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Any feminism I could subscribe to would include valuing childcare, teaching the skills early to everyone explicitly, and eventually re-integrating children into

Any feminism I could subscribe to would include valuing childcare, teaching the skills early to everyone explicitly, and eventually re-integrating children into day-to-day life. I get incredibly frustrated with all my friends who hate ever being around children, such that I can't have over my fiends with kids and my friends without at the same time. I was always around children growing up, and it was a part of life. It also meant that the adults who stepped up to fulfill their parental responsibilities weren't punished for it. Both you and this woman are facing the same social problem; we could think of radical solutions such as free, high-quality child care, part-time work as an encouraged and a valid option for everyone, not just people with kids. We could stop promoting the biggest assholes, who ask the loudest and put in the most hours (breaking code, usually). We could make it a social norm that if a man doesn't want to or is incapable of performing childcare he should not expect to have children. Individual people may come to other arrangements, but the basic social norm needs to change. If we demand that children be hidden away from the world for 15 years, and then we demand that women and only women who produce children must care for them, "choice" is an illusion. "Would you like the rack or the thumbscrews?" is a choice too. "Would you like to be childless or give up your career?" is a sucky choice, and if we are going to force women to make it I believe it is only fair that men be forced to make it to.

Mz 15y ago
(when) we demand that women and only women who produce children must care for them, "choice" is an illusion. "Would you like the rack or the thumbscrews?" Yes, I basically agree. "Would you like to be childless or give up your career?" is a sucky choice, and if we are going to force women to make it I believe it is only fair that men be forced to make it to. In some sense, men are asked to make this choice and men fairly often choose career over children. This doesn't necessarily mean that they do not reproduce. My grown sons have no relationship to their father. I am divorced. Our sons live with me. At some point after they became legal adults, my oldest son clearly spelled out to his father that he didn't view him in parental/affectionate terms and please don't have an delusions in that regard. Their father stopped trying to contact them after that. We are okay with that. Their dad poured himself into his career. He thought he was doing the right thing. I have no idea how he feels about his lack of relationship to the kids but he did in some sense make a choice between the two. The fact that women (and children) are getting screwed by our societal norms/policies does not prove men really have it much better.
- sunahsuh 15y ago
  > The fact that women (and children) are getting screwed by our societal norms/policies does not prove men really have it much better. But economics does. And yes, how many men would be happier if society didn't try to tie so much of their self-worth into career advancement (just as it tries to tie so much of women's self-worth into wife/motherhood) and gave them the respect they deserve if they decide to focus on their families?
  - Mz 15y ago
    But economics does. Last I heard, when a man dies, it often plunges the wife into poverty. But when a woman dies, it often leads to the death of the husband within a year. And in spite of being over-represented among the "poor" and "chronically poor", women live on average several years longer. Me thinks you have a rather one dimensional view of quality of life which I don't happen to share. Which strikes me as a bit odd coming from someone trying to advocate for stay-at-home dads. Peace. (Will add I did appreciate your remarks here and did upvote it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3341367 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3341367)
    - sunahsuh 15y ago
      It is an inadequate measure, and what I meant is that in that dimension, men still have it better (I suppose in my attempt to be pithy, I opened myself up for misinterpretation). Economics is a metric that's relatively easy to measure as opposed to personal happiness and so it's a yardstick we can look at that's not unrelated (as a grad student that left a good tech job for school, I can say not having to stress about the state of your bank account is a privilege that I took for granted). And from what I've read in recent studies regarding happiness among men and women, men seem to be doing better at the expense of women (see, for instance, this 2009 overview: bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Female_Happiness.pdf) So yes, I definitely agree with you in that quality of life is made up of so much more than your economic situation, but making enough to live on (with a strong emphasis on enough) is for a disproportionate number of women a source of unhappiness and unfulfilled aspirations. I suspect if we as a society were to attack the root causes for the gender gap in wealth and income, we'd also rectify some of the causes of unhappiness for both genders.
einhverfr 15y ago
eventually re-integrating children into day-to-day life What's not to like about our current approach of factory farming children? In my view the future (and I hate to say this on a VC's site) is in family-run micro-businesses, not startups. Both parents work from home at least part of the time (one or both may have part or even full-time jobs elsewhere), integrate child care into the realities of this life. Sure this won't work in every field but it will work in many. The thing is by integrating everything as you put it, this tradeoff doesn't have to happen. However making that integration happen requires challenging our ideas of the role of capital and labor in our society.

Mz 15y ago

(when) we demand that women and only women who produce children must care for them, "choice" is an illusion. "Would you like the rack or the thumbscrews?" Yes, I basically agree. "Would you like to be childless or give up your career?" is a sucky choice, and if we are going to force women to make it I believe it is only fair that men be forced to make it to. In some sense, men are asked to make this choice and men fairly often choose career over children. This doesn't necessarily mean that they do not reproduce. My grown sons have no relationship to their father. I am divorced. Our sons live with me. At some point after they became legal adults, my oldest son clearly spelled out to his father that he didn't view him in parental/affectionate terms and please don't have an delusions in that regard. Their father stopped trying to contact them after that. We are okay with that. Their dad poured himself into his career. He thought he was doing the right thing. I have no idea how he feels about his lack of relationship to the kids but he did in some sense make a choice between the two. The fact that women (and children) are getting screwed by our societal norms/policies does not prove men really have it much better.

sunahsuh 15y ago
> The fact that women (and children) are getting screwed by our societal norms/policies does not prove men really have it much better. But economics does. And yes, how many men would be happier if society didn't try to tie so much of their self-worth into career advancement (just as it tries to tie so much of women's self-worth into wife/motherhood) and gave them the respect they deserve if they decide to focus on their families?
- Mz 15y ago
  But economics does. Last I heard, when a man dies, it often plunges the wife into poverty. But when a woman dies, it often leads to the death of the husband within a year. And in spite of being over-represented among the "poor" and "chronically poor", women live on average several years longer. Me thinks you have a rather one dimensional view of quality of life which I don't happen to share. Which strikes me as a bit odd coming from someone trying to advocate for stay-at-home dads. Peace. (Will add I did appreciate your remarks here and did upvote it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3341367 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3341367)
  - sunahsuh 15y ago
    It is an inadequate measure, and what I meant is that in that dimension, men still have it better (I suppose in my attempt to be pithy, I opened myself up for misinterpretation). Economics is a metric that's relatively easy to measure as opposed to personal happiness and so it's a yardstick we can look at that's not unrelated (as a grad student that left a good tech job for school, I can say not having to stress about the state of your bank account is a privilege that I took for granted). And from what I've read in recent studies regarding happiness among men and women, men seem to be doing better at the expense of women (see, for instance, this 2009 overview: bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Female_Happiness.pdf) So yes, I definitely agree with you in that quality of life is made up of so much more than your economic situation, but making enough to live on (with a strong emphasis on enough) is for a disproportionate number of women a source of unhappiness and unfulfilled aspirations. I suspect if we as a society were to attack the root causes for the gender gap in wealth and income, we'd also rectify some of the causes of unhappiness for both genders.

einhverfr 15y ago

eventually re-integrating children into day-to-day life What's not to like about our current approach of factory farming children? In my view the future (and I hate to say this on a VC's site) is in family-run micro-businesses, not startups. Both parents work from home at least part of the time (one or both may have part or even full-time jobs elsewhere), integrate child care into the realities of this life. Sure this won't work in every field but it will work in many. The thing is by integrating everything as you put it, this tradeoff doesn't have to happen. However making that integration happen requires challenging our ideas of the role of capital and labor in our society.