igetspam

It's a huge problem if you're in your theoretical 10%. Ask me how my chronic pain suffering spouse fairs. Six years without even an inkling of a diagnosis. They've had things cut out, things put in, bones fused. The medical system has crippled them more than we ever imagined (not an exaggeration) and we get a lot of "that's interesting" and "my part looks fine, tell me which new doctor I should forward this to." They've also had many comments that they're very complicated and then doctors seems to just fade away because the don't want to mess up their record.

You'd be amazed at the way people think about this. A reasoned answer would be "any that specifically require the use of genitals" but that's not how it plays out. I have friends whose family (sisters and cousins and parents) got offended that they bought their son a play kitchen because that's a "girl toy," even though he wanted it. Girls playing with swords and trucks are "cool chicks" but boys playing with dolls and animals are looked at weird. My anecdata shows that if you let kids pick instead of pointing them in a direction, all toys are gender neutral.

Careful, once you go down that IKEA hacking rabbit hole, it can be hard to stop buying cheap furniture.

https://ikeahackers.net

:)

So then the assumption you're making is that women are the lower earners? Why is that? (Or why is that true?)

Fantastic response.

Yes, in situations like this I prefer to keep things androgenous. I don't talk much about the gender of my kid or spouse.

It does because the site is a right wing think tank but I will give that my link is more about "women are happier when they get to be people first" and it doesn't contradict the "women often marry up in income." The problem with starting with a place like a right wing think tank's evaluation of a study is that the goal is to sell a narrative that aligns with their existing bias. See the use of the word "prefer" which is only used once in the interview and it's from a leading question that asserts the preference to be true. It's easy for women to marry up economically: find a man doing your same job, marry him and he'll likely get paid more.

Additionally, it's easy for better educated women to do that same. Find qualified women in various industries and review the educational qualifications of their male peers who are making more than them and... same outcome.

So yes, I find the source to be problematic. I have not read the cited study itself but I did see that fun Q&A.

You're not American, are you? Maternity leave is not a year here. There's a 12 but it's "weeks" and never months. That's the law I'm the very liberal states.

I think you're still in the minority but it's a good thing. I'm devoted to my spouse and my kid. I'll drop anything for them. Some of the fathers I know feel the same but some smell like mine and he was a piece of crap. I fully support parenting being a team sport and in my opinion, that's how we're going to fix the modern family, by making it better than pretend version of The Good Old Days.

When bad people use innocent people as human shields, you don't kill the innocent. This "by any means necessary" attitude is inching toward genocide, which is something you'd assume Israel would empathize with. As someone with Jewish blood and, technically, Jewish by rules of the faith (follows the mother, etc), I'm fucking appalled by this.

I'm sorry but... WTF? Are you saying that Israel has streets lined with dead and hospitals filled with rotting babies in the NICU and they not sharing that? If that's not what you're claiming, then you're making a false and shameful comparison. What's being done to Palestine is indefensible. I don't see that as weaponization as much as a people begging for their survival. Palestinians seem to be at risk of being wiped out because of a terrorist faction that lives near them.

Men can stay home and that's the point: we don't see men volunteering to be the stay-at-home parent because there's no incentive for them. We assume being mom is the pinnacle of female existence because we ignore the reality that all humans have goals and independent needs. Maybe your wife is special and thinks she needs nothing else and get cup is filled only by pouring herself out into the cups of others until she's empty. Maybe your local community days the same thing out loud. But I bet if you asked your wife if she ever felt like she'd like to do have something for herself, something that let her feel like individual she once was, she'd probably have some comments and ideas. Perhaps explore that a bit.

Ooh. That's credible. A right wing think tank!

I'll see you and raise you "single women are happier"'

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-bad-looks-good/2...

My spouse (partner) should avoid those that put their own misconceptions about health science ahead of the greater good. Thankfully, those people tend to advertise loudly and are often easy to stay away from. We can't avoid every danger but we don't have to stand on well marked landmines. I feel like that's a fantastic lesson most kids lear: don't stick your hand in the fire on purpose.

What evidence do you have to support your assertion that women would naturally give up their independence to stay at home?

That's not the natural choice. The natural choice is to find the bottom of the barrel outside care and have a second income because we've made it financially impossible to do anything else.

How many do you need?

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/24/anti-vaxxers-politi...

Then why don't we pay them for it? Why aren't men clamoring for the role? Why do we often put "job" in quotes when we talk about it?

Being a caregiver is absolutely noble but unless you're working in a professional environment taking care of the infirm, we don't really give the role much respect.

What detour? This feels like a straight line to reasonable discourse. What does forcing one sex to be the DRI for childrearing improve for kids? Specifically, what does it improve for girls?

You have data to support this claim?

Hahaha. As a parent and regular human, I'm fully aware of who can breastfeed. I assume my point was clear though. We need to stop putting all of this on women. Yes there are certain biology issues that require women to take some outsized roles in child development but those aren't permanent and telling women that they should stay home with the kids is usually not aligned with "until they're off the breast and then the father can stay home instead."

Thankfully modern science has invented and improved the breast pump and the bottle warmer and after recovery, women don't actually need to stay home for kids to get breast milk. So there's really no need to be gender specific about which parent should stay home, past reasonable maternity/paternity leave periods.

On the other hand, being single income is a luxury that not everyone can afford anyway. Our living costs have skyrocketed since 2020 and both parents working is necessity for lower and middle income families, in many cases. Even if the second income covers little more than child care, that "little more" is meaningful to people.

If we want better families, we should provide ways for lowering the burden and not force women (her it's women because nothing grows in or comes out of men) to have kids they can't care for and/or don't want and find ways to make childcare more affordable.

Perhaps fathers could.

If Twitter is your truth-in-media source in Germany, that's unfortunate. The friends and family I have im Germany don't seem to lack for legitimate news sources, so I'm a little surprised by your claim. Can you elaborate?

That's his version of it: name calling and whining. Let's not forget that he called a rescue diver a "pedo guy" because he lived in a popular place for divers and thought Elmo's wild rescue tube wasn't going to work (it wasn't).

COVID led some of my family into being antivax and the ones who already were just went deeper and bought into QAnon. Ny partner is immunocompromised. Willfully making choices that are dangerous to the general population is where I had to draw the line. It's unlikely my kid will meet many of their cousins. I just can't trust their parents and the things they say are comic book level conspiracy.

My story isn't unique. Geography isn't the only thing preventing interaction with extended family, some of it is the deterioration of family because the world has gone dumb.

Wait a second... this is starting to sound familiar. I swear there are policies that are too into place but I just can't my finger on it. Hmmm...

/s

Finally!

The idea that this is about "control" is incorrect. It's about safety. I want to know where my kid is, if I can't find them. I want to know they're at school and not the woods between school and home. I don't need to know what they're doing but I do want to know where they are, if they aren't where I expect them to be because I love them and don't want them to get hurt.

Before the advent of cell phones, kids couldn't call you or tell you where they were, if they were lost. We lose fewer kids now.

Trusting little kids to not get abducted or wander off is how kids get lost. We're not talking about teenagers here, we're talking about children.

A cell phone is the best tracking device I've found for knowing where my kid is. They won't leave it behind and if it's outside of where I expect it to be, I get an alarm. I'd love a better option but I really haven't found something that's more reliably close to them at all times.