To wonder if men giving birth could actually end the motherhood penalty

[ReginaRegina]

Obv we're talking a fair few years from now.

My prediction is that, despite all the talk about male privilege, a lot of women wouldn't actually want to be the main breadwinner. However, it would certainly create more choice in terms of shared parenting.

I know a bloke who's wife is unwell so he's had to park his career on the back burner a bit to pick up the parenting slack. He's a good person - his career isn't affected because he gave birth. It's affected because he (through necessity) had to prioritise differently. I definitely DON'T think his life is easier because he's leaving at 5.30 to pick his children up from daycare. Maybe I was unfair to the op. But the reason it feels either misinformed or goady is the constant little asides along the lines of "most people would love to not work". Which both assumes being a stay at home mother of small children is easy (it's not) and also that the "childcare" penalty mostly affects SAHM. The women it affects are those working (therefore part of the employment statistics) who have to balance their job/career aspirations with being there to pick children up from school, leave work if children are sick etc etc. Whoever does that in a couple is likely to suffer in their career. Again maybe I am being unfair but that plus the insistence that actually this is in the near future feels like they are trying to suggest the only reason women are disagreeing with them is because it threatens a status quo women secretly want. Which is fine if that's the argument you want to make but be honest about it.

I would also say that Glasgow City Council spent millions trying to defend the OP’s position that female dominated work is worth less than equivalent male dominated work and that was why they were paying women less. They lost the equal pay claim and it’s nearly bankrupted them. I think Birmingham did the same.

If we're into thought experiments I remember an alien human like species where men gave birth to boys and women to girls. How would such a society organise itself.

I'm not sure why you're getting such a pile on here. Your comments didn't come across too me like you were saying that staying home and caring for children is some kind of doss.

I certainly didn't say that but on here that often doesn't seem to matter. 😂

My sister has three kids under 10 and works PT. In a pretty high level job too. I know it's not easy. However, I do feel people on here and also many feminists can often be a bit selective with their reasoning. It's always about how the bloke gets to sail through life living the corporate dream.

There's never any mention of the fact that if one partner doesn't work despite kids being in school it's nearly always the female. Men who become SAHD or lower earners are statistically much more likely to be divorced so generally women don't seem to like it when the shoe's on the other foot.

I don't think it's 'misogyny' to point that out.

I do 'a man's job' and I get paid like a man. There's nothing stopping other women doing the same.

100%. People really want me to be advocating for it so they can rally the troops. In truth, I'm really not that fussed about the gender stuff either way. Maybe that will change in the future but I can't actually remember the last time I saw a transwoman in the real world so for now it's really not a big concern tbh.

100%. People really want me to be advocating for it so they can rally the troops. In truth, I'm really not that fussed about the gender stuff either way. Maybe that will change in the future but I can't actually remember the last time I saw a transwoman in the real world so for now it's really not a big concern tbh.

Back in the real world fathers get a parenting boost when they have children.

I'm baffled by what you are trying to say, why did you start this thread in the first place. You not fussed by 'gender stuff' and you seem to be disputing women particularly mothers are discriminated in workforce.
You don't seem to understand Equal Pay legislation or the Equality Act.
But then I suspect that's because you're not bothered so why start a thread.

It's always about how the bloke gets to sail through life living the corporate dream.

It's not though. I think you are working with an assumption or a characature of thinking that isn't accurate.
In order for a theory to be workable it has to be disprovable. Is there anything people on here could say to disprove the theory you started with. I suspect not. Either they agree with you or they disagree and prove your point by being defensive (insert passive aggressive emojis here.)

"I do 'a man's job' and I get paid like a man. There's nothing stopping other women doing the same". yes and if everyone did that then the world would fall apart. The same way if no-one did. Because someone needs to look after the children and it is not well paid or well respected. As you keep demonstrating.

I do "a man's job" too by the way. That's not what bothers me. It's the complete failure of logic from someone convinced they are being logical.

What the heck is a man's job when it's at home?

Testing urinals?

All the really difficult jobs wOmEn ArE tOo LaZy To Do. We use having to have children and then look after them as an excuse to force men to be the breadwinners and then have the temerity to write angry feminist screeds about how all men are living the lives of riley in their fancy corporate jobs. But when men are the ones giving birth all this will change (for reasons undisclosed) and men will be able to work easy jobs or stay home with children or stay home while the children are at school. Or something. I am not sure how men giving birth will change this exactly but it will.

You lost me at ‘when women become men’.
Who said that?

You did, in a post on page two: Wombs could come from deceased women and donors who have decided to have their own reproductive organs removed — which can happen when women decide to become men.

Just for clarity, humans can't change sex, women cannot "decide to become men", and the chances of natal men being able to gestate and give birth to babies are precisely zero.

I'm relieved to see push back against an OP casually advocating for medical experimentation on babies & women. I know that some now excuse experimenting on children because .. trans.. but it's good to keep stating that all this is unacceptable.
Once you've gestated & birthed a baby you just know that this is a twisted sick man's fantasy.

It was a quote lol.

I haven't read the thread so this may have been addressed, but women don't earn more than men before having children. This is a misconception, at least if based on the earlier US studies, where the data from metropolitan areas compared young women's and men's earnings in an overall sense.

When these comparisons were done separately for each level of education (i.e., women with university degrees compared to men with university degrees, women without any training past school compared to men without any training past school), men earned more than women in each category. The overall result was created by the fact that those metropolitan areas had more educated young women than educated young men.

I do 'a man's job' and I get paid like a man. There's nothing stopping other women doing the same.
Of course there isn’t (although I would guess you have to prove you are at least as good at it as all the men before they reluctantly accept you doing it). That’s not the point I was making. I said it was sexism that traditionally male dominated jobs get paid more than traditionally female dominated jobs at the same level. I have one DD studying to be an engineer and one studying to be a nurse. Same level of degree and neither would be capable of doing the other’s job. Guess who will be paid substantially more throughout her career. I get that there is a public/private sector weighting in this but both are shortage professions so you can’t use the supply and demand argument.

Sorry, I meant to quote at the top of my post there.
To add, I will worry far more about my nurse DD being hurt or killed in her job than my engineer DD.

@nepeta thanks for that, that's useful to know! You don't happen to have the name of the studies/more detail do you? No worries if not just curious. I actually know quite a few women who DID quite singlemindedly pursue their career/promotion in their early twenties. It was a conscious decision made precisely because they wanted children/a family and were quite aware of the career hit that would take so they wanted to soften that effect as much as possible. I think that's quite common and I think the extent to which higher achieving (in economic terms) women are deliberately front loading their career compared to their slightly more relaxed male counterparts is missed out of discussions.

It's all too predictable that your posts are being misinterpreted OP.

It's an interesting question. I personally think that those saying 'many men would not choose to carry the baby if it became feasible' are wrong. I think they are overlooking what we are already seeing.

We are already seeing TM elbowing their way into women's spaces, women's sport's, attempting to simulate periods, demanding gynaecological care, trying to induce breast milk, creating neo-vaginas (it's worth remembering that the latter often involves considerable expense and an ongoing physical burden, yet it doesn't deter them)

Do I think if science were to advance sufficiently to permit men to carry babies and it was to become an increasingly streamlined process, men wouldn't take it? I do think they would, in significant numbers, because many men already so inclined see the ability to gestate a baby as 'power'

Let's not overlook women either. They would likely become the biggest proponents of it! We've seen how many women endorse their children's desire to change sex, either in order to win 'best most caring mummy' status or straight munchausen's-by-proxy and some even start pushing it on their toddler children. Celebrities have been quick to embrace it. They'd be the first to jump on the bandwagon. As, they have been with surrogacy to have children close together or preserve the integrity of their vaginas. 'Oh look my husband is having our daughter, and I'm soooo proud of him, it just wooorrks for us, and leaves me free to never have to push something from my vagina'

It would affect the status of women massively. Many women take a derogatory view of SAHM, or women who have more than a couple children even now, men being able to have children would further devalue what women do hugely.

I do think it would free women up to secular working more hours, however. And attitudes would change. Just not in a good way.

*TW

It will take me some time to find that information. I do have it somewhere, so will post it tomorrow if I can find it easily enough.

The results are driven by young women having more education now, but the proper comparisons should be between people with the same education levels, similar jobs, same work experience, same marital status etc. When you do that, the old gender gap reappears.

I think you've been drinking trans cool-aid

The male and female body are completely different. No matter how many hormones and mutilating surgeries, the female body can never be replicated

I found a couple of popular media takes from last year (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/28/gender-pay-gap-young-women/ and https://careerdesignlab.sps.columbia.edu/blog/2022/05/11/why-young-women-earn-more-than-men-in-some-us-cities/).

They both address higher education as the reason why in some large metropolitan centres young women outearn young men overall. They don't give actual properly standardised comparisons between a randomly picked young man and young woman with the same education level, but that is very likely to show some male advantage still.

The other factor that might play a role here are areas where the main industries employ more educated young women, such as universities, so those areas have more retention of that group.

Overall, though, men outearn women in the US (where these data come from) so that women's average earnings are around 82 cents per each dollar of men's average earnings. The difference does grow with age, probably due to that motherhood penalty or the perception that women are likely to become mothers in the future even if they are not yet.

@nepeta thank you!!!