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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

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]
      - Pxtl 13y ago
        Yup. My wife took only 5 months mat leave. I took the other 7. People were generally envious and supportive of me, at least publicly. My wife, on the other hand, got to hear all the negativity. People treating her as heartless for going back to work and "leaving" a 5-month-old, and being deeply suspicious of "trusting her husband with the kids", which kinda turns my stomache. Honestly, most folks are pretty positive about it, but it only takes a few throwbacks to make you feel disgusting.
        RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        When my children were quite young, I used to bristle when people who knew me would see me out with my baby or toddler and ask, "Oh, are you babysitting?" I'd answer, "No, I'm parenting."

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]
    - Pxtl 13y ago
      Yup. My wife took only 5 months mat leave. I took the other 7. People were generally envious and supportive of me, at least publicly. My wife, on the other hand, got to hear all the negativity. People treating her as heartless for going back to work and "leaving" a 5-month-old, and being deeply suspicious of "trusting her husband with the kids", which kinda turns my stomache. Honestly, most folks are pretty positive about it, but it only takes a few throwbacks to make you feel disgusting.
      - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        When my children were quite young, I used to bristle when people who knew me would see me out with my baby or toddler and ask, "Oh, are you babysitting?" I'd answer, "No, I'm parenting."