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The fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism. Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how we s

The fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism. Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how we structure society. For millenia across many cultures women have had their participation in broader society curtailed to the sphere of reproductive and domestic labor. That is injustice. As Morenz notes, we don't have to accept that. We can structure our work so that women are not disadvantaged for having kids and men aren't penalized for taking a greater role in raising them. This seems like violent agreement. I think Scott was trying to dismiss the people who criticize them by inviting Morenz to make a guest post. Perhaps his dismissiveness is the reason why this is so acrimonious.

TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
This assumes that men and women en masse want equal roles in raising children. I'm not convinced that this is the case.
- danharaj 7y ago
  What does? I made a few claims.
  - TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
    I was responding to the main premise of your comment, that "the fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism." This implies discrimination due to external forces that make men and women behave differently.
    - danharaj 7y ago
      What do you mean by external forces? These are all interactions between human beings. We behave that we do in large part based on our interactions with others. Would you say that it is "external forces" that cause us two to communicate in English? What is the alternative position you're suggesting?
      - TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
        "Structural sexism" implies nonintrinsic forces causing discrimination, hence why I called it an external force, as it's a force not generated internally. I think the effects of evolutionary biology need to be considered when looking at behavioral differences. Evolutionarily speaking, women invest much more energy into growing, giving birth to, and caring for children than men. This leads to innate differences in behavior separate from social forces you are describing.
        deyouz 7y ago
        Then how come some women don't want children and even dislike children? The reason why women are more involved in childcare after giving birth/nursery years is purely societal factors. It's expected of them to behave in that way in more conservative places and it's strongly implied in other places.
- csb6 7y ago
  Sure, many more women may choose to take the more active role, but it’s important to consider that these conscious choices are affected by implicit social pressures and expectations that are placed on men and women from childhood onwards, such as men being expected to be breadwinners and women being expected to be caregivers. These are pretty arbitrary social constructs that are not universal or intrinsic to nature or even human societies. So it follows that what men and women would say they desire is not the full picture, since they may be unaware of the implicit forces acting on them.
  - darawk 7y ago
    It's true that these social pressures exist, and they are certainly sexist. But I think it's important to distinguish that the pressure is what's sexist, not the impact of the choice.
    - csb6 7y ago
      Then let’s make an effort to expose and reform these sexist structures! That is the goal of people trying to reform the mindset of STEM institutions. These structures are not fixed, and so can be changed.
- fred_is_fred 7y ago
  Although I love my kids I would go clinically insane if I had to do the stay-at-home raising of them full time. My wife OTOH loves it and would rather do nothing else. I know that this is swapped for many couples, but I still argue that reality is more skewed this way than the other. Maybe that will change over time.
  - volak 7y ago
    People downvote but I assure you many dads agree. IMO dads don't achieve the same level of bonding as women do to their babies and therefore we are able to tolerate less of the crap babies get into during the day. Its not sexism, its just biology. If I had a project I worked on for 9 months I would have more desire to continue working on it into the future. My investor is an interested party, but ultimately its entirely my drive which moves the project forward
- empath75 7y ago
  I'd love to spend more time with my kids and my wife would prefer to spend more time at work. I make 3 times her salary, though, so it's not really economically feasible for us to switch roles. She could afford to not work or work part time for 2 years. We couldn't afford it if I did it.
darawk 7y ago
> The fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism. You seem to be making a fairly subtle point here that I think others might be missing. Which is not that women choosing to take on the burden of childcare represents sexism (which is an argument some people make), but rather that the fact that their making this choice impinges upon their personal economic future is sexist. That is maybe a more interesting point than the former, but I don't think it really holds up to scrutiny. Choosing to take on the burden of childcare is choosing to spend less time working. In any other context, if a person chooses to work less, that negatively impacts their earning, and we consider that perfectly reasonable and fair. If I choose to play video games for 8 hours a day and work part time, basically everyone accepts it's reasonable that I make less money. Now, if women are being pressured or forced into accepting this childcare responsibility at their own economic expense, then yes. That is 100% structural sexism. Also, if society would have treated men making this choice differently than women, then that too would represent structural sexism. But there are men making this choice, and their careers are generally just as negatively impacted as the women who make it.
- clairity 7y ago
  to compare it to playing video games all day is (unwittingly?) falling prey to the very systemic sexism you're trying to fathom--that "women's work" such as childcare is not "work"--that it's economically unproductive and should be "free".
  - darawk 7y ago
    No, that was not the point of my analogy. Whether it is work or not is irrelevant. When I clean my home, that is work, but nobody pays me to do it. I do the work because I receive the benefit of that work. People care for their children for the same reason. And many (most?) couples consider the income of the breadwinner to be shared between the two of them for precisely this reason: Because the couple values the childcare that the childcare-r provides. I'm not arguing that childcare isn't valuable. I am arguing that it isn't valuable to any employer of the person doing the childcare, and as such, they shouldn't pay for it.
zajio1am 7y ago
> Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how we structure society. What does raising children have to do with society? Decision of having and raising a child is a fundamentally personal, not societal decision. Each pair should decide how they want to split responsibilities of raising a child before its conception, based on their preferences, and society should not force them to any model. Also, it seems to me that society already prioritize child-raising too much compared to other non-work activities. If people would leave STEM/some other field due to work-life balance for some other personal goals than child-raising (say part-time working in a non-profit), would anyone care?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- untog 7y ago
  > What does raising children have to do with society? Decision of having and raising a child is a fundamentally personal, not societal decision. Of course it isn't. Every society needs an up and coming younger generation as the older generation stops working. That is absolutely a problem on a societal level.
  - zajio1am 7y ago
    While i agree it may be a concern of a society to be stable, it does not automatically translate to necessary concern for society as a whole. Many things necessary for a society work even if society does not intervene in them. People would have children for emotional reasons even if society does not intervene. Also, if a societal stability is a goal, then having more than replacement number of children is as problematic as having less.
    - untog 7y ago
      > People would have children for emotional reasons even if society does not intervene. Yes, but the success of those children is still a societal concern. You want some of those children to be a new generation of doctors, teachers, etc. etc... without supporting them at a young age (i.e. providing education, a welfare safety net) there's no guarantee that would ever happen, and they might end up being more of a drain on society than a productive member.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how we structure society. Great. But my personal experience is that this notion seems to vanish as soon as we look at things like rates of workplace deaths, life expectancy, hours worked, imprisonment, or numerous other areas. And even if they don't vanish, the level of attention devoted seems to be remarkably different. Would the way we structure society in regards to structuring our attention for social ills also possibly include sexism? And I guess such notions can be dismissed as being off topic. As they aren't relevant to the actual issue under discussion. But when we start viewing larger more structural things as sexism, then wouldn't even such dismissal potentially qualify as sexism?
- danharaj 7y ago
  This might surprise you but a lot of feminists are also strongly in favor of workers' rights and prison abolition. For example, bell hooks and Angela Davis. I have never met people more passionately invested in the wellbeing of men than the feminists I read and live with. It is a shame to me that decades of propaganda have buried those voices and raised the voices of those who insist that feminism is a zero sum game.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    >prison abolition As in, no criminals go to prison? I wonder what these feminist feel should be as the punishment for rape. >I have never met people more passionately invested in the wellbeing of men than the feminists I read and live with. Many of those who want to ban abortion are very passionate about protecting the women seeking such, as they believe it is far better for those women to be denied such an opportunity (such as saving them from doing something they will regret, at least per the belief of the people supporting anti-choice legislation). Intentions and passion shouldn't be ignored, but neither do they provide a complete picture.
tathougies 7y ago
Have you considered that the primary enforcer of this curtailment is not adults but infants? I mean, I took long paternity leave, I am with my daughter at night, and am with her whenever I am home. She still wants to nurse on her mothers breast when she's sick or in pain. This makes sense as not only is it comforting to her (and a childs emotional need is very real) but it is also physiologically beneficial (nursing reduces stress hormones and helps her heal from disease faster). She enforces this dichotomy of roles by screaming if i try to comfort her and shes already decided what she wants by screaming mama. She'll take comfort from me only if shes decided that its something that doesnt require something no man can give. And her cry is meant to change both of our emotional states to fulfill her every desire. Is this injustice? Perhaps you could characterize it this way, but since the perpetrator is beyond reason and lacks expression, I'm not sure how youre going to fix this.
- csb6 7y ago
  Structural sexism is not perpetuated by infants. I mean come on. Children wanting to nurse is not the big issue; children grow up, and do not need nursing when they become toddlers. So why are women still expected to be caretakers of toddlers, middle-schoolers, and tweens? Surely, there isn’t a physiological reason. There is clearly something larger going on. In reality, men and women’s roles are arbitrary, and the sexist structures present today are not the result of children asking for it. You are overestimating the intrinsic qualities of human social and family interactions, which are not as set in stone as you claim. Even the concept of the nuclear family - with one possible nurse and mother figure - isn’t a universal construct of human societies.
  - eej71 7y ago
    While its not a universal construct - it is challenging to look at the history of many cultures who arrived at a similar distribution of labor and the behavior of other mammals and not wonder if men and women aren't inherently different in some generalized way that isn't readily alterable. For those of us on the other side of the debate, there is always this vague sense of some people are underestimating the impact of these intrinsic differences.
hurricanetc 7y ago
Biology isn't sexist. Men can't get pregnant so therefore only women can deal with pregnancy. Men can't breastfeed or pump, either. People want reality to reflect their world view but biology is biology. It's not an indictment on society that only women perform certain biological functions.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  The century is young. Who knows what the future might bring?
breischl 7y ago
>We can structure our work so that women are not disadvantaged for having kids Can we, though? It seems that there is some amount of time that women are unable to work due to the physical rigors of pregnacy, child-birth, and (in many cases) infant care. Taking time away from work, no matter what the reason, necessarily affects the trajectory of your career. We can try to minimize that in various ways (as the original article discussed) but it seems impossible to reduce it to zero barring sci-fi tech like artificial wombs. It might be reasonable to say that we can structure out work so that women are disadvantaged _as little as reasonably possible_ for having kids.

TheAdamAndChe 7y ago

This assumes that men and women en masse want equal roles in raising children. I'm not convinced that this is the case.

danharaj 7y ago
What does? I made a few claims.
- TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
  I was responding to the main premise of your comment, that "the fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism." This implies discrimination due to external forces that make men and women behave differently.
  - danharaj 7y ago
    What do you mean by external forces? These are all interactions between human beings. We behave that we do in large part based on our interactions with others. Would you say that it is "external forces" that cause us two to communicate in English? What is the alternative position you're suggesting?
    - TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
      "Structural sexism" implies nonintrinsic forces causing discrimination, hence why I called it an external force, as it's a force not generated internally. I think the effects of evolutionary biology need to be considered when looking at behavioral differences. Evolutionarily speaking, women invest much more energy into growing, giving birth to, and caring for children than men. This leads to innate differences in behavior separate from social forces you are describing.
      - deyouz 7y ago
        Then how come some women don't want children and even dislike children? The reason why women are more involved in childcare after giving birth/nursery years is purely societal factors. It's expected of them to behave in that way in more conservative places and it's strongly implied in other places.
csb6 7y ago
Sure, many more women may choose to take the more active role, but it’s important to consider that these conscious choices are affected by implicit social pressures and expectations that are placed on men and women from childhood onwards, such as men being expected to be breadwinners and women being expected to be caregivers. These are pretty arbitrary social constructs that are not universal or intrinsic to nature or even human societies. So it follows that what men and women would say they desire is not the full picture, since they may be unaware of the implicit forces acting on them.
- darawk 7y ago
  It's true that these social pressures exist, and they are certainly sexist. But I think it's important to distinguish that the pressure is what's sexist, not the impact of the choice.
  - csb6 7y ago
    Then let’s make an effort to expose and reform these sexist structures! That is the goal of people trying to reform the mindset of STEM institutions. These structures are not fixed, and so can be changed.
fred_is_fred 7y ago
Although I love my kids I would go clinically insane if I had to do the stay-at-home raising of them full time. My wife OTOH loves it and would rather do nothing else. I know that this is swapped for many couples, but I still argue that reality is more skewed this way than the other. Maybe that will change over time.
- volak 7y ago
  People downvote but I assure you many dads agree. IMO dads don't achieve the same level of bonding as women do to their babies and therefore we are able to tolerate less of the crap babies get into during the day. Its not sexism, its just biology. If I had a project I worked on for 9 months I would have more desire to continue working on it into the future. My investor is an interested party, but ultimately its entirely my drive which moves the project forward
empath75 7y ago
I'd love to spend more time with my kids and my wife would prefer to spend more time at work. I make 3 times her salary, though, so it's not really economically feasible for us to switch roles. She could afford to not work or work part time for 2 years. We couldn't afford it if I did it.

darawk 7y ago

> The fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children is structural sexism. You seem to be making a fairly subtle point here that I think others might be missing. Which is not that women choosing to take on the burden of childcare represents sexism (which is an argument some people make), but rather that the fact that their making this choice impinges upon their personal economic future is sexist. That is maybe a more interesting point than the former, but I don't think it really holds up to scrutiny. Choosing to take on the burden of childcare is choosing to spend less time working. In any other context, if a person chooses to work less, that negatively impacts their earning, and we consider that perfectly reasonable and fair. If I choose to play video games for 8 hours a day and work part time, basically everyone accepts it's reasonable that I make less money. Now, if women are being pressured or forced into accepting this childcare responsibility at their own economic expense, then yes. That is 100% structural sexism. Also, if society would have treated men making this choice differently than women, then that too would represent structural sexism. But there are men making this choice, and their careers are generally just as negatively impacted as the women who make it.

clairity 7y ago
to compare it to playing video games all day is (unwittingly?) falling prey to the very systemic sexism you're trying to fathom--that "women's work" such as childcare is not "work"--that it's economically unproductive and should be "free".
- darawk 7y ago
  No, that was not the point of my analogy. Whether it is work or not is irrelevant. When I clean my home, that is work, but nobody pays me to do it. I do the work because I receive the benefit of that work. People care for their children for the same reason. And many (most?) couples consider the income of the breadwinner to be shared between the two of them for precisely this reason: Because the couple values the childcare that the childcare-r provides. I'm not arguing that childcare isn't valuable. I am arguing that it isn't valuable to any employer of the person doing the childcare, and as such, they shouldn't pay for it.

zajio1am 7y ago

> Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how we structure society. What does raising children have to do with society? Decision of having and raising a child is a fundamentally personal, not societal decision. Each pair should decide how they want to split responsibilities of raising a child before its conception, based on their preferences, and society should not force them to any model. Also, it seems to me that society already prioritize child-raising too much compared to other non-work activities. If people would leave STEM/some other field due to work-life balance for some other personal goals than child-raising (say part-time working in a non-profit), would anyone care?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
untog 7y ago
> What does raising children have to do with society? Decision of having and raising a child is a fundamentally personal, not societal decision. Of course it isn't. Every society needs an up and coming younger generation as the older generation stops working. That is absolutely a problem on a societal level.
- zajio1am 7y ago
  While i agree it may be a concern of a society to be stable, it does not automatically translate to necessary concern for society as a whole. Many things necessary for a society work even if society does not intervene in them. People would have children for emotional reasons even if society does not intervene. Also, if a societal stability is a goal, then having more than replacement number of children is as problematic as having less.
  - untog 7y ago
    > People would have children for emotional reasons even if society does not intervene. Yes, but the success of those children is still a societal concern. You want some of those children to be a new generation of doctors, teachers, etc. etc... without supporting them at a young age (i.e. providing education, a welfare safety net) there's no guarantee that would ever happen, and they might end up being more of a drain on society than a productive member.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how we structure society. Great. But my personal experience is that this notion seems to vanish as soon as we look at things like rates of workplace deaths, life expectancy, hours worked, imprisonment, or numerous other areas. And even if they don't vanish, the level of attention devoted seems to be remarkably different. Would the way we structure society in regards to structuring our attention for social ills also possibly include sexism? And I guess such notions can be dismissed as being off topic. As they aren't relevant to the actual issue under discussion. But when we start viewing larger more structural things as sexism, then wouldn't even such dismissal potentially qualify as sexism?

danharaj 7y ago
This might surprise you but a lot of feminists are also strongly in favor of workers' rights and prison abolition. For example, bell hooks and Angela Davis. I have never met people more passionately invested in the wellbeing of men than the feminists I read and live with. It is a shame to me that decades of propaganda have buried those voices and raised the voices of those who insist that feminism is a zero sum game.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  >prison abolition As in, no criminals go to prison? I wonder what these feminist feel should be as the punishment for rape. >I have never met people more passionately invested in the wellbeing of men than the feminists I read and live with. Many of those who want to ban abortion are very passionate about protecting the women seeking such, as they believe it is far better for those women to be denied such an opportunity (such as saving them from doing something they will regret, at least per the belief of the people supporting anti-choice legislation). Intentions and passion shouldn't be ignored, but neither do they provide a complete picture.

tathougies 7y ago

Have you considered that the primary enforcer of this curtailment is not adults but infants? I mean, I took long paternity leave, I am with my daughter at night, and am with her whenever I am home. She still wants to nurse on her mothers breast when she's sick or in pain. This makes sense as not only is it comforting to her (and a childs emotional need is very real) but it is also physiologically beneficial (nursing reduces stress hormones and helps her heal from disease faster). She enforces this dichotomy of roles by screaming if i try to comfort her and shes already decided what she wants by screaming mama. She'll take comfort from me only if shes decided that its something that doesnt require something no man can give. And her cry is meant to change both of our emotional states to fulfill her every desire. Is this injustice? Perhaps you could characterize it this way, but since the perpetrator is beyond reason and lacks expression, I'm not sure how youre going to fix this.

csb6 7y ago
Structural sexism is not perpetuated by infants. I mean come on. Children wanting to nurse is not the big issue; children grow up, and do not need nursing when they become toddlers. So why are women still expected to be caretakers of toddlers, middle-schoolers, and tweens? Surely, there isn’t a physiological reason. There is clearly something larger going on. In reality, men and women’s roles are arbitrary, and the sexist structures present today are not the result of children asking for it. You are overestimating the intrinsic qualities of human social and family interactions, which are not as set in stone as you claim. Even the concept of the nuclear family - with one possible nurse and mother figure - isn’t a universal construct of human societies.
- eej71 7y ago
  While its not a universal construct - it is challenging to look at the history of many cultures who arrived at a similar distribution of labor and the behavior of other mammals and not wonder if men and women aren't inherently different in some generalized way that isn't readily alterable. For those of us on the other side of the debate, there is always this vague sense of some people are underestimating the impact of these intrinsic differences.

hurricanetc 7y ago

Biology isn't sexist. Men can't get pregnant so therefore only women can deal with pregnancy. Men can't breastfeed or pump, either. People want reality to reflect their world view but biology is biology. It's not an indictment on society that only women perform certain biological functions.

amanaplanacanal 7y ago
The century is young. Who knows what the future might bring?

breischl 7y ago

>We can structure our work so that women are not disadvantaged for having kids Can we, though? It seems that there is some amount of time that women are unable to work due to the physical rigors of pregnacy, child-birth, and (in many cases) infant care. Taking time away from work, no matter what the reason, necessarily affects the trajectory of your career. We can try to minimize that in various ways (as the original article discussed) but it seems impossible to reduce it to zero barring sci-fi tech like artificial wombs. It might be reasonable to say that we can structure out work so that women are disadvantaged _as little as reasonably possible_ for having kids.