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Comment by knorker | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I think that this issue will get a news report similar to the one flash-forward from The Simpsons: "[year 40 years from now] 40 year study concludes: diet and exercise leads to weight loss".

Except it'll be: "40 year study concludes: choosing a less lucrative field, and putting more time into family leads to lower salary at work".

We can have all the equality possible. That doesn't change the fact that nobody can have it all. You can't be a primary caregiver and also have an equal career to someone who isn't (statistically, obviously). Traditionally it's been the father who has (for lack of a better word) neglected the children. If you want an equally successful career you need to choose to (again, bad word here) neglect the children.

There are only 24 hours in the day.

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You've jumped to a conclusion the study does not appear to draw. It does not state that being a married primary caregiver correlates with a lower expected salary. It says that being a married woman with offspring correlates with a lower expected salary.

In other words that there is systematic bias against married women with children, not against all married caregivers with children.

The idea that men can be a primary caregiver still blows minds.

edit: s/leads to/correlates with/ which I agree is an important nuance but doesn't change my point.

Until 50% of the female marrying population want to marry a man who is willing to be the primary caregiver, this is unlikely to change, we are the product of expectations of men to women and women to men.

Let's not assume that correlation is causation here. One explanation is that female primary caregivers face systematic discrimination their male peers don't face.

Another is that female primary caregivers, more so than their male counterparts, lose interest in focusing on work after they have a child, and thus fall into the rut of a lower performing employee that inevitably gets paid less.

I don't know which it is. Are their studies that try to find out?

> Another is that female primary caregivers, more so than their male counterparts, lose interest in focusing on work after they have a child, and thus fall into the rut of a lower performing employee that inevitably gets paid less.

This study was looking at pay one year after receipt of PhD. I'd expect that it would usually take longer for people to start being separated by performance in the types of jobs that PhDs typically get.

> It says that being a married woman with offspring leads to a lower expected salary.

No, it doesn't.

It says that there is a correlation between being a married woman with offspring and a lower expected salary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

Furthermore, if you even had read the article you would've noticed the bit where it says "Weinberg says that the data cannot identify or tease apart factors that might explain why married women with children earn less — among the possibilities"

Okay. My point stands whether one writes "leads to" or "correlates with".

Thanks for suggesting the correction, and can I in turn suggest avoiding the phrase "if you had even read the article" in future. I'm sure you intended it to reinforce your remark, but I believe it actually tends to devalue any point it accompanies.

Small point: "if you even had read the article" and "if you had even read the article" are (imho) semantically different.

In the first the 'even' appears to mean "even in this very article, you may find this", where as in the second it appears to mean "if you at least put in the effort to read this article".

On the other side of things --- the social standing of men is determined heavily by how competent you are and if you are in a position of leadership.

What a surprise!

People on this site will argue that you dont have to "neglect" your children and have a career but that is only because they have money to out source their parental duties to other more poorer families who care for their own kids and yours.

> only because they have money to out source their parental duties

Holy jumping to assumptions, batman.

Assumptions? it is just simple math, if your not working your not earning, so you have a choice, make less money and look after your kids or pay someone else too.

> Assumptions? it is just simple math

No, it's a baseless assumption. You're somehow assuming that the only reason someone may even argue that you dont have to "neglect" your children and have a career is "only because they have money to out source their parental duties". That's a blatant baseless assumption. You may feel that, considering your career and the way you've been managing it, the only reason why someone may succeed in not neglecting their kids is if they pay someone else to do their job, but that obviously doesn't mean that your baseless assumption has any truth to it.

Simple math isn't worth anything if you get the facts all wrong.

It is really simple, can you explain to me how you can have a career, not outsource your parental duties and maintain the same income level as someone who outsourced (or had a spouse) looking after their children. You cannot do it, and will not.

I see you magically added the "maintain the same income level" gem to try to move your goalpost.

But even considering your goalpost-moving argument, why do you assume that preserving a high income level is a priority over not neglecting your children?

If you and people like you constantly prioritize maximizing your personal income level over not neglecting your own children, it is rather obvious that you will end up neglecting your children to pursuit a larger paycheck.

But that doesn't mean your job demands it. It's you that is demanding it. You neglect your children because you opt to pursuit a higher paycheck.

But that doesn't mean anyone is forced to neglect their children just to keep a well-paying job. That's only your own personal choice, and you don't justify your personal life choices by throwing blanket accusations and baseless assumptions like you've been doing in this thread.

In order to reduce the "pay gap" you must maintain the same level of income, its what the whole debate is about pay gap, how is that moving the goal post.

> why do you assume that preserving a high income level is a priority over not neglecting your children

I didnt assume its a priority, it only becomes a priority if you want to have children and not make less than a man/family without children or full time/part time caring spouse.

At this point I dont even understand what your arguing, I dont even have children, stop projecting.

There is a term called "global care chain", coined by Hochschild in 2000, that describes the migration of poor families to rich countries, and the outsourcing of childcare labor to poor families. Now it has budded into a rich area of academic discussion.

Also, anyone who has participated, even just as a customer, in the child care / afterschool education / extracurriculars industry, can see some the ways that parenting logistics differ from family to family.

What about, e.g. boarding schools?

I wouldn't say "neglect". Working hard to provide for your family is the very opposite of neglect.

Neglect is a loaded word. Children don't need hard working parents who earn lots of money though. What children need is your love and your time, along with support, security, food etc. It's all about having a work life balance, usually working hard comes at the expense of your family.

this. many people work hard to provide for their families, end up in a bad spiral of more-work-for-more-money and what they fail to see is child's view - they want their daddy and mommy to be with them as much as possible, talk to them, tech them, spend their time together. In this case it's not just quality, quantity matters too. this helps kid on so many levels that money just cannot buy, and forms their personality in one way or the other.

will kids survive neglect? of course they will. but if your idea of a good parent is that your kids just survive, think again. this world has already plenty of human beings ridden with all kinds of inner issues stemming from childhood

I repeatedly admitted it was not the best word.

What I was trying to get at is that neglect is not even a crude approximation of reality in this case.

This tendency to see the family as a collection of individuals is a rather new way of thinking. So when we say "the father as an individual" is "neglecting" the "child as an individual", we misrepresent reality.

What used to be the way to think about this was that the family is the fundamental unit, and the persons are components of this machine. So the father doesn't take action (in this case work outside the home) of his own accord, but (ideally speaking), plays his role as is in the interests of the family. Similarly, the mother does not stay at home out of some oppression, but plays her role as what is in the best interests of the family.

It is modern feminism that has eroded this idea of the family as a unit, and replaced it with the idea of the family as a collection of individuals.

Ah. Sure.

But the woman becoming an individual instead of a family role seems to have taken a front row seat to that meaning that the man will become an individual instead of role too. And that means admitting that the father role means not being able to have the family part like the mother role does.

I'm in this not saying people should be individuals or roles, just that we as a society (and individuals) should make that choice with our eyes open.

I think "deprioritizing" instead of "neglecting" doesn't sufficiently stress just how much you have to not do, in order to do the other thing.

My opinion is that the tasks of working and home maker should be up to the grownups involved. And if circumstances are such that you spend lots of time on children, then you are probably less useful to the workplace, and therefore should be paid less. It's insane to me that in some jurisdictions you legally have to count years worth of parental leave as if you were at work every day. A CV will not show this gap, even though it should.

I do sympathize with your idea of giving responsibility "to the grownups involved", but in reality ordinary people seldom take that responsibility. They just take cues from somewhere else if society does not give it to them (Sheryl Sandberg, for example).

Why should traditional systems be deemed inferior to pop media in directing people's lives?

I don't think it's inferior at all.

There are, as I see it, two extremes here: 1) Use traditional roles, including the woman doesn't work. 2) Everyone does everything 50/50

Neither, if imposed from the outside, is good.

It's a hard problem in general that people don't know what they want, or what they need to be happy. Women (or men for that matter) who stay home with children are told (implicitly or explicitly) that they "should" go out and work may become unhappy if they do this.

And they can become unhappy not because they don't do what they want, but because they are treated like, or even start believing, that they "want the wrong things". And it's not just that other people say it. It can be the case that they genuinely don't know if they would be happier doing something else.

Try not wanting to have children at all. Parents, family members, and even complete strangers will tell you that you are not happy, that you want the wrong thing, and they'll pity you.

Then there's the "it's selfish of you to not work as a woman, have children, be an breadwinner as a man", etc.. That's worse. That's admitting that the advice you're giving would make that person less happy, so that they will fit in to the advice giver's world view.

In the end I just want people to have control of their lives. I can try enabling their freedom, but I can't make them make good choices.

> If you want an equally successful career you need to choose to (again, bad word here) neglect the children.

Or make the other parent not neglect them

What a disgusting supposition

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