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HN is the whitest malest forum I'm a member of. Spend 30 seconds in the thread discussing a charity encouraging black girls to program[1] and it's blatantly ap

• citricsquid 14y ago
  This has nothing to do with HN and everything to do with society.
  • ballooney 14y ago
    It probably is partially to do with HN, the kind of place that has a demographic further up the spectrum than a random sample of society, whose ability to reason sometimes suffers from a tendency towards talking and thinking in absolutes.
• ams6110 14y ago
  Because women are biologically, historically, and culturally the nurturers of infant children. You can pretend it's some other way, but that doesn't make it so.
  • asto 14y ago
    I'm laying this one on the babies. Mommy handles them, they're all happy. Daddy tries something, suddenly they aren't as happy. Asshole babies! </joke> If the parents are worth so much, in my opinion they could both take time out for the kid. Is there a reason why women should take care of newborns full time? Yes, that's what is natural (meaning occurs in nature). Is there any reason her husband shouldn't help her? I don't really see one.
    • irahul 14y ago
      > Is there a reason why women should take care of newborns full time? Yes, that's what is natural (meaning occurs in nature). A lot of things happen in nature. But is there a reason a women is required to raise an offspring? Apart from breast-milk, there isn't anything a man can't do. > Is there any reason her husband shouldn't help her? I don't really see one. No reason at all. I am more interested in parent's comment about woman required to take care of babies. Let alone helping, I don't see a reason why a man can't raise a baby all by himself.
      • param 14y ago
        http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.html#soulhttp://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/mother-absence.html http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.htm... This seems to have a number of references.
      • Produce 14y ago
        And this is the whole problem with taking a rational approach to something you know nothing about - you get the wrong answers because you are acting on the wrong information. As pointed out by param, there is a mountain of research on this subject which clearly indicates that a mother is essential to a child's development. A growing body of research shows that a present father is also very important. Nonetheless, we are adapted to the condition of the mother being present during our development, therefore it holds more weight than the father being present. Both parents being present improves things futher.
    • kamaal 14y ago
      I'd love to sit at home cook food, and take care of kids if my future wife wants to take of everything else(Money, security etc). That will give me a great deal of time to hack, play video games and practice my harmonica.
      • omegant 14y ago
        Wait to have kids and then try to spare time...
• pinaceae 14y ago
  Jobs was and is slammed regularly for abandoning his first child and for his erratic behavior. Gates has been ridiculed for his sexy pose desktop picture and classic nerd aura in terms of women. Marrying an employee didn't help. Ellison? Never heard a single good thing about him here. Last time he bought that Hawaiian island and yeah, that did go well. Male on male aggression/envy is simply normal here and filtered out in your memory. If it hits a female it suddenly becomes apparent.
  • kamaal 14y ago
    >>Male on male aggression/envy is simply normal here and filtered out in your memory. If it hits a female it suddenly becomes apparent. I've always wondered the reason for this. If you ever see a bunch of males(boys, teenagers, adults, middle aged men, old folks) of any age. They will easily get aggressive with each other, crack jokes, tease each other fight, the older ones even drink and swear at each other. Yet none would feel bad about it. You can't say they same think about women. You have to worry about every single word you say and do. Because you never know what is generally taken as offensive and what isn't.
    • untog 14y ago
      You're painting incredibly broad strokes, there.
  • waterhouse 14y ago
    > Jobs was and is slammed regularly for abandoning his first child and for his erratic behavior. I looked for some citations, and I did find a few: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3161927 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229495 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3926052 Source: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=steve+jobs+daughter&sortby=points+desc&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=steve+jobs+... (search also for "steve jobs child", and leave out the "steve" if you feel like sorting through a bunch of unrelated stuff)
• irahul 14y ago
  > I challenge anyone to find any posts questioning any other CEO's parenting choices. (Bonus points if top voted for on a story). Personally, when I become a father, I would like to either take time off, or take a job which isn't much stressful. I tend to overindulge. It would mean either I am too serious about my job, and my child is left out; or I am too engaged in my child to actually care about the job. I am not that good at little bit of everything. The public persona of the people you have named(Gates, Brin...) conveys they don't dip their toes in water, but like to dive in head first. I might be wrong, but to me it would look like they can't possibly handle the child and the job at the same time. So yes, I would question their fitness as a father when they take up a challenging job while their child is on the way. > I challenge anyone to find any posts questioning any other CEO's parenting choices. (Bonus points if top voted for on a story). Get out from under the rock, and you will see what kind of shitty attitude exists for Gates(who is doing more good than anyone and everyone talking about him), Jobs(who has ardent admirers and ardent haters), Ellison(seriously? People might be biased, but I have never heard good things about him)... > But a woman steps up and suddenly HN cares about her child and votes up a comment questioning how her decision affects her child and second guessing her motherly quality. I don't know. Why is it bad to ponder the child won't get the required attention if a stressful job takes most of your time. That holds true regardless of gender. Now, I might be totally wrong, and you can be a better at time and life management, but I don't see why you see the need to vilify me for saying so.
  • praptak 14y ago
    You seem to confuse the generic bashing of CEOs with specific kind mentioned by GP: questioning parenting choices.
    • irahul 14y ago
      > You seem to confuse the generic bashing of CEOs with specific kind mentioned by GP: questioning parenting choices. You seem to ignore my whole blurb about "being a father" and "holding a stressful job", and how it applies to the CEOs in question.
• spindritf 14y ago
  > The top voted comment about a new CEO literally questions her fitness as a mother. It questions her motives for becoming a CEO.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• btilly 14y ago
  I admit it. I'm a white male. (I do have 4 half-Chinese half-siblings, but they are irrelevant.) However I'm married, and the father of two children. The first reaction that I had when I saw that she was pregnant was, "She has no idea what she's getting into." I've been there, twice, and seen first hand what pregnancy and hormones take out of a woman who has a baby. I've experienced what it is like to go through the first few months. Sure, she has help. But I know how strong the desire is to connect. And as soon as she does, I know what amount of energy is required. And if she fails to devote enough energy, I know what the pain of being rejected by your own child is like. This applies to some extent to both parents. I personally took much more than her planned 2 weeks for each birth, and am aware that my performance at work was directly affected for months. (My ability to work hard has been impacted for years but that is a more complicated story.) However all of this applies to women more than men for the solid biological reason that women are the ones actually get pregnant, go through child birth, have associated hormone shifts, and produce milk. (Yes, you can give the baby formula, but if you've read the research there is a significant chance that feeding your baby formula will reduce IQ. Do you want to risk that for your child?? However breast feeding is a significant time commitment, and opens you up for even more hormones.) And this is if everything goes well. It often doesn't. For instance about 10% of women suffer through postpartum depression, and being a high-flying exec has no correlation with the biology behind that. Or you can wind up on bed rest if the pregnancy is difficult - and the odds of a difficult pregnancy go up rapidly when the mother has external stresses. Yes, it is PC to claim some sort of absolute equivalence between men and women. But this is very clearly false when it comes to child birth. When I saw her saying that she'd only take 2 weeks of maternity leave, the first thing that I said was, "She has absolutely no clue what she's in for." When I told my wife the story and my opinion, her only question was, "First time mother?" I said, "Yes," then my wife laughed in agreement. Now please disclose your experience. How old are you? How many children do you have? Have you considered the possibility that parenting might just be harder than you think, and people who have been down that path might just know something that you don't know?
  • rustynails77 14y ago
    I highly respect the views of the parent poster (btilly). As a father of two, I fully can relate to your posting, including an almost identical conversation with my lovely wife.
• loceng 14y ago
  Maybe more people should question the involvement of fathers in their children's life, as to start to make it important in the culture's view? It goes both ways - keeping quiet, and of making noise.
• Produce 14y ago
  Blah blah white men blah blah sexist blah blah blah. As mentioned by others, pregnancy has a real physical effect on a woman. As mentioned by countless studies, having your parents around when you're an infant has a huge impact on the rest of your life. None of this is sexist. And yes, I think that if a multimillionaire has a kid then they should take some time off and do their goddamn job and raise them, no matter the parent's gender. Both mothers and fathers are important in a child's development. And for the record, I don't hold any of the CEO's you listed in high regard.
• codex 14y ago
  I wouldn't attribute to sexism what can be attributed to novelty and the bikeshed principle. A new CEO is named to a Fortune 500 company. Do any of us really have the expertise to comment on that nomination? Likely not. It's so far out of our league that we don't even attempt to Monday-morning quarterback. On the other hand, everyone can relate to parenting, so that (the bikeshed) is the first choice for discussion instead. It's not passing judgement--it's just the most accessible and novel topic about Marissa's nomination. Why rehash old business threads whan you can talk about something new and interesting? She's the first pregnant Fortune 500 CEO; of course it's going to come up. It's also a fair comment that most women would prefer to raise an infant under more ideal circumstances. This is just a statement of fact. Most male CEOs have as great a powerlust (or more so) than Marissa, but they're not pregnant, so you can't as easily talk about what they're giving up to take the job, and so it doesn't come up in conversation.