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[Loud Whispers]

Ironically, in the effort to free Swedish children from so-called normative behavior, gender-neutral proponents are also subjecting them to a whole set of new rules and new norms as certain forms of play become taboo, language becomes regulated, and children's interactions and attitudes are closely observed by teachers. One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely "stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying." And so every detail of children's interactions gets micromanaged by concerned adults, who end up problematizing minute aspects of children's lives, from how they form friendships to what games they play and what songs they sing.

Insert reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee here

[Reelya]

Gender-neutral parenting was extremely popular in the 1970s, but I don't read many success stories, instead you have recollections such as this:
http://www.newsweek.com/my-parents-failed-experiment-gender-neutrality-69487

I also remember one article about some gender-neutral parents who gave their boy only teddy bears and dolls, they gave it up after they discovered he had turned it into a wargame with dolls vs teddy bears.

The issue is that yes you can teach your kids good values like everyone being equally valuable, but trying to force any sort of androgyny is a doomed concept. And it's discriminatory. Egalia, the gender-neutral preschool in Sweden is very supportive of transgender and gay/lesbian identity. So they're supportive of personal differences, that's great.

But a boy who likes to play with cars is beyond the pale! I also sort of wonder what the girls are doing in this classroom. Are they also banning anything girls like?

[Sheb]

To be honest "my education was nice" isn't exactly a great subject for an article.

[Antioch]

To be honest "my education was nice" isn't exactly a great subject for an article.

It isn't, but those experiments with gender-neutral eduction were virtually all abandoned though. Until this apparent revival in some Swedish schools at least.


I recently saw a book that describes how behaviour that was previously seen as "typically boy like" is often considered to be problematic and pathological, often given labels such as ADHD and corrected by medicine.

[Reelya]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32858/drugging-of-the-american-boy-0414/

A full 20% of boys are diagnosed with ADHD, and 2/3rds are prescribed drugs. The best evidence that there are a massive number of false positives in there is this:

The researchers found that "boys who were born in December"—typically the youngest students in their class—"were 30 percent more likely to receive a diagnosis of ADHD than boys born in January," who were a full year older. And "boys were 41 percent more likely to be given a prescription for a medication to treat ADHD if they were born in December than if they were born in January." These findings suggest, of course, that an errant diagnosis can sometimes result from a developmental period that a boy can grow out of.

Obviously, the month you were born should have absolutely no correlation with having a disease that needs medication. We're drugging boys just for being a few months less socially developed than other kids in their classroom. And since boys and girls mature at different rates, you can see how this could lead to inadvertently drugging up boys rather than offering them actual support they need. With a good 1/6 school boys forced onto mind-altering drugs, when what they actually needed was mentoring because they were slightly young for that grade, that could well explain some of why girls are doing better by the end of highschool.

If girls fall behind, they get mentoring, if boys fall behind, we drug them into submission. I mean that sounds crazy and orwellian, but it's just a plain description of what's happening on the ground.

Also interesting thing about the gender-gap at schools which favors girls:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/why-girls-do-so-much-better-than-boys-in-school/
It's highly correlated with poverty. Poor boys fall behind equivalent girls much more than those from affluent families. So much for the "boys just don't want to learn" or "girls are naturally better learners" argument. That's basically the same therefore as saying "poor people are just naturally poor". If poor girls were falling behind boys from the same background, we'd damn well be talking about how poverty doubly impacts girls, and doing something about it.

[Loud Whispers]

But a boy who likes to play with cars is beyond the pale! I also sort of wonder what the girls are doing in this classroom. Are they also banning anything girls like?

Free play is hierarchy

[Reelya]

I'mma just leave this here.

Wow, that video is pretty damning and I had no idea things were that bad in the USA.

That brings up an important question. You bring up lack of parental leave as a factor holding back female wages. Yes, it's true only USA lacks mandated paid parental leave. But therefore we have a whole world of countries with paid parental leave and we can do statistical analysis and see what correlation there is with the wage gap, and promotions.

Exhibit A

According to a recent study from an economist at Cornell, generous parental leave policies could jeopardize all women’s chances for promotion. Looking at the impact on women, the study indicated that women hired after the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed were “five percent more likely to remain employed but eight percent less likely to be promoted than those who were hired before” it was enacted. The reason? Perhaps employers hesitate to invest in women if there is a chance they will take long periods of time away from work.

Similarly, research on the impact of generous maternity policies in Europe indicates that women are less likely to become managers or to occupy high-powered positions. In Chile, a child care mandate for working mothers led to a decrease in starting salaries for all women.

Exhibit B


More paid maternity leave is a great goal - it gives families more options, so it is a better deal for the women who use it. It's just not, categorically, good for the "wage gap" statistic, and the negative views surrounding it can hurt other women.

[O.Wilde]

Well, there's an easy solution for that. Make both maternity and paternity leave required, and in similar amounts.

[Antioch]

Personal anecdote vs. "one study suggests this may be a thing". Sounds like a wash.
Plus, it sounds they're looking specifically at instances of leaving and returning to the same job.

Also doesn't examine whether job performance really does suffer, or managers just have a bias against employees who took a leave of absence. The latter is not unheard of, and is a problem in its own right. I'mma just leave this here.

Having watched that video, and living in a country that does pay out maternity leave, sure I agree everyone should have that option. But in places that brought that in (i.e. the entire world excluding America), it's actually correlated with lower promotion potential for women. Women are more likely to keep their jobs but see advancement opportunities shrink after those schemes come in. I guess there's more fear that you're going to end up with this highly-paid mission-critical person who then takes an extended 'highly paid' break. So, not only are you losing the mission-critical person, you're paying them a fraction of their post-promotion paycheck to take it.

I'm not making a value judgement, I think paid parental leave is a great idea and an important social equity thing. But any big social change will have knock-on effects throughtout the economy:

According to a recent study from an economist at Cornell, generous parental leave policies could jeopardize all women’s chances for promotion. Looking at the impact on women, the study indicated that women hired after the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed were “five percent more likely to remain employed but eight percent less likely to be promoted than those who were hired before” it was enacted. The reason? Perhaps employers hesitate to invest in women if there is a chance they will take long periods of time away from work.

Similarly, research on the impact of generous maternity policies in Europe indicates that women are less likely to become managers or to occupy high-powered positions. In Chile, a child care mandate for working mothers led to a decrease in starting salaries for all women.

So, implementing a similar parental leave situation in the USA (almost all of which is likely to be used by women) will most probably have a similar effect as it did in other countries, i.e. lead to some downsides for the promotion of women.

This is one of the reasons why I am a proponent of increased parental leave for men, it will be good for women's position in businesses. I also don't see a reason apart from the medical stress exerted by childbirth why parental leave should be exclusive for women (which it is in a lot of countries).

Well, there's an easy solution for that. Make both maternity and paternity leave required, and in similar amounts.

Forced leave will probably lead to a lot of resistance, but given an equal option for it to both men and women would be a good change already.

[Reelya]

If it's paid by taxes, we could enforce that each couple has a limit on the paid parental leave. This will encourage couples to equitably take on home care, and alleviate the gender effect. If we just expand "maternity leave" you're going to get the wage-gap-increasing-female-promotion-killing effect seen in Europe.

Well, there's an easy solution for that. Make both maternity and paternity leave required, and in similar amounts.

The remaining issue is that paid leave was associated with reduction of female promotion potential even if that women had no kids. Just the possibility she'd have a kid then get a long stretch of paid leave scared off employers. Sure, shared leave might alleviate that a little, but you'd still have some negative views, because a single woman could have a child or a married woman get divorced and get custody of the kids, then take the paid leave.

But when you think about it, it might be "sexist" but it's a realistic appraisal of the possible things that could happen. Businesses do not stay profitable by pretending things that exist don't exist (such as the much highly likelihood of a women taking this long stretch of paid leave than a man, which is a real thing). That's selfish of those companies, but it's not necessarily sexist, if the possibility they're planning for is realistic.

[O.Wilde]

Well, there's an easy solution for that. Make both maternity and paternity leave required, and in similar amounts.

Forced leave will probably lead to a lot of resistance, but given an equal option for it to both men and women would be a good change already.

Required for companies to allow, not required to take. Sorry, that wasn't quite clear.

[Reelya]

The only issue is that if people are allowed to choose, a large majority of couples choose to have the mother stay home rather than the dad. So any parental leave scheme which allows this choice is actually correlated with a larger wage gap. Sad truth.

It's an issue of "having your cake and eating it" here. We want to give people choice and support them, but what do you do when allowing that is actually negatively correlated with other goals that we hold equally important? Just sweeping any possible downside under the carpet to boost the idea of paid parental leave, is of course not helping anyone.

And if we say "well just make moms and dads take equal amounts of leave" we have another potential issue. If only one parent takes leave for e.g. 2 years, then only that parent's income is affected - losing out on pay and any raises they might have earned, possibly earning less later. But if both parents sequentially take 1 year off, that's going to crimp both parents earnings. So it might lead to the "more equal" social outcome in relation to the gender pay gap, but it might actually leave families worse off financially, thus hurting kids.

[O.Wilde]

Hum. That's depressing. So what about going to the original interpretation of my words and doing actual forced 'You get payed but you are required to not work' parental leave for 3 months? Has anyone tried that, or are the freedom issues too much?

[Frumple]

I'unno, I could probably get behind forcing paid parental leave on both parents -- 6-8 weeks at a minimum within the first two years of life, something like that. Maybe give companies an out for that if they're providing on-site childcare plus it still being mandated both can take the (still paid!) leave by choice. Probably try it on the state level in a few places for a decade or two, see how it effects the generation after.

[Reelya]

I failed to link this image before:


What you see here is that each 3-week extension of paid parental leave is associated with a widening of the total gender pay gap of about 1%

Yeah, mandatory leave for both parents seems like the only thing that would avoid paid leave having the apparent effect it did in Europe.

But it also comes with a lot of possible issues. Forcing both parents to take leave prevents parents being strategic with who takes leave based on relative income. That could make a baby much more risky for a high-earning executive mother, the very same people we want to promote in this thread. It would also mean both parents careers have a hiccup, not just one, which would hurt household incomes for people with kids.

So, since it's completely unacceptable to force someone to take a break, we could "cap" the leave and say it's split between both parents, but is optional. But in that case, you might find couples where the mother did her 3 months paid leave, but dad is earning too much money for them to take his 3 months leave, so rather than derail dad's career the mother just quits her job. They, and women in general, would be in a worse position than if we'd only been more flexible and said mom could take 6 months paid leave.