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Comment by hacknat | Hacker News Reader

> Sure, women who take time off to raise kids will take a hit to income.

There's a lot more to it than just that. If there was only a one-time hit to income, everything you said afterwards would hold true, but that's not the only issue, and you're quite naive for thinking so.

Also it shows poor faith in the community to hide behind a throwaway. I wouldn't down vote you for stating the opinion you just stated, but I will take the argument you just made less seriously because your making it in a cowardly fashion.

I take downvoting someone very seriously and will only do so if I think they are harming the community with their speech.

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That's a fair point. However, alimony can most certainly extend beyond the age of majority for the kids, and marital property is usually divided in such a way as to compensate a woman for taking time off to raise kids. Social Security also allows divorced women to partially receive benefits based on their ex-husband's income, even income earned after the end of the marriage.

Regarding my lack of faith in the HN community, I like your attitude, and I also take downvoting seriously. Unfortunately empirically the comment was downvoted, so obviously not everyone agrees with us. It's become politically (both here and elsewhere) unacceptable to have a belief that perhaps being a woman in America isn't so bad. I think it's worthwhile to have this discussion, but I'm not interested in having my head put on a pike for it.

I think it's true that being a woman in America isn't all that bad if you're in a privileged group, but under-served populations tend to get the shaft (in more ways then one), and especially women.

While the wage gap between men and women is close when you adjust for "job differences", I think the strong reaction against that caveat is "adjusting for job differences" equates strongly with "behaving like a man".

Fair point on the community our regard for being politically correct is obnoxious, and I definitely don't think you should have been down voted for expressing an intellectually earnest opinion, c'est la vie.

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