Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving, along with persistent wage inequalities that make women, on the whole, lower earners than their male partners, both incentivize women, and not men, to drop out of the workforce and stay home when they have children.
Differences in reaction to ickle ones are based purely upon culture and nothing more?
That would be…..odd. For such differences do seem to occur in many a species – maybe even all. True, not all – and yes, let’s mention the seahorse – have the biddy doing the childcare but there is often that sexual difference in who does.
So why is it that in humans it’s always the culture, never anything innate?
Well, I imagine it’s because we’re the only species with the necessary level of cognitive ability to overcome basic instincts. Whether it’s wise to do so is a whole different discussion!
When convenient – eg childcare – femiloons will claim that sex differences are cultural, but also when convenient (eg over trannies or menopausal leave) that women are essentially different to men. And they don’t get that they opened the door to trans-sexualism by distinguishing sex and gender and claiming that sex differences were cultural.
“stay home “: this sort of poltroon just can’t resist writing in subAmerican English. Soon, no doubt, we’ll be told that something fell “off of” a boat or whatever. Are these people tin-eared or do they just ache to be fashionable?
Obviously this research is self-serving but before forcefully rearranging society perhaps we should ask a few more questions:
How many women would trust their partners to stay at home and look after little children?
How many of these couples made a conscious decision that the man will go out to work?
Who is most anxious at work over their children being at home and looked after by their partner? I would put money on it being women and not even being close.
The term “Stay at home parents” is rapidly becoming redundant with the growth of WFH.
This in turn is mirrored by the number of parents (women most affected) who don’t fancy the messy and often boring aspects of bringing up their sprogs.
If it were anything but culture you couldn’t have a Blank Slate, Year Zero and a Brave New World. And then there the wimmin go, bellyaching about hormones.
The clowns refuse to accept that we’re simply primates and that human behaviour, both individual and social, is clearly driven more by instinct, hormone and belief than by socialised rationality.
Moira’s already persuaded majority of women to sacrifice their best child bearing years to the career and or galivanting. Now she’s got her sights on the lucky ones who didn’t miss the boat,, and those, once the bundle of delayed joy comes along, have the most reluctance to immediately jump back on the treadmill. Agree with BiP in that I’m sure if enough ideological leverage is brought to bear on couples it can all be evened up so gals and guys are guilted into doing it roughly evenly. But you’d be supressing an awful lot of natural instincts in doing so, and that will cause many many issues down the line. The reason why gardeners obsess over their soil type is not because they can’t change the pH or the drainage to fit any given plant, it’s because going against what you have naturally is an awful awful lot of work and if you give up the plant dies.
Persistent wage inequalities are because some people *earn*, not just are paid, more than others. They are not an invention of “the patriarchy” since some women earn more than others: it is, to a significant extent, due to the fact that men work a lot more hours per week than women.
Other things being equal, once the child has been weaned, the lower earner will be the one to stay at home looking after the child.
Women who are nine months pregnant aren’t going down the mines or doing any of the trades. Men obviously don’t have that issue.
“Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving”
Yes, somebody needs to start producing TV shows, films, novels, and discussions that introduce the idea of working women. I can’t recall ever having seen images or accounts of women doing well in traditional male areas. They could also try gently nudging the idea that most blokes are useless, either irrational testosterone-fuelled combat machines, or gormless incompetents. And while they’re at it, they could get a few blacks and mixed-race people on the telly as well.
“So why is it that in humans it’s always the culture, never anything innate?”
Very specific humans, almost exclusively female, anglophonic, and “educated” in specific subjects.
Women take a lot more time off work due to “stress” and “mental health”.
Employer reluctance to hire women is entirely rational. But illegal.
“Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving”
If Islamic mothers are almost invariably stay-at-home, is it OK when they do it? Or is it only white folks who shouldn’t.
@rhoda
By defining the question as islamaphobic, it doesn’t need to be answered.
“sacrifice their careers”
I think it was CS Lewis who said that motherhood is the ultimate career, being the one which all the others exist to serve.
@ Simon Neale
My wife found me accounts of/references to women leading gangs of navvies digging the english canal system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were not *quite* unique but so rare as to be remarkable and chronicled: as was Tamara Press.
sacrifice their careers for caregiving
Sam (and CS Lewis ) beat me to it, but does this malignant halfwit think all those blokes who slog themselves half to death for their families are doing it for shits and giggles?
Is it worth sacrificing a family for some bullshit job in HR or PR or some government busywork department?
Women take the primary care role because this is how evolution has worked out. See also, all our closest animal relatives. Although this miserable bitch probably believes it’s the silverback patriarchy stopping lady gorillas reaching their potential.
“So why is it that in humans it’s always the culture, never anything innate?”
Because we’re not animals, Tim.
And My Lord Bishop ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce will back me up on that.
That’s because the Republicans’ childcare policy, like their pro-natalist policy, is based on one goal: undoing the historic gains in women’s rights and status, and pushing American women out of the workforce, out of public life, out of full participation in society – and into a narrow domestic role of confinement, dependence and isolation.
insha’Allah. I’m working class so my mum and granny always worked, cleaning and doing other working class women’s work for a pittance.
But if their husbands had earned enough to allow them to stay at home, I don’t think they’d have cried about not being allowed to “participate in society”. There was a lot more society about in those days, people weren’t shut ins and strangers to their neighbours.
Is the “Gen Z boss and a miniskirt” cohort “participating in society”, or is it adult daycare for childless women who are themselves stuck in childhood because they have failed to become mothers?
By “society”, does Moira really mean “Tiktok”?
By a “career”, does she mean some shitty office job? I’ve had a “career” for decades, and the business never loves you back. If “careers” were great, male suicide rates wouldn’t be so high. I’ve yet to hear of anyone on their deathbed regretting that they didn’t spend more time at work.
And I’ve yet to hear a female colleague “joke” about hopefully dying of a heart attack at work so the missus can get the death benefit. But men work themselves into an early grave for their wives and children all the time. Because they’re Patriarchal oppressors, natch.
Is Moira’s problem that she is not loved? Is she looking for love in all the wrong places? You won’t find love in your P11D or the local abortion clinic.
@ Marius
Yes, the Silver-back patriarchy does prevent *almost* any megalomaniac females reaching their potential – which is just as well for the other gorillas. Elephants have a matriarchy, but lesser animals rely on the adult males to protect the family groupings from predators and we lack a single scrap of evidence of *long-term* survival of any human matriarchies (her late majesty did a damn good job compared to every elected President in recorded history but 73 years is not “long-term”).
Footnote the Spartans had the most liberated females in classical Greece as well as the toughest guys but their problem was that they just died out and when the Romans invaded they had to recruit helots for their army because there were no longer enough Spartiates
John – Footnote the Spartans had the most liberated females in classical Greece
But their definition of “liberated” meant “not having a career”.
For the Spartiates, generational parasites and pederasts that they were, working for a living was beneath them. That’s what slaves were for.
If neither parent stayed home, then mothers would still be the “stay at home parent” as they would need a day or so for recovery before getting back to the tractor / lathe / iron foundry. Whereas dad can go back to the office reception desk as soon as “pop”.
Of course then some childcare would still be needed for the mewling, and as granny traditionally gets her state pension before grandad it is likely going to be nana that takes it on.
Which all just goes to show, not a stat that will change no matter what you do…
@ Steve
FYI Sparta had no law about adultery
FYI It was Thebes that paired up “lovers” in their army
Helots worked the farms but most other jobs were done by Spartans (which was why the currency was iron, lest some Spartiate might become too rich)
Rev Spooner
Because we’re not animals, Tim.
We are animals but we are also persons. And persons – unlike animals – are free, self-conscious, accountable beings, capable of complex speech, rationality and laughter. Personhood is not reducible to animality but rather emerges from it – much as the Mona Lisa herself emerges from Leonardo’s brush strokes and patches of colour…
john77 – FYI Sparta had no law about adultery
FYI It was Thebes that paired up “lovers” in their army
Eh, I don’t care if a man is shagging another bird while trading in Egypt or besieging Athens. It’s the pederasty they were bad for. Ancient Greece wasn’t a safe place for boys, and the Spartiates were not only enthusiastic nonces, but generally psychotic murderers as a way of maintaining the power of the state.
Not nice people. Xerxes did nothing wrong.
Helots worked the farms but most other jobs were done by Spartans
No, the Spartiates were forbidden by law from working. I’m not calling them Spartiates to be a dick, calling them “Spartans” gives a completely false idea of what kind of society it was.
The Spartiates were a small minority in ancient Sparta, and they ruled the Helot majority (the people whose country it actually was, the Spartiates were invaders) by unrestricted ritualised slaughter and public humiliation rituals. Up to 80% of the population were slaves. It wasn’t really a polity, more like a gang ruling over a prison of one of those awful blood cults in South America that the conquistadors unalived. King Pyrhhus had the right idea, albeit poor execution. They should have sent King Exterminatus.
Fucking Sparta. What have they ever done for us?
From a biological viewpoint, it’s because we’re mammals, and females are needed to breast-feed their young. As Tim points out , there are fish species in which the males do most of the job of rearing young (seahorses, but also sticklebacks) and similarly for amphibians (midwife toads) – several bird species, and there may well be reptiles, too , though none come readily to mind. But there are no mammalian species in which the male does the bulk of child-rearing.
and as granny traditionally gets her state pension before grandad it is likely going to be nana that takes it on.
Well, that’s no longer going to happen, in the name of equality.
With a “proper” pension scheme, women would get less pension per month than men, as they are actuarially expected to be drawing it longer, so By The Power Of Division! that results in smaller payments. Women starting drawing before men and ending drawing after men and drawing the same per-payment amount for the same pot is unsustainable.
Most “culture” is rooted in incentives and those change with technology. And men and women have different innate differences. Women want to raise children, which is why they aren’t as work focussed as men are. You can see this in the choice of degrees. Women choose more stupid degrees that are fun than men do.
You can also see this in what drama is made for men and what drama is made for women. Cop shows for men are about nicking villains with the words “shut it”. Cop shows for women are more about their home life. Sex and the City is about shagging and having coffee with the girls. Halt and Catch Fire or The Big Short are more about the actual work. Boys and girls play different sorts of video games. Girls love “building” games like Animal Crossing. Boys like missions.
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