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We might ask why it is still broadly assumed and expected that women will scale back their career hours so much more than men within a given profession. To sugg

We might ask why it is still broadly assumed and expected that women will scale back their career hours so much more than men within a given profession. To suggest instead that women doctors should have become medical assistants is astonishingly blinkered.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
You clearly didn't read the study at all. The study doesn't assume that women will scale back their hours. They use data which shows it. Suggesting that female doctors should have been medical assistants is merely the result of the fact that they would have made more money (i.e., income - cost of education) if they did.
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  I did read the study. My question is: why do women still take a lot more time off their careers for childcare than men? Presumably most of the children that a woman doctor is missing work to look after also have fathers: why are fathers not taking more responsibility to raise their children?
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Most of the time the fathers are taking responsibility. They typically provide income while the mother takes care of the children. Or perhaps you are asking why individual couples choose this particular breakdown of responsibility?
    - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      I'm asking why the prevailing pattern in North American couples is for the mother to give up years of career advancement to provide direct child care while the father continues to work, earning more money and a higher income.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Most likely more than 50% of women have a comparative advantage (relative to their husband) in caring for children.
        RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        You're still begging the question. Shall I jump on the regress treadmill with you and ask why women have a "comparative advantage" with respect to caring for their children? I suspect you'd like us eventually to land on some innate, hard-coded difference between men and women that makes women's relative absence in tech and under-representation in pay and seniority in other industries okay, but that's bullshit. Men are every bit as capable of looking after children as women, and it is a convenient insult to men to suggest otherwise: convenient because it just happens to uphold the gender imbalance that leaves men in much more powerful positions, relatively speaking, than women.
        yummyfajitas 13y ago
        I don't know why, I haven't looked at the topic in detail. I just suggest comparative advantage because it is generally a good answer as to why two parties mutually agree to some particular economic arrangement. I don't actually subscribe to collectivist moral theories that declare it somehow wrong when members of different groups are statistically more likely to make different choices. In fact, I believe most of the collectivist theories that do ascribe morality to statistics of this nature are not even well formed.
        rayiner 13y ago
        There are enormous social pressures involved. Families and child rearing are deeply tied up in culture and history. Pretending that it's just parties mutually agreeing to a particular arrangement based on comparative advantage ignores the evidence plainly in front of your face in order to preserve some idealistic theory. Between my wife and I, there is no comparative advantage when it comes to child rearing. We're attorneys, we both work at big firms, we make similar incomes (hence have similar opportunity costs), neither of us is any better with the kid than the other (thanks to the magic of modern technology, like infant formula). Yet from the moment she got pregnant, the pressure was on my wife to be the primary caregiver. People talked about what a shame it was that she was a busy professional and the baby had to spend all day in daycare (nobody ever said anything similar about my job). People will say things like "she needs her mom" when the baby cries (no: she's either hungry or bored or needs to be changed). When we stroll around in winter with the baby without putting a hat on her, busybodies never tell me to put a hat on the baby, always my wife. If you're a woman and you have a baby, the deck is totally stacked against you from the minute you get pregnant.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]

yummyfajitas 13y ago

You clearly didn't read the study at all. The study doesn't assume that women will scale back their hours. They use data which shows it. Suggesting that female doctors should have been medical assistants is merely the result of the fact that they would have made more money (i.e., income - cost of education) if they did.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
I did read the study. My question is: why do women still take a lot more time off their careers for childcare than men? Presumably most of the children that a woman doctor is missing work to look after also have fathers: why are fathers not taking more responsibility to raise their children?
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Most of the time the fathers are taking responsibility. They typically provide income while the mother takes care of the children. Or perhaps you are asking why individual couples choose this particular breakdown of responsibility?
  - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
    I'm asking why the prevailing pattern in North American couples is for the mother to give up years of career advancement to provide direct child care while the father continues to work, earning more money and a higher income.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Most likely more than 50% of women have a comparative advantage (relative to their husband) in caring for children.
      - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        You're still begging the question. Shall I jump on the regress treadmill with you and ask why women have a "comparative advantage" with respect to caring for their children? I suspect you'd like us eventually to land on some innate, hard-coded difference between men and women that makes women's relative absence in tech and under-representation in pay and seniority in other industries okay, but that's bullshit. Men are every bit as capable of looking after children as women, and it is a convenient insult to men to suggest otherwise: convenient because it just happens to uphold the gender imbalance that leaves men in much more powerful positions, relatively speaking, than women.
        yummyfajitas 13y ago
        I don't know why, I haven't looked at the topic in detail. I just suggest comparative advantage because it is generally a good answer as to why two parties mutually agree to some particular economic arrangement. I don't actually subscribe to collectivist moral theories that declare it somehow wrong when members of different groups are statistically more likely to make different choices. In fact, I believe most of the collectivist theories that do ascribe morality to statistics of this nature are not even well formed.
        rayiner 13y ago
        There are enormous social pressures involved. Families and child rearing are deeply tied up in culture and history. Pretending that it's just parties mutually agreeing to a particular arrangement based on comparative advantage ignores the evidence plainly in front of your face in order to preserve some idealistic theory. Between my wife and I, there is no comparative advantage when it comes to child rearing. We're attorneys, we both work at big firms, we make similar incomes (hence have similar opportunity costs), neither of us is any better with the kid than the other (thanks to the magic of modern technology, like infant formula). Yet from the moment she got pregnant, the pressure was on my wife to be the primary caregiver. People talked about what a shame it was that she was a busy professional and the baby had to spend all day in daycare (nobody ever said anything similar about my job). People will say things like "she needs her mom" when the baby cries (no: she's either hungry or bored or needs to be changed). When we stroll around in winter with the baby without putting a hat on her, busybodies never tell me to put a hat on the baby, always my wife. If you're a woman and you have a baby, the deck is totally stacked against you from the minute you get pregnant.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]