Sex differences regarding economics

Starting a thread to reply to Jordan going off-topic from personality differences in "Gender..."

Liberals like to go on and on about "choice". But if you give mothers choices, many will make wrong choices for convenience.

Why did you ignore what I wrote about women's work before the Industrial Revolution being good and proper, as it was organized to be compatible with childcare?

The problem is that the modern ruling class (haute bourgeoisie) want women in their offices and factories, yet the children out of sight and out of mind. The separation is novel and unjust.

I ignored it because it's not much of an answer. Sounds like you are saying that it was ok for women to be employed in the past, when they were doing agricultural work, but that it's not ok now. And for that matter, children obviously don't stay babies forever, so I'm not sure how that detail is the end all be all of the question of women being able to work.

And if you are opposed to any kind of laws that would have employers have child-protective policies, then the short answer is that you don't want women to work (unless they are working in the fields with a baby at their breasts).

Edit- if you do favor pro-child raising employment policies, then I am in agreement with you there.

edited 30th Mar '11 11:46:11 AM by Jordan

What's not okay is for a woman to harm her children by making her employer her first priority. "A fulfilling career" being treated as life's highest goal is obscurantism that benefits no one but employers.

What do you mean by "child-protective policies"? Daycare, or employees being able to keep their children with them as they work? The first is bad, the second would be a great improvement on the system.

edited 30th Mar '11 11:53:58 AM by Rottweiler

While I can agree with children in a modern society needing more attention from their parents, I would not suggest tying down the mother. I'd more of advocate that the two parents decide the one that'll be doing the raising or split the workload between the two if job scheduling allows it. In this way, if the father is going to be doing the primary child raising, the mother can work for the household income.

As far as breast feeding is concerned, it is possible for the woman to store is breast milk for the father to use at any time.

Applies equally to all humans.

1. You're assuming that the proper role of women is to produce, and then to raise, children.
2. What the heck is "haute bourgeoisie"?

1. Apart from the pregnancy period, men can also care for children. How about having daddy take on some responsibilities?
2. What the heck is obscurantism?
3. What's wrong with people wanting a fulfilling career more than anything else? Note: This is not a rhetorical question.

Rottweiler, mothers don't always have a choice not to work. Sometimes it is because they are single, which I know causes you to have apoplectic fits, but many married women have to contribute income to their households in order for said households to stay afloat. The pressure needs to be on employers to acknowledge the realities of their employees' lives, not on parents who are making the best choices they can given their circumstances.

Also, don't knock daycare. As far as the child is concerned, there's no difference between spending every weekday at Grandma's and spending it at Miss Chrissy's, except that Miss Chrissy is guaranteed to be CPR certified and there are also a handful of playmates at her place.

@Usht: The refrigerator manufacturers praise your commitment to equality, I'm sure.

So much simpler to say "feeding babies is women's work."

Maternity leave.

@Kara:

Pretty sure it's not the employer's problem unless that employer is desperate for workers. See, why both pay someone to work for you if you can get someone else who's better for the same wage. Keep in mind that in a free enterprise, employers are not lawfully bound to give such benefits. There are some benefits that an employer much have for employees, but not that many.

@Rott

The refrigerator statement was supposed to mean what again? And I don't care what you say, it's quite possible for a household to have a mother who's more capable of holding a higher end job than the father.

EDIT: Okay, got it. In which, I'm pretty sure most middle class couples have a refrigerator by the time they have a kid anyway.

edited 30th Mar '11 12:12:17 PM by Usht

It's not just single mothers. Both my spouse and I will HAVE to have steady jobs before we even think about having kids. At that point, we intend to split the responsibilities of raising and caring for them, like normal human beings would do. Ideally we'd like for one of us to spend as much time as possible with them, especially when they're very young, but we don't live in an ideal world. So we make do.

In the end, what more do you expect from people?

...who buys refrigerators to store breast milk?

For some reason, typing that made this come to my mind. /offtopic

Daycares also tend to be rather impotent when it comes to discipline because the general standpoint is that that's the parents' job and nobody else's, even if they're there in the first place because the parents can't be around to do it themselves.

Yeah, Daycare children I've met are generally louder, more obnoxious, and misbehave more often than kids raised by one or two of their parents. Can't say I have a link to a study on it though.

Here you go. From what I gather, the overreactive teachers do nothing to combat misbehavior, and the lax ones actively make it worse. I'll be reading it more closely during my next class.

edited 30th Mar '11 12:50:06 PM by Pykrete

"Pretty sure it's not the employer's problem unless that employer is desperate for workers. See, why both pay someone to work for you if you can get someone else who's better for the same wage. Keep in mind that in a free enterprise, employers are not lawfully bound to give such benefits."

Because we should live in a society in which the superstructure supports the quality of human life, not in one in which human life senselessly supports the superstructure.

It is illegal for an employer to let go off a female employee because of pregnancy, and in many countries is legally mandated to provide them with maternity leaves.

Got it in one.

And yet it's not illegal at all to let someone go for "totally unrelated" reasons, much like they do with unions.

Try laying off a pregnant woman for "totally unrelated reasons" and see how long before a lawsuit hits you.

Of course, maternity leaves are one of those required benefits, but constantly paying for the mother while she works less hours because she needs to raise her kid (especially after that kid reaches a few years in age) would be dumb since there's someone else who can do more work for the same pay. It's from a practical view point for the employer.

^^ You mean like union members do all the time and only sometimes win?

Between both of my parents, they've worked a grand total of two jobs where the HR department was actually in contact with the employees, much less had an "attachment" to them. One of them was self-employment.

edited 30th Mar '11 12:54:03 PM by Pykrete

Hiring and retraining is surprisingly expensive. And on the off-chance that the employer is a human being with some sort of attachment to his workers, he'll be glad to bear the brunt for a month or so.

^ I'd sure like some statistics, since what I've heard from people in unions contradicts that.

edited 30th Mar '11 12:53:10 PM by kashchei

@GMH:

Yeah, women are mammals like that.

The class of people who have lots of capital as private property. See also petit bourgeoisie, the small proprietors.

Some days I miss Tribune.

What do I look like, a penguin? Mammalian biology imposes certain natural duties toward our children on us.

Ideas that obscure the true nature of things, to the advantage of the rulers.

Some days I miss Tribune.

Because that's making serving your employer your highest priority.

edited 30th Mar '11 12:58:24 PM by Rottweiler

That is rich coming from someone who indiscriminately supports traditions for no other reason than that they are traditions, and who favors a lot of specific customs that—if history teaches us anything—are all but guaranteed to prop up various institutions at the cost of much human life and happiness.

Rott, if you haven't noticed, evolution not only instills us with habits but also gives us the ability to grow out of those habits. We're living in a society where one parents doesn't necessarily need to be "strong" in the traditional sense. Thus, either parent can do the child raising without causing severe problems.

edited 30th Mar '11 8:29:14 PM by Usht

Madame, I think you have misunderstood my views on that subject!