The senior culture writer for BuzzFeed found a graph of the effect of having a first child on income for men and women.
https://twitter.com/annehelen/status/963107981754744832
She was clearly shocked by this.
I figured that this came from the files of “No duh!” Really it’s from Denmark.
I thought the results of this study were pretty common sense. Mothers generally take off more time than fathers after a child is born. Mothers more than fathers take on the duties of caring for infants and all the little chores and duties that entails.
That time is time spent away from work and time spent away from work doesn’t pay, hence, salary goes down. As the child gets older and mom can go back to work her salary increases again from the point where she left work to take care of the child.
Two attorneys, one man and one woman start out the same at the firm. After five years the woman leaves to have a kid. She comes back to work when the child enters school. She has been out of law school for nine years but only has five years experience. The man has been working the entire time and has nine years experience, so his salary is higher.
This all seems rather common sense, at least to me.
I don’t have the outrage that others seem to have.
This graph needs to have a subtitle for women who have children:
"Women Who Do Essential Public Work For Free"#EqualPay— Dktr Süs⁷ (@Dktr_Sus) February 12, 2018
I realized, that is because I think like a married man.
My wife takes a hit to her salary because we had kids. She’s better suited to stay home than I am to care for a newborn. My salary is also double hers, so the lost of my income has more of an impact on us. We still feel the effect of her income loss. I have to work harder and sacrifice more to make up the difference.
That is called being in a partnership. We both wanted kids. I knew what that would mean to me in terms of responsibility and disposable income.
I think this outrage comes form the feminist “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” thing.
If you don’t truly understand that getting married and having a child is a partnership, you might see that graph as the woman falling behind.
I have a kid, my salary goes down compared to a man’s, it’s not fair.
That supposes that when my wife takes time off and doesn’t collect a paycheck, she has to go barefoot eating ramen while I have steak and buy a new gun for myself. No, WE make it work.
The wife takes the financial hit and the so the husband, hers directly and his indirectly, as he has to make up the difference.
Only a narcissist who doesn’t understand what a marriage and family really means gets tied up in the competitiveness between the sexes.
Maybe this explains the divorce rate. If you are more focused on how “unfair” it is that your salary took a hit compared to your husband’s than realizing the sacrifice the both of you made, your marriage is going to go down in flames.
What I a sure of is that there is nobody worth marrying – of either gender – over at BuzzFeed.
“Only a narcissist who doesn’t understand what a marriage and family really means gets tied up in the competitiveness between the sexes.” THIS is the key. Yes the woman takes an earnings hit but the guy spends more time at work. With me it was always wife got the better car since she often had the boys. I drove 100 miles a day so no need to destroy a new car. I had the nicer car when we first got married, she has had the nicer car since then. It is a partnership, that’s how you make it work. Coming up on 28 years soon.
Yup, we dont have kids,but my wife drives my 2015 Tundra to work because I have a company van. I am so sick and tired of the “fairness and inequality” war.
Life aint fair. There are people who make less than me, there are tons who make more. What? The mechanic is supposed to make what the heart surgeon makes? The check out clerk should make what an engineer makes?? These morons dont realize that “equality” really means everyone equaly MISERABLE.
Another example of not being taught morality…
I stayed home with the kids. My wife always had a higher income than I, and it was her job that moved us to this state in the first place. So I’ve spent that last 5 years without any sort of monetary return on my time. Actually, it’s been longer than that since I carried a full-time job, but that’s because I took the first year of our residence to complete an-depth remodel of our house. My graph looks a lot like the ‘Women after first kid’ than any of the others. Actually, probably worse, since I was was a carpenter before. If I’d stayed at work, I’d likely be doing spec homes right now, and remodels. Now, I work part time at a farm store gun counter. Even if I went back into construction, I’m not competing at the management level I was before- I’d be competing with the labor pool, and younger is almost always cheaper in the labor pool. We knew when we made the decision that we were probably making an irreparable change to my career. We did it anyway, and gladly.