
The 10-Year Baby Window That Is the Key to the Women’s Pay Gap - polarbear5
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/upshot/the-10-year-baby-window-that-is-the-key-to-the-womens-pay-gap.html
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tjansen
Like so many others, the article fails to acknowledge that some women (and
some men!) don't mind earning less if that allows them to take are of their
children. I could certainly earn more than I do today. But that would mean
spending even less time with my children, so I don't. Does it hurt my career?
Probably. But it's worth it.

~~~
IAmEveryone
And these women who prefer to earn less money just happen to be the ones that
get children between the ages of 25 and 35, but not before or after?

~~~
randomdata
Further study is warranted, I'm sure, but it seems reasonable on the surface.
Those who have their children earlier have children that are older during
their prime working years. Those who have children later already have
established careers. 25-35 does seem to be a critical period in setting the
course for one's career, so those who opt to focus on children during that
time are giving up the gains they could be making in the workplace.

~~~
IAmEveryone
That's not the point. You're just providing an intuitive explanation for the
study's empirical findings, which I agree with.

OP's point was specifically that the wage gap may be caused by women's focus
on child care instead of career advancement.

Yet, as I was trying to say: that idea is hard to square with the study's
findings. Presumably, those emphasizing time with their children would tend to
also have children rather early, possibly before they are 25. But in that age
group, the study did not find a sustained reduction in income.

~~~
cptskippy
> Presumably, those emphasizing time with their children would tend to also
> have children rather early, possibly before they are 25.

Who presumes that? I would presume people who are looking to start a family
would want a solid foundation to start from. That means holding off on having
kids until you've gotten some sort of stability. Most people in their early
20s don't have any sort of stability.

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belorn
I would be very interested to know if there is a correlation to how often men
file for divorce and the amount of time the wife spends on child care and
related responsibilities. We already know that the rate in which women will
file for divorce is directly related to the income of the husband, which would
then make this a directly symmetric incentive model and possible a form of
nash equilibrium which the solution that the article suggest are not
addressing.

~~~
kennywinker
> We already know that the rate in which women will file for divorce is
> directly related to the income of the husband

Do we know that? I see a study suggesting that women who earn more relative to
their male partners will be more likely to divorce (so called "independence
effect"). I see a study that suggests that lower income families are more
likely to divorce. These two bullet points alone make me think there is not a
clear cut story about how the income of one partner effects marriage and
divorce rates.

~~~
vowelless
There is a study that shows rates for different industries too. I think
entertainment industry has the highest divorce rates where as engineering is
among the lowest? If someone kind find a link I'll be grateful

~~~
cosmotron
I believe this is the article: [http://flowingdata.com/2017/07/25/divorce-and-
occupation](http://flowingdata.com/2017/07/25/divorce-and-occupation)

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bitL
Aren't single working women <30 on average paid 8% more than men of the same
age?

~~~
lmcnish14
Where did you get that number?

~~~
ardillaroja
Not OP but this guardian article mentions some figures supporting that from
UK, compiled by Press Association based on on ONS data.

[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-
in-20s-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-earn-
more-men-same-age-study-finds)

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gimmeDatCheddar
How is this a surprise to anyone? Children require time and effort, and this
usually means one of the parents works less or not at all. Considering 25 to
35 are prime child-rearing ages, the reason for this gap seems quite obvious.

~~~
IAmEveryone
The result indicates that 25 to 35 is prime career age, not prime child-
rearing age (the latter may well be true, but this study doesn't answer that
question).

It's somewhat surprising that younger ages, especially 18 to 25, do not have
this effect. I would have probably guessed that any hiatus in your
professional career (including education) would result in a proportionally-
delayed career advance throughout your career. I. e.: spend 2 years with
children from 23-25 and your income at 60 is what you'd have made at 58
without children.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The article is comparing pay gap between married partners. Those who have
children when they are younger are much less likely to be highly educated or
be in high paying careers to begin with, and they're not likely to be in a
relationship with someone who is either. Lower pay in general implies lower
variance since they're not likely to be moving up the ranks into $100k, $150k,
$200k+ careers.

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clairity
from a pure economic perspective (which is the slant imposed by "pay gap"), a
core piece of the problem is that household care (as a broader category that
includes child care) is not adequately specified and appropriately valued
monetarily.

if household management was a good to be bought and sold, we could discover
its price curve through market mechanisms. since women do more house work, we
would be able to appropriately account for that gap.

but do we want a society where household care is simply another market good?

~~~
tomp
> household care [...] is not [...] appropriately valued monetarily

> since women do more house work

What if it _is_ valued appropriately? E.g. (1) _I_ don't value the housework
_you_ do at all, nor does pretty much anyone else in the society... sure, you
can put a $ value on e.g. cleaning (hiring a cleaning service) or cooking
(hiring a chef), but it won't be clean to _your_ standard and it won't be
_your_ favourite food; (2) it's possible, and in my (admittedly anecdotal)
experience quite likely, than women value household care _more_ than men - so
they _want_ to do more of it. Of course, not _everybody_ , but even _on
average_ that could have a significant effect.

~~~
UncleMeat
But do you think this effect could be culturally formed? That would still make
it worth tackling.

~~~
tomp
> That would still make it worth tackling.

Why?

In my opinion, only if you can replace it with something better... E.g.
speaking English is culturally formed, but so what?

I don't have kids yet, but I've thought a lot about how to raise any future
children I might (well, want to) have. My current thinking is that I will
raise them differently, boys and girls, according to what I see the most
probably outcome (e.g. for each to be heterosexual). Sure, I might turn out to
be wrong, but (1) you can't avoid putting _some_ preconceptions in a child's
mind (after all, that's what "raising children" means), and (2) as long as
they can consciously choose a different path (e.g. "I'm actually gay, I'll
optimize my life for that") I think that's mean-variance optimized choice.

It's like, well your kid could be Mozart but you screwed them completely
because you taught them guitar, stupid you... but then, there's no way you
could have known, and a guitar is probably still better than complete lack of
music, so it's a good choice overall.

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throwaway92224
People have careers today for the same reason they had farms or shops or a
regular practice of hunting and gathering in former times: to support their
own lives and those of their families. Whereas the motivation towards a career
is conditional on its support of survival and the more adaptive urges, the
twin motivations of survival and reproduction are invariant.

Viewed in this light, the article is confirming a truism well known to
anthropologists: men work so women can have children. Our society is little
different from others. So much male parental investment is an unusual
arrangement among primates, but it’s well documented among humans. Men produce
roughly 2/3 of the calories consumed across a broad range of the societies
([Marlowe2001]). This is due to both:

* The difficult, dangerous and demanding nature of human birth and gestation, which is quite different from that of other primates.

* The enormous amount of energy expended in gestation, nursing and early childhood to support growth of the human brain.

The benefit of this arrangement is human brain development: we have larger
brains than other primates, and the brains undergo considerably more training
before functional adulthood. We are able to have these arguments about women’s
careers precisely because of the situation we are complaining about: that
women set aside so much to have children, and men set aside so much so they
can.

Nothing about the energetics of pregnancy, nursing or early childhood has
changed as a result of our transition from working mostly outside to working
mostly inside, save that the length of “childhood” is now considerably longer,
as long as thirty years in some cases. That women and men do not work equally
well when pushed to live the same life course is no surprise, when we consider
human history and the lives of the other primates. Should men and women be
pushed to live the same life course, it’s not clear how it would be stable:
men must bring something to the relationship to balance the large and fixed
metabolic cost of gestation and nursing, which they can’t do if they can’t
earn more than women. Men who failed to find some way around this would not
have offspring and consequently later generations of men would be descended
from — and have not just the genes but also the habits of — those men who
found a way to obtain superior renumeration. This is no doubt how men got to
be what they are in the first place.

[Marlowe2001] Male Contribution to Diet and Female Reproductive Success among
Foragers

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api
Wouldn't lengthening the human life span solve a lot of this? Or even
lengthening our span of peak performance? What if we lived to an average of
90-110 and had peak performance until 70-80 instead of living to 70-80 with
peak performance until 40-50? That 10 year gap would mean a lot less.

~~~
feistypharit
Well, you can't move a biological clock. Women that get pregnant after age 35
are deemed high risk, advanced maternal age. The risk of downs syndrome and
other defects goes way up. Men having children after age 35 also have some
poor outcomes, but not quite as bad or likely.

There sure is a lot of assumptions here too. More and more men are becoming
stay at home dad's...myself included. Guess what, it impacts our career too.
Possibly more so...I can't tell you the number of people that seem shocked to
hear I stay home. Some literally are speechless.

~~~
api
Sure. My point was that with an extra 20 years of peak time taking time off
from mid 20s until mid 30s would not be so devastating. You'd have a lot more
time to make up for it later.

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blattimwind
"problematic"

If you're a woman and you have non-standardized interests, you are
"problematic" for society. If you're a woman and want to raise your own
children, you're "problematic". If you're a woman and the number on your
paycheck is not priority #1 in your life, you're "problematic".

~~~
Eire_Banshee
Im pretty sure 'problematic' here is just that this is problematic for women.
Not that women are problematic...

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poster123
The U.S. educational system is needlessly slow and expensive. In other
countries you don't need to pay for four years of college before starting
medical school or law school. For example, I think in India a woman can finish
medical school at age 23, whereas in the U.S. it would be age 26, assuming she
graduates high school at 18. If women and men complete their education
earlier, it is easier to have both a high-powered career and a family.

~~~
ardit33
The problem is that people don't fully mature until 25-ish.

I wouldn't trust a 23yo lawyer or doctor, no matter how smart they appear.
Some things are learned only by experience, and not just by books.

Also, a huge chunk of tech's HR issues are mostly created by startups having
very young founders and young managers that don't have real life experience.
(to me, young is anybody younger than 30). Half of the firing/issues I have
seen in real life could have been easily avoided if the people in the room had
more experience.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
What do we count as mature?

There are different stages of brain development that don't finish until around
25 in women and 28 in men, but these aren't necessary to be mature. Even
people who are 40 will make decisions that their 50 year old selves will view
as immature. And given that much of what we consider maturity is driven by
experience, delaying acquisition of experience until after maturation will
result in further delaying maturation for the next generation.

~~~
ardit33
Car companies have decided to be 25, as in many states you can't rent a car if
you are under 25. Turo, has the age limit at 30 for high-value cars.

You have to be 35 to run for president in many countries....

etc...

There is obviously a sliding scale, but the 25-ish age range is more physical
where your prefrontal cortex is still developing, while later stages are more
experience based maturity.

"Neuroscience has shown that a young person's cognitive development continues
into this later stage and that their emotional maturity, self-image and
judgement will be affected until the prefrontal cortex of the brain has fully
developed.

Alongside brain development, hormonal activity is also continuing well into
the early twenties says Antrobus.

"A number of children and young people I encounter between the age of 16 and
18, the flurry of hormonal activity in them is so great that to imagine that's
going to settle down by the time they get to 18 really is a misconception,"
says Antrobus."

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zeveb
> Research has shown other policies that would help: programs to help women
> re-enter the labor force; flexibility in when and where work gets done;
> subsidized child care.

I'm not certain what a 'programme to help women re-enter the labor force'
would look like, so I won't comment on that.

Flexibility is awesome, and in many jobs (particularly our own) it's possible.
But in many other jobs (the majority, perhaps?) it's impossible, or has
extreme costs.

I believe that over time we'll find that children raised by strangers will
have various physical & psychological issues compared to those raised by their
own families; while it's necessary in some cases I don't think that we want to
encourage it as a society.

~~~
harryh
_I believe that over time we 'll find that children raised by stranger..._

This has been studied. There is very little evidence for your hypothesis.

~~~
tomp
Do you have any links to any more extensive explanation?

~~~
harryh
The work of Judith Harris is a good place to start.

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kennywinker
> The study found that over all, women earn $12,600 less than men before
> children are born and $25,100 less afterward.

If two working people have a child, and one is going to partially leave the
work force to care for the child, who's salary would you pick?

The uneven salary, on top of the cultural biases we all absorb, mean it's
practically a given the man will stay in the workforce and the woman will
become the caregiver.

Equal pay for women means more men will get to take on childcare roles.
Feminism is humanism.

~~~
kimmeld
> The group of women who had the biggest post-baby pay gap compared with their
> husbands was, paradoxically, women who earned more than their husbands
> before having children.

Yet you ignore that the article goes on to state that the biggest gaps were
the ones that started with the women making more. It seems on average the
couple is picking the wife to absorb the hit regardless of the paychecks.

~~~
kennywinker
I did mention something about cultural biases, yes? Culture has its hooks
deep. Given complete freedom economically, we still choose things based on
what is "normal" or "expected".

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
And equal pay won't fix things like each gender having difference qualities
they prefer in partners, on average. Nor will it fix things like career choice
(studies have found that places with less economic freedom have better gender
parity in picking careers). It may be possible some of this isn't cultural at
all. Every other species on the planet has sexually dimorphic characteristics,
so to we shouldn't assume that humans either don't, or even that the ones we
do have would have no impact on any factors related to pay (including things
like impacting what careers a person finds desirable).

~~~
kennywinker
You’d be surprised how much is cultural. Core beliefs, emotions, etc.

In nature vs. nurture, with humans, comparative anthroplogy is pretty
conclusive - there are VERY few things all humans do regaurdless of culture.

“what do men do” or “what do women do” is so much more a function of history
and how we’ve organized our society (aggricultural / industrial) than a
product of in-built characteristics. I’m not saying there are no inherent
differences, i’m just saying nobody knows what they are.

~~~
malvosenior
That's not true at all. One of the most obvious differences is physical
strength. Pre-industrialization men were required for "heavy lifting".

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/alm...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/almost_all_men_are_stronger_than_almost_all_women/)

The ability to give birth is another obvious difference that has nothing to do
with nurture but is directly relevant to the topic at hand.

~~~
kennywinker
There is a difference between who we are, and what we do. Most people work in
jobs that do not require the kind of heavy lifting that depends on a sexual
dimorphic advantage. Even in pre-industrial settings... tilling fields,
harvesting crops, general farm work can almost entirely be done by men, women,
and even children.

Yes, there are differences between the average man and the average women
physically. Height, muscle mass, etc. but that does not say much about what is
a natural role and what is one that is a product of culture. Because we don’t
spend, and probably never spent that much of our lives doing very heavy
lifting or giving birth.

~~~
malvosenior
Those were just a few examples off the top of my head, there are many more
(I’m unaware of any female hunting societies for example, breast feeding is
another obvious one...).

Why do you think we evolved sexually dimorphic features if not to help us in
specialized roles?

