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You're implying a lot I didn't say. Do I think American society needs to incentivize having children through government intervention because of our falling bir

You're implying a lot I didn't say. Do I think American society needs to incentivize having children through government intervention because of our falling birth rate? Yes Do I think those women are making the right choice for both themselves and society by choosing to at the margin spend more time with their kids than working? Yes >They’re not “prioritizing child rearing over career” they’re attending to the essential work of society that only they can do. From a society stand point that's true. But when a couple is deciding how they are going to balance work and parenting they aren't thinking about society they are thinking about their kid and themselves and what is important to them. And together they are more commonly choosing the mother to be the primary care giver over their husband and this choice has consequences which is a part of the pay gap.

rayiner 5y ago
My point is that your framing of it as a “choice” is inapt: > From a society stand point that's true. But when a couple is deciding how they are going to balance work and parenting they aren't thinking about society they are thinking about their kid and themselves and what is important to them. And together they are more commonly choosing the mother to be the primary care giver over their husband and this choice has consequences which is a part of the pay gap. This isn’t a “choice” like deciding what car to buy. Fully 56% of women with kids under 18 would prefer to not work at all and stay home instead: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-women-desire-work-outside-home.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Only 39% would prefer to work outside the home. Meanwhile only 26% of men would prefer to stay home. When society has two groups, and one group is biologically capable of reproducing the species, and expresses strong preferences for caregiver roles, and the other isn’t and doesn’t, it’s not just about individual choices. It’s about accommodating reality—just like we design airplane seats around real humans and require buildings to have bathrooms for men and women. There’s concrete things we could do. For example, right now, it’s extremely difficult for women who take time off to raise young kids to return to the workforce. We could, for example, make it illegal for employers to consider childcare-related resume gaps in hiring decisions. There’s a whole universe of system-level things we could retool if we went in with the assumption that women would want to take a few years off work at some point to attend to child rearing without permanently downshifting their careers.

rayiner 5y ago

My point is that your framing of it as a “choice” is inapt: > From a society stand point that's true. But when a couple is deciding how they are going to balance work and parenting they aren't thinking about society they are thinking about their kid and themselves and what is important to them. And together they are more commonly choosing the mother to be the primary care giver over their husband and this choice has consequences which is a part of the pay gap. This isn’t a “choice” like deciding what car to buy. Fully 56% of women with kids under 18 would prefer to not work at all and stay home instead: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-women-desire-work-outside-home.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Only 39% would prefer to work outside the home. Meanwhile only 26% of men would prefer to stay home. When society has two groups, and one group is biologically capable of reproducing the species, and expresses strong preferences for caregiver roles, and the other isn’t and doesn’t, it’s not just about individual choices. It’s about accommodating reality—just like we design airplane seats around real humans and require buildings to have bathrooms for men and women. There’s concrete things we could do. For example, right now, it’s extremely difficult for women who take time off to raise young kids to return to the workforce. We could, for example, make it illegal for employers to consider childcare-related resume gaps in hiring decisions. There’s a whole universe of system-level things we could retool if we went in with the assumption that women would want to take a few years off work at some point to attend to child rearing without permanently downshifting their careers.