I am a woman and I feel disadvantaged compared to men in two ways when it comes to family life:
1) TIME LIMITATION: I need to finish the child-having process by age 36 or so. I want to have a large family, so to have 5 kids, I should start at 28, one kid/2 years. Tracing back, that means I should get married at 27 and find "the one" at ~26. The upper limit of ages to have kids is greater for men, by a decade.
2) ASYMMETRY IN NUMBER OF POTENTIAL PARTNERS: Say, I decide to have a smaller family with 2-3 kids - that would mean I could get married at 33-34 and still be in my productive zone. Well who am I going to potentially marry when I am 33: guys who are 32+ who are not married. Who will unmarried guys 32+ marry: women ages 24 and above. It's not a self-imposed limitation - I might be fine dating 24 year old guys, but would a 24 year old guy date a 33 year old woman, with the intention to get married if all goes well? I doubt it.
So small family or large family, I need to get married by age 27, where I have the maximum number of options to find my soul mate from. Men can get married at 37 and still have many options in choosing their partners.
And the extra decade without family responsibilities without limiting your options for spouses, I would argue, is the biggest differentiator in the workplace successes.
I am a woman and I feel disadvantaged compared to men in two ways when it comes to family life:
Just a completely ridiculous attitude and an example of the article.
Very few men, especially in this day and age" get to say "I want to have 5 kids" or "let's stop at 2 kids" or "I do not want to be a parent".
You are not disadvantaged compared to men in this way, you are incredibly advantaged. Literally have authority over this in a zillion ways men do not.
And the extra decade without family responsibilities without limiting your options for spouses, I would argue, is the biggest differentiator in the workplace successes.
And that's the reason for the article. Women have been told they can have it all: 5 kids and workplace success.
What? Do you only engage in relationships where you're stepped on?
Plenty of men I know have the conversation about how many kids to have or not have. Yes, biologically women do the child-bearing, but it is -- for most couples -- a conversation, a joint decision. Like deciding whether to move to Florida or take care of the aging parents or which career to prioritize.
As is so often true of the poor-me-I'm-a-disadvantaged-man crowd, it sounds like you are choosing to associate with unpleasant people. Respect yourself, and find someone who respects you. Sounds like it would be a nice change.
I am a male and I feel disadvantaged compared to females.
My average life expectancy in the United States is 75.35 years. Female life expectancy is 80.51 years. I can expect to miss out on over 5 years of life as compared to females. This would be the time I would expect to spend as a grandparent. It means I will miss out on a significant portion of my grandchildren's lives. I will probably not see my great grandchildren. Additionally, because of this life expectancy issue I never met one of my grandfather's. The second was experiencing late stage dementia by the time I was old enough to communicate with him. Thus, as a male child I never was able to share the experience or gain examples that female children had with their grandmother's.
It seems to me that commenting on how many kids somebody wants to have is incredibly rude. That's their business, not yours.
I think that history will show that you're on the wrong side of this debate; we should be encouraging good parents to have more children, not less. We're facing a demographic crisis, her kids are going to help maintain the social safety net during your retirement.
And adoption is not a panacea: just ask anyone who's trying to adopt children on just how hard it is.
It was utterly rude and a bad way to treat any commenter, but especially a new one who was trying to add something very valuable—a fresh perspective—to this site. If I were anxx and that were my first impression of HN, I'd think [something that probably shouldn't be printed here] and just go away.
Edit after quick glance at comment history: luckily this isn't anxx's first impression of HN, and hopefully she'll be sticking around.
Hey everyone! Thanks for the concerns, I am a new commenter, but like <<gruseom>> hinted, I have been reading HN for years, so this is not my first impression of the community. I also come from a culture where "gee why aren't you married yet" or "why don't you make more kids" are considered "safe" questions to ask to people, so the deleted-but-quoted comment was not offensive to me (but having also lived in the US, I understand that it could have been).
Anyway, just to reply to some of the comments: I mentioned the # of kids to present some reasoning behind the biological limitation to get married at 27. But kids and family are still fairly distant in the future for me, so it can change, I recognize that (i.e. haven't totally boxed myself in).
But let's even look at the more interesting side: men who want families have the OPTION of staying single well into their thirties without limiting the number of people who they could statistically find a match from. A 35 year old man has many more potential marriage partners than a 35 year old woman. And I think that is not going to change until it is as common for a 35 year old woman to date and marry a 5+ years younger man as it is for the reverse case.
I should mention that I am super open minded about these things - I am just observing some realities around me, not commenting on whether they are good or bad.
I think you have a valid point, but my experience is that it is not nearly as rosy a picture for men.
Most women I came across while dating in my early thirties were not open to the idea of a 5+ year difference. Many women in their mid-twenties consider 30 a magical number that some how makes you "too old". Less then four years of age difference seems to be more along the norm that women looked for. I've seen articles that confirm that as well.
That said, it is true that the exceptions for age difference favor men over women. Not sure what could be done to change that, but having a realistic expectation and timeline of your goal will go a lot further to it success then anything else. You realize you may have to hedge your bets to make it happen. Unfortunately many women will not pay attention to that fact until it is too late to make that choice.
I'm glad you were not offended. One thing, I'm 35 and were I not married I cringe at the thought of dating most 24yr old women. I'll say that in the personal cases of older women that married younger men I know, the men had finished school, had a stable career, got a house, and just got fed-up with all the drama of dating women near their age. But again, sample size may be too small.
> In regards to having 5 kids yourself - please reconsider this. If you do want a large family, rather consider adopting a few to round out your natural child birth. Society could do well with more good parents and a few less unwanted children.
I'm horribly offended you would say such a thing to someone directly. It's not your body, it's not your business, and it's silly to assume she hasn't already considered something like this.
It is not a body and personal choices that is under the question, it is sheer number of people and problems it carries. That does make it everybody's business and easily allows for disapproving statements if nothing else. Population density is a problem for the environment and eventually for people themselves, lowering average quality of life both due to deteriorated environment and strain on resources.
The strategy of relying on expansive growth to support the social net is easy, but ultimately unsustainable (not that I have better ideas though).
Naturally overpopulation is controlled by famines and diseases, technology just moves the mark, it doesn't eliminate it yet (there are still famines around). So everything will work out in the end, but it might be rather unpleasant.
Your comment makes talking about population control feel like a taboo (I'm not sure, is it normally considered as such?), and at first one might oppose it on the same principle one would oppose regular bigotry-of-the-day (homophobia, xenophobia and what have you). I think it should be treated instead akin to telling people they can't just dump industrial waste into a river even if the river is on their own property (for a lack of better example...).
Population taboo isn't the problem. The problem is pleading and attempting to dictate to a person what they should and shouldn't do with their personal life. Considering the USA has actually had the fertility rate drop below replacement levels recently, I think it's a bit silly to tell someone to actually have less babies, and at the same time suggest adoption as a (more costly) alternative.
I'd sincerely suggest you reconsider looking into adjusting the quality of life in countries where high birth rate is actually a problem before telling someone how many babies they should or shouldn't have in a country with a fertility rate below replacement levels.
In a world of scarce resources, frankly it is all of our business. The taboo of openly discussing how many kids one chooses to have should be done away with.
FWIW the vast majority of my friends married in the 20-28 yr old range, as did I. I don't see it as much of a time limit practically really. The ones that married later, I don't know if the sample is large enough at that point, but they all had careers that had them moving from one city to another, so maybe avoid that so that you can stay in one place long enough to make meaningful connections I recommend.
For your second point, yes there is an asymmetry, but I say it's more that the vast majority of everybody I know, their spouse is +/-2yr of their age. I know more couples where the wife is at least five yrs older than the husband than the other way, though the men were in their late twenties when they married. Again the sample size may be too small to draw conclusions from.
> FWIW the vast majority of my friends married in the 20-28 yr old range, as did I. I don't see it as much of a time limit practically really.
There's another angle on this issue. Evidence is accumulating that the reported big increase in autism-spectrum disorders is correlated with late marriage. No one knows why, so it's only a correlation at this point, but it's pretty reliable -- late marriage and late childbearing equals more autism disorders.
Quote: "In unadjusted analyses, both mean maternal age and mean paternal age were significantly higher for ASD cases than for the birth cohort as a whole."
Don't take this in the wrong way, but if spend a lot of time thinking about how unfair things are when there is nothing you can do about it, its going to cause a lot of unnecessary stress in your life.
I think its better to acknowledge the limitations of life and do the best you can.
She's speaking theoretically. But it's the cold fact for women: have kids before you're 40 and disrupt your career (if you're going for an intensive career where goals must be met) or don't have (your own) kids. I'm a woman and whatever way I look at it, it sums up to that.
I'm a man, and I have observed a similar situation ("disrupt your career") holds if I take into account my own vision of how I want to raise my kid. I have had to make some re-adjustments, compromises, changes to the objective function of my life. And that's OK.
If I didn't want to deal with difficult-to-foresee, potentially life-altering consequences of factors outside my control, probably having a kid would not be a good idea.
This is serious stuff, but I don't understand the sense of gloom that seems to pervade these choices, which are, after all, rather joyful in both cases ("fully-realized and consequential career" vs. "parent of a child"). Is it the pain of saying goodbye to a version of yourself that will never be actualized? What about the version that will be?
That's a really good comment you make, and in the exact spirit to the article. She's right - you do have to just decide not to 'play the game'. We, as a society, can make a difference here by hiring parents with young children or ready to have families, being generous where we can, and making time flexible. The issue at hand really only applies to the status quo which we know can topple at any moment given the right circumstances.
"Let's say gravity suddenly shifted a little making everyone a little bit lighter. It would likely make the news circuit for a while and make movers and other professional lifters particularly happy. But after the scientists had explained again and again why it happened and all the potential story lines had been exhausted by newspapers and television pundits, religious zealots and idle conversationalists (“How about that gravity?”), we would accept it, perhaps with a individual joy all our own.
Which is to say, even though a slight shift in gravity on Earth literally changes everything on our home planet, after awhile we’d adjust. Occasionally we might think back to the days before gravity changed with wonder and even nostalgia, but we’d know that everything being lighter is just better on one of those annoyingly and truistically difficult-to-communicate levels and continue with the practice of everyday life, with appropriate changes to this new state of lightness.
Yep. And if you have kids and disrupt the career you're an argument for why women shouldn't be paid as much or selected for the leadership track and if you don't have kids you'll still be judged as if you could pop one out at any moment (and so be paid less and not selected for the leadership track).
It is kind of odd to work for something for years and then feel like you're pouring gasoline all over it and throwing a match: that's how I feel about my career and its collision-to-come with kids. It sucks. Oh well.
1) TIME LIMITATION: I need to finish the child-having process by age 36 or so. I want to have a large family, so to have 5 kids, I should start at 28, one kid/2 years. Tracing back, that means I should get married at 27 and find "the one" at ~26. The upper limit of ages to have kids is greater for men, by a decade.
2) ASYMMETRY IN NUMBER OF POTENTIAL PARTNERS: Say, I decide to have a smaller family with 2-3 kids - that would mean I could get married at 33-34 and still be in my productive zone. Well who am I going to potentially marry when I am 33: guys who are 32+ who are not married. Who will unmarried guys 32+ marry: women ages 24 and above. It's not a self-imposed limitation - I might be fine dating 24 year old guys, but would a 24 year old guy date a 33 year old woman, with the intention to get married if all goes well? I doubt it.
So small family or large family, I need to get married by age 27, where I have the maximum number of options to find my soul mate from. Men can get married at 37 and still have many options in choosing their partners.
And the extra decade without family responsibilities without limiting your options for spouses, I would argue, is the biggest differentiator in the workplace successes.