5 ms·

Both Klein and Trunk seem to be missing the point that just because women are choosing do X instead of Y doesn't mean there's no sexism in the Y. Anyway, to me

Both Klein and Trunk seem to be missing the point that just because women are choosing do X instead of Y doesn't mean there's no sexism in the Y. Anyway, to me the arguments here about babies and startups are eerily reminiscent of the arguments against women becoming professors. Stuff like: women want to have babies, how will they advise their students when they're pregnant? They can't bring in grant money for a whole two years! Blah blah blah. Think of our academic standards. Fortunately that argument has been thoroughly debunked by the large number of successful female professors who are also mothers. Frankly, I don't buy the argument that having a pregnant co-founder hurts a startup. If women can get tenure at a top-10 university while raising a kid, I'm pretty sure they can also keep your startup going while raising a kid. EDIT: Heh, I've been downvoted. Why am I not surprised?

learc83 15y ago
It really depends on how you plan to run your startup. If you require 80 hour weeks then no, a women with a young child isn't going to cut it. However, neither is a man with a young child. If you are demanding that working for your startup is your employee's number 1 priority then you probably only want a specific type of person--young and single (male or female). However, if you run a more sane company married with 3 kids would probably work fine.
- cperciva 15y ago
  If you require 80 hour weeks then no, a women with a young child isn't going to cut it. However, neither is a man with a young child. There is one difference, though: Males are more likely to postpone having kids for the sake of their career -- because men are biologically more likely to be able to postpone having kids. For a 35 year old childfree woman, having kids is practically "now or never"; for a 35 year old childfree man, having kids is simply a matter of waiting until the right moment and then finding an appropriately-aged woman.
  - todayiamme 15y ago
    Well just like the pill, science can come to our rescue over here too. As the costs associated with cryonically storing tissue drops with improvement in technology and methodology, sooner or later it will be possible for almost all women to get their eggs stored for later use in their 20s. Just imagine the tectonic shift that will take place when this happens. It will change the world in such a deep way that the pill will pale in comparison. Maybe future generations past that point will see such discussions as a symptom of a primitive society.
    - klipt 15y ago
      If she has frozen eggs, can a woman still carry a child post menopause? Or does she have to resort to a surrogate?
      - todayiamme 15y ago
        Yes, she can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50
- davidhansen 15y ago
  Not that I encourage this particular lifestyle, but some people do manage to do this successfully. John Carmack, for instance, works 40 hours per week on iD, 40 hours per week on Armadillo, and still manages to raise two children.
  - learc83 15y ago
    I agree, it can be done, but if he is really working 80 hours per week most weeks (it's different if maybe he is constantly taking vacations or something), then I wouldn't really call that raising two children. I'd say his wife is raising them, and he sees them occasionally on weekends. This some kind of value judgment, just looking at the amount of time in a week, and there's no way it's enough for both.
    - jtheory 15y ago
      Right... I have a small child and I actually do my fair share of raising her. And I generally don't sleep more than 5-6 hours a night (sometimes much less), or watch any TV, or even waste much time online anymore -- and I track it with RescueTime -- but getting 40 hours a week of real work done is still hard some weeks. Raising kids -- doing it right, that is -- takes a lot of time & interaction. Then there's time keeping the house functioning & relatively clean, paying bills, grocery shopping, the various trivial little tasks that need doing... I'm pretty sure 80 hours a week would be impossible unless I stopped sleeping altogether. Even once my daughter is in school, it'd be pretty rough going.
    - davidhansen 15y ago
      My understanding is that he works 13-14 hours per day, 6 days per week, and he takes Sundays off entirely for family time: "I still work 80 hours a week," he admitted to Mark Lisheron of the Austin American-Statesman. "It used to be 80 hours on software, now it's 40 hours on software and 40 hours on Armadillo." Carmack did ease up a bit after he and his wife, Anna Kang, had their first child in 2004—he was getting home from the office at about midnight instead of 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM. Kang, however, insists that Sunday is family day, so Carmack compromises by reading technical manuals to his infant son. ref. http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/A-Ca/Carmack-John.html http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/A-Ca/Carmack-John.htm...
natrius 15y ago
"Fortunately that argument has been thoroughly debunked by the large number of successful female professors who are also mothers." The argument hasn't been debunked. I don't have the facts to back this up, but I'd guess that on average, men work more hours per year than women with the same jobs, because women tend to give birth and take care of children more than men. The reason there are so many successful female professors is because we've decided as a society that optimizing for hours worked per year is a bad idea with detrimental effects on our lives. If someone were choosing between a man and a woman of equal skill to work at a startup, wanted to maximize hours worked per year, and didn't care about the law or the effects of their decision on society, they'd pick the man. Fortunately, there are far better indicators than gender of how prone an individual is to take extended leave.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  The argument hasn't been debunked. I don't have the facts to back this up, but I'd guess that on average, men work more hours per year than women with the same jobs, because women tend to give birth and take care of children more than men. The reason there are so many successful female professors is because we've decided as a society that optimizing for hours worked per year is a bad idea with detrimental effects on our lives. Also from what I have heard is that in the sciences, it is extraordinarily hard to succeed as a professor and a mother at the same time unless you simply don't want to take time off to spend with your newborn and expect your kid to be factory-farmed. Edit: What's up with the downvotes? It seems like they go up and down this thread largely randomly. Are people just downvoting things they disagree with?
  - TWSS 15y ago
    Because it would be TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS to expect a father to participate equally in the raising of his child.
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      The reason why this is off-base would take more time to get into than I have. Suffice it to say however, that the inequality goes both ways, and bringing fathers up to the same level of rights in deciding whether to become parents that mothers have is not going to happen. Fathers are legally and socially secondary parents and I think women would rebel very strongly if full equality in all aspects of deciding what level of responsibility to take on regarding children was at issue.
einhverfr 15y ago
If women can get tenure at a top-10 university while raising a kid. If by raising you mean outsourcing to a factory farm.... The fact is that today it's getting harder and harder for women to both have careers and raise their kids (instead of outsourcing that to day care centers and the like).
- kscaldef 15y ago
  You say this as if men haven't "outsourced" their child care for pretty much all of history.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    Families outsourcing child care though is very recent. I, for one, am not a fan of factory farming our kids (and it's one reason why I, as a man, work from home).
da_dude4242 15y ago
Providing counterexamples to a generalization is not a debunking. Every stat I run into on the matter shows career focused women being less likely to have children or have them much later in life. Apparently there is a limiting resource whether it is time, money, or energy.

learc83 15y ago

It really depends on how you plan to run your startup. If you require 80 hour weeks then no, a women with a young child isn't going to cut it. However, neither is a man with a young child. If you are demanding that working for your startup is your employee's number 1 priority then you probably only want a specific type of person--young and single (male or female). However, if you run a more sane company married with 3 kids would probably work fine.

cperciva 15y ago
If you require 80 hour weeks then no, a women with a young child isn't going to cut it. However, neither is a man with a young child. There is one difference, though: Males are more likely to postpone having kids for the sake of their career -- because men are biologically more likely to be able to postpone having kids. For a 35 year old childfree woman, having kids is practically "now or never"; for a 35 year old childfree man, having kids is simply a matter of waiting until the right moment and then finding an appropriately-aged woman.
- todayiamme 15y ago
  Well just like the pill, science can come to our rescue over here too. As the costs associated with cryonically storing tissue drops with improvement in technology and methodology, sooner or later it will be possible for almost all women to get their eggs stored for later use in their 20s. Just imagine the tectonic shift that will take place when this happens. It will change the world in such a deep way that the pill will pale in comparison. Maybe future generations past that point will see such discussions as a symptom of a primitive society.
  - klipt 15y ago
    If she has frozen eggs, can a woman still carry a child post menopause? Or does she have to resort to a surrogate?
    - todayiamme 15y ago
      Yes, she can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50
davidhansen 15y ago
Not that I encourage this particular lifestyle, but some people do manage to do this successfully. John Carmack, for instance, works 40 hours per week on iD, 40 hours per week on Armadillo, and still manages to raise two children.
- learc83 15y ago
  I agree, it can be done, but if he is really working 80 hours per week most weeks (it's different if maybe he is constantly taking vacations or something), then I wouldn't really call that raising two children. I'd say his wife is raising them, and he sees them occasionally on weekends. This some kind of value judgment, just looking at the amount of time in a week, and there's no way it's enough for both.
  - jtheory 15y ago
    Right... I have a small child and I actually do my fair share of raising her. And I generally don't sleep more than 5-6 hours a night (sometimes much less), or watch any TV, or even waste much time online anymore -- and I track it with RescueTime -- but getting 40 hours a week of real work done is still hard some weeks. Raising kids -- doing it right, that is -- takes a lot of time & interaction. Then there's time keeping the house functioning & relatively clean, paying bills, grocery shopping, the various trivial little tasks that need doing... I'm pretty sure 80 hours a week would be impossible unless I stopped sleeping altogether. Even once my daughter is in school, it'd be pretty rough going.
  - davidhansen 15y ago
    My understanding is that he works 13-14 hours per day, 6 days per week, and he takes Sundays off entirely for family time: "I still work 80 hours a week," he admitted to Mark Lisheron of the Austin American-Statesman. "It used to be 80 hours on software, now it's 40 hours on software and 40 hours on Armadillo." Carmack did ease up a bit after he and his wife, Anna Kang, had their first child in 2004—he was getting home from the office at about midnight instead of 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM. Kang, however, insists that Sunday is family day, so Carmack compromises by reading technical manuals to his infant son. ref. http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/A-Ca/Carmack-John.html http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/A-Ca/Carmack-John.htm...

natrius 15y ago

"Fortunately that argument has been thoroughly debunked by the large number of successful female professors who are also mothers." The argument hasn't been debunked. I don't have the facts to back this up, but I'd guess that on average, men work more hours per year than women with the same jobs, because women tend to give birth and take care of children more than men. The reason there are so many successful female professors is because we've decided as a society that optimizing for hours worked per year is a bad idea with detrimental effects on our lives. If someone were choosing between a man and a woman of equal skill to work at a startup, wanted to maximize hours worked per year, and didn't care about the law or the effects of their decision on society, they'd pick the man. Fortunately, there are far better indicators than gender of how prone an individual is to take extended leave.

einhverfr 15y ago
The argument hasn't been debunked. I don't have the facts to back this up, but I'd guess that on average, men work more hours per year than women with the same jobs, because women tend to give birth and take care of children more than men. The reason there are so many successful female professors is because we've decided as a society that optimizing for hours worked per year is a bad idea with detrimental effects on our lives. Also from what I have heard is that in the sciences, it is extraordinarily hard to succeed as a professor and a mother at the same time unless you simply don't want to take time off to spend with your newborn and expect your kid to be factory-farmed. Edit: What's up with the downvotes? It seems like they go up and down this thread largely randomly. Are people just downvoting things they disagree with?
- TWSS 15y ago
  Because it would be TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS to expect a father to participate equally in the raising of his child.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    The reason why this is off-base would take more time to get into than I have. Suffice it to say however, that the inequality goes both ways, and bringing fathers up to the same level of rights in deciding whether to become parents that mothers have is not going to happen. Fathers are legally and socially secondary parents and I think women would rebel very strongly if full equality in all aspects of deciding what level of responsibility to take on regarding children was at issue.

einhverfr 15y ago

If women can get tenure at a top-10 university while raising a kid. If by raising you mean outsourcing to a factory farm.... The fact is that today it's getting harder and harder for women to both have careers and raise their kids (instead of outsourcing that to day care centers and the like).

kscaldef 15y ago
You say this as if men haven't "outsourced" their child care for pretty much all of history.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  Families outsourcing child care though is very recent. I, for one, am not a fan of factory farming our kids (and it's one reason why I, as a man, work from home).

da_dude4242 15y ago

Providing counterexamples to a generalization is not a debunking. Every stat I run into on the matter shows career focused women being less likely to have children or have them much later in life. Apparently there is a limiting resource whether it is time, money, or energy.