What does "legally protected maternity leave" mean? From your stipend comment it sounds like it's not fully-paid. Does it just mean your company has to offer you your job back when you want to return? What happens if the company has eliminated the roll/laid people off in the meantime? Can they not get rid of your position if you are on maternity at the time?
> Does it just mean your company has to offer you your job back when you want to return?
The legal situation is that you are still employed there while on the maternity leave and your employment is protected. They don't pay you anything of course, any money you receive comes from the state/social security pocket.
So when you return you just returned to your position. If the position was eliminated, the company has to offer you another position.
> This sounds like the old-fashioned way of running companies that would result in a married woman being laid off instead of a married man, on the theory that he's the breadwinner and his family relies on him.
That reasoning would be illegal of course, but also in our work law system it's pretty hard to lay off someone if they didn't commit a grave fault. As above, even if you eliminate positions, you still have to offer them another one first.
correct. in general, when letting people go you need to consider the impact on their lives. and you need to let go those who are less impacted. you can't just pick the weakest performers or the most expensive (although the higher paid ones are less likely to be impacted)
This sounds like the old-fashioned way of running companies that would result in a married woman being laid off instead of a married man, on the theory that he's the breadwinner and his family relies on him.
Wow, this sounds very complicated, subjective, and invasive. I guess in such situations it's not possible (or not favorable) to not have your employer know much about your personal situation.
yes, that is kind of unavoidable. but i don't really see why you would want to keep that private.
we already have or work on laws that makes peoples salaries public to allow employees to know if they are paid fairly, and you are not going to hide your kids in a basement, so the most important factors to consider are more or less public already
This is anathema to me, as an American. I would never want to have pressure to tell my employer anything about my home life, for fear of losing my job. As for laws about salaries, that also sounds terrible. I am glad that this is extremely uncommon where I live, except for government workers.
actually, in the US policies about keeping your pay secret are illegal. and in many states salaries need to be published on job postings too. so it's not hard to figure out what someone earns, and it is in your benefit to not keep it secret unless you are a very high earner.
you also do not have any job protection, so you don't benefit from sharing this. but the number of kids is hardly a secret worth keeping. and when your employer offers childcare benefits you would also share that information. you would not forgo the benefits just to keep that private.
and that's the same in europe if you don't tell your employer then you can't benefit from the additional job protection. your choice.
No one said anything about policies forcing people to keep their pay secret. We love our freedom of speech, so that wouldn't make much sense. It is true that a small minority of states (under a quarter) have some requirement about salary range on job postings, but that doesn't tell you what people make. That tells you what the base salary range is, and the range can be quite large. It also doesn't tell you what anyone who wasn't just hired makes, since their salary could have increased in the time since they were hired in the applicable range. And of course, the many people who worked at a company since before these recent laws went into effect have no hint of their salary published anywhere.
I guess some people don't find it creepy to have employers make termination decisions based on family structure, but I sure as hell do. I would think that European countries, where they like privacy so much that they invented cookie banners, wouldn't put employees in the awkward situation of having to disclose their family structure, spousal earnings, costs (medical bills? caring for a parent?) in order to hang onto their jobs.
And this is before getting into the efficiency arguments of retaining employees based on productivity, not family structure. I can see why startups aren't flourishing as much in Europe, with policies like these!
> employers make termination decisions based on family structure
There might be a misunderstanding. The employer usually does not know about your family structure; the only place that really has to know about that is the wage department to calculate your taxes etc. (even though in some countries you can do that yourself if you are a very private person, but in that case you are more likely to be self-employed anyway). Of course if you want to claim days out of work, paid or not, to care for the children or a parent, the employer might want to know if the children are real.
The employer usually does not know about your family structure
when i need to let go people from my company because i need to downsize for whatever reason i need to choose those who would be least affected. that means i need to know who is single, married, or has children. because if i let go the one who is a parent instead of someone who is single, they might sue me because it would cause them undue hardship, if say finding a new job would force them to move which would affect the other parents job and also the kids school. and their whole social life.
sometimes this can't be avoided. if all my employees have families and children then i am stuck. but if there is a choice, then the choice must be the person who is more likely to recover, or who has less dependents. the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
long story short, i have to know the family structure to make that choice.
i am talking about germany, but i believe this is true for many european companies.
i am legally compelled to not dismiss people if that causes social/financial hardship for them, when i could dismiss other people who would face less hardship.
basically i need to consider three factors: how long they already worked in my company, how old they are, and their family situation, whether they have dependents.
failure to consider these risks a lawsuit making the dismissal invalid.
this of course does not apply to dismissals that are related to bad behavior or lack of qualification.
on the other side: unique qualifications that i need to keep my business running are also exempt even if that person otherwise would be the one facing the least hardship from a dismissal.
It's not like that in Slovakia afaik. There is no legal obligation to not dismiss people if that causes social/financial hardship for them. I'd think it's also similar in other Eastern European countries. It's pretty hard though to force someone out if they did nothing wrong, so that fact alone is very protective for employees.
I guess it's easier to lob silly fart claims rather than engage with the fact that what you've described is very foreign to most Americans.
As for sanctioning specific states, we do this plenty. There aren't many voices raised when it's done against countries that are our enemies. Sanctioning allies would obviously be a weird move, and countries in between, are in between.
I'll end by saying that you characterize this as a debate, when it isn't one. You're free to think it's grand to terminate employees based on their home life. I think it's terrible and am glad I don't work at a company that would ever do such a thing. But I don't think it's something that should be illegal, as long as everyone who went to work for the company knew what they were getting into.
No one said anything about policies forcing people to keep their pay secret. We love our freedom of speech, so that wouldn't make much sense.
really? it has been a widespread policy in many companies across the US until the laws changed.
some people don't find it creepy to have employers make termination decisions based on family structure, but I sure as hell do.
why though? what's the big deal with someone knowing how many children you have?
European countries, where they like privacy [...] wouldn't put employees in the awkward situation of having to disclose their family structure, spousal earnings, costs (medical bills? caring for a parent?) in order to hang onto their jobs.
there are a few things you need to consider: for one earnings are much more average. there are not many high or low earners. if i know what your job is i can pretty much guess how much you make because most people in the same job get the same pay, and that is already public knowledge. unlike the US (you do have a point with the base salaries and the range there) the pay ranges in europe are much narrower. likewise costs are irrelevant because almost everyone has health insurance which covers anything worth of note. medical bills are not a thing for the average person in europe. i said it before: there is nothing to disclose that isn't already public.
I can see why startups aren't flourishing as much in Europe, with policies like these!
also not relevant because these laws don't apply to small companies. the minimum is 50 people i think.
The 10$ a day program is double to triple that price and childcare spaces have become even more rare since that program launched and it’s because capacity has reduced and not usage. One of the issues with that is the increased control and administration to the point of local governments approving line items for these businesses.
It's long term second-order thinking that people on the right side of the political spectrum tend to lack in my experience.
I pay taxes so other people can afford to have kids, they can stay home and give the kids a stable childhood. Then the kids will go to subsidised childcare (0-250€/month depending on income) and later to school where they have free school lunches and well-paid teachers.
Why? Because I'm getting old and when I retire we need people working and paying taxes so there's money to pay for MY healthcare and pension.
I was not trying to start an ideological battle — just pointing out that childcare is not cheaper, it's just paid out of taxes instead of consumer spending.
But if you want to discuss second order effects, what basic economic theory and empirical evidence both show is that the second order effect is less incentive for people to work, and higher rates of children born out of wedlock. The implications of that is higher incarceration rates and other socioeconomic problems as a consequence of the negative effects of being raised in a single parent household.
This is the kind of multi-generational impact that I've found social democracy advocates rarely weigh in their analysis.
In terms of the economic impact, the higher taxes dampens growth, which is exactly why median income is so much lower in the EU than the U.S:
EU Europe average ≈ $30,500
United States ≈ $68,000
A 2018 study shows tax increases significantly reduce innovation. A 1% increase in the top marginal income tax rate leads to a 2% reduction in patents and inventors, while a similar increase in corporate taxes causes even larger declines:
This shows up in company creation. The United States has vastly more large young companies than the European Union. Looking only at companies started from scratch, and now worth at least $10 billion on the stock market, the EU has about 14 companies worth a combined ~$430 billion, while the US has dozens whose total value is close to $30 trillion — roughly 70 times larger. In fact, the entire EU total is less than half the value of Tesla alone.
You might point to the Nordic countries as examples of welfare success stories, but the Nordics are only proof that a rich, high-trust society can stay rich while paying high taxes. Not proof that high taxes made them rich, or that the model doesn’t slow growth or scale badly elsewhere.
Keep in mind that it was during the Nordics' 100 year free-market era that they got rich. That's when they experienced the massive gains per capita income and average qualify life. On the eve of their experiment with social democratic authoritarianism in the mid 1960s, they were at the very top of global rankings in per capita income and quality life metrics. It wad the preceding 100 years of free market economics that got them there, not social democracy.
Not only has their rate of economic growth slowed since they raised their taxes, there is evidence that they’re losing the high-trust culture that made this model possible in the first place. They’re also losing the work ethic that was built over hundreds of years of hard labor in a cold climate.
More and more people are comfortable lying about being on sick leave, for example. That’s a measurable decline in work ethic. And you simply cannot sustain a high-tax welfare state without an unusually strong work ethic and high trust.
No reason why it would be cheaper in total, given the government workforce would inevitably unionize, leaving the taxpayer with very little bargaining power.
> Childcare is much cheaper in other countries, even relative to the lower earning potentials.
Cheaper, or more heavily subsidized? It's an important difference.
For the record: I'm not opposed to subsidies, and think the US need them in a lot more areas (and a lot more government involvement in the economy, in general).
It is both subsidized and cheaper but that word sort of implies parents (and especially non-parents) may be worse off in the end, which I think is an unfortunate way of thinking about these subsidies.
Given the cost of health and life insurance, unemployment insurance, paid vacation (4-6 weeks generally), healthcare (I once paid $32 for 5 weeks hospital care), paid parental leave, childcare, school and university, I am confident this more than makes up for the higher taxes. I believe people are calmer when the risk of living is low. No broken leg or depression will set us back financially, and if we have a few too many kids they can all go to college even if we don't earn much. And both parents can work (70% at least) while their kids go to daycare. This is at least an extra 5 years of salary compared to supporting a stay-at-home parent.
It might not be charming to brag about all our advantages, but as a European I really want e.g. Americans to know that there is another way. Life doesn't have to be about chasing money until you can afford to live.
I have so many thoughts on this from my own life experience. Latchkey kid, YMMV.
When I was a child, it was normal for neighborhood moms who didn't work to just watch kids for favors or a nominal fee. My memories are fuzzy, but I seem to mostly remember watching daytime TV soaps and eating PBJs probably more often than a child should.
Now that I'm older, I'm flabbergasted by regulations and costs for simple daycare. I've met numerous people who spend more on childcare than they make in a month. Not to sound trad anything, but that just doesn't make any financial sense to me.
I've no idea what the solution is. NM recently announced free child care, interested to see how that plays out. For everyone else... there's gotta be a saner solution.
In my kids' lives, I've spent about $160k on childcare. So crazy to think of how hard we've worked to not be with our kids. I'm going to guess my parents spent under $10k in all of my childhood, inflation adjusted.
This model doesn't really make good sense. On one hand, I'm glad my wife and I can have careers. On the other, I doubt I would care much if we lived in a society where we didn't need to so badly. $160k of childcare doesn't pay for itself.
That I don't know exactly if it's just one on one, as I've not read up on it when it's a more personal relationship.
I do know that my own wife, who was home all day watching just one child, was open to taking on more for free, but regulations around it made it way more of a headache than it was worth. There are laws about how many kids you can watch, how long you can watch them, licensing, child to adult ratios, state visits, etc.
Basically, if you wanted to be open to watching 5 kids for a working day, doing so would be illegal in every state I've lived in.
Every state has regulations and laws that at face value most people would agree with, but together end up in a system where you have to pay thousands per month for a facility to watch a child.
My wife had a very successful "farm school" in Mississippi by staying under the limit for required childcare licensing. At the time one could have six children (in addition to one's own) and not have to be a licensed childcare facility.
By the talk of "ratios", it sounds like it's fine if your kid's friend comes over every day, but if your kid's four friends come over every day you could get in trouble.
That's perfectly legal where I live, but... There are no friendly neighbours with that kind of time on their hands. My entire townhome complex of 34 units (ranging from 2–4 bedrooms each) has only one single elderly woman who's retired. Everyone else is young people in their 20s (working), or families with their own kids and—in all families but one—two working parents.
Probably only kicks in for paid providers. There would be all sorts of laws around safety (making sure the areas are child-proofed, no dangerous items (knives, guns, medicine), background checks, temperature maintenance, emergency plans, etc.).
Another way to look at that is one parent brings in 100% of their income, and when the second parent wants to get a job they have to sacrifice 14% of their pay to get childcare while they're away. That seems low to me.
Another way to analyze this is to look at how many children a single worker has to take care of to hit the same pay. If childcare for 2 kids is 14% of a salary, and salary is half the cost of running a daycare, then you need 29 kids per childcare employee?? How is that supposed to work?
Edit: And yes I'm aware subsidies can exist but this hits an area where the subsidies are so high that the 7% number still needs explanation.
For comparison, I live in a Scandinavian country where childcare is subsidised, and here a family with two kids living at the poverty limit spends 8% of their income on childcare.
The devil is in the details. The crux of the article is in these two lines:
> Across the U.S., the average annual cost of care for an infant and a 4-year-old is $28,190, according to Child Care Aware of America. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) considers child care affordable when it accounts for no more than 7% of a household’s income.
It’s been awhile, but the $28k number seems reasonable. It’s more expensive in different areas and the article goes into the numbers by state. But the part where it gets difficult to see is the 7% number. You only require $400k/year if you cap child care costs at 7%. When my kids were in daycare, it cost significantly more than 7% of our income.
With all due respect, why in the world does 28k sound like a reasonable number for care of a single child? That's more than many people make at a full time job.
An enterprising person, great with children, would see an opportunity to make 72k a year to watch three kids. And another might offer to do it for 60k, and so on.
Regulations prevent that, and kill the free market. Now everyone pays a crapton to some facility where the owner jumped through all the hoops to get certified, while hiring minimum wage people to care for the kids. Not that some aren't great, but is it really a better system?
Reality shows that the outcome are centers with a television on 24/7, or where kids are given drugs to sleep. That's not the exception but the rule. That's why inspections and licensing came in.
The longterm costs of that -- crime, mental health, etc. -- explain why subsidies make sense. Every rich country has universal public education for a good reason.
Market forces, as you point out, will drive your enterprising person making 72k out-of-business very quickly, and the market becomes a cesspool.
I didn’t mean that it was a reasonable cost, only a reasonable estimate of the cost.
Childcare in the US is way more expensive than it should be. The costs are also highly location dependent with the coasts being much more expensive than the Midwest etc…
Yes, you're right. I'd read the quote out of context and for whatever reason read it as "for either of these ages", but the preceding sentence clarifies it as two individual kids. Still absurd to me, but perhaps less so.
And taking care of an infant is extra hard. The laws where I live mandate twice as many workers per infant compared to 3-4 year olds, and three times as many compared to school age kids.
In every system from hunter-gather society, feudalism, socialism and capitalism you need to exchange your work for the products of the work of other people. No system will give you the ability to not work and get what you want.
The capitalism is the least bad one where there the correlation between "making something that people want" to the value you can keep to feed yourself.
The conditions for retirees relative to those still working in the USSR were fairly decent (by the end). But its not exactly fair since the demographic situation there was much better than it is now in most developed countries.
And then all capitalist countries in Europe these days (which coincidentally are all capitalist) generally have similar retirement systems to the US.
Where will these resources will came from if the capitalist system is the most productive of them all? You can't redistribute something out of nothing. You need a healthy tax base to redistribute.
Childcare is just too regulated and people don't want to do it and ask for a premium on childcare.
Retirement in socialist country? Or in China before the capitalism came there? Or in a feudal society where your children where your insurance in the old age?
Why don't you ask them "where will these resources will came from"? This isn't a hypothetical we're discussing, most of Europe has protected retirement.
The original commenter was saying something more like "we will work until we die, but that's okay, because capitalism is great! And it's not like you would get to retire under any other system anyway"
Not all capitalism is equal though. The overlap between socialism and capitalism is state capitalism, and it turns out if you want affordable childcare, healthcare, utilities, public transport, etc. then state capitalism is the way to go.
Read Milton Friedman on why this won't work. If you have seen any government run organization you'll see why.
Taxes can be levied on productive businesses that are in ruthless competition in the free and international market. No productive businesses = nothing to redistribute. No international business == no imports. Everybody is poor and hungry.
There is a difference between productive business and basic infrastructure. Just look at China, they have state capitalism with free market economy according to the 60/70/80/90 rule. The state capitalism covers most basic needs like utilities, healthcare, and public transport extremely efficiently.
The free market economy is ruthlessly efficient in the national and international market due to involution and strategic loans from state-owned banks.
Difference between the capitalism our parents had vs us. They had taxes on the rich. So they could afford homes and retire and never needed 3 jobs to scrape by. In fact one job was enough to afford a home and a family.
This is just painfully and obviously not the reason why childcare is so expensive now. Labor costs are higher these days (Baumol's cost disease), regulations have become more strict because we are more protective of our children, and multigenerational living has declined.
Taxing the rich is great but it's not gonna fix any of those.
Taxing the rich means that there are fewer people with absurd money, which means businesses won't have many customers at such high prices. It's like McDonalds charging $5 for a quarter of a potato. They're hoping that the lost sales from the poors at such a high price is made up by fewer high priced purchases by the rich.
If even the rich couldn't or didnt want to afford $5 quarter potatoes then they'd have to lower the price
Taxing the rich is not going to solve any of this. It may help some, but it's nothing like the panacea certain people pretend it is.
If we took all the assets from all the billionaires in the US, that total is something like $6-7 trillion if we pretend there's no asset price decrease in the selling of said assets.
Sounds like a lot, but we're nearly $40 trillion in debt. Taxing the rich heavily won't solve a spending problem.
The federal government specifically, and the admin class in general was a lot smaller during our parents' era.
The chart claims that you need to make over half a million dollars a year ($516k) to comfortably afford child care in Minnesota. I'm sorry, that is absolutely ridiculous.
I have 4 kids (all under 12) and make quite a bit less than $200k with me being the only provider in the home and although I wouldn't say we're exactly where I want to be financially I don't think that were completely bankrupt.
I am not in that market, but this seems implausible. My neighborhood is pretty prosperous, but I doubt that $400k/year is the standard. Yet kids do go off to daycare.
Yes, that’s the point they’re claiming: a median family cannot afford healthcare. Are there any figures in particular asserted by the article that you consider faulty, or merely the conclusion?
"Uh, excuse me. This ad for a payday loan company says the vast majority of households can't afford this thing that most households with children do, in fact, afford and pay for. Which figures do you dispute?"
Concluding something farcical and then asking people to debate it is silly and a waste of time. 400k is an extremely high household income. Childcare is a common expense for families with children. The claim that only extremely high income people can afford a common expense is wrong on its face and needs no further analysis.
When I was a young kid, my mother was a “stay at home mom”, which meant that she babysat the kids of 5 or 6 of the other families in our neighborhood where both parents worked. For me, it was a wonderful experience growing up having a ready-made group of close friends and my mother close at hand. It did mean that my mother effectively sacrificed her career (though she eventually went to work for my father as his office manager and was instrumental to his success), but I’m certain she was not charging $20k/yr/kid (or whatever the equivalent in 1980s dollars would be).
What Americans seem to only just now be waking up to is that lack of work/life balance, lack of family leave accommodations, and loss of community has a very real, very tangible dollar amount cost. I’m very, very tired of the knee-jerk response to every “socialist” proposal being, “yeah, that’s great, but how are you going to pay for it?”
How are you going to pay for not having family leave? How are you going to pay for not having universal healthcare? How are you going to pay for not having tuition-free college for all? These choices have a cost, and Americans are paying that cost every day!
Wow. My wife and I have 3 kids, all went to college.
At the time the first was born, we decided she’d stay home and be a full time mother. She coached them through school and ACT prep, which brought academic scholarships for all 3.
We have friends where the couple both stayed at work. Maybe they take nicer vacations than we do, some sent their kids to more expensive colleges. Oddly, I retired before anyone from that group. Some say they can’t afford to retire.
Trad wife worked out for us. My daughter has a career and is entering marriage age, I’m conflicted about that. I hate for her to leave her career behind, but that’s the path that worked for my wife and me.
Baumol's Law suggests the money spent on less automatable industries increases as the economy becomes more automated, so I question if the 7 percent figure is either realistic or achievable, given childcare is highly resistant to productivity gains through automation.
Moms often nurse past infancy, and once she's taken 18-24 months off work, it makes more sense for her to continue the pause.
On average, moms seem to derive more enjoyment from spending time with babies. I have some male friends who had almost zero desire to spend time with their babies/toddlers. I don't know many women who feel similarly (I'm sure there are some, just many fewer).
Don't you dads take any parental leave? Maybe that's why they don't find enjoyment from spending time with their kids. Kids and parents need time together to bond properly, regardless of gender.
And why would the mom even continue staying at home at all once the kids are past infancy? Just drop the kids off at daycare and go to work, have lunch with colleagues, do inspiring work (compared to doing laundry or sitting by the playground), plan your career, make some money, save for retirement. Most kids are fine playing and learning with other kids at daycare unless they get picked up too late. I don't get why having a kid and staying home means being doomed to take 5-10 years off work. Unless it's a money thing of course - I get that not everyone has the luxury of paid parental leave, basically free daycare, etc.
I'm guessing from your handle that you're not a mom, and I'm guessing from your comment that you haven't talked to many about what they want. Most mothers of young children do not want to work full time. They want to work part time, or not at all. Telling them that they should drop off their kids at daycare and go further their career is just tone deaf. Some women want to do that (and don't need to be told to), but the vast majority of women do not. They love their babies/toddlers very deeply, and they take immense pleasure from being with them, taking care of them, and imprinting on them. My wife has a superstar career, but she regrets every work trip, misses her little ones so much when she's gone, and always calls to facetime them while she's away. I don't know any dads who feel that way.
As for
> Don't you dads take any parental leave?
Yeah, I sure did. I spend tons of time with my kids. Some dads like doing this, but not nearly as many as moms.
> Maybe that's why they don't find enjoyment from spending time with their kids. Kids and parents need time together to bond properly, regardless of gender.
This misunderstands the order. For moms, the desire to be with their baby is present from day one. For some dads, it is not. For some dads, it does not ever come. They only want to spend time with their kids when they are no longer babies, or even toddlers. Mothers, on the other hand, tend to be much more maternal out of the gates. That's literally why the word "maternal" comes from the root word for mother.
To be sure, there are some women who are not maternal. Generally they do not have kids, and they do not pair up with men who want kids. That's why in almost every family, the woman is more maternal than the man (which is one of the reasons that when deciding who will take more parental leave, the mother is usually the one).
> I'm guessing from your handle that you're not a mom
Correct.
> I'm guessing from your comment that you haven't talked to many about what they want.
Wrong.
I think we live in different cultures, which is fine. But I reject your notion that the norms of the culture you live in is somehow the globally correct one, and that it's biologically true somehow. I'm Scandinavian and I acknowledge that we have been early adopters of a free thinking discussion of what gender roles could be. We have both a (male and female) feminist avantgarde and a strong conservative block, all taking part in this conversation. Almost no-one are saying that the biological mission of females are to spend so much time with their kids that it affects their abilities to pursue a career. We tend to celebrate those who overcome hardships and make something of themselves, whether it's becoming professional workers, becoming published authors, launching brands, pursuing higher eductation and taking part in the societal discourse, etc.
I talk to parents all the time. In the private workforce, in the public sector, members of churches, workers in academia, founders of companies, as well as young people hoping to become parents one day.
Everyone agrees that being a parent is difficult, and that time management is a huge problem. Most people acknowledge that they might not be able to work full-time when their kids are small, but most absolutely do. This goes for men and women. I've had very successful male entrepreneurs brag about how much time they spent with their kids off and on work, much like you would imagine a woman do.
The one outlier that I see are divorced women who especially struggle to find a way to combine being a parent when their former partner don't step up to the plate. They talk about this all the time, at work.
Men still generally suck at taking responsibility when their kids live with them 50% of the time. This goes for buying clothes, planning birthday parties, or
But we are engaging when it comes to school, sports and leisure activities. Most kids pop into their dad's offices all the time to do homework or wait for a ride. But this is becoming more and more rare. Most divorced dads I know seem to be quite on par with their wives. Though I guess they clean their windows less often and are generally late when planning the winter wardrobe.
> This misunderstands the order. For moms, the desire to be with their baby is present from day one. For some dads, it is not. For some dads, it does not ever come. They only want to spend time with their kids when they are no longer babies, or even toddlers. Mothers, on the other hand, tend to be much more maternal out of the gates.
The word here is "some". I agree with you. But this doesn't have to be the norm, just like dads being violent or alcoholics doesn't have to be the norm. We can acknowledge the work it will take to shift from a society of male drunks with a tendency to get into fights and not feeling a genuine bond with their kids, and aim for a society where these former norms are mostly history. Until there is a backlash of course, then we start again.
I would like us to agree that the norm has been for a very long time that mothers have been engaging with their kids far more than dads have. And also that society isn't static. It changes all the time. Some things are biological and many things are not, and we don't need to see past societal truths as hard rules that force us to live a certain way. I'm sure there is a biological factor that can be proven to nudge this behavior in a certain direction, but I don't believe this should be seen as proof that some norms in society affecting most of the population are static and should be left unquestioned.
> I'm sure there is a biological factor that can be proven to nudge this behavior in a certain direction, but I don't believe this should be seen as proof that some norms in society affecting most of the population are static and should be left unquestioned.
The notion that biology is merely a nudge in this context, especially when huge hormonal surges are at play (both at birth and with nursing) is just not accurate. There is a reason that in basically every culture in the world, for thousands upon thousands of years, mothers have been the primary nurturers.
Could it be different? Sure. But we should be mindful that there is a reason that societies have developed the way they have, and not set our sights on a "goal" of fathers spending as much time with kids as mothers. This ignores the reality that mothers are, on average, more inclined to nurture than fathers. We should not urge them back to work, nor should we pretend that fathers "should" be as nurturing as mothers. That is not in our nature, (on average) quite literally.
on the contrary, it makes less sense if you want women to get equal chance of a career at work. the likelihood of women staying at home reduces their chances at being promoted, causes them to get paid less, etc. the pay gap, which is supposed to disappear comes from this difference.
if you want to equalize this then you effectively need to force dads to stay at home for the same amount of time as moms, so that their careers are affected in the same way.[1]
of course this won't work without a massive change in culture. men have no interest in spending time with children because that's what they learned from their own parents.
i wanted to stay with my children, but when i did i hated it because i had no role model to draw on. i didn't know what to do with them.
my wife also wasn't very helpful with guidance.
interestingly this is worse in europe than it is in china. i see more men taking care of children in china. of course most of those are grandparents but at least they provide the needed role models. this correlates with more equality of women in the work place. (although it is still far from ideal)
[1]that then leaves the issue of childless people having a career advantage. if you want people to keep having children that advantage must be eliminated, hence making the case for child support for everyone. germany pays almost 300$ per child per month regardedless of income. and even that is not enough. stay at home parents should have their time count as worked for their pension, or they may need a full salary for example. i don't know what would really work here.
> men have no interest in spending time with children because that's what they learned from their own parents.
It sounds like this was the case for you, but it doesn't mean it is the case for other men. It isn't the case for the dads I know who didn't have an in being around their babies/toddlers. They simply did not have an interest.
> if you want to equalize this then you effectively need to force dads to stay at home for the same amount of time as moms, so that their careers are affected in the same way.
This is not possible in a country that values liberty. Even if you could somehow require parity between one parent and another (mom only gets as many weeks of leave as dad takes), you can't effect parity between one family and another. More families have SAHMs than SAHDs, which would disrupt any attempt at parity at a societal level.
Bottom line though, is that moms simply are more maternal than dads. We literally have a word for it, and it's related to being a mother. There is a reason, and it's not all/mostly cultural. It is one of the most genetically-imbued aspects of our beings as humans. Mothers are the predominant nurturers in humans, as in nearly all mammal/animal species.
You can fight against it, but biological reality will not easily be defeated.
It sounds like this was the case for you, but it doesn't mean it is the case for other men. It isn't the case for the dads I know who didn't have an in being around their babies/toddlers. They simply did not have an interest.
i don't understand how you see a contradiction here. you are observing that men have no interest in childcare, and i am explaining why.
it's a lack of role models.
unless your friends did have fathers who had in interest in child care but your friends had no interest despite that.
the problem with nurture vs nature is that it is difficult to prove one way or the other. beyond pregnancy and breastfeeding everything else can be learned. and it's difficult to prove that it isn't
According to your line of thinking, anything that results from nature can be attributed to nurture because "we can't prove 100% that it isn't nurture". This is a terrific example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
Secondly, even your description of your own experience undermines your theory. You say you didn't know what to do with your kids, so you didn't want to spend as much time with them. That is different from what I said my dad-friends have expressed, which is lack of interest that is not related to not knowing what to do with them. They just don't have an interest in being with a baby/toddler. Their experience is not yours, but you try to twist it to fit your narrative.
In general, it makes sense to be open-minded about how others' internal states, perceptions, etc. When someone says they don't have the same reason for doing something that you do, maybe don't tell them that yes they do. This is good general practice, but it's especially important for personal and perceptual matters, where outsiders literally have no idea why someone is doing something.
According to your line of thinking, anything that results from nature can be attributed to nurture because "we can't prove 100% that it isn't nurture". This is a terrific example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
all correct. but the reverse is true too. you can't prove that any of it is nature.
both are beliefs. the reason why i side for nurture is because nature is used as an excuse to defend bad behavior or to discriminate. i have written about this before.
"men should not be teachers because they can not be trusted with our children" or "men should not be single parents because they don't have the capacity to care for children" or "he could not help raping her. her clothing provoked him, and he could not control himself"
the teacher comment was shared by someone in new zealand, the single parent one is common in germany and i believe in the US and many other place too. the last one has been used as a defense before. discrimination and excuses. fortunately much of that is no longer accepted. but only because we accept that nurture matters more than nature.
but we aren't animals. as humans we are not bound to our instinct. we have the capacity to overcome our nature. of course not everything is learned. breathing for example, but heck even properly latching on to a breast is learned, whereas for many mammals it is instinct. so using animals here as example is not evidence.
the point is that nurture is stronger than nature and every human behavior can be learned and override any instinct. what i am trying to say is that while by nature mothers may be more nurturing, males can learn to be just as nurturing and therefore the advantage women may have in nurturing is small enough as to be insignificant.
the only natural advantage is that the mother by default has more contact with the mother though pregnancy and breastfeeding. but take an adopted baby by a childless couple, and even that advantage disappears.
what remains is the raw difference between man and woman, most of which is governed by learned behavior, and not by nature. whether that can be proven or not is another question that we already addressed.
you are ignoring that even among animals, and mammals specifically the amount of nurture vs nature varies a lot. some animals, especially those who are prey, are born with the capacity to run. others are born blind or weak and need more nurturing before they can get around on their own.
but no matter which animal you look at, none of them spend nearly two decades or more in training their children before letting them go off into the world. (ok, the orang utan comes close with 8-12 years, but that includes everything they ever have to learn for their life before they go off to live on their own, unlike humans who don't stop learning from their parents until they have children of their own)
how can you even argue that the influence of nature on humans is comparable to any animal in the world? regardless of the classification of humans
My wife is MUCH more nurturing, than I am. I'm glad she is taking on the role of caring for our children full-time. She is also homeschooling 2 of our kids at 3 and 4, and "has her finger on the pulse of our children's lives" as I like to say. I don't think she'd be able to do that with a full-time job, and I definitely wouldn't do as good a job as her. Also, if she had a full time job, she would still feel the drive to take on household and family tasks that would fall to the wayside if I were in charge of them, and frankly find herself overloaded. It's working well for us to fall into traditional roles.
I believe it can be pretty high, but $400,000 seems utterly ridiculous to me. You spend $100K per year per kid just for child care? You can hire a live-in nanny for that amount of money.
Most families are in poverty with regards to childcare, they just don't realize it.
Sure you could keep a child alive on less, but to "raise" one involves a host of social social capital, enrichment, and cultural integration. Child care is ridiculously expensive because most attention is captured by frivolities (and companies abusing child labor).
Say you spend 10K a year on food, school supplies and some sport, unless your child becomes a scholar or athlete you have failed to raise them. You might have prevented obesity and built some amount of discipline, but you've prevented them from making connections outside school/sports. Do you think hiring a nanny would, over time, go most of the way towards raising your children? If so then $400,000 isn't ridiculous, if not then shouldn't it be higher?
Unfortunately more than 99% of children in America are chronically undervalued, parents have overly cynical beliefs about their children starting from ages even earlier than 4. By the time a child sees any real investment they are likely to just give it straight to the mag7
Is this some American bullshit thing? There is no way that’s true in normal countries… here in a different part of northern hemisphere, we pay $100 usd per month 11 months a year…
first column is public or private, second is age, then lowest cost vs highest cost, and finally average.
highest overall is 18000€ per year for private childcare institutions for 1-2 year olds. thats more than 21000USD.
and that may still be subsidized and not include meals. it is also usually income dependent. so it's not american bullshit. what it is however is american lack for child support. the joke in germany on the other hand is that you need to apply for a space years in advance. possibly even before you are pregnant.
You're moving the goalposts. A child's own mother will always provide cheaper and higher quality childcare than a disinterested third party, regardless of the sorry state of our economy.
Cheaper is very much not true if you value time. Devoting the entire workday of an adult to 1-3 children is a huge cost, much more expensive than having one adult handle 6-10 children.
And "higher quality" isn't guaranteed at all. Even with daycare the children are with their parents most of the time, and meeting up with other kids and a trained caregiver during weekdays has a lot of good effects.
God forbid men abandoned their families (children, wives) for selfish reasons. But they still do. It is not cool to be a single mother without a career, because you wanted women to be housewives by profession.
Those are mental gymnastics to justify extinction. There is nothing mysoginistic about the human reproductive and child rearing process that every generation of humans has followed from the dawn of our species up until about 20 years ago.
Childcare is much cheaper in other countries, even relative to the lower earning potentials.
Canada for example is working towards $10/child/day childcare https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/campa...