6 ms·

Unrelated, but as a 21 year old (male!) who knows little about society, human psychology, etc., can I ask with sincerity what is probably a really dumb question

by brhsiao 10y ago

Unrelated, but as a 21 year old (male!) who knows little about society, human psychology, etc., can I ask with sincerity what is probably a really dumb question? Why do companies/society need to accommodate people who have kids? Why are maternity/paternity leave a thing? How come we don't expect people to price the fact that having a kid is a lot of work that will inherently set their life back into their decision of whether to have one? Is it really so "evil" when one makes the assumption that someone with kids is on balance less dedicated, more tired, more preoccupied, etc. than someone without? Can't we rephrase that as, someone who has a matter in their life they need to spend hours a day on will have less time for other things? Is that discrimination?

snowwrestler 10y ago
Where do you see yourself in about 30 years? Would you like to have a healthy society, innovation in arts and sciences, a strong economy, a strong national defense, etc.? Well, the kids who are babies today will be providing that for you--even if you don't have kids yourself. That's one reason childrearing gets special treatment in policy. Another more practical reason is that quite a lot of people have kids, and so families make up a large block of votes in our democracy.
- brhsiao 10y ago
  I get that humans should have kids, and obviously it's terrible (and should be fixed) whenever kids are neglected. We should have (more, better) programs for this. But why does it fall on companies to create an "environment" that treats people with kids the same way when in fact their circumstances are different? During the YC/Thiel thing, I saw someone cite "I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon", as an example of a morally outrageous statement. But surely people with small kids are more preoccupied?
  - tunah2 10y ago
    Because kids do better when their parents take care of them, and "programs" can't replace this. Companies have to help out because they're part of society. In exchange they get to do things like limit their liability and collectively enter into contracts.
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    There seems to be this amazing doublethink in Silicon Valley where people convince themselves that their startup is going to make the world a better place in some huge disruptive way, while arguing that companies have no responsibility to make the world a better place in small, normal, achievable ways, like setting family-friendly policies. Silicon Valley startups are apparently so powerful that they will fundamentally disrupt and reshape society, but also so fragile that having some women with kids on staff will cause total mission failure.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      > having some women with kids on staff will cause total mission failure hyperbole
  - balls187 10y ago
    > But why does it fall on companies to create an "environment" that treats people with kids the same way when in fact their circumstances are different? In the US. It doesn't. The Federal Government mandates every eligible employee gets 12 weeks leave to deal with certain "family" related issues: * Taking are of yourself, your spouse, your parent, a new child In countries like Sweden, the government mandates that parents can take up to 480 days paid leave per child. As others have posted, for tech companies, they are doing it to remain competitive. More recently, companies like MSFT, Netflix, Facebook have started to offer paid paternity leave, as employee incentives. Put it this way, if my company did not make concessions for parents, we would leave and find jobs else where. That would make the jobs of all employees that are left that much harder, and in all likelihood, cause the company to fail. > "I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon", as an example of a morally outrageous statement. But surely people with small kids are more preoccupied? Is there evidence that startups with female co-founders with small children fail more, less, or about average? What if that family had a nanny (like I do), or the spouse was planning on staying at home? There are women who have small children, work full time, and attend night school. If they can do that, then certainly they can start a company. Personally, with a young baby, I much prefer the stability and predictability of an established company, to that of being a co-founder, or very early employee of a startup.
projektir 10y ago
> How come we don't expect people to understand that having a kid is a lot of work, something that will inherently set their life back, and price that into their decision of whether to have a kid? Specifically because people understand this is why we need to accommodate people who have children. If having children starts really setting you back because it's not accommodated in the slightest, all the ambitious, driven, and responsible people will decide that they can't afford to have children. If it gets bad enough, it becomes so common that the fertility rate of your entire country falls down. The other reason is a business oriented one: a very large portion of the population intends to have children. It would be rather strange to exclude them all from your employment pool. > Can't we rephrase that as, someone who has a matter in their life they need to spend hours a day taking care of will have less hours for other things? Now a question for you. Would you want to live in a world where the only way to survive was to dedicate 100% of your life to your job? No relationships, no hobbies, no time for things like exercise. Just your job.
- brhsiao 10y ago
  Makes sense. Ok, you changed my mind. I did read once that humans basically evolved to handle childcare as a society. Apparently villages used to raise all the kids together. So I am probably arguing against biology here. I'm still not sure assuming that people with kids have less time left over is discrimination, but I am probably projecting my own lack of desire to have kids onto the separate issue of how society should be run.
  - telesilla 10y ago
    >humans basically evolved to handle childcare as a society On that, you are right. It's incredibly frustrating for many trying to raise a family in Western-style living arrangements being so separate from their extended families and community. Child-raising is most efficient when done by a group: alone, it's exhausting and challenging and it's bad for the economy in the long term: http://www.historyfuturenow.com/wp/why-the-nuclear-family-needs-to-die-in-order-for-us-to-live/ http://www.historyfuturenow.com/wp/why-the-nuclear-family-ne... Even if you don't care about the emotional aspect, there are many impacts on society caused by the very recent rise of the Nuclear Family.
CJefferson 10y ago
It comes down to living in society. A very large proportion of people will, at some point, have children. Many countries have decided, to varying degrees, it is good for society as a whole to make companies support parents, as children are the future of society.
- _delirium 10y ago
  In many cases it's not precisely "make companies support parents", at least not directly. In many social-democratic countries, companies are required to accommodate the parental leave, in the sense of allowing the absence, but the pay during leave is funded by the government, via taxes, not expected to be covered by the company on its payroll. It's considered part of the social security system in those cases, like old-age pension, free schooling, and other such universal, state-funded benefits.
greglindahl 10y ago
You might try reading this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave for some background. The short answer is that family leave is good for companies, especially companies that are innovative and employ a lot of knowledge workers.
alexbeloi 10y ago
Because you/the-company/society wants ambitious hard-working people to copulate. One large multinational company that I know of actually gave people bonuses for having kids, growing a multi-generational loyal employee base.
Hondor 10y ago
Some employers also accommodate side businesses and hobbies. One place I worked at even encouraged employees to use their equipment to work on side projects. My current employer lets me work on my side business in the office when I don't have other work to do. Ironically, that same employer discriminates against staff in relationships because they're a child-having risk! So I think one aspect of accommodating kids is the same. Not a moral thing so much as a way of attracting workers.
rgbrenner 10y ago
Why do companies/society need to accommodate people who have kids? People are giving you these answers about the importance of children, etc, etc, etc. They're right, but I don't think that's the reason companies accommodate people with children. IMO, it's pretty rare to see policies that are truly based on altruism.. there's usually at least some financial/economic basis for those policies. This is simple really... if you don't accommodate them (something that costs little), they will go somewhere else that does. So you're left with a smaller pool of employees. Some of those that you've lost, may be very good, but they will go work somewhere else where they get what they value. So to attract those people, you can try offering more money (likely more than what child-accommodating policies would cost). Either way, you've reduced the employee pool, and increased wages to compensate. That's not a good situation for any company to be in (unless the cost of such policies costs more... which is unlikely). Edit: also consider that the older a person is, the more likely they are to have children. So if you didn't accommodate them, your employee pool would be filled with younger, less experienced people (ie: 18-30). That's also generally not a good thing for a company.

by brhsiao 10y ago

snowwrestler 10y ago

Where do you see yourself in about 30 years? Would you like to have a healthy society, innovation in arts and sciences, a strong economy, a strong national defense, etc.? Well, the kids who are babies today will be providing that for you--even if you don't have kids yourself. That's one reason childrearing gets special treatment in policy. Another more practical reason is that quite a lot of people have kids, and so families make up a large block of votes in our democracy.

brhsiao 10y ago
I get that humans should have kids, and obviously it's terrible (and should be fixed) whenever kids are neglected. We should have (more, better) programs for this. But why does it fall on companies to create an "environment" that treats people with kids the same way when in fact their circumstances are different? During the YC/Thiel thing, I saw someone cite "I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon", as an example of a morally outrageous statement. But surely people with small kids are more preoccupied?
- tunah2 10y ago
  Because kids do better when their parents take care of them, and "programs" can't replace this. Companies have to help out because they're part of society. In exchange they get to do things like limit their liability and collectively enter into contracts.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  There seems to be this amazing doublethink in Silicon Valley where people convince themselves that their startup is going to make the world a better place in some huge disruptive way, while arguing that companies have no responsibility to make the world a better place in small, normal, achievable ways, like setting family-friendly policies. Silicon Valley startups are apparently so powerful that they will fundamentally disrupt and reshape society, but also so fragile that having some women with kids on staff will cause total mission failure.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > having some women with kids on staff will cause total mission failure hyperbole
- balls187 10y ago
  > But why does it fall on companies to create an "environment" that treats people with kids the same way when in fact their circumstances are different? In the US. It doesn't. The Federal Government mandates every eligible employee gets 12 weeks leave to deal with certain "family" related issues: * Taking are of yourself, your spouse, your parent, a new child In countries like Sweden, the government mandates that parents can take up to 480 days paid leave per child. As others have posted, for tech companies, they are doing it to remain competitive. More recently, companies like MSFT, Netflix, Facebook have started to offer paid paternity leave, as employee incentives. Put it this way, if my company did not make concessions for parents, we would leave and find jobs else where. That would make the jobs of all employees that are left that much harder, and in all likelihood, cause the company to fail. > "I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon", as an example of a morally outrageous statement. But surely people with small kids are more preoccupied? Is there evidence that startups with female co-founders with small children fail more, less, or about average? What if that family had a nanny (like I do), or the spouse was planning on staying at home? There are women who have small children, work full time, and attend night school. If they can do that, then certainly they can start a company. Personally, with a young baby, I much prefer the stability and predictability of an established company, to that of being a co-founder, or very early employee of a startup.

projektir 10y ago

> How come we don't expect people to understand that having a kid is a lot of work, something that will inherently set their life back, and price that into their decision of whether to have a kid? Specifically because people understand this is why we need to accommodate people who have children. If having children starts really setting you back because it's not accommodated in the slightest, all the ambitious, driven, and responsible people will decide that they can't afford to have children. If it gets bad enough, it becomes so common that the fertility rate of your entire country falls down. The other reason is a business oriented one: a very large portion of the population intends to have children. It would be rather strange to exclude them all from your employment pool. > Can't we rephrase that as, someone who has a matter in their life they need to spend hours a day taking care of will have less hours for other things? Now a question for you. Would you want to live in a world where the only way to survive was to dedicate 100% of your life to your job? No relationships, no hobbies, no time for things like exercise. Just your job.

brhsiao 10y ago
Makes sense. Ok, you changed my mind. I did read once that humans basically evolved to handle childcare as a society. Apparently villages used to raise all the kids together. So I am probably arguing against biology here. I'm still not sure assuming that people with kids have less time left over is discrimination, but I am probably projecting my own lack of desire to have kids onto the separate issue of how society should be run.
- telesilla 10y ago
  >humans basically evolved to handle childcare as a society On that, you are right. It's incredibly frustrating for many trying to raise a family in Western-style living arrangements being so separate from their extended families and community. Child-raising is most efficient when done by a group: alone, it's exhausting and challenging and it's bad for the economy in the long term: http://www.historyfuturenow.com/wp/why-the-nuclear-family-needs-to-die-in-order-for-us-to-live/ http://www.historyfuturenow.com/wp/why-the-nuclear-family-ne... Even if you don't care about the emotional aspect, there are many impacts on society caused by the very recent rise of the Nuclear Family.

CJefferson 10y ago

It comes down to living in society. A very large proportion of people will, at some point, have children. Many countries have decided, to varying degrees, it is good for society as a whole to make companies support parents, as children are the future of society.

_delirium 10y ago
In many cases it's not precisely "make companies support parents", at least not directly. In many social-democratic countries, companies are required to accommodate the parental leave, in the sense of allowing the absence, but the pay during leave is funded by the government, via taxes, not expected to be covered by the company on its payroll. It's considered part of the social security system in those cases, like old-age pension, free schooling, and other such universal, state-funded benefits.

greglindahl 10y ago

You might try reading this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave for some background. The short answer is that family leave is good for companies, especially companies that are innovative and employ a lot of knowledge workers.

alexbeloi 10y ago

Because you/the-company/society wants ambitious hard-working people to copulate. One large multinational company that I know of actually gave people bonuses for having kids, growing a multi-generational loyal employee base.

Hondor 10y ago

Some employers also accommodate side businesses and hobbies. One place I worked at even encouraged employees to use their equipment to work on side projects. My current employer lets me work on my side business in the office when I don't have other work to do. Ironically, that same employer discriminates against staff in relationships because they're a child-having risk! So I think one aspect of accommodating kids is the same. Not a moral thing so much as a way of attracting workers.

rgbrenner 10y ago

Why do companies/society need to accommodate people who have kids? People are giving you these answers about the importance of children, etc, etc, etc. They're right, but I don't think that's the reason companies accommodate people with children. IMO, it's pretty rare to see policies that are truly based on altruism.. there's usually at least some financial/economic basis for those policies. This is simple really... if you don't accommodate them (something that costs little), they will go somewhere else that does. So you're left with a smaller pool of employees. Some of those that you've lost, may be very good, but they will go work somewhere else where they get what they value. So to attract those people, you can try offering more money (likely more than what child-accommodating policies would cost). Either way, you've reduced the employee pool, and increased wages to compensate. That's not a good situation for any company to be in (unless the cost of such policies costs more... which is unlikely). Edit: also consider that the older a person is, the more likely they are to have children. So if you didn't accommodate them, your employee pool would be filled with younger, less experienced people (ie: 18-30). That's also generally not a good thing for a company.