Study: Traditional Men Earn the Most

[Darth Wong]

So for the record, your argument can essentially be summarised as this:

"If everyone wanted to specialise according to traditional gender roles, everyone would be better off if they specialised according to traditional gender roles."

That's a bit like me saying "If the sky were red, it would be red".

Wrong. It's like saying "if you're willing to do it, you'll probably be better off." Your reading incomprehension is not my problem.

If your claim was really that limited, firstly, why did you bother posting it at all, and secondly, why did you preface it with "throwing out PC" and admit that your position was sexist? How is the position you're claiming now sexist?

It's sexist because women are frankly better at the mothering job than men. But please, go ahead and pretend that millions of years of evolution don't mean anything, all in the name of political doctrine.

Like it or not, the "dual-income for everyone" model is not beneficial for society as a whole. It works fine once the kids are older, but in the early childhood years, it's a fucking disaster. I don't need to try and force change on other people in order to say that it's not beneficial for society.

This seems like a further weakening of your claim, but in any case, some of the evidence I presented indicates that dropping out of the workforce once having kids increases psychological distress in women, while staying in the workforce after having a child does not. That doesnt tell us much about how it is for the kids, but it does indicate that it's a mixed bag at best.

Raising kids is hard work. I'm not surprised that many women find their stress levels to go up when they do it. But I was talking about overall benefit for society, not "will it make you happy to abandon your child so you can afford better vacations". What part of the word "society" do you not comprehend? It's more stressful to have kids at all than to remain childless, yet most people have kids.

[Diomedes]

So for the record, your argument can essentially be summarised as this:

"If everyone wanted to specialise according to traditional gender roles, everyone would be better off if they specialised according to traditional gender roles."

That's a bit like me saying "If the sky were red, it would be red".

Wrong. It's like saying "if you're willing to do it, you'll probably be better off." Your reading incomprehension is not my problem.

So it's more "If a particular couple is willing to do it, that family will probably be better off"?

The thing is, every couple who does do that is ultimately willing, otherwise they wouldnt be doing it. And when we look at that group for trends, we find all sorts of negative correlations in marriage satisfaction and stability and so on.

If your claim was really that limited, firstly, why did you bother posting it at all, and secondly, why did you preface it with "throwing out PC" and admit that your position was sexist? How is the position you're claiming now sexist?

It's sexist because women are frankly better at the mothering job than men. But please, go ahead and pretend that millions of years of evolution don't mean anything, all in the name of political doctrine.

Frankly, attitudes like yours are insulting and demeaning to all stay-at-home fathers. With no evidence whatsoever, you assume that a stay-at-home father is inadequate or ill-prepared, doing a job that he's ill-suited for and will necessarily be inferior to a woman.

I'm willing to admit that women are more likely to be better at the "mothering job" than men, but I'd argue that there are plenty of men who would do the job perfectly well. Are you willing to admit that, even though there are exceptions, relationships conforming to traditional gender roles are more likely to be unhappy, unstable, and feature reduced sexual satisfaction?

This seems like a further weakening of your claim, but in any case, some of the evidence I presented indicates that dropping out of the workforce once having kids increases psychological distress in women, while staying in the workforce after having a child does not. That doesnt tell us much about how it is for the kids, but it does indicate that it's a mixed bag at best.

Raising kids is hard work. I'm not surprised that many women find their stress levels to go up when they do it. But I was talking about overall benefit for society, not "will it make you happy to abandon your child so you can afford better vacations". What part of the word "society" do you not comprehend?

I think I comprehend it better than you do, because I'm looking at a bigger picture that includes marital stability and satisfaction, which, if sacrificed in the name of traditional marriage might lead to worse consequences such as divorce - and there's plenty of research on the detrimental effect of divorce on children.

Actually, now that I think about it, I've just been blindly accepting that it's better for the kids if a parent stays home. If that's a part of your argument, you should probably present some evidence for it.

[Lusankya]

Frankly, attitudes like yours are insulting and demeaning to all stay-at-home fathers. With no evidence whatsoever, you assume that a stay-at-home father is inadequate or ill-prepared, doing a job that he's ill-suited for and will necessarily be inferior to a woman.

Since when can stay-at-home fathers reliably provide breastmilk for a baby in the first year? What? Never? I wonder if there are any advantages to breastfeeding?

There we go! Proof that a stay-at-home father is doing a job that he's ill-suited for and is necessarily inferior to a woman.

[Darth Wong]

So it's more "If a particular couple is willing to do it, that family will probably be better off"?

That's what I said in the first place. It's not my fault that you've got your ideological back up and are running around claiming that you can't understand a simple statement that even "18-Till-I-Die" could figure out without assistance.

The thing is, every couple who does do that is ultimately willing, otherwise they wouldnt be doing it. And when we look at that group for trends, we find all sorts of negative correlations in marriage satisfaction and stability and so on.

You're not bothering to control for other factors, such as couples in which this is not really a mutual un-coerced decision.

Frankly, attitudes like yours are insulting and demeaning to all stay-at-home fathers. With no evidence whatsoever, you assume that a stay-at-home father is inadequate or ill-prepared, doing a job that he's ill-suited for and will necessarily be inferior to a woman.

That's how generalizations work. They don't have to be 100% perfect, any more than the statement "Americans are capitalists" must be 100% perfect before you can say it.

I'm willing to admit that women are more likely to be better at the "mothering job" than men, but I'd argue that there are plenty of men who would do the job perfectly well. Are you willing to admit that, even though there are exceptions, relationships conforming to traditional gender roles are more likely to be unhappy, unstable, and feature reduced sexual satisfaction?

Wow, you figured out that there are exceptions to every rule. Somebody stop the presses! Inform the public! The people have a right to know!

I think I comprehend it better than you do, because I'm looking at a bigger picture that includes marital stability and satisfaction, which, if sacrificed in the name of traditional marriage might lead to worse consequences such as divorce - and there's plenty of research on the detrimental effect of divorce on children.

Again, you are:

1) Ignoring the effect of uncontrolled variables
2) Assuming that elevated stress means people wish they hadn't made the choice and that their life satisfaction has gone down (even though all parents have elevated stress compared to non-parents, even though almost none of them would change their decision and all of them would say that their lives are more complete with kids).

Actually, now that I think about it, I've just been blindly accepting that it's better for the kids if a parent stays home. If that's a part of your argument, you should probably present some evidence for it.

Hmm, my wife breast-fed both our children ...

Anyway, my original argument was simply that specialized division of labour works better: a fact that has been borne out in every other field of human endeavour. The bit about gender-specific abilities was due to your challenge that I explain how my position might be interpreted as sexist. But please, feel free to attempt to change the subject. You're clearly desperate to claim some sort of victory here.

[Diomedes]

Since when can stay-at-home fathers reliably provide breastmilk for a baby in the first year? What? Never? I wonder if there are any advantages to breastfeeding?

There we go! Proof that a stay-at-home father is doing a job that he's ill-suited for and is necessarily inferior to a woman.

That assumes that the working mother isnt able to store breast milk for the father to feed the child, and breastfeed the child during off-work hours. And there's no indication that I can see that a combinaiton of formula and breast milk will result in the child missing out on the benefits of breast milk.

[Singular Intellect]

Since when can stay-at-home fathers reliably provide breastmilk for a baby in the first year? What? Never? I wonder if there are any advantages to breastfeeding?

There we go! Proof that a stay-at-home father is doing a job that he's ill-suited for and is necessarily inferior to a woman.

That assumes that the working mother isnt able to store breast milk for the father to feed the child, and breastfeed the child during off-work hours. And there's no indication that I can see that a combinaiton of formula and breast milk will result in the child missing out on the benefits of breast milk.

Translation: A man can take care of a child just as well as a woman as long as the woman helps him!

[Cairber]

Since when can stay-at-home fathers reliably provide breastmilk for a baby in the first year? What? Never? I wonder if there are any advantages to breastfeeding?

There we go! Proof that a stay-at-home father is doing a job that he's ill-suited for and is necessarily inferior to a woman.

That assumes that the working mother isnt able to store breast milk for the father to feed the child, and breastfeed the child during off-work hours. And there's no indication that I can see that a combinaiton of formula and breast milk will result in the child missing out on the benefits of breast milk.

Stored/Expressed breastmilk, while definitely superior to formula, loses some nutritional value and a lot of immune properties. Breastmilk changes all the time; it carries the immunities needed for that particular time.

I see this a lot in my own experiences. A cold will sweep through the house but the baby won't get it. She is protected by the immunities in my milk, which would be lost during storage.

you can read a little about this here:

article on this

There is also the issue of hormone exchange between the child and the mother as well as the stress of pumping to consider (and ability to pump in the workplace)



Also, as a stay at home mom, I would like to add that it takes me more than a day to clean with everything else that's going on

[Diomedes]

So it's more "If a particular couple is willing to do it, that family will probably be better off"?

That's what I said in the first place. It's not my fault that you've got your ideological back up and are running around claiming that you can't understand a simple statement that even "18-Till-I-Die" could figure out without assistance.

Yeah, your argument must be really strong if 18-Till-I-Die is backing you up

I dont think you've got any credibility arguing that your original claim was unamgibuous, it's there for people to read. You basically start off by saying "Look everyone, I'm going to make a big controversial claim!", then start talking about "everyone", and moderating the claim only with "if the woman hates that role, then some accomodation should be made", the weakness of which tends to indicate that you think that most of the time, and unless she's extremely adverse to the mothering role, everyone would be better off adopting traditional roles.

You've got very reasonable and intelligent people such as Spin Echo and Spyder who have taken your argument in similar ways to how I interpreted it, and have explained why and how. For you to claim that the weaker argument you're now backing was your intention all along and anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid can only be dishonesty on your part.

The thing is, every couple who does do that is ultimately willing, otherwise they wouldnt be doing it. And when we look at that group for trends, we find all sorts of negative correlations in marriage satisfaction and stability and so on.

You're not bothering to control for other factors, such as couples in which this is not really a mutual un-coerced decision.

Do you notice how you've gone from talking in fairly general or even universal terms like "everyone", or referring to evolutionary specialisations on gender-wide bases to now claim that you're referring to only the small minority of couples who come to truly uncoerced mutual decisions to adopt traditional gender roles?

Frankly, attitudes like yours are insulting and demeaning to all stay-at-home fathers. With no evidence whatsoever, you assume that a stay-at-home father is inadequate or ill-prepared, doing a job that he's ill-suited for and will necessarily be inferior to a woman.

That's how generalizations work. They don't have to be 100% perfect, any more than the statement "Americans are capitalists" must be 100% perfect before you can say it.

Heh, you did recognise that my above paragraph was extremely similar to the one you presented in response to my first post? Where you criticised my (supposed) assuptions about all stay-at-home mothers? Irony.

I'm willing to admit that women are more likely to be better at the "mothering job" than men, but I'd argue that there are plenty of men who would do the job perfectly well. Are you willing to admit that, even though there are exceptions, relationships conforming to traditional gender roles are more likely to be unhappy, unstable, and feature reduced sexual satisfaction?

Wow, you figured out that there are exceptions to every rule. Somebody stop the presses! Inform the public! The people have a right to know!

That's pretty funny from someone who's argument seems little more sophisticated than "if they're happy doing it, they'll be happy doing it".

I think I comprehend it better than you do, because I'm looking at a bigger picture that includes marital stability and satisfaction, which, if sacrificed in the name of traditional marriage might lead to worse consequences such as divorce - and there's plenty of research on the detrimental effect of divorce on children.

Again, you are:

1) Ignoring the effect of uncontrolled variables
2) Assuming that elevated stress means people wish they hadn't made the choice and that their life satisfaction has gone down (even though all parents have elevated stress compared to non-parents, even though almost none of them would change their decision and all of them would say that their lives are more complete with kids).

Just because a person makes a choice and doesnt regret it doesnt mean that they made the optimal choice.

Actually, now that I think about it, I've just been blindly accepting that it's better for the kids if a parent stays home. If that's a part of your argument, you should probably present some evidence for it.

Hmm, my wife breast-fed both our children ...

Please, you'll need to do better than that, it's a more complicated issue - what is the effect of childcare versus stay at home mothering - is it positive ot detrimental? Do you know? You seem to be making an argument but all you've come up with is breastfeeding? There may be positives and negatives to both, claiming one is better than the other requires looking at all of the positives and negatives.

Anyway, my original argument was simply that specialized division of labour works better: a fact that has been borne out in every other field of human endeavour. The bit about gender-specific abilities was due to your challenge that I explain how my position might be interpreted as sexist. But please, feel free to attempt to change the subject. You're clearly desperate to claim some sort of victory here.

No desparation here, I'm quite relaxed actually

I think you're only looking at things from the perspective of efficiently getting the job done - not surprising for an engineer - but there are social and psychological effects beyond simple income/hours-spent-with-child/whatever equations. Traditional male's incomes aside, I think it's more improtant to look at a breader picture that includes marital satisfaction and all the rest. All of the confusion about the nature of your argument aside, you've made a claim but seem to have only backed it up with a theory of work efficiency - I think the topic deserves more than that.

[Diomedes]

That assumes that the working mother isnt able to store breast milk for the father to feed the child, and breastfeed the child during off-work hours. And there's no indication that I can see that a combinaiton of formula and breast milk will result in the child missing out on the benefits of breast milk.

Stored/Expressed breastmilk, while definitely superior to formula, loses some nutritional value and a lot of immune properties. Breastmilk changes all the time; it carries the immunities needed for that particular time.[/quote]

What percentage of their breastmilk intake needs to be "live" for them to get these benefits though? If they are breastfed directly during off-work hours, and fed stored breastmilk while she's at work, I'd be surprised if the baby is significantly disadvantaged.

[Cairber]

Please, you'll need to do better than that, it's a more complicated issue - what is the effect of childcare versus stay at home mothering - is it positive ot detrimental? Do you know? You seem to be making an argument but all you've come up with is breastfeeding? There may be positives and negatives to both, claiming one is better than the other requires looking at all of the positives and negatives.

I think this question is not easily answered. I could provide you with a bunch of links to studies showing behavior is better in kids whose mom stayed at home. I could provide you with IQ studies and "social interaction" studies that vary. There was even a recent one that talked about how "well off" moms are better off staying at home because the quality of care they can give their children is better than most available child care facilities. However, the situation reversed when low income mothers were looked at.

I think this subject could take pages and pages to argue about (which is why I did not jump in sooner actually). But I do agree with Darth Wong about being a stay at home mom (which is why I do it; if I thought it was better for my kids to be in child care I would do that.)

Do you notice how you've gone from talking in fairly general or even universal terms like "everyone", or referring to evolutionary specialisations on gender-wide bases to now claim that you're referring to only the small minority of couples who come to truly uncoerced mutual decisions to adopt traditional gender roles?

Do you feel that only a small minority of stay at home moms made an uncoerced decision to stay home?

[Cairber]

What percentage of their breastmilk intake needs to be "live" for them to get these benefits though? If they are breastfed directly during off-work hours, and fed stored breastmilk while she's at work, I'd be surprised if the baby is significantly disadvantaged.

LLL and the World Health Organization agree that the order of infant feeding should be 1) at the breast breastfeeding 2) pumping 3) donated milk 4) formula. This is because studies have shown decreased benefits to the child and mother the further down the list you go.

Mixed feeding is associated with an increase in the risk of diabetes, allergies, asthma, ear infections and bacterial infections (esp Enterobacter sakazakii )

Exactly how much fresh milk is needed to get immunity benefits, I don't know. But a mother who is pumping is not feeding fresh milk to the baby. At best, the milk is from the day before. And unless a mother is feeding through the night (doubtful if we are talking about a mom working the 9-5), the baby isn't getting a lot of at the breast feedings at the breast if the mother works full time. There is also the issue of decreased supply with this kind of arrangement and the increase in formula use when a mother is working full time and pumping.


This is all a little off topic by this time, though. But if you want more info, I can gladly provide it

[Darth Wong]

So it's more "If a particular couple is willing to do it, that family will probably be better off"?

That's what I said in the first place. It's not my fault that you've got your ideological back up and are running around claiming that you can't understand a simple statement that even "18-Till-I-Die" could figure out without assistance.

Yeah, your argument must be really strong if 18-Till-I-Die is backing you up

Nice strawman. Why don't you look carefully at my statement and see if you can figure out what I'm trying to say?

I dont think you've got any credibility arguing that your original claim was unamgibuous, it's there for people to read. You basically start off by saying "Look everyone, I'm going to make a big controversial claim!", then start talking about "everyone", and moderating the claim only with "if the woman hates that role, then some accomodation should be made", the weakness of which tends to indicate that you think that most of the time, and unless she's extremely adverse to the mothering role, everyone would be better off adopting traditional roles.

You proved my point for me by knee-jerking. You can't say something like this without being accused of being a closet Taliban member. And accusing someone of flip-flopping or backpedaling because his post looks different when you read it in its entirety instead of seizing upon the first two sentences is just pathetic.

You've got very reasonable and intelligent people such as Spin Echo and Spyder who have taken your argument in similar ways to how I interpreted it, and have explained why and how.

Yeah, they both seized upon the first two sentences and ignored the rest of the post. That's the only way to interpret the post as you have.

For you to claim that the weaker argument you're now backing was your intention all along and anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid can only be dishonesty on your part.

As above, you seem to think that expecting someone to read the entire post is somehow dishonesty, flip-flopping, or backpedaling from your interpretation of the first two sentences. You would have made a wonderful Republican politician: seizing on a soundbite and ignoring the context. Did you study at the Karl Rove school of politics?

You're not bothering to control for other factors, such as couples in which this is not really a mutual un-coerced decision.

Do you notice how you've gone from talking in fairly general or even universal terms like "everyone", or referring to evolutionary specialisations on gender-wide bases to now claim that you're referring to only the small minority of couples who come to truly uncoerced mutual decisions to adopt traditional gender roles?

Yeah, it's funny how those conditional statements work. They only work when the conditional "if" part of the statement is actually true. Fascinating, isn't it? Not that this stops you from attempting to spin-doctor this into yet another accusation of backpedaling.

Heh, you did recognise that my above paragraph was extremely similar to the one you presented in response to my first post? Where you criticised my (supposed) assuptions about all stay-at-home mothers? Irony.

Yes, because you're the one making blanket statements. My statement was ALWAYS conditional upon mutual agreement. Your statement contained no such conditions. So yes, your attempt to equate the two statements is indeed bullfuckery on your part. Perhaps you simply expected me not to notice?

That's pretty funny from someone who's argument seems little more sophisticated than "if they're happy doing it, they'll be happy doing it".

No, it's "if they're both willing to do it, they'll be better off". I already corrected you on this strawman once, and you even acknowledged that in your previous post, yet you're trotting this out again. Methinks your accusations of "dishonesty" are borne of psychological projection.

Just because a person makes a choice and doesnt regret it doesnt mean that they made the optimal choice.

Optimal for what? In case you hadn't noticed, a society which produces no kids will become extinct. People need to produce and nurture children, even if it increases their stress level. Moreover, people want to do this, as proven by the fact that so many of them do it despite the stress level. You spoke of "satisfaction"; how do you measure the dissatisfaction of never doing something you really want to do? Virtually anything worthwhile you do in your life can produce stress; saying that families are worse off if their stress levels increase is retarded; by that logic, no family should have children.

Actually, now that I think about it, I've just been blindly accepting that it's better for the kids if a parent stays home. If that's a part of your argument, you should probably present some evidence for it.

Hmm, my wife breast-fed both our children ...

Please, you'll need to do better than that, it's a more complicated issue - what is the effect of childcare versus stay at home mothering - is it positive ot detrimental? Do you know? You seem to be making an argument but all you've come up with is breastfeeding? There may be positives and negatives to both, claiming one is better than the other requires looking at all of the positives and negatives.

No, I don't need to do better than that (even though I actually did, by mentioning evolution which leads to a huge amount of anthropological research indicating that these roles predate human civilization, which in turn begs the question of how the fuck men and women would not have evolved to specialize their skills to suit). In any case, that is one example of a clear and unambiguous advantage that women have over men. Leaving aside the other arguments, that is already one more piece of evidence than you have produced for your own position, which makes it good enough. Why should I go poring through research in a field where neither you or I specialized when I'm already one up on you in the evidence department?

Anyway, my original argument was simply that specialized division of labour works better: a fact that has been borne out in every other field of human endeavour. The bit about gender-specific abilities was due to your challenge that I explain how my position might be interpreted as sexist. But please, feel free to attempt to change the subject. You're clearly desperate to claim some sort of victory here.

No desparation here, I'm quite relaxed actually

Your Rovian spin-doctoring says otherwise; you are clearly desperate to score something you can call a victory, even going so far as to repeat a strawman distortion of my argument that you already knew to be incorrect.

I think you're only looking at things from the perspective of efficiently getting the job done - not surprising for an engineer - but there are social and psychological effects beyond simple income/hours-spent-with-child/whatever equations.

Which you have not produced a shred of evidence for, whereas the evidence for the efficacy of specialized division of labour is so massive and overwhelming as to be utterly beyond question. Your argument is made of thin air.

Traditional male's incomes aside, I think it's more improtant to look at a breader picture that includes marital satisfaction and all the rest. All of the confusion about the nature of your argument aside, you've made a claim but seem to have only backed it up with a theory of work efficiency - I think the topic deserves more than that.

If you think the topic deserves more than that, then produce the evidence to back up your position. What you're saying is that you think my argument is not comprehensive enough for your taste, even though it does contain specific elements which you cannot refute. Enough bluster; why don't you produce some of this wonderful in-depth analysis that you keep demanding from me, even though I've already given more reasons for my position than you have?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

To elaborate on my point--I think now from what Sanchez said that I hadn't make myself clear--it isn't just that egalitarian men don't feel the need to push as hard, but also that women are behaviourally less motivated to measure their lives in the same competition-based terms as males. Or to put it simply, I'm out for security and comfort--a man is out for success and prosperity. Not ALL men are like this, however--but because the male success schema in society is oriented toward it, because most are, that means that males who are highly competitive will always tend to succeed.

Whereas, for me, while I certainly both desire and am capable of a professional career at a high level of achievement, the fundamental underlying motivation behind that is to carve out a niche in society that will make my life as stable and comfortable as possible. And if that means I have to live in an apartment for the rest of my life and take public transportation, I don't really care, as long as I can get two or three month long vacations and an essential guarantee (one of the reasons I'm going to leave the states) that I'd never be fired or otherwise find myself in a position of want.

So why would I push for the big promotion when everything is steady at my current level?

Indeed, I'd say that it's a reflection of the major work that still needs to be done in America toward equality that the American system is explicitly set up to reward only alpha males engaged in competition to be successful, rather than in European countries (and to a lesser extent, Canada), where the system guarantees female needs (and by extension the needs of everyone) while male competitive aspirations are not truly affected--if the tax rate is twice as high in European countries, that just means that the alpha males competing for status are going to have to work twice as hard, which isn't a problem to them, because they want to do that and doing that is what defines and envigorates their lives, so their personal livelihood isn't really harmed whereas that of women and less competitive men is basically guaranteed.

Whereas, in America, a professional might well negotiate for salary, but who can get three months of paid leave? Most engineers are simply expected to work substantially more than 40 hours a week, as I understand it, also, whereas in France, though someone in a field like engineering will certainly work more than 35 hours a week, there are some fairly strict limits on that sort of out-of-paid time productivity demands. And of course where companies can be ruthless about firing in America, it's almost impossible to fire anyone in France.

So why wouldn't I, from my perspective, be quite glad to work for even half as much as I could make in America, if I could get 2 or 3 months of paid vacation, reduced work hours a week, universal health care, and state controls to prevent easy firing of workers out of it? And if that Just Isn't Enough For You, then go all out to work harder: There are still plenty of millionaires in France. The country is also hardly lazy or unsuccessful on a broad basis; it's been a home to innumerable technological innovations in the past 60 years. Just because you can't reach anyone in the engineering department for a couple months in summer while they're all off at the Riviera doesn't mean that they haven't succeeded in Concorde, the TGV, and producing 80% of their power through nuclear energy--because they have.

And that is the sort of life I infinitely prefer, whereas in America I'd be forced to compete with the Alpha Males simply to keep my job, and it would tend to make my life absolutely miserable to do so.

Notice that part of the reason the birthrate is so low in European countries is almost certainly because a female-oriented career schema is possible, and therefore many more women take advantage of it instead of settling down for a traditional life, whereas in the United States a female-oriented career schema is basically impossible, so that for the sake of emotional health, marriage and housewifery is the only possible option.

[Darth Wong]

The funny thing (considering some of the assumptions made in this thread) is that I'm not really one of those traditionally-minded men who earns a lot of money myself. I scaled back on hours so I could spend more time with my family. I didn't go for the hard-charging career path, in part because I saw what those people often ended up like.

Frankly, men like that need to have a stay-at-home wife. Their workload and stress levels are often enormous, and they will not take time off work to help with their kids. Sad, but true. Some of these guys don't even see their kids at all, except on weekends. If the wife isn't putting in twice the effort to make up for his complete absence, those kids are going to be pseudo-orphans. And how is the wife going to put in twice the effort, while also holding down a full-time job? Answer: she can't, unless she kills herself trying. Mind you, that extreme is pretty unhealthy too, if only because the father is now an absentee parent, and that's no good either.

Kids do benefit from having two parents, but one parent ideally has to be the "go to" parent. One parent has to think of parenting as the primary job, rather than something he does after his primary job. Especially if anything goes wrong, or there is any problem to be dealt with. People who have never tried raising kids have no idea of how much bullshit there can be to deal with, like having to volunteer at the school so you can keep an eye on how your kid is doing, because the teachers don't tell you shit. Or being alert enough to spot small problems before they become big problems and the school finally calls you at work. A lot of the arguments against the benefits of a stay-at-home parent rely on the assumption that parenting is nothing more than a part-time job.

[Diomedes]

I dont think you've got any credibility arguing that your original claim was unamgibuous, it's there for people to read. You basically start off by saying "Look everyone, I'm going to make a big controversial claim!", then start talking about "everyone", and moderating the claim only with "if the woman hates that role, then some accomodation should be made", the weakness of which tends to indicate that you think that most of the time, and unless she's extremely adverse to the mothering role, everyone would be better off adopting traditional roles.

You proved my point for me by knee-jerking. You can't say something like this without being accused of being a closet Taliban member. And accusing someone of flip-flopping or backpedaling because his post looks different when you read it in its entirety instead of seizing upon the first two sentences is just pathetic.

As I said, your post is there for everyone to see, and if you really need to believe that what you wrote was a fine example of clarity of thought and communication, go ahead. But you're not going to win any points with me by trying to portray yourself as the hapless victim of a politically correct witchhunt.

Heh, you did recognise that my above paragraph was extremely similar to the one you presented in response to my first post? Where you criticised my (supposed) assuptions about all stay-at-home mothers? Irony.

Yes, because you're the one making blanket statements. My statement was ALWAYS conditional upon mutual agreement. Your statement contained no such conditions. So yes, your attempt to equate the two statements is indeed bullfuckery on your part. Perhaps you simply expected me not to notice?

Well that's a lie, and a stupid one considering it's easy to return to page two and see that my claims regarding the trends and correlations as just that, and that I acknowleged that every relationship is different and that couples in traditional roles can be perfectly happy. Nowhere did I say that women who stay home are universally submissive or weak, that was just your rather convenient mischaracterisation of my argument.

That's pretty funny from someone who's argument seems little more sophisticated than "if they're happy doing it, they'll be happy doing it".

No, it's "if they're both willing to do it, they'll be better off". I already corrected you on this strawman once, and you even acknowledged that in your previous post, yet you're trotting this out again. Methinks your accusations of "dishonesty" are borne of psychological projection.

I dont think there's much of a substantive difference between the two. Unless you can point out significant differences in the meaning of "happy" and "willing", and "happy" and "better off" in the context of family wellbeing.

Just because a person makes a choice and doesnt regret it doesnt mean that they made the optimal choice.

Optimal for what? In case you hadn't noticed, a society which produces no kids will become extinct. People need to produce and nurture children, even if it increases their stress level. Moreover, people want to do this, as proven by the fact that so many of them do it despite the stress level. You spoke of "satisfaction"; how do you measure the dissatisfaction of never doing something you really want to do? Virtually anything worthwhile you do in your life can produce stress; saying that families are worse off if their stress levels increase is retarded; by that logic, no family should have children.

Optimal for the happines and stability of their family. Having enough children to maintain the population is important, but if there are ways or organising the family that lead to more optimal outcomes in marriage satisfaction, reduce likelihood of divorce, improve outcomes for children's education and health, then those should be chosen. Stress may be a necessary consequence of a worthwhile decision, but if equally or more worthwhile means to the same ends are available, it's stupid to choose the more stressful method.

Please, you'll need to do better than that, it's a more complicated issue - what is the effect of childcare versus stay at home mothering - is it positive ot detrimental? Do you know? You seem to be making an argument but all you've come up with is breastfeeding? There may be positives and negatives to both, claiming one is better than the other requires looking at all of the positives and negatives.

No, I don't need to do better than that (even though I actually did, by mentioning evolution which leads to a huge amount of anthropological research indicating that these roles predate human civilization, which in turn begs the question of how the fuck men and women would not have evolved to specialize their skills to suit).

Your point regarding evolution only addresses the issue of whether the father or mother should stay home, not whether one parent must stay home versus both working. What have you really presented in favour of your claim?

Firstly, the article in the op might seem to suport your argument. But note that it talks about men with traditional patriarchal views of women, not just egalitarian men who decide in a mutual and uncoercive fashion with their wives to have the mother stay home - the kind of relationship that you seem to be supporting. Secondly, it deals only with men's income, not family income, which with two working parents is likely to be greater than that of patriarchal men.

So what else have you presented in support of your argument? Well, you've mentioned specialisation in jobs. But you ignore research on the psychological effects of being a stay-at-home mum, and the decreased marital satisfaction and stability associated with it. Furthermore, the specialisation argument would actually seem to support sending children to day-care, where professionals truly specialise in childcare - as opposed to a typical stay-at-home mother who must split her time between homemaking and looking after the kids.

I think that a proper evaluation needs to look at the results, not just the theory. So no, you havnt done enough to support your argument. Apart from the assumption that specialisation should result in better outcomes for the family, you havnt presented anything at all, let alone properly addressed the contradictory evidence I've presented.

It seems to me that the logical place for you to find evidence to support your argument would be to look for studies on outcomes for children - if the outcomes for children are significantly better in families with a stay-at-home mum, that might outweigh the negative effects on the parents' relationship. Why on earth do I need to tell you how to debate?

In any case, that is one example of a clear and unambiguous advantage that women have over men. Leaving aside the other arguments, that is already one more piece of evidence than you have produced for your own position, which makes it good enough. Why should I go poring through research in a field where neither you or I specialized when I'm already one up on you in the evidence department?

That's a laugh.

I think you're only looking at things from the perspective of efficiently getting the job done - not surprising for an engineer - but there are social and psychological effects beyond simple income/hours-spent-with-child/whatever equations.

Which you have not produced a shred of evidence for, whereas the evidence for the efficacy of specialized division of labour is so massive and overwhelming as to be utterly beyond question. Your argument is made of thin air.

My argument's made of thin air? Now that's projection. I've presented a significant amount of evidence on the kinds of harmful effects correlated with traditional gender roles in marriages. Simply saying "sometimes stressful things are necessary" doesnt refute any of that - if you think that your model is the best model, you need to show that its outcomes are better, that the negative effects it is associated with are worth it in light of benefits that you havnt yet shown.

Traditional male's incomes aside, I think it's more improtant to look at a breader picture that includes marital satisfaction and all the rest. All of the confusion about the nature of your argument aside, you've made a claim but seem to have only backed it up with a theory of work efficiency - I think the topic deserves more than that.

If you think the topic deserves more than that, then produce the evidence to back up your position. What you're saying is that you think my argument is not comprehensive enough for your taste, even though it does contain specific elements which you cannot refute. Enough bluster; why don't you produce some of this wonderful in-depth analysis that you keep demanding from me, even though I've already given more reasons for my position than you have?

Nice, try to shift the burden of evidence onto me. You're the one who made the claim, and one of the biggest problems is that you dont present any specific elements to refute - just an appeal to the principle of specialisation.

Your problem is that you've got a theory but you dont actually know it to be true, you just assume it to be so. That would be fine, except that you actually expect to convince other people. If that's no longer your goal, then fine, we can end this here. But if you stick by your claim, you'll need to add some substance before it's actually convincing.

[Diomedes]

Kids do benefit from having two parents, but one parent ideally has to be the "go to" parent. One parent has to think of parenting as the primary job, rather than something he does after his primary job. Especially if anything goes wrong, or there is any problem to be dealt with. People who have never tried raising kids have no idea of how much bullshit there can be to deal with, like having to volunteer at the school so you can keep an eye on how your kid is doing, because the teachers don't tell you shit. Or being alert enough to spot small problems before they become big problems and the school finally calls you at work. A lot of the arguments against the benefits of a stay-at-home parent rely on the assumption that parenting is nothing more than a part-time job.

You know, I had decided not to post this after your bullshit with trying to shift the burden of evidence onto me, but in the interests of having a constructive debate one of us has to put some effort in, so here:

Maternal employment does not harm infants’ development, research shows

AUSTIN, Texas—When mothers spend time away from home at a job or school, their infants’ development does not suffer, according to a large study led by a researcher at The University of Texas at Austin.

By evaluating mothers’ time use, the home environment, maternal bonding and other characteristics for 1,053 mothers with babies across the United States, the researchers in a longitudinal study concluded that mothers’ personalities, beliefs and circumstances influenced the quality of parenting, overshadowing the influence of sheer amount of time spent with their children.

“The amount of time isn’t as important as what she brings to the relationship,” said Dr. Aletha Huston, the study’s director and the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor in Child Development at the university. The results were published in the March/April issue of Child Development.

New Longitudinal Study Finds That Having A Working Mother Does No Significant Harm To Children

Dr. Harvey examined four employment variables: Whether the mother worked during the first three years of the child's life, how soon a mother returned to work after childbirth, how much she worked (hours per week) during the first three years of her child's life, and the discontinuity of employment (if there were any periods of unemployment during the same time frame). She compared these variables with five child outcome measures: compliance, behavior problems, cognitive development, self-esteem and academic achievement.

Dr. Harvey found that children whose mothers worked during the first three years of their lives were not significantly different from children whose mothers did not work during that time frame. Among mothers who worked during the first three years of their child's life, the only significant effect of the timing of their return to work and the discontinuity of the employment was on compliance in three and four year olds. Three and four year olds whose mothers returned to work later showed slightly higher compliance than the same age group whose mothers returned to work sooner, but these differences were small and disappeared by the time the children were five to six years of age.

Children whose mothers worked long hours were found to have slightly lower scores on tests, which measures children's vocabulary and individual student achievement, but again these differences were small and faded over time.

This article talks about a book regarding the issue.

Working Moms Found Not Guilty!

She painstakingly documents the major studies that show working women are healthier and less depressed than their nonworking counterparts.

Holcomb also disputes press reports of "scientific" data proving that day care is responsible for interfering with the natural bonding between mother and child. Armed with the April results of an exhaustive day care study conducted at ten sites nationwide, she reports that these infants and young children were intimately bonding with their mothers. Not surprisingly, this encouraging news was not widely disseminated in the popular press.

Cairber mentioned this article, which found that the children of high status women who worked were negatively impacted, but that children of low status women who worked were better off. What the study didnt account for was what childcare children received in each case. I would theorise that low status parents were more likely to put their children into childcare (with benefits of enhanced stimulation and interaction), while high status parents would be more likely to hire a nanny.

To Work or Not?

On Thursday, the University of North Carolina, Greenboro, economist published a study showing that kids from high-socioeconomic-status families take a long-term hit when their moms work outside the home—at ages 10 and 11, they perform more poorly on cognitive tests and are also more likely to be overweight than those whose high-status mothers leave the workforce. Children from low-status families, on the other hand, don't seem to suffer as much when their moms work. In fact, many of them do better on the same tests, and they're more fit, than similarly disadvantaged kids with stay-at-home moms.

Working Moms - Are Their Kids OK?

Yes, research shows that children of working mothers do as well as those with stay-at-home mothers. Mom's increased self-esteem and aliveness seem to counteract any ill effects that might result from a loss in her availability. (Of course, she must still choose child care well and be concerned about ensuring quality time with her children.)

[Zablorg]

Maternal employment does not harm infants’ development, research shows

AUSTIN, Texas—When mothers spend time away from home at a job or school, their infants’ development does not suffer, according to a large study led by a researcher at The University of Texas at Austin.

This is not what DM is arguing at all. As he pointed out in his first post, if both parent co-operates with his or her evolutionary role, the family structure will generally be more efficient. If you have a family with a mother that "house-wives" and a father that brings home the money, they will both be better at these jobs than if the roles are reversed, or if they both tried to do a bit of each.

[Diomedes]

This is not what DM is arguing at all. As he pointed out in his first post, if both parent co-operates with his or her evolutionary role, the family structure will generally be more efficient. If you have a family with a mother that "house-wives" and a father that brings home the money, they will both be better at these jobs than if the roles are reversed, or if they both tried to do a bit of each.

That's his claim, but he hasnt actually provided evidence that it's true. I've shown that generally, this type of relationship will be detrimental to the marriage, and I've also shown that being a stay-home-mother will not benefit the children. So where's the benefit? If his model is more efficient, why isnt it reflected in positive outcomes?

[Lagmonster]

Frankly, attitudes like yours are insulting and demeaning to all stay-at-home fathers. With no evidence whatsoever, you assume that a stay-at-home father is inadequate or ill-prepared, doing a job that he's ill-suited for and will necessarily be inferior to a woman.

I was a stay-at-home father for the period of time after my wife had to go back to work. And I'm a damn good father, but a piss-poor mother. What the hell makes you think that men and women should be equally apt to perform tasks that are the result not of political movements, but of millions of years of specialization and development? Women raise kids better. Men beat the shit out of things better. What makes that objectionable?

[Diomedes]

Frankly, attitudes like yours are insulting and demeaning to all stay-at-home fathers. With no evidence whatsoever, you assume that a stay-at-home father is inadequate or ill-prepared, doing a job that he's ill-suited for and will necessarily be inferior to a woman.

I was a stay-at-home father for the period of time after my wife had to go back to work. And I'm a damn good father, but a piss-poor mother. What the hell makes you think that men and women should be equally apt to perform tasks that are the result not of political movements, but of millions of years of specialization and development? Women raise kids better. Men beat the shit out of things better. What makes that objectionable?

Nothing, as long as you acknowledge you're making a generalisation rather than an absolute, universal claim. The main point of that paragraph was actually to send up Darth Wong's very similar paragraph, strawmanning my point regarding stay-at-home mums.

[Cairber]

I think it's obvious that stay at home moms are going to be a little more stressed than moms who work. Let's face it; when your kids are in day care, someone else is dealing with the tantrums, the diaper changes, the feeding, the teaching, etc. These are stressful parts of being a mom.

But I don't see how any of these studies addresses what Darth Wong said about choosing the more stressful route.


Diomedes makes this comment:

Stress may be a necessary consequence of a worthwhile decision, but if equally or more worthwhile means to the same ends are available, it's stupid to choose the more stressful method.

How are you quantifying "worthwhile"? It might be less stressful to be making another 50k a year so that we never have to budget but being the one who teaches our children about right and wrong and being the one they trust to come to when they need to talk (as opposed to the children we hang out with who have nannies or are in daycare- the mothers constantly talk about how "billy asked for our nanny last night when he had a nightmare" kinda thing) is more worthwhile to me than the 50k.

I guess that could be stupid to someone on the outside looking in.


Also, if you look at the actual studies themselves, you will see that many of them (including the Harvey one you posted) show that there is a difference in behavior for younger children who are in constant day care. This difference "disappears" over time, but, in most of these, it remains present until the child is 6. Differences on test scores remain a lot longer. The Harvey study shows that children whose mothers work longer hours scored worse on vocab and other tests.


There are also studies like these:

Why working moms have fatter children

I know I have another one somewhere about test scores and working vs stay at home moms and I will have to get back to you on that one.


But, like I said before, you can find ammo on both sides. But I think the whole thing is tough to prove. When moms go back to work at 6 weeks and their infants spend 8 hours being held in turn, I find a hard time accepting the idea that the level of bonding and attachment (two different things, by the way) are the same. Speaking of, I know I have a study on this as well.

Right now I am heading out with the kids, but I will go through my saved links and get those studies to you when I get back.

[Broomstick]

One of my sister's and her husband did a complete role-reversal between her two children.

With the first they went the very traditional route and she stayed home after the birth of her son for two years. Then, just before she had her daughter, her husband's employer went under and he was out of a job. So he stayed home and she went back to work as soon as she possibly could. To further complicate things, her daughter had SEVERE allergies from the very beginning, the sort that resulted in multiple trips to the hospital her first year, and could NOT tolerate any formula on the market so it was a matter of life and death that my sister produce breastmilk - that's all my niece could tolerate for her first 18 months. But the kid got most of it in a bottle because mom HAD to work if they were going to keep a roof over their heads.

My brother-in-law actually made a pretty good Mr. Mom. Both their kinds are equally comfortable going to either parent with a problem or concern.

But while men and women are equally capable in many areas of child-rearing, that first year, particularly with the breastfeeding angle, women DO have an edge due to biology. That doesn't mean babies fed on formula are doomed to be stupid and sickly, or that men can't competently raise children, just that it's not THE BEST route to get these things done. Fortunately, human beings are flexible enough that "pretty good" is usually sufficient and not everything has to be perfect for a good outcome.

[Diomedes]

I think it's obvious that stay at home moms are going to be a little more stressed than moms who work. Let's face it; when your kids are in day care, someone else is dealing with the tantrums, the diaper changes, the feeding, the teaching, etc. These are stressful parts of being a mom.

But I don't see how any of these studies addresses what Darth Wong said about choosing the more stressful route.

All Darth Wong has said about choosing the more stressful route is that it's better, but that's all he does - say it's better. Even if I hadnt presented the evidence that it is more stressful, his argument would suffer from lack of evidence - but my doing so means that in order to show that his model is the best one, the benefits need to outweigh this.

Stress may be a necessary consequence of a worthwhile decision, but if equally or more worthwhile means to the same ends are available, it's stupid to choose the more stressful method.

How are you quantifying "worthwhile"?

I'm not - it was a statement of principle, in response to his strawman of my argument that I believed that anything that increases stress is completely bad and must be avoided.

It might be less stressful to be making another 50k a year so that we never have to budget but being the one who teaches our children about right and wrong and being the one they trust to come to when they need to talk (as opposed to the children we hang out with who have nannies or are in daycare- the mothers constantly talk about how "billy asked for our nanny last night when he had a nightmare" kinda thing) is more worthwhile to me than the 50k.

Well, your anecdotal evidence aside, studies indicate that both parents working and the child attending daycare is not detrimental to parental bonding, and that parental attitudes - such as wanting your kids to understand right and wrong - are vastly more important than number of hours spent with the child. But regardless, I'm not criticising you personally - maybe for you and your husband and your children you're doing the best thing. But that's not what this is about - I admitted that couples can be perfectly happy in traditional relationships in my first post. I'm more interested in what's best in general.

Also, if you look at the actual studies themselves, you will see that many of them (including the Harvey one you posted) show that there is a difference in behavior for younger children who are in constant day care. This difference "disappears" over time, but, in most of these, it remains present until the child is 6. Differences on test scores remain a lot longer. The Harvey study shows that children whose mothers work longer hours scored worse on vocab and other tests.

And that eventually these differences faded away. If the kid's going to get to their teen years in an equivalent psychological and academic state, to go on to be an equally successful adult, the most important outcomes are no different. That gives us room to look at other factors, including the psychological wellbeing of mothers, marital stability and likelyhood of divorce (which is often quite harmful to children), marital and sexual satisfaction. It looks like for most people, egalitarian marriages and working parents lead to better outcomes in those areas.

There are also studies like these:

Why working moms have fatter children

Notice that the article claims that the effect is small and on the margin of significance, and while one of the studies I posted indicated (similarly to this one) that wealthier families with working parents tend to increase the risk of overweight children, that other study didnt find any effect in less well-off families.

I know I have another one somewhere about test scores and working vs stay at home moms and I will have to get back to you on that one.

But, like I said before, you can find ammo on both sides. But I think the whole thing is tough to prove. When moms go back to work at 6 weeks and their infants spend 8 hours being held in turn, I find a hard time accepting the idea that the level of bonding and attachment (two different things, by the way) are the same. Speaking of, I know I have a study on this as well.

Right now I am heading out with the kids, but I will go through my saved links and get those studies to you when I get back.

I'm sure you can find ammo on both sides, though must of the ammo I found seems quite robust given sample sizes an the longtitudinal nature of some of them. But this in itself tells us something - the differences cant be great, either way (and some studies indicate children who go to daycare do benefit from the greater stimulation), even if they do exist. That's a problem for anyone saying that traditional marriages and childrearing is superior.

If in general children are either very slightly disadvantaged, neither disadvantaged nor advantaged, or very slightly advantaged by traditional childrearing, and if traditional marriages tend to be less happy and stable ones, what's the advantage? Where is the improved efficiency Darth Wong's talking about manifesting itself?

[Darth Wong]

As I said, your post is there for everyone to see, and if you really need to believe that what you wrote was a fine example of clarity of thought and communication, go ahead. But you're not going to win any points with me by trying to portray yourself as the hapless victim of a politically correct witchhunt.

It's not about victimization; it's about the fact that you took the first two sentences out of the post and pretended that was the entire argument. Later, you even attempted to portray the rest of the post as some kind of backpedaling trick, as if I actually intended the first two sentences to be the entire argument and then backpedaled by continuing to type. That kind of dishonest bullfuckery characterizes your entire argument.

Well that's a lie, and a stupid one considering it's easy to return to page two and see that my claims regarding the trends and correlations as just that, and that I acknowleged that every relationship is different and that couples in traditional roles can be perfectly happy. Nowhere did I say that women who stay home are universally submissive or weak, that was just your rather convenient mischaracterisation of my argument.

Actually, your argument is a textbook case in scientific ignorance, specifically your ignorance of method. I stated that given a conditional statement (which you ignored), society will be better off if people raise their own kids. I acknowledged that there are exceptions to every rule, which you attempted to mischaracterize as being equivalent to your use of correlations with uncontrolled variables. There is a HUGE difference between exceptions and uncontrolled variables built into correlations; anyone with even a smidgen of understanding of the basic concept of scientific inquiry would know that. So no, the fact that I acknowledge exceptions does NOT validate your use of correlations with uncontrolled variables. They are NOT the same thing, and "acknowledging that every relationship is different" does not excuse it either.

I dont think there's much of a substantive difference between the two. Unless you can point out significant differences in the meaning of "happy" and "willing", and "happy" and "better off" in the context of family wellbeing.

There's your whole problem: you think that people have children in order to make themselves happy. This whole argument was raised before in another thread, when studies were cited which indicate that the people with the highest happiness levels have no kids at all. When I say that everyone will be better off, I'm talking about accomplishing your goals most effectively. If you want to sit there, accomplish nothing, and be happy with that, then don't have kids at all. Why do you think I keep calling parenting a "job" instead of "entertainment"? You don't do it for your own happiness; you do it because it's something you want to accomplish in life, and you want to do that as well as possible. Your fundamental misunderstanding of this concept is clearly due to ignorance of the entire process.

Optimal for the happines and stability of their family. Having enough children to maintain the population is important, but if there are ways or organising the family that lead to more optimal outcomes in marriage satisfaction, reduce likelihood of divorce, improve outcomes for children's education and health, then those should be chosen. Stress may be a necessary consequence of a worthwhile decision, but if equally or more worthwhile means to the same ends are available, it's stupid to choose the more stressful method.

People who raise kids aren't doing it for their own relaxation, moron. Of course it increases stress; I worry about my kids every goddamned day. The closer you are to the activity, the more parenting-related stress you will feel. That doesn't mean it's a bad choice, because ou give up control when you hand the kids off to someone else. People voluntarily take on this stress because it's about accomplishing goals, not helping themselves relax. What kind of imbecile thinks that women who stay home to raise their kids do so in an attempt to lower their own stress level? Your whole argument is riddled with non sequiturs like this, where you try to connect completely mismatched objectives and means of measuring success.

You cling to your bizarre delusion that people have kids in order to make themselves happy (that's why stupid teenaged girls have kids, but not intelligent adults), or in order to relax (not even teenaged girls think that), and then you crow that if a particular parenting method does not achieve these goals, then it's not working out. You have absolutely no clue, do you?

Your point regarding evolution only addresses the issue of whether the father or mother should stay home, not whether one parent must stay home versus both working. What have you really presented in favour of your claim?

For the umpteenth time, specialized division of labour, which is well-understood to work for everyone. This is an argument taken from industry, which you discount because you refuse to admit that parenting is a job rather than some sort of self-indulgence or relaxation exercise.

Firstly, the article in the op might seem to suport your argument. But note that it talks about men with traditional patriarchal views of women, not just egalitarian men who decide in a mutual and uncoercive fashion with their wives to have the mother stay home - the kind of relationship that you seem to be supporting. Secondly, it deals only with men's income, not family income, which with two working parents is likely to be greater than that of patriarchal men.

The article in the OP has numerous problems of its own and I was not basing my argument upon it.

So what else have you presented in support of your argument? Well, you've mentioned specialisation in jobs. But you ignore research on the psychological effects of being a stay-at-home mum, and the decreased marital satisfaction and stability associated with it.

I do not "ignore" it; I point out that it is irrelevant to the objectives. Parenting is an objective-oriented activity; you are tring to achieve a goal. It is not about self-indulgence or relaxation, no matter how much you might pretend otherwise.

Furthermore, the specialisation argument would actually seem to support sending children to day-care, where professionals truly specialise in childcare - as opposed to a typical stay-at-home mother who must split her time between homemaking and looking after the kids.

For one thing, the level of qualification required to be a day-care worker is a joke. For another, the ratio between caregivers and children makes this argument a joke.

I think that a proper evaluation needs to look at the results, not just the theory. So no, you havnt done enough to support your argument. Apart from the assumption that specialisation should result in better outcomes for the family, you havnt presented anything at all, let alone properly addressed the contradictory evidence I've presented.

Outcomes cannot be measured without reference to objectives. One does not measure the success of a fuel economy improvement project by looking at quarter-mile times. So far, your argument is predicated upon the assumption that the objective of raising kids is to make yourself happier or more relaxed: a preposterous position to take. My argument is predicated upon the assumption that parents make parenting decisions based on their desire to have maximum control over the way their children are raised: a proposition which is much easier to justify in light of actual observed parent behaviour.

It seems to me that the logical place for you to find evidence to support your argument would be to look for studies on outcomes for children - if the outcomes for children are significantly better in families with a stay-at-home mum, that might outweigh the negative effects on the parents' relationship. Why on earth do I need to tell you how to debate?

Unfortunately, sociological studies have been an ideological morass for the entire history of the field, going back to the early studies showing that divorce had no negative impact whatsoever on kids (which, interestingly enough, use almost exactly the same methods used by the studies you cited in your subsequent post, which attempted to prove the same thing about handing off your kids to institutions and which were contradicted by subsequent studies). It doesn't help that you need a high income to be able to afford to keep a parent home, or that many single-income families are actually single-income because of involuntary unemployment rather than a conscious decision (almost a quarter of minimum-wage earners are sole breadwinners for their families; a horrendous situation). Labour studies have been far more controlled, which is why I based my argument upon division of labour.

My argument's made of thin air? Now that's projection. I've presented a significant amount of evidence on the kinds of harmful effects correlated with traditional gender roles in marriages.

All based upon your laughable assumption that parents have kids in order to make themselves happier or more relaxed, leaving aside the "uncontrolled variable" issue which you have already demonstrated that you don't understand at all, based on your comical attempt to equate it to the concept of exceptions to rules.

Nice, try to shift the burden of evidence onto me.

I made an argument based on effective output and division of labour, based upon ironclad results from industry. You attacked it by citing various studies that don't actually relate to the subject, unless one adopts your bizarre assumptions about the reasons people have kids. Sorry, but YOU bear the burden of proof to show why my argument is wrong, since you keep saying it's wrong but you produce no real evidence other than the kind of studies which get tossed back and forth because there are just as many studies saying exactly the opposite thing, thanks to the nature of sociology.

You're the one who made the claim, and one of the biggest problems is that you dont present any specific elements to refute - just an appeal to the principle of specialisation.

Which you ignore because you have no real rebuttal to it, and because in your spectacular ignorance, you fail to understand that parenting is a form of labour, not self-relaxation.

[Diomedes]

As I said, your post is there for everyone to see, and if you really need to believe that what you wrote was a fine example of clarity of thought and communication, go ahead. But you're not going to win any points with me by trying to portray yourself as the hapless victim of a politically correct witchhunt.

It's not about victimization; it's about the fact that you took the first two sentences out of the post and pretended that was the entire argument. Later, you even attempted to portray the rest of the post as some kind of backpedaling trick, as if I actually intended the first two sentences to be the entire argument and then backpedaled by continuing to type. That kind of dishonest bullfuckery characterizes your entire argument.

The proviso you put towards the end of your first post was quite weak. You said "if the woman hates that role". Not "if the women dislikes, feels unfulfilled by, or overly stressed by", but hates. Followed by "then some accomodation should be made". Not "then she shouldnt have to" - some accommodation implies relatively minor compromise. In the context of your post, and the issues with word choice, with priming it with "I'm throwing out PC" and admitting that it's sexist, this conditionality it barely blunts your claim. Now, you're going to come screaming in here about how I'm getting all uptight about semantics, and I dont enjoy talking about semantics but it seems like you genuinely dont understand how your post could be interpreted the way it was, so I do this simply to help make that clear to you.

Well that's a lie, and a stupid one considering it's easy to return to page two and see that my claims regarding the trends and correlations as just that, and that I acknowleged that every relationship is different and that couples in traditional roles can be perfectly happy. Nowhere did I say that women who stay home are universally submissive or weak, that was just your rather convenient mischaracterisation of my argument.

Actually, your argument is a textbook case in scientific ignorance, specifically your ignorance of method. I stated that given a conditional statement (which you ignored), society will be better off if people raise their own kids. I acknowledged that there are exceptions to every rule, which you attempted to mischaracterize as being equivalent to your use of correlations with uncontrolled variables. There is a HUGE difference between exceptions and uncontrolled variables built into correlations; anyone with even a smidgen of understanding of the basic concept of scientific inquiry would know that. So no, the fact that I acknowledge exceptions does NOT validate your use of correlations with uncontrolled variables. They are NOT the same thing, and "acknowledging that every relationship is different" does not excuse it either.

What we've got here is some evidence versus none, and it's not surprising when you cant find anything to support your argument that the only avenue left would be to attempt to write off anything that contradicts your claim.

Right now you're basically trying to say that "Oh, the results are negative because for most of those families there will be other variables that make the mother staying home be associated with all these bad effects". But if we're talking about the real world and if you're right, then whatever these other variables are do exist, and it seems that your general recommendation on gender roles doesnt take into account that therefore for most couples it wont "work out better for everyone".

If you want to make a more limited claim, not just "if everyone's willing to accept traditional gender roles", and not just if the woman doesnt hate it, but also as long as everything else in this couples lives conform to a fairly utopian ideal that evidently only a minority of traditional families actually live in, that then it all works out for the better - well, you'll still only have the appeal to specialisation rather than any evidence that outcomes are better, but your claim would be a lot more defensible.

I dont think there's much of a substantive difference between the two. Unless you can point out significant differences in the meaning of "happy" and "willing", and "happy" and "better off" in the context of family wellbeing.

There's your whole problem: you think that people have children in order to make themselves happy.

No, I think that happiness is a secondary objective. Not irrelevent. And in fact, parental happiness will feed into the primary objective of producing and rearing well adjusted children capable of reaching their full potential. Surely you agree that happiness and marital satisfaction of parents is positive for children.

This whole argument was raised before in another thread, when studies were cited which indicate that the people with the highest happiness levels have no kids at all. When I say that everyone will be better off, I'm talking about accomplishing your goals most effectively. If you want to sit there, accomplish nothing, and be happy with that, then don't have kids at all. Why do you think I keep calling parenting a "job" instead of "entertainment"? You don't do it for your own happiness; you do it because it's something you want to accomplish in life, and you want to do that as well as possible. Your fundamental misunderstanding of this concept is clearly due to ignorance of the entire process.

You're talking about accomplishing your goals most effectively - I'm talking about choosing the option that allows you to accomplish your goals most effectively while also maximising happiness and minimising stress, psychological distress, marital disfunction. I've shown that outcomes for children are either weakly positive, neutral, or weakly negative for working parents compared to traditional families - the most important outcomes are the same. If the two means achieve the same ends with regards to children, I'm saying dont advocate means to most people that which for most people will be sub-optimal for them as parents.

Optimal for the happines and stability of their family. Having enough children to maintain the population is important, but if there are ways or organising the family that lead to more optimal outcomes in marriage satisfaction, reduce likelihood of divorce, improve outcomes for children's education and health, then those should be chosen. Stress may be a necessary consequence of a worthwhile decision, but if equally or more worthwhile means to the same ends are available, it's stupid to choose the more stressful method.

People who raise kids aren't doing it for their own relaxation, moron. Of course it increases stress; I worry about my kids every goddamned day. The closer you are to the activity, the more parenting-related stress you will feel. That doesn't mean it's a bad choice, because ou give up control when you hand the kids off to someone else. People voluntarily take on this stress because it's about accomplishing goals, not helping themselves relax. What kind of imbecile thinks that women who stay home to raise their kids do so in an attempt to lower their own stress level? Your whole argument is riddled with non sequiturs like this, where you try to connect completely mismatched objectives and means of measuring success.

Do you truly misunderstand my argument to such a degree or is this just a strawman tactic? On the one hand, I could try and reformulate it for you, but on the other hand looking at the paragraph you just replied to, that paragraph already explains it simply enough. If you read it and understood it you'll know that I'm already taking that having children, and providing them with optimal outcomes is already assumed to be the number one priority. But if most people will be happier achieving that one way versus another, why on earth should the average couple choose the option that decreases marital satisfaction and all the rest?

You cling to your bizarre delusion that people have kids in order to make themselves happy (that's why stupid teenaged girls have kids, but not intelligent adults), or in order to relax (not even teenaged girls think that), and then you crow that if a particular parenting method does not achieve these goals, then it's not working out. You have absolutely no clue, do you?

You cant be this stupid. You know that isnt my argument. Are you so desperate that you need to mischaracterise my argument in such a way?

Your point regarding evolution only addresses the issue of whether the father or mother should stay home, not whether one parent must stay home versus both working. What have you really presented in favour of your claim?

For the umpteenth time, specialized division of labour, which is well-understood to work for everyone. This is an argument taken from industry, which you discount because you refuse to admit that parenting is a job rather than some sort of self-indulgence or relaxation exercise.

You sort of remind me of free market fundamentalists who say, government spending is always inefficient, the market is always efficient, and then blindly apply that principle to any policy without taking into consideration a lot of the complexities and, well, the human side.

I think there's a downside to someone specialising in a job that makes them unhappy. If there's a job that neither of the two workers involved want to specialise in, and would become distressed and dissatisfied in, it may in the long run be better for them to either split that job between them or outsource a portion of it. Marriages arent the same as industry - in industry you can hire people, fire people, increase their rewards - there's no way to account for inequitable division of labour in marriages, and you've got two main workers that you cant afford to lose. If you dont manage working conditions in such a way as to maintain stability you risk having the family unit break apart altogether. And like industry, you ignore worker morale at your peril - when workers have low morale they're less likely to be as productive.

If such specialisation in the modern world lead to significantly superior outcomes in the primary objective of raising well adjusted children and all that, then that would trump any concerns about morale. But that doesnt seem to be the case, and it seem that in general, whether due inherently to the nature of traditional marriages or to external variables that impact upon the experience of traditional marriage, for most people, morale suffers significantly.

Again, if the outcome for children is equivalent, you cant make a general recommendation that people choose the means to that end that will lead to less satisfying marriages.

So what else have you presented in support of your argument? Well, you've mentioned specialisation in jobs. But you ignore research on the psychological effects of being a stay-at-home mum, and the decreased marital satisfaction and stability associated with it.

I do not "ignore" it; I point out that it is irrelevant to the objectives. Parenting is an objective-oriented activity; you are tring to achieve a goal. It is not about self-indulgence or relaxation, no matter how much you might pretend otherwise.

You and I both agree that the primary objective is to provide the most benefit to the children, but are you seriously saying that being happy and satisfied in doing so is of no importance whatsoever?

Furthermore, the specialisation argument would actually seem to support sending children to day-care, where professionals truly specialise in childcare - as opposed to a typical stay-at-home mother who must split her time between homemaking and looking after the kids.

For one thing, the level of qualification required to be a day-care worker is a joke. For another, the ratio between caregivers and children makes this argument a joke.

What is the purpose of day-care? I would say that the first objective is to provide a safe environment, but that any additional benefit beyond this should be considered positive. Such benefits might include socialisation and stimulation. In fact, some of the studies I read indicate that children who attend day care are less likely to demonstrate dependency issues, less likely to be "clingly" and less likely to be distressed in various social situations. The fact that caregivers can conduct group activities renders the criticism of caregiver to child ratios a poor one.

I'd also like to point out, since we've been talking about evolutionary roles, that for most of humanity's existence childrearing was probably more communal - probably more like that of the daycare situation. Marriage and monogamy were probably not a feature in the family models we evolved through. Isolated mothers caring for only their own children was probably an unnatural state.

I think that a proper evaluation needs to look at the results, not just the theory. So no, you havnt done enough to support your argument. Apart from the assumption that specialisation should result in better outcomes for the family, you havnt presented anything at all, let alone properly addressed the contradictory evidence I've presented.

Outcomes cannot be measured without reference to objectives. One does not measure the success of a fuel economy improvement project by looking at quarter-mile times. So far, your argument is predicated upon the assumption that the objective of raising kids is to make yourself happier or more relaxed: a preposterous position to take. My argument is predicated upon the assumption that parents make parenting decisions based on their desire to have maximum control over the way their children are raised: a proposition which is much easier to justify in light of actual observed parent behaviour.

Ah, so now your argument is changing to one about "maximum control". I thought it was about "working out better for everyone", a more general claim that would involve truly important outcomes such as a child's psychological wellbeing and academic achievement. Not to mention that parents would seem to be included in "everyone".

If you want to argue that parents having "maximum control" over children is what's most important, I'll let you go on your merry way and we can end the debate here. But if the most important objectives relate to a child's wellbeing, I have provided evidence indicating that there's no significant difference in outcomes for children through either parenting style.

It is with this established that we can look at secondary objectives, because unlike you I think that once the primary objective is assured, happiness and satisfaction for parents is in fact worth considering.

It seems to me that the logical place for you to find evidence to support your argument would be to look for studies on outcomes for children - if the outcomes for children are significantly better in families with a stay-at-home mum, that might outweigh the negative effects on the parents' relationship. Why on earth do I need to tell you how to debate?

Unfortunately, sociological studies have been an ideological morass for the entire history of the field, going back to the early studies showing that divorce had no negative impact whatsoever on kids (which, interestingly enough, use almost exactly the same methods used by the studies you cited in your subsequent post, which attempted to prove the same thing about handing off your kids to institutions and which were contradicted by subsequent studies).

More recent research indicates that divorce is most harmful when no apparent tensions existed in the marriage, while it is less harmful or even in fact benefical if the marriage is perceived by the children to be disfunctional. But anyway, let me get this straight - you dont like the field of research, so you're going to ignore any research it outputs? So rather than actually address their arguments and the data and methods used, you're going to ignore it because of who they are, because of the field they're in? I think there's a word for that fallacy.

It doesn't help that you need a high income to be able to afford to keep a parent home, or that many single-income families are actually single-income because of involuntary unemployment rather than a conscious decision (almost a quarter of minimum-wage earners are sole breadwinners for their families; a horrendous situation). Labour studies have been far more controlled, which is why I based my argument upon division of labour.

It seems like you're maneuvering yourself into a position where your claim only applies to the minority of couples who live in just the right ideal conditions. It would have been a lot easier if you'd limited your claim in such a way in the beginning.

My argument's made of thin air? Now that's projection. I've presented a significant amount of evidence on the kinds of harmful effects correlated with traditional gender roles in marriages.

All based upon your laughable assumption that parents have kids in order to make themselves happier or more relaxed, leaving aside the "uncontrolled variable" issue which you have already demonstrated that you don't understand at all, based on your comical attempt to equate it to the concept of exceptions to rules.

See above, there's really nothing new here.

Nice, try to shift the burden of evidence onto me.

I made an argument based on effective output and division of labour, based upon ironclad results from industry.

Why dont you admit that you came into this debate without one clue as to the actual effects of different marriage models on outcomes for children and parents in the real world? You've made an assumption based on an the application of an oversimplified principle of efficiency in industry to families, where there are fundamental differences - hell, take a very basic one, such as that for working individuals work (however unsatisfying it may be) can be left there when they return home - for stay-at-home mothers work is home, and if that's not satisfying there's no escape. The world would be a lot simpler if people were machines, but unfortunately sometimes their activities are complicated by psychological factors, as irrational as they may be, that can nullify the superior efficiency that they should achieve on paper.

You attacked it by citing various studies that don't actually relate to the subject, unless one adopts your bizarre assumptions about the reasons people have kids. Sorry, but YOU bear the burden of proof to show why my argument is wrong, since you keep saying it's wrong but you produce no real evidence other than the kind of studies which get tossed back and forth because there are just as many studies saying exactly the opposite thing, thanks to the nature of sociology.

Attack the field, rather than the research - that's quite pathetic. The fact is, you havnt done one bit of research to see where the preponderance of evidence lies.

You're the one who made the claim, and one of the biggest problems is that you dont present any specific elements to refute - just an appeal to the principle of specialisation.

Which you ignore because you have no real rebuttal to it, and because in your spectacular ignorance, you fail to understand that parenting is a form of labour, not self-relaxation.

"I dont care what the real world says, traditional parenting should be more efficient because families are the same as industry! It just must be so!".