursing, and then when she's done, she's back to me for fun times. This is easier for everyone involved, and fosters a positive father-child relationship. Both my wife and brother-in-law were breastfed whenever they were fussy, and it always calmed them down, according to MIL and FIL. Not being breastfed myself, I didn't believe it at first. But sure enough, with my daughter, literally all problems can be solved by suckling for a minute at her mother's breast. Why make this harder on ourselves? By the time she's back with me, she's happy, laughing, and ready for tickles and fun, and mom can get a well-deserved break.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I won't down vote you, but I hope you are wrong :-) I'd be very interested to see if you can come up with studies that back up your anecdotal evidence. I mean, what you say makes a certain amount of sense, but there are lots of things in the world that makes sense and are wrong ;-)
sersi 7y ago
Another reason I fully agree with you is that mandatory paternal leave would help reducing discrimination against women of child bearing age. Right now, employers are worried that women would take maternity leave and so are less likely to hire women than men, having men with a substantial paternity leave would level the playing field somewhat.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Women taking 10x as much leave as men is great if you want to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. That's a reasonable concern, but I think requiring the parental leave to be split isn't a reasonable solution. In a lot of families, that will just create serious problems without any real upside. I don't have a good solution to suggest, but there has to be some leeway for families to work those details out themselves without having to justify their choices so as to be granted an exception.