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Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplace

by astan 6y ago

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that creates a genuine barrier for women. Startups have it worst, and everday I count the number of years I have to work in the high stress places I want or do a startup if I want to have two kids before 35. No one talks about planning around fertility. When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy. All careers are built this way. PhD to tenure, startups, generally high stress professions. I wish the world wasn't so male centric, that feminists actually cared about finding structural solutions instead of forcing women to become copies of men to achieve gender parity. But they care more about power than actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires, that those needs and desires are equally valuable and not inferior to desires men have, that the two genders have different strengths and capabilities and it is equally important to reward both. And maybe not wanting to outsource your baby to a nanny during their most vulnerable years is not a heretical thought. I wish we had more focus in allowing people to transition back from taking a few years off to raise young kids, and it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. Hell, I want to take that time to contribute to open source, something I don't get to do much usually and I'm looking forward to it because I am willing to face the consequences. But I wish more women could be less scared of their career prospects for choosing to have children.

antisthenes 6y ago
> All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Exactly this. Generous maternity leave and at least 0.25x paternity leave. I am not a woman, so I can't possibly begin to imagine how tough pregnancy is on a body. I also really doubt that anyone is really focused on work in the months immediately following birth. You can't buy baby food and bond with it with a pink ribbon or with the fact that your company's board of directors is 50% female. Lack of parental leaves is just young parents subsidizing unsavory capitalistic practices and outright greed.
- pc86 6y ago
  There's zero legitimate reason to gender parental leave either way. Not because "muh equality" or sexism or anything like that, but it should be "new kid == n weeks leave," whether you're the biological mother, father, adoptive parent, had a biological child via surrogate, whatever.
  - hksh 6y ago
    Totally agree. I experienced a variation on that and learned pregnancy is not a vector space. My wife carried twins so when I asked about the "new kid == n weeks of leave" it was _not_ multiplicative. I only got n and not 2n. Boo.
    - pc86 6y ago
      If they were your first two you should've gotten n^2 :)
  - Nimitz14 6y ago
    Best of luck calming the baby down without the mother.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Why? There are times when a baby just wants mom and nobody else will do. But there also also times when a baby just wants dad (or grandma/grandpa/nanny/other caregiver) and nobody else will do. Babies are just weird sometimes. Other than those specific cases, calming a baby is mostly a matter of your skill and being lucky with your baby's temperament.
    - irae 6y ago
      I won't assume you don't have kids, but what you said does not align with my experience at all. I have two kids from different relationships, and as dad, in both cases, I calmed down my kids better than the mothers did. They both relied on me specially in the worst baby crying situations. I don't think I am an exception in ability or anything, I just cared to go learn a bit about babies, that's all. Thought a couple of friends how to do it, they also became very good at it.
requieted555 6y ago
Seriously! From a male perspective, I want to have 2 lamborghinis before age 35 but I’m stuck working this stupid 9-5! I’m seriously upset when I’m out on the street and I see hardly any cars, I really feel like it’s my duty to put 2 more cars on the street. Plus it would make me so happy to have 2 cute little lambos of my own resting in my garage. I’ve always wanted some of my own. All to myself, hehe. Work sucks!
dcow 6y ago
> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy. And this happens way more than people lead on and for the exact BS reasons you call out. As someone who dated in SF not for the hookup but to try and find a life partner who wanted to prioritize and raise a family, it was bleak. We almost seem intent on reinforcing “career is king”, not tearing it down.
- andrepd 6y ago
  I don't want to sound like an extremist but this is what happens when everything in life is mercantilised. Money becomes king.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    It's really housing and then money only as a prerequisite to that. To start a family you need somewhere to live. When housing costs are insane you need crazy money to afford it, so everything becomes about money.
    - kungito 6y ago
      It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to do that.
      - samr71 6y ago
        I'm sure most of the people working in Tech in the Bay Area could go get a job at some firm in Cincinnati, with substantially lower COL. Of course, they would have a substantially lower salary as well, probably low enough to make the Bay Area the better option economically, even including the high COL. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't lower the COL of the Bay Area! Make Silicon Valley as dense as Tokyo, and I assure you rents will fall.
conradev 6y ago
Perhaps the alien look you are getting is because you are in a financial situation where you can afford to take 2-4 years off of work while also being able to afford to live in the Bay Area. I don't think it's a fair assumption that every sleep-deprived working new parent wants to be working.
xenihn 6y ago
It's not clear what you're asking for exactly, but the solution is obvious: give whatever it is that you want to provide to EVERYONE, regardless of their gender, and whether or not they actually have children. Special treatment for everyone.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  This is a nice sentiment, but doing so would have unintended consequences. For example, in most top universities, they give roughly the same leave to new fathers as new mothers. New mothers use this time to care for their baby, but many new fathers use this time as an extended sabbatical/research leave. Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book. Then when it comes time for tenure review, the men who did this have accomplished more than they would have if they hadn't had kids (and more than some faculty who are mothers, who spent their leave with their baby). So when everyone gets the same treatment, that doesn't necessarily reduce or eliminate disparities — and in some cases it can exacerbate them.
  - x3iv130f 6y ago
    2nd step would be a cultural change that would make it OK for men to do childrearing. Let young boys play with dolls. Celebrate fathers who parent young kids in movies and TV shows.
  - as300 6y ago
    I don't think the goal should be to eliminate disparities. I think it should be eliminate obstacles. If the husband and wife agree that they want to use their combined paternity/maternity in a given way, who are you or I to tell them that they can't? The wife could just as well force the husband to take care of the child and work on her own next book. Or the pair could stagger their leaves so that they spend equal time taking care of the baby.
  - irae 6y ago
    > Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book. I was under the impression people had kids to build a family together, not to compete with their partners for achievements. I don't think at all the situation you described is bad in any way. In fact, it would be a huge step forward. You know what is better then a new father stressed at work, absent from home, worried his career is not growing fast enough? A new father excited about the future, doing something that is quite easily interrupted to help with the newborn and building a future for the family. I do agree giving everyone the same things would be the best, but it is easier said than done. Easier for large corporations to support larger universal parental leaven than to for startups to do the same.
random5634 6y ago
Yeah, my mom always rebelled at the feminist push to have women do men's work as the goal (without valuing work women already did). Join the military, kill people etc. I'm 100% for that, but it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids, perhaps the most important thing for society and with INCREDIBLE costs (if done badly) and benefits (if done well) to everyone. What's even more interesting, upvalue work that is traditionally female, and you may see more men drawn to it, staying home, teaching etc. Instead, those can be thankless jobs from a money standpoint, and only folks who sell their souls into a male centric hellhole of work environments (PhD life is silly, medical residencies are nuts etc) are rewarded and women are told to lean in.
- klipt 6y ago
  > it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child support. The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not a downside! It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
  - csa 6y ago
    > In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. ... and half of asset appreciation, and in some cases (it varies) half of pension. I will also add that it’s not just mothers. It’s any spouse. I’ve seen successful women come out on the raw end of this deal during divorce. I mention this not as a grievance, rather just an observation that people who are married, both male and female, are sometimes surprised at asset allocation during a divorce with regards to “passive” investments and business ownership (e.g, a self-owned business that has grown).
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    That's a weird contortion of logic. Your point is still that raising children isn't an economically valuable activity, unless you also think that men should be paid somewhere around 2x if they are supporting a stay-at-home mom...
throw8932894 6y ago
> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years > actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires I find your view sexist and disturbing. 99% men would love to take couple of years off with kids as well. But face even more obstacles!
- jluxenberg 6y ago
  Try this: s/women/people/g If taking a break to focus on parenting was more acceptable, anyone (man/woman/nonbinary) who wanted to do this would benefit. Many careers are built around this idea that you spend 5-10 years, with no breaks, in your late 20s and 30s working on something. What if taking a substantial chunk of time off was more common (for anyone)?
  - throw8932894 6y ago
    Try this: s/men/paypigs/g
  - cc_cccc 6y ago
    > Try this: s/women/people/g Wow I don't even know what to say haha.
  - jbay808 6y ago
    That would be awesome. Unfortunately, young people also don't have money. That's the time period when many people feel a lot of pressure to accumulate savings -- often, that might specifically be so that they can afford to raise a child in the future. Acceptance of multigenerational households, living with grandparents, and raising kids there, would be an option and allow people in their 20s to become parents before their careers have taken off. But even for those who have loving and supportive grandparents, that also can be a major strain on a relationship.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take this thread into gender flamewar. It's obviously already prone to it—that's no reason to push it into the volcano. Actually it's a reason to consciously post otherwise, as the guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
xiphias2 6y ago
> I wish the world wasn't so male centric, that feminists actually cared about finding structural solutions instead of forcing women to become copies of men to achieve gender parity What is happening is destroying both men and women in their roles: sure, men can have their great enjoyment at the male and performance centric workplace, but providing for a family is also part of being a man, and it's being ignored. Sexual life of most men is in a strong decline. Sadly man hating and women hating increased together (according to Google trends), and more and more relationships are just transactional.
hksh 6y ago
I agree with much of what you say except that "women have different needs". I would say each person has different needs and to divide into the male/female binary is a fairly restrictive definition of gender as I have come to understand it. My wife and I have twins a little less than 2 years old, we are both ~35, but we live in rural-ish NH not SV. She has taken the last 2+ years off for the pregnancy and to function as primary caregiver while I continue to work. While I don't feel a need to work (perhaps a "need to project" would be closer) I do feel a need to provide for my kids while being with them as much as possible. As such I have chosen a low-stress, 9-5 SWE role optimizing for family time over career advancement. At least for the foreseeable future. From what we can tell she seems to be the only woman from her MBA class that has taken so much time off from career to have children. I don't want to speak for my wife but my impression is that she feels torn by desires to have a high-power career and to spend all the time with the kids (though pandemic parenting in NE with no third spaces available means that some days it would be an easy choice). Maybe that is society having an outsize impact on her internal valuation of family rearing, but I am not sure. The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation doesn't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit so I find it less plausible that a less-represented person would match it either as my "group" [more accurate term requested] has largely set the social norms. I acknowledge I could be an outlier.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  You have describe a situation where you and your wife decided on priorities in your life and acted accordingly. You both decided that personal career goals were secondary to raising your kids. It's a mystery to me why this is not seen as normal. Everything involves trade-offs. It's not possible to be present, involved parents and spend 60-80 hours a week on a career. Choose one or the other, and don't complain about how unfair it is.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  > The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation doesn't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit so I find it less plausible that a less-represented person would match it either as my "group" [more accurate term requested] has largely set the social norms. I don’t understand this conclusion at all. You just described a fairly standard situation, and then said trying to apply historical understandings of gender don’t work... and yet they fit perfectly within the story you provided. To me the issue has always been allowing other to define success for you. If you find success is being a high powered executive who spends 90hrs a week working, then do that, and don’t let someone else tell you that having kids is the only metric of success. If your definition of success is raising children who are normal humans and can function in society and make it a better place, then do that; and don’t let anyone tell you that success can only be found in working and being valued at ever higher dollar amounts. Your definition of success is exactly that: YOURS not anyone else’s and you shouldn’t take anyone else’s definition and try to apply it to yourself. I think most of society’s current problems stem from everyone using some amorphous societal understanding of success that no one has defined, but thinks everyone else knows. You be your best as you understand that to be. That’s the only path to happiness. Trying to conform to some gender philosopher’s definition is a rabbit hole that leads no where good.
as300 6y ago
Unfortunately I just don't think it's a tenable position to assert that women (or men) should be able to take 2-4 years off of work and not be disadvantaged in their career for doing so. I wholeheartedly support the idea that, as a society, we ought to value childcare/child-rearing and (perhaps monetarily) support those who perform this service. But I don't believe corporations ought to be the ones making a space for that.
- ljf 6y ago
  Genuine question, who should?
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    The society as a whole seems to be as300's idea - which, in practice, means the government. If parents give up 10% of their career in order to give their kids a better childhood, are we willing to pay to make it up to them? My money is on "no way". If not that, the only other answer is the parents. Are you as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with no (monetary) compensation? I suspect, very few. (More will do so with only one parent giving up the years.) "You can have it all" is a lie. You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. You can't. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. Instead, people need to prioritize and choose what they want out of the tradeoffs that reality imposes.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      > You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. I think the brutal/ultra-competitive work culture is uniquely American - Europe seems to do OK with giving working parents generous amounts of time (and money!) to be with their kids; 4 weeks PTO per year is unthinkable in the US, but I'm sure its a multiplier for good parenting. I do not know if it is possible to change the work-culture when money is king.
onetimeusename 6y ago
> "equitable to mothers" > "actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires". I can't see any other meaning besides equality of outcomes split across employees by fertility lines regardless of inputs. I think this is unfair. What do you tell someone who did not take X amount of time off when their outcome is equated with someone who did? Increasing paternity leave for all people doesn't help compensate those who do not have children or don't have this issue. Likewise for subsidizing fertility treatments.
- retrac 6y ago
  It's no less fair than me having to pay school taxes when I have no children. Healthy families and adequate children so the population pyramid doesn't implode (more of an issue in other developed countries than North America) is a pressing issue that affects everyone in those societies. We should pay our part of it.
  - babesh 6y ago
    My town exempts people over 55 from some school parcel taxes. That is because there needs to e a supermajority to pass bonds and exempting people who don’t have school age children makes them much easier to pass. There is a balance that needs to be reached here. If you take this to the extreme, I could have no children and work while my neighbor has 7 children and chooses not to work.
    - curveaway 6y ago
      Those 55+ year olds don't realize who are paying their pension and medical care.
  - onetimeusename 6y ago
    Is that the same issue? Public schools are a public good but compensation/equity/advancement is a private one with private benefits. This isn't an issue of preventing financial collapse but as OP says a matter of "career prospects". The justification for that reason as a public good seems a lot less obvious to me than for public education.
ansible 6y ago
The only solutions to all this I can think of are considered hopelessly "radical" and "socialist". One thing that would help is having a Universal Basic Income, with Universal Healthcare. This would allow people to work on startups at their own pace, instead of desperately needing to become successful in a relatively short time-frame in order to create some stability.
Consultant32452 6y ago
I don't think these changes are likely because, in my opinion, there is a silent anti-natal movement in Western culture. We have serious issues of an aging population, not enough kids being born to fund social security, etc. and all of our solutions look like bringing people in from other countries with high fertility rates. None of the ideas being tossed around seem to have anything to do with facilitating our own families. There's lots of different sub-sects of the anti-natal movement ranging from the environmental to racial. I have a friend who confided in me she was afraid to have a child because she didn't want to pass on whiteness. I truly hope you are able to find a partner and employer who supports you in your life decisions.
- frongpik 6y ago
  "pass on whiteness"? Never heard this phrase before.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Sounds very racist...
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    Is it surprising? Coca Cola was recently in the news for having corporate training that instructed people to "be less white." People get really caught up in this stuff. She's a victim of an anthropology department at the local state university that is rabidly racist against white people.
michaelbrave 6y ago
Only thing I can right now is pay attention to things like this in the hopes that when/if I can finally get a company off the ground that I can help to implement things like this, and hope/encourage it to pave the way for things the way that Ford's early factories paved the way for the weekend. I think we can make the world better, it's within our reach if only a few courageous executives would take that initial hit in immediate productivity in the interest of long term sustainability.
AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
Society has never been more gynocentric than it is now. It's frankly unhealthy how gynocentric things are.
afaejzjfiefia 6y ago
> it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. Is there any scenario in life were someone with 2-4 more years of experience (maybe 50% more at that point in time) isn't more valued for their greater experience? What is the difference between a junior and senior engineers salary for instance? A 4 year break is possibly worse in that regard.
- xyzzy123 6y ago
  I'm pretty biased, but it would depend on the role. Thinking that parenting is not "experience", or that it has no commercial relevance is (in my opinion) a mistake. Many roles, I suspect a candidate with 4 years of SWE and 4 years of parenting could be a more valuable team member than a candidate with 8 years of just SWE. Parenting does not universally develop emotional maturity and wider perspectives, but I believe there's a correlation. Disclaimer: Of course, individual differences swamp any other factor, so always take each person as they come.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I think there are two ways to look at the quoted statement. Is person A with 2 years of professional software development experience and a 2 year gap about the same [on average across a large population] as person B who has 2 years professional software development experience and no gap? Person B is slightly more valued by virtue of recency of experience, but 3 months from now, once the rust is knocked off person A, I'd expect them to be basically the same so I'd value them the same in hiring. Now, is person C who has 4 years of software development experience, no gap, more skilled and capable at software development than person A who has 2 years of software experience and then a 2 year gap or person B who has 2 years and no gap? Absolutely, and I'd expect C to be quite rationally valued more highly in the software development market. Person C has twice as much directly relevant experience at a time in career where the curve is still rising quickly.
earthboundkid 6y ago
YES! I have been saying this for years, but my fellow PMCs look at me like I have three heads or I'm saying we should all live in a shoe with more kids than we know what do. Human beings have limited fertility. It sucks, but it's part of life. Professional life is designed around the idea that you are a male with a female partner who will bear and raise your children while you are attaining your professional credentials and leaving them to their own devices. That is no longer a valid design because we now want female professionals and male involvement in child rearing. Therefore, the system must be changed. But if you say that every PhD program, medical school, start up, etc. should be designed so that it's NBD to take a year off for having a kid, you're crazy, how would that even work, anyway, have you heard about egg freezing??
tomcam 6y ago
Thanks. This is something dudes can't write about. My wife & I simply decided decades ago that one of us would always not work. We lived cheaply so we could accomplish that goal, but we wanted a good family life. I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start out assuming that a 2-career life would simply be too much stress in the high tech world. Great thing is it forced me to make creative choices, but one thing that got us both hoodwinked was this notion that a woman is as fertile at 35 as she is at 21. Um... no. So we had two severely handicapped kids. It would have been nice if the popular press had been a little more honest about the biology--but of course I should have educated myself better.
- coryfklein 6y ago
  Why can't men write about it?
  - jimmygrapes 6y ago
    For the same reasons it needs to be written about.
  - krrrh 6y ago
    Parts of what she wrote are similar to parts of what James Damore wrote, and he was fired for it.
    - rednerrus 6y ago
      Cancel culture isn't a real thing. /s
    - AussieWog93 6y ago
      James Damore went a bit further than the author did. He also didn't take care to avoid offense and misunderstanding when talking about certain topics. For example, he mentioned that women, on average, have more neuroticism. He's technically correct in terms of the psychological definition of the word (women will, on average, experience higher levels of anxiety than men when exposed to the same level of negative stimulus), but he didn't consider the political ramifications of describing 3.5 billion people as neurotic. If a woman had written what he did, she would have been ripped to shreds also.
lr4444lr 6y ago
that the two genders have different strengths and capabilities Even the concept of two genders is under attack, let alone whether they have categorical behavior patterns.
kaitai 6y ago
I agree and disagree. During my PhD, I had several women friends have kids. It was a great time to have kids other than the poverty thing, if you had a supportive advisor. But what was not great was the lack of structure around it, by which I mean clear and equitable maternity leave policies for people in this sort-of-employee, sort-of-student position which many PhD students in STEM inhabit. But I gotta say I don't see non-feminists advocating for maternity leave for grad students, so part of your post puzzles me. I was breast-feeding while a professor and needed to pump at work. The nearest lactation space was in a different building, which was somewhat inconvenient, and I had a sometimes-shared office during the day so that wasn't perfect. But it worked out -- mostly because a bunch of, uh, I guess feminists had advocated for lactation spaces to be officially made available across campus (they did a great job, taking a very data-driven approach wrt geography and student/staff density). Before those spaces were available, I know a woman who pumped in a dirty janitorial closet. One day the janitor walked in on her accidentally and everyone was quite embarrassed. But there were no other places available; even the bathrooms didn't have electrical outlets close enough to space to sit to pump. Heartily agree that destigmatizing gaps and breaks would be great, and there are lots of people working to do that. Maybe it's different where you live compared to where I live. I guess I live in a low-cost-of-living part of the Midwest where we aren't so high-stress about everything. Don't know what it would take to change SV. For me, I sure as heck outsourced my baby to a nanny 15 hours a week after she was 3 months old. Do you know how nice it is to shower alone and have conversations with adults? Also, it was wonderful for my kid to get some love from someone else; I don't why she should be restricted to only two adult contacts for 16 months of her life. I was very lucky that I was able to teach evening classes and my husband took FMLA one day a week for the first year, so that we both had time to devote to the careers we love as well as the kid we love. I fully support the stay at home moms I know, and I am also thrilled that I did not do that, thanks. But my message to you is don't be scared of your career prospects w/children. Seriously, don't worry about it. F*&^ anyone who says having kids will derail your career. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Maybe a TBI you sustain during a competitive road biking event or your weekend at Tahoe will derail your career instead. And the higher-paid you are before you have kids, the easier it will be to advance afterward. Life is long. Babyhood and toddlerhood is short. You'll be fine.
- 6y ago
hinkley 6y ago
I don't want to blame this on 'toxic masculinity', but I think there are a lot of men who would make allies for this sort of work if they would stop for a moment and think about what's good for them instead of toeing the party line. I am deeply convinced that I would be as productive at 32 hours a week as I am at 40, ±5%. And the +5% in particular interests me, because it would say a lot about how we are mishandling creative roles. 32 hours a week not only opens up more diversity in hiring, it also shifts the balance in co-parenting. Yes, I can take Billie to his eye appointment/drop him off at school/buy groceries for dinner on the way home.
- monksy 6y ago
  > but I think there are a lot of men who would make allies for this sort of work if they would stop for a moment and think about what's good for them instead of toeing the party line. Men are "toeing the partying line?" I must have missed that memo.
- underpand 6y ago
  This is a baseless generalization of men. Men are not an obstacle to a 32 hour work week.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    So brave. Who is working 60-80 hours a week, regularly? Who is running those companies? Who is funding those companies? Microsoft didn’t change until most of management had kids. Why do you suppose that is?
hycaria 6y ago
I am female too and I really don’t relate to this kind of discourse. If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without making a fuss about it. Especially if you know that for some ecologically unreasonable reason you want numerous kids then start early. Also I’ve seen so many female acquaintances wanting to keep up their old life ambitions and eventually just never go back there because child rearing became more important than anything (and sometimes their sole motivation left in life). How can you be so sure you won’t fall for this ? Especially if you aspire at staying at home for a few years, it seems a higher predisposition to stay in that state forever than when you long for your office job. Because some manage to do it both and it seems right that they be rewarded for it. With kids you just have to focus on a few priorities with the time you have left and if it really is software then one will find the motivation to cultivate it and to make it work. Heck we have the perfect job for it you can remote you can freelance you can contribute ... But talking about aspirations not pursued without a kid to be developed while child rearing when you will have even less time sounds like a fantasy to me.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  You don't understand why people can have multiple, potentially incompatible ambitions, and talk about the major obstacles that exist to achieving them and how to get around them instead of just giving up? That seems like a fundamental limitation in your own understanding of people.
- lhorie 6y ago
  Sometimes I wonder how much of this idea of "maternity = bad" is self-imposed and/or a false impression. > When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. Is this really that common? As an anecdote, a few years ago, my kid's preschool teacher announced she was quitting half way through the school year due to health reasons. When I privately asked if everything was ok, it turned out to be that she wanted to have kids of her own. I was relieved and totally supportive of her decision: everyone ought to have the chance of choosing the life and family they want to have. I can see how a certain "why would you want kids" attitude might come out from some young folks, but I think it's not so much that they're judging you personally, but more that they are expressing their own preference for not wanting kids at that stage in their life. As for gap years, I know someone who got into software development relatively "late" in life (coming from the culinary industry and doing occasional freelance web stuff). My mom took some very long gaps and still had no problems working afterwards. The idea that one has to toil without gap years or else be banned from the industry forever is a myth. As you said, I think the mantra "if there's a will, there's a way" is very true. I also see the shift in priorities over the years being very common, and I don't think there's anything inherently bad about changing one's mind about whether kids are more important or even the reverse (deciding that career work is more fulfilling than being a housewife/husband after all).
jancsika 6y ago
> Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that creates a genuine barrier for women. HN is to technical discussions what ____ is to social discussions. Please fill in the blank. Serious question, and thanks to any serious respondents!
- higerordermap 6y ago
  HN No need to thank me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 6y ago
> Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Yes! I wish we could talk about this more openly and honestly. As you note, we still structure workplaces around the needs of married men with stay-at-home spouses, and insofar as women can succeed within that framework, it comes at a real cost to their families. There is a huge gap between how many children women want, and how many they are having: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility... > As a result, the gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years. (From 1972 to 2016, men have expressed almost exactly the same ideal fertility rates as women: In a given year, they average just 0.04 children below what women say is ideal.) It does't make any sense to me to structure career paths to necessarily put the major pressure points during the same time period when biology dictates people will be having kids. Kids really don't require intensive parenting for all that long. Our oldest is already very manageable at 8. I'll only be 45 when our youngest hits that age. At that point, I'll have at least another two decades before retirement, but parenting obligations will go down a lot. I'll be twiddling my thumbs waiting for grandkids, I guess. But I would have preferred to back load the career stuff a bit so the major milestones weren't happening while I was trying to parent toddlers. Corporate policies such as paying for egg freezing are a really unfortunate example of the male-centric nature of workplaces. I'm sure it's well-intentioned, but in effect the message is that women must shift their biological timeline to accommodate the workplace. Not only that, but egg freezing is not magic. More often than not, IVF using frozen eggs does not work: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expensive-lottery-ticket-freezing-eggs-offers-women-hope-not-everyone-n975921 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expensive-lottery... > The data that does exist is not overwhelmingly positive. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 21 percent of cycles among patients using their own frozen eggs ultimately ended in live births. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which uses a slightly different metric than the CDC, showed odds that top out around 11 percent, depending on age.
d1zzy 6y ago
> I wish we had more focus in allowing people to transition back from taking a few years off to raise young kids, and it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. I don't know about you but I'm pretty certain I'd be a worse SWE after 4 years break. Worse than I was before the break and much worse than I'd have been if I didn't take the break (and not just because I would have become better with practice but also because being a good SWE means keeping up with new stuff happening all the time). I personally see it as dropping a level on the company engineering ladder, it's not the end of the world but it's definitely a regression, regardless of the reason for the break.
john_moscow 6y ago
Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a full-time job. It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience. It's not the same job as doing taxes or writing code. But being a manager or a consultant in a software company is also different from classical hands-on jobs, and nobody has a problem with that. But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak.
- curveaway 6y ago
  It's a form of demographic debt. By increasing the workforce #, you decrease the amount of kids people have (because they can't afford the time to have many kids) but increase total GDP until you pay the piper later with decrease reproduction rates and more seniors that the economically productive. I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester. It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.
  - bumby 6y ago
    >it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. I don’t want to speak for them but I think part of the OP’s point is that this isn’t the takeaway we should have, but rather recognize and value the transferable skills one acquires in the role of a stay-at-home parent. It’s not unlike the trouble many military members had decades ago before there were as many resources to help employees and employers understand what skills transfer across domains
underpand 6y ago
This conversation seems to be geared towards upper middle class, dual income professionals that usually have $150,000+ household income. It's difficult for me to sympathize and see these issues as more than entitlement. First, since household income is a combination of the mother and father's incomes, women still have the same household income and spending power as men. The remaining complaint is worse work fulfillment for women. I don't think people are entitled to work fulfillment. It's a minor issue in my eyes. There are advantages and drawbacks to this issue. While mothers have a more difficult time with work fulfillment and climbing the corporate ladder, mothers also have an easier time avoiding the corporate environment and work pressure. Women who don't find fulfillment at work can more easily not work than the equivalent men. Second, ignoring gender and seeing this from a gender-neutral parent perspective, many of these upper middle class parents are lamenting the tradeoff between living an upper middle class lifestyle and being parents. I don't think there is a problem when upper middle class parents have to downgrade their living standards when becoming parents. I don't think people are entitled to an upper middle class lifestyle.
TeeMassive 6y ago
I'm sorry, but until we invent a relativistic quantum machine that can squeeze more than 24h in a day this just won't happen. Careers, by definition, will take the vast majority of your productive time during your most productive years which also coincides with the best time to take care of young children. I'm failing to see how policy could change those two facets of adult life. Also, if I was in a place that had a certain class of people getting paid not working for "family time" while I have to not only work but also cover for them I'll just leave.
Agentlien 6y ago
I strongly agree with this. Personally, I am a Swedish father who works in a typically stressful industry (game development) and I've been able to take a good amount of time off to care for both of my children. In Sweden doing so is quite normal and an employer is not allowed to object in any way, as long as you give a few months' notice. For each of my children my wife and I took two months together at birth, then she stayed at home for another ten months while I worked. After that I spent six months on parental leave while she went back to work. This means our children have each had a year and a half of at least one of us being home with them before they started at daycare. It's been a magical time and I feel blessed to have had that opportunity. Months where every day was built entirely around just playing and learning together. Of course, you might note that my wife was home for about twice as long as I was. This was definitely a financial decision and shows there's still plenty of room for improvement.
anchochilis 6y ago
> Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that creates a genuine barrier for women. This is something I've heard a lot of talented young women say at the beginning of their careers. With all due respect... give it a few years. Sexism plays out in really subtle ways, often unconsciously. After a while though you start to notice patterns: who is hired and promoted, who is mentored and fast-tracked, which people are given high-profile projects and which aren't, who is noticed by leadership and who isn't. You'll also become more aware of aggregate effects. I.e., "because boss at company X mentored me, I was able to get a senior position at company Y, which paved the way to my current job at fast-growing company Z." That said, as an individual woman in the industry, devoting much energy to thinking about sexism is a losing game. In fact I think it's better to pretend it doesn't exist and focus on what you can control: the quality of your work, your skills, relationships with coworkers, and so on.
dTal 6y ago
You mention "destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders", but the rest of your post is structured to imply that time off for new parents is a primarily or exclusively female concern. What are these "different needs and desires"? Men like to spend time with their children too. It seems to me that, rather than any particular unfairness towards women, the issue is that children simply demand a lot of parental resources that are difficult to spare in a competitive marketplace.

by astan 6y ago

antisthenes 6y ago

> All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Exactly this. Generous maternity leave and at least 0.25x paternity leave. I am not a woman, so I can't possibly begin to imagine how tough pregnancy is on a body. I also really doubt that anyone is really focused on work in the months immediately following birth. You can't buy baby food and bond with it with a pink ribbon or with the fact that your company's board of directors is 50% female. Lack of parental leaves is just young parents subsidizing unsavory capitalistic practices and outright greed.

pc86 6y ago
There's zero legitimate reason to gender parental leave either way. Not because "muh equality" or sexism or anything like that, but it should be "new kid == n weeks leave," whether you're the biological mother, father, adoptive parent, had a biological child via surrogate, whatever.
- hksh 6y ago
  Totally agree. I experienced a variation on that and learned pregnancy is not a vector space. My wife carried twins so when I asked about the "new kid == n weeks of leave" it was _not_ multiplicative. I only got n and not 2n. Boo.
  - pc86 6y ago
    If they were your first two you should've gotten n^2 :)
- Nimitz14 6y ago
  Best of luck calming the baby down without the mother.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Why? There are times when a baby just wants mom and nobody else will do. But there also also times when a baby just wants dad (or grandma/grandpa/nanny/other caregiver) and nobody else will do. Babies are just weird sometimes. Other than those specific cases, calming a baby is mostly a matter of your skill and being lucky with your baby's temperament.
  - irae 6y ago
    I won't assume you don't have kids, but what you said does not align with my experience at all. I have two kids from different relationships, and as dad, in both cases, I calmed down my kids better than the mothers did. They both relied on me specially in the worst baby crying situations. I don't think I am an exception in ability or anything, I just cared to go learn a bit about babies, that's all. Thought a couple of friends how to do it, they also became very good at it.

requieted555 6y ago

Seriously! From a male perspective, I want to have 2 lamborghinis before age 35 but I’m stuck working this stupid 9-5! I’m seriously upset when I’m out on the street and I see hardly any cars, I really feel like it’s my duty to put 2 more cars on the street. Plus it would make me so happy to have 2 cute little lambos of my own resting in my garage. I’ve always wanted some of my own. All to myself, hehe. Work sucks!

dcow 6y ago

> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy. And this happens way more than people lead on and for the exact BS reasons you call out. As someone who dated in SF not for the hookup but to try and find a life partner who wanted to prioritize and raise a family, it was bleak. We almost seem intent on reinforcing “career is king”, not tearing it down.

andrepd 6y ago
I don't want to sound like an extremist but this is what happens when everything in life is mercantilised. Money becomes king.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It's really housing and then money only as a prerequisite to that. To start a family you need somewhere to live. When housing costs are insane you need crazy money to afford it, so everything becomes about money.
  - kungito 6y ago
    It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to do that.
    - samr71 6y ago
      I'm sure most of the people working in Tech in the Bay Area could go get a job at some firm in Cincinnati, with substantially lower COL. Of course, they would have a substantially lower salary as well, probably low enough to make the Bay Area the better option economically, even including the high COL. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't lower the COL of the Bay Area! Make Silicon Valley as dense as Tokyo, and I assure you rents will fall.

conradev 6y ago

Perhaps the alien look you are getting is because you are in a financial situation where you can afford to take 2-4 years off of work while also being able to afford to live in the Bay Area. I don't think it's a fair assumption that every sleep-deprived working new parent wants to be working.

xenihn 6y ago

It's not clear what you're asking for exactly, but the solution is obvious: give whatever it is that you want to provide to EVERYONE, regardless of their gender, and whether or not they actually have children. Special treatment for everyone.

gnicholas 6y ago
This is a nice sentiment, but doing so would have unintended consequences. For example, in most top universities, they give roughly the same leave to new fathers as new mothers. New mothers use this time to care for their baby, but many new fathers use this time as an extended sabbatical/research leave. Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book. Then when it comes time for tenure review, the men who did this have accomplished more than they would have if they hadn't had kids (and more than some faculty who are mothers, who spent their leave with their baby). So when everyone gets the same treatment, that doesn't necessarily reduce or eliminate disparities — and in some cases it can exacerbate them.
- x3iv130f 6y ago
  2nd step would be a cultural change that would make it OK for men to do childrearing. Let young boys play with dolls. Celebrate fathers who parent young kids in movies and TV shows.
- as300 6y ago
  I don't think the goal should be to eliminate disparities. I think it should be eliminate obstacles. If the husband and wife agree that they want to use their combined paternity/maternity in a given way, who are you or I to tell them that they can't? The wife could just as well force the husband to take care of the child and work on her own next book. Or the pair could stagger their leaves so that they spend equal time taking care of the baby.
- irae 6y ago
  > Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book. I was under the impression people had kids to build a family together, not to compete with their partners for achievements. I don't think at all the situation you described is bad in any way. In fact, it would be a huge step forward. You know what is better then a new father stressed at work, absent from home, worried his career is not growing fast enough? A new father excited about the future, doing something that is quite easily interrupted to help with the newborn and building a future for the family. I do agree giving everyone the same things would be the best, but it is easier said than done. Easier for large corporations to support larger universal parental leaven than to for startups to do the same.

random5634 6y ago

Yeah, my mom always rebelled at the feminist push to have women do men's work as the goal (without valuing work women already did). Join the military, kill people etc. I'm 100% for that, but it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids, perhaps the most important thing for society and with INCREDIBLE costs (if done badly) and benefits (if done well) to everyone. What's even more interesting, upvalue work that is traditionally female, and you may see more men drawn to it, staying home, teaching etc. Instead, those can be thankless jobs from a money standpoint, and only folks who sell their souls into a male centric hellhole of work environments (PhD life is silly, medical residencies are nuts etc) are rewarded and women are told to lean in.

klipt 6y ago
> it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child support. The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not a downside! It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
- csa 6y ago
  > In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. ... and half of asset appreciation, and in some cases (it varies) half of pension. I will also add that it’s not just mothers. It’s any spouse. I’ve seen successful women come out on the raw end of this deal during divorce. I mention this not as a grievance, rather just an observation that people who are married, both male and female, are sometimes surprised at asset allocation during a divorce with regards to “passive” investments and business ownership (e.g, a self-owned business that has grown).
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  That's a weird contortion of logic. Your point is still that raising children isn't an economically valuable activity, unless you also think that men should be paid somewhere around 2x if they are supporting a stay-at-home mom...

throw8932894 6y ago

> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years > actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires I find your view sexist and disturbing. 99% men would love to take couple of years off with kids as well. But face even more obstacles!

jluxenberg 6y ago
Try this: s/women/people/g If taking a break to focus on parenting was more acceptable, anyone (man/woman/nonbinary) who wanted to do this would benefit. Many careers are built around this idea that you spend 5-10 years, with no breaks, in your late 20s and 30s working on something. What if taking a substantial chunk of time off was more common (for anyone)?
- throw8932894 6y ago
  Try this: s/men/paypigs/g
- cc_cccc 6y ago
  > Try this: s/women/people/g Wow I don't even know what to say haha.
- jbay808 6y ago
  That would be awesome. Unfortunately, young people also don't have money. That's the time period when many people feel a lot of pressure to accumulate savings -- often, that might specifically be so that they can afford to raise a child in the future. Acceptance of multigenerational households, living with grandparents, and raising kids there, would be an option and allow people in their 20s to become parents before their careers have taken off. But even for those who have loving and supportive grandparents, that also can be a major strain on a relationship.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take this thread into gender flamewar. It's obviously already prone to it—that's no reason to push it into the volcano. Actually it's a reason to consciously post otherwise, as the guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

xiphias2 6y ago

> I wish the world wasn't so male centric, that feminists actually cared about finding structural solutions instead of forcing women to become copies of men to achieve gender parity What is happening is destroying both men and women in their roles: sure, men can have their great enjoyment at the male and performance centric workplace, but providing for a family is also part of being a man, and it's being ignored. Sexual life of most men is in a strong decline. Sadly man hating and women hating increased together (according to Google trends), and more and more relationships are just transactional.

hksh 6y ago

I agree with much of what you say except that "women have different needs". I would say each person has different needs and to divide into the male/female binary is a fairly restrictive definition of gender as I have come to understand it. My wife and I have twins a little less than 2 years old, we are both ~35, but we live in rural-ish NH not SV. She has taken the last 2+ years off for the pregnancy and to function as primary caregiver while I continue to work. While I don't feel a need to work (perhaps a "need to project" would be closer) I do feel a need to provide for my kids while being with them as much as possible. As such I have chosen a low-stress, 9-5 SWE role optimizing for family time over career advancement. At least for the foreseeable future. From what we can tell she seems to be the only woman from her MBA class that has taken so much time off from career to have children. I don't want to speak for my wife but my impression is that she feels torn by desires to have a high-power career and to spend all the time with the kids (though pandemic parenting in NE with no third spaces available means that some days it would be an easy choice). Maybe that is society having an outsize impact on her internal valuation of family rearing, but I am not sure. The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation doesn't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit so I find it less plausible that a less-represented person would match it either as my "group" [more accurate term requested] has largely set the social norms. I acknowledge I could be an outlier.

throwawayboise 6y ago
You have describe a situation where you and your wife decided on priorities in your life and acted accordingly. You both decided that personal career goals were secondary to raising your kids. It's a mystery to me why this is not seen as normal. Everything involves trade-offs. It's not possible to be present, involved parents and spend 60-80 hours a week on a career. Choose one or the other, and don't complain about how unfair it is.
vxNsr 6y ago
> The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation doesn't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit so I find it less plausible that a less-represented person would match it either as my "group" [more accurate term requested] has largely set the social norms. I don’t understand this conclusion at all. You just described a fairly standard situation, and then said trying to apply historical understandings of gender don’t work... and yet they fit perfectly within the story you provided. To me the issue has always been allowing other to define success for you. If you find success is being a high powered executive who spends 90hrs a week working, then do that, and don’t let someone else tell you that having kids is the only metric of success. If your definition of success is raising children who are normal humans and can function in society and make it a better place, then do that; and don’t let anyone tell you that success can only be found in working and being valued at ever higher dollar amounts. Your definition of success is exactly that: YOURS not anyone else’s and you shouldn’t take anyone else’s definition and try to apply it to yourself. I think most of society’s current problems stem from everyone using some amorphous societal understanding of success that no one has defined, but thinks everyone else knows. You be your best as you understand that to be. That’s the only path to happiness. Trying to conform to some gender philosopher’s definition is a rabbit hole that leads no where good.

as300 6y ago

Unfortunately I just don't think it's a tenable position to assert that women (or men) should be able to take 2-4 years off of work and not be disadvantaged in their career for doing so. I wholeheartedly support the idea that, as a society, we ought to value childcare/child-rearing and (perhaps monetarily) support those who perform this service. But I don't believe corporations ought to be the ones making a space for that.

ljf 6y ago
Genuine question, who should?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  The society as a whole seems to be as300's idea - which, in practice, means the government. If parents give up 10% of their career in order to give their kids a better childhood, are we willing to pay to make it up to them? My money is on "no way". If not that, the only other answer is the parents. Are you as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with no (monetary) compensation? I suspect, very few. (More will do so with only one parent giving up the years.) "You can have it all" is a lie. You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. You can't. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. Instead, people need to prioritize and choose what they want out of the tradeoffs that reality imposes.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    > You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. I think the brutal/ultra-competitive work culture is uniquely American - Europe seems to do OK with giving working parents generous amounts of time (and money!) to be with their kids; 4 weeks PTO per year is unthinkable in the US, but I'm sure its a multiplier for good parenting. I do not know if it is possible to change the work-culture when money is king.

onetimeusename 6y ago

> "equitable to mothers" > "actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires". I can't see any other meaning besides equality of outcomes split across employees by fertility lines regardless of inputs. I think this is unfair. What do you tell someone who did not take X amount of time off when their outcome is equated with someone who did? Increasing paternity leave for all people doesn't help compensate those who do not have children or don't have this issue. Likewise for subsidizing fertility treatments.

retrac 6y ago
It's no less fair than me having to pay school taxes when I have no children. Healthy families and adequate children so the population pyramid doesn't implode (more of an issue in other developed countries than North America) is a pressing issue that affects everyone in those societies. We should pay our part of it.
- babesh 6y ago
  My town exempts people over 55 from some school parcel taxes. That is because there needs to e a supermajority to pass bonds and exempting people who don’t have school age children makes them much easier to pass. There is a balance that needs to be reached here. If you take this to the extreme, I could have no children and work while my neighbor has 7 children and chooses not to work.
  - curveaway 6y ago
    Those 55+ year olds don't realize who are paying their pension and medical care.
- onetimeusename 6y ago
  Is that the same issue? Public schools are a public good but compensation/equity/advancement is a private one with private benefits. This isn't an issue of preventing financial collapse but as OP says a matter of "career prospects". The justification for that reason as a public good seems a lot less obvious to me than for public education.

ansible 6y ago

The only solutions to all this I can think of are considered hopelessly "radical" and "socialist". One thing that would help is having a Universal Basic Income, with Universal Healthcare. This would allow people to work on startups at their own pace, instead of desperately needing to become successful in a relatively short time-frame in order to create some stability.

Consultant32452 6y ago

I don't think these changes are likely because, in my opinion, there is a silent anti-natal movement in Western culture. We have serious issues of an aging population, not enough kids being born to fund social security, etc. and all of our solutions look like bringing people in from other countries with high fertility rates. None of the ideas being tossed around seem to have anything to do with facilitating our own families. There's lots of different sub-sects of the anti-natal movement ranging from the environmental to racial. I have a friend who confided in me she was afraid to have a child because she didn't want to pass on whiteness. I truly hope you are able to find a partner and employer who supports you in your life decisions.

frongpik 6y ago
"pass on whiteness"? Never heard this phrase before.
- tasuki 6y ago
  Sounds very racist...
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Is it surprising? Coca Cola was recently in the news for having corporate training that instructed people to "be less white." People get really caught up in this stuff. She's a victim of an anthropology department at the local state university that is rabidly racist against white people.

michaelbrave 6y ago

Only thing I can right now is pay attention to things like this in the hopes that when/if I can finally get a company off the ground that I can help to implement things like this, and hope/encourage it to pave the way for things the way that Ford's early factories paved the way for the weekend. I think we can make the world better, it's within our reach if only a few courageous executives would take that initial hit in immediate productivity in the interest of long term sustainability.

AlgorithmicTime 6y ago

Society has never been more gynocentric than it is now. It's frankly unhealthy how gynocentric things are.

afaejzjfiefia 6y ago

> it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. Is there any scenario in life were someone with 2-4 more years of experience (maybe 50% more at that point in time) isn't more valued for their greater experience? What is the difference between a junior and senior engineers salary for instance? A 4 year break is possibly worse in that regard.

xyzzy123 6y ago
I'm pretty biased, but it would depend on the role. Thinking that parenting is not "experience", or that it has no commercial relevance is (in my opinion) a mistake. Many roles, I suspect a candidate with 4 years of SWE and 4 years of parenting could be a more valuable team member than a candidate with 8 years of just SWE. Parenting does not universally develop emotional maturity and wider perspectives, but I believe there's a correlation. Disclaimer: Of course, individual differences swamp any other factor, so always take each person as they come.
sokoloff 6y ago
I think there are two ways to look at the quoted statement. Is person A with 2 years of professional software development experience and a 2 year gap about the same [on average across a large population] as person B who has 2 years professional software development experience and no gap? Person B is slightly more valued by virtue of recency of experience, but 3 months from now, once the rust is knocked off person A, I'd expect them to be basically the same so I'd value them the same in hiring. Now, is person C who has 4 years of software development experience, no gap, more skilled and capable at software development than person A who has 2 years of software experience and then a 2 year gap or person B who has 2 years and no gap? Absolutely, and I'd expect C to be quite rationally valued more highly in the software development market. Person C has twice as much directly relevant experience at a time in career where the curve is still rising quickly.

earthboundkid 6y ago

YES! I have been saying this for years, but my fellow PMCs look at me like I have three heads or I'm saying we should all live in a shoe with more kids than we know what do. Human beings have limited fertility. It sucks, but it's part of life. Professional life is designed around the idea that you are a male with a female partner who will bear and raise your children while you are attaining your professional credentials and leaving them to their own devices. That is no longer a valid design because we now want female professionals and male involvement in child rearing. Therefore, the system must be changed. But if you say that every PhD program, medical school, start up, etc. should be designed so that it's NBD to take a year off for having a kid, you're crazy, how would that even work, anyway, have you heard about egg freezing??

tomcam 6y ago

Thanks. This is something dudes can't write about. My wife & I simply decided decades ago that one of us would always not work. We lived cheaply so we could accomplish that goal, but we wanted a good family life. I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start out assuming that a 2-career life would simply be too much stress in the high tech world. Great thing is it forced me to make creative choices, but one thing that got us both hoodwinked was this notion that a woman is as fertile at 35 as she is at 21. Um... no. So we had two severely handicapped kids. It would have been nice if the popular press had been a little more honest about the biology--but of course I should have educated myself better.

coryfklein 6y ago
Why can't men write about it?
- jimmygrapes 6y ago
  For the same reasons it needs to be written about.
- krrrh 6y ago
  Parts of what she wrote are similar to parts of what James Damore wrote, and he was fired for it.
  - rednerrus 6y ago
    Cancel culture isn't a real thing. /s
  - AussieWog93 6y ago
    James Damore went a bit further than the author did. He also didn't take care to avoid offense and misunderstanding when talking about certain topics. For example, he mentioned that women, on average, have more neuroticism. He's technically correct in terms of the psychological definition of the word (women will, on average, experience higher levels of anxiety than men when exposed to the same level of negative stimulus), but he didn't consider the political ramifications of describing 3.5 billion people as neurotic. If a woman had written what he did, she would have been ripped to shreds also.

lr4444lr 6y ago

that the two genders have different strengths and capabilities Even the concept of two genders is under attack, let alone whether they have categorical behavior patterns.

kaitai 6y ago

I agree and disagree. During my PhD, I had several women friends have kids. It was a great time to have kids other than the poverty thing, if you had a supportive advisor. But what was not great was the lack of structure around it, by which I mean clear and equitable maternity leave policies for people in this sort-of-employee, sort-of-student position which many PhD students in STEM inhabit. But I gotta say I don't see non-feminists advocating for maternity leave for grad students, so part of your post puzzles me. I was breast-feeding while a professor and needed to pump at work. The nearest lactation space was in a different building, which was somewhat inconvenient, and I had a sometimes-shared office during the day so that wasn't perfect. But it worked out -- mostly because a bunch of, uh, I guess feminists had advocated for lactation spaces to be officially made available across campus (they did a great job, taking a very data-driven approach wrt geography and student/staff density). Before those spaces were available, I know a woman who pumped in a dirty janitorial closet. One day the janitor walked in on her accidentally and everyone was quite embarrassed. But there were no other places available; even the bathrooms didn't have electrical outlets close enough to space to sit to pump. Heartily agree that destigmatizing gaps and breaks would be great, and there are lots of people working to do that. Maybe it's different where you live compared to where I live. I guess I live in a low-cost-of-living part of the Midwest where we aren't so high-stress about everything. Don't know what it would take to change SV. For me, I sure as heck outsourced my baby to a nanny 15 hours a week after she was 3 months old. Do you know how nice it is to shower alone and have conversations with adults? Also, it was wonderful for my kid to get some love from someone else; I don't why she should be restricted to only two adult contacts for 16 months of her life. I was very lucky that I was able to teach evening classes and my husband took FMLA one day a week for the first year, so that we both had time to devote to the careers we love as well as the kid we love. I fully support the stay at home moms I know, and I am also thrilled that I did not do that, thanks. But my message to you is don't be scared of your career prospects w/children. Seriously, don't worry about it. F*&^ anyone who says having kids will derail your career. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Maybe a TBI you sustain during a competitive road biking event or your weekend at Tahoe will derail your career instead. And the higher-paid you are before you have kids, the easier it will be to advance afterward. Life is long. Babyhood and toddlerhood is short. You'll be fine.

6y ago

hinkley 6y ago

I don't want to blame this on 'toxic masculinity', but I think there are a lot of men who would make allies for this sort of work if they would stop for a moment and think about what's good for them instead of toeing the party line. I am deeply convinced that I would be as productive at 32 hours a week as I am at 40, ±5%. And the +5% in particular interests me, because it would say a lot about how we are mishandling creative roles. 32 hours a week not only opens up more diversity in hiring, it also shifts the balance in co-parenting. Yes, I can take Billie to his eye appointment/drop him off at school/buy groceries for dinner on the way home.

monksy 6y ago
> but I think there are a lot of men who would make allies for this sort of work if they would stop for a moment and think about what's good for them instead of toeing the party line. Men are "toeing the partying line?" I must have missed that memo.
underpand 6y ago
This is a baseless generalization of men. Men are not an obstacle to a 32 hour work week.
- hinkley 6y ago
  So brave. Who is working 60-80 hours a week, regularly? Who is running those companies? Who is funding those companies? Microsoft didn’t change until most of management had kids. Why do you suppose that is?

hycaria 6y ago

I am female too and I really don’t relate to this kind of discourse. If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without making a fuss about it. Especially if you know that for some ecologically unreasonable reason you want numerous kids then start early. Also I’ve seen so many female acquaintances wanting to keep up their old life ambitions and eventually just never go back there because child rearing became more important than anything (and sometimes their sole motivation left in life). How can you be so sure you won’t fall for this ? Especially if you aspire at staying at home for a few years, it seems a higher predisposition to stay in that state forever than when you long for your office job. Because some manage to do it both and it seems right that they be rewarded for it. With kids you just have to focus on a few priorities with the time you have left and if it really is software then one will find the motivation to cultivate it and to make it work. Heck we have the perfect job for it you can remote you can freelance you can contribute ... But talking about aspirations not pursued without a kid to be developed while child rearing when you will have even less time sounds like a fantasy to me.

lazyasciiart 6y ago
You don't understand why people can have multiple, potentially incompatible ambitions, and talk about the major obstacles that exist to achieving them and how to get around them instead of just giving up? That seems like a fundamental limitation in your own understanding of people.
lhorie 6y ago
Sometimes I wonder how much of this idea of "maternity = bad" is self-imposed and/or a false impression. > When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. Is this really that common? As an anecdote, a few years ago, my kid's preschool teacher announced she was quitting half way through the school year due to health reasons. When I privately asked if everything was ok, it turned out to be that she wanted to have kids of her own. I was relieved and totally supportive of her decision: everyone ought to have the chance of choosing the life and family they want to have. I can see how a certain "why would you want kids" attitude might come out from some young folks, but I think it's not so much that they're judging you personally, but more that they are expressing their own preference for not wanting kids at that stage in their life. As for gap years, I know someone who got into software development relatively "late" in life (coming from the culinary industry and doing occasional freelance web stuff). My mom took some very long gaps and still had no problems working afterwards. The idea that one has to toil without gap years or else be banned from the industry forever is a myth. As you said, I think the mantra "if there's a will, there's a way" is very true. I also see the shift in priorities over the years being very common, and I don't think there's anything inherently bad about changing one's mind about whether kids are more important or even the reverse (deciding that career work is more fulfilling than being a housewife/husband after all).

jancsika 6y ago

> Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that creates a genuine barrier for women. HN is to technical discussions what ____ is to social discussions. Please fill in the blank. Serious question, and thanks to any serious respondents!

higerordermap 6y ago
HN No need to thank me.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 6y ago

> Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Yes! I wish we could talk about this more openly and honestly. As you note, we still structure workplaces around the needs of married men with stay-at-home spouses, and insofar as women can succeed within that framework, it comes at a real cost to their families. There is a huge gap between how many children women want, and how many they are having: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility... > As a result, the gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years. (From 1972 to 2016, men have expressed almost exactly the same ideal fertility rates as women: In a given year, they average just 0.04 children below what women say is ideal.) It does't make any sense to me to structure career paths to necessarily put the major pressure points during the same time period when biology dictates people will be having kids. Kids really don't require intensive parenting for all that long. Our oldest is already very manageable at 8. I'll only be 45 when our youngest hits that age. At that point, I'll have at least another two decades before retirement, but parenting obligations will go down a lot. I'll be twiddling my thumbs waiting for grandkids, I guess. But I would have preferred to back load the career stuff a bit so the major milestones weren't happening while I was trying to parent toddlers. Corporate policies such as paying for egg freezing are a really unfortunate example of the male-centric nature of workplaces. I'm sure it's well-intentioned, but in effect the message is that women must shift their biological timeline to accommodate the workplace. Not only that, but egg freezing is not magic. More often than not, IVF using frozen eggs does not work: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expensive-lottery-ticket-freezing-eggs-offers-women-hope-not-everyone-n975921 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expensive-lottery... > The data that does exist is not overwhelmingly positive. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 21 percent of cycles among patients using their own frozen eggs ultimately ended in live births. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which uses a slightly different metric than the CDC, showed odds that top out around 11 percent, depending on age.

d1zzy 6y ago

> I wish we had more focus in allowing people to transition back from taking a few years off to raise young kids, and it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. I don't know about you but I'm pretty certain I'd be a worse SWE after 4 years break. Worse than I was before the break and much worse than I'd have been if I didn't take the break (and not just because I would have become better with practice but also because being a good SWE means keeping up with new stuff happening all the time). I personally see it as dropping a level on the company engineering ladder, it's not the end of the world but it's definitely a regression, regardless of the reason for the break.

john_moscow 6y ago

Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a full-time job. It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience. It's not the same job as doing taxes or writing code. But being a manager or a consultant in a software company is also different from classical hands-on jobs, and nobody has a problem with that. But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak.

curveaway 6y ago
It's a form of demographic debt. By increasing the workforce #, you decrease the amount of kids people have (because they can't afford the time to have many kids) but increase total GDP until you pay the piper later with decrease reproduction rates and more seniors that the economically productive. I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester. It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.
- bumby 6y ago
  >it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. I don’t want to speak for them but I think part of the OP’s point is that this isn’t the takeaway we should have, but rather recognize and value the transferable skills one acquires in the role of a stay-at-home parent. It’s not unlike the trouble many military members had decades ago before there were as many resources to help employees and employers understand what skills transfer across domains

underpand 6y ago

This conversation seems to be geared towards upper middle class, dual income professionals that usually have $150,000+ household income. It's difficult for me to sympathize and see these issues as more than entitlement. First, since household income is a combination of the mother and father's incomes, women still have the same household income and spending power as men. The remaining complaint is worse work fulfillment for women. I don't think people are entitled to work fulfillment. It's a minor issue in my eyes. There are advantages and drawbacks to this issue. While mothers have a more difficult time with work fulfillment and climbing the corporate ladder, mothers also have an easier time avoiding the corporate environment and work pressure. Women who don't find fulfillment at work can more easily not work than the equivalent men. Second, ignoring gender and seeing this from a gender-neutral parent perspective, many of these upper middle class parents are lamenting the tradeoff between living an upper middle class lifestyle and being parents. I don't think there is a problem when upper middle class parents have to downgrade their living standards when becoming parents. I don't think people are entitled to an upper middle class lifestyle.

TeeMassive 6y ago

I'm sorry, but until we invent a relativistic quantum machine that can squeeze more than 24h in a day this just won't happen. Careers, by definition, will take the vast majority of your productive time during your most productive years which also coincides with the best time to take care of young children. I'm failing to see how policy could change those two facets of adult life. Also, if I was in a place that had a certain class of people getting paid not working for "family time" while I have to not only work but also cover for them I'll just leave.

Agentlien 6y ago

I strongly agree with this. Personally, I am a Swedish father who works in a typically stressful industry (game development) and I've been able to take a good amount of time off to care for both of my children. In Sweden doing so is quite normal and an employer is not allowed to object in any way, as long as you give a few months' notice. For each of my children my wife and I took two months together at birth, then she stayed at home for another ten months while I worked. After that I spent six months on parental leave while she went back to work. This means our children have each had a year and a half of at least one of us being home with them before they started at daycare. It's been a magical time and I feel blessed to have had that opportunity. Months where every day was built entirely around just playing and learning together. Of course, you might note that my wife was home for about twice as long as I was. This was definitely a financial decision and shows there's still plenty of room for improvement.

anchochilis 6y ago

> Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that creates a genuine barrier for women. This is something I've heard a lot of talented young women say at the beginning of their careers. With all due respect... give it a few years. Sexism plays out in really subtle ways, often unconsciously. After a while though you start to notice patterns: who is hired and promoted, who is mentored and fast-tracked, which people are given high-profile projects and which aren't, who is noticed by leadership and who isn't. You'll also become more aware of aggregate effects. I.e., "because boss at company X mentored me, I was able to get a senior position at company Y, which paved the way to my current job at fast-growing company Z." That said, as an individual woman in the industry, devoting much energy to thinking about sexism is a losing game. In fact I think it's better to pretend it doesn't exist and focus on what you can control: the quality of your work, your skills, relationships with coworkers, and so on.

dTal 6y ago

You mention "destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders", but the rest of your post is structured to imply that time off for new parents is a primarily or exclusively female concern. What are these "different needs and desires"? Men like to spend time with their children too. It seems to me that, rather than any particular unfairness towards women, the issue is that children simply demand a lot of parental resources that are difficult to spare in a competitive marketplace.