Rebuttal

So, let me state my premises so it is clear where I am coming from.

1. The act of making a child is most important, and most consequential thing a person can do. Human life is precious and unpredictable.
2. Once the child-maker assumes the mantle of being a parent, life is no longer about them, but about the child (until they go their separate ways into adulthood).

I certainly have my own baggage and issues for believing this things (coming from an abusive home, having a child early in my adult life). But they’re important so it is known where the rest of what I am saying is based upon.

So, my first observation, is that the focus on women/parent, and not the child, is wrong. This is what I generally find troubling in articles such as these — they seem to treat child rearing as a household commodity, like cleaning, walking the dogs, or cooking dinner. I can hire someone to do all of the things that I do, or that my wife does in the home, and it won’t have an impact on our children, save for one — and that is raising them. Someone else can cut the grass; won’t impact the happiness of my son. Someone else can cook dinner; won’t impact the happiness of my daughter (unless they’re a bad/good cook). Someone else raising my son or daughter? That’s a considerably higher bar to their potential happiness. Who has said that they’re where they are today because of their nanny? Because of the after school caretaker? It’s a fact of life for working class and low income families to have something of a revolving door for out of the home caretakers, and there’s no way that the various adults raising a child will do as good as one of their parents would. Those that can afford consistency also have sufficient “slack” to be able to handle any relationship problems that could arise by parents being out of the home.

Regarding studies and editorial rebuttals to studies

It is mentioned frequently that being at home with child leads to undesirable outcomes for the mother, which I can understand. However, it isn’t clear that this controls for women who would have been at home anyway, or have some other issues that might lead to depression. I also don’t see any numbers. What are we talking about? A standard deviation? What is the standard deviation, anyway? The HBS is seeing a lot of press. Is Harvard Business School the best organization to be researching the outcomes for children and parents? Don’t they have a motive — to show that a working mother can leave a child at home with no ill effect? They also don’t show any numbers.

One can rank in priority the feelings of a child over a mother/parent without saying the mothers feelings are useless. How many people live with emotional trauma they had due their being a parent? How many adults live with emotional trauma they suffered as a child? I find the experiences I had as a boy and as a teenager are far “sticker” in an emotional sense than those I have had since.

And as far as studies are concerned, there are several in the literature that make claims counterproductive to your argument, such as this one.

Pointing about the apparent absurdity that we don’t see studies about men staying at home with children is not very helpful, either. Men have gone out and done things, while women have stayed home with children. It’s been this way for millenia and across cultures. There’s also the obvious biological aspects why women being with the child is the “default” and men being away is similarly seen as the default. Our society might be egalitarian, but our biology is not.

You’re also raising some serious issues you seem to have with motherhood in your writing, here. Who says that staying at home with the children replaces a womans previous positive qualities with soft, lazy mommy-hood? You do. My dinosaur of a former employer thought this way. I have engaged with few others who have this view. There’s nothing soft and lazy about being a mother, unless that mother decides to be soft and lazy. My wife, prior to our marriage and children, basically had no muscle tone in her arms. Her pre “mommy-hood” life could be thought of as soft and lazy. Today, you’d have to be a damned fool to think that. She has muscle tone in her arms, gained from carrying around our dense son, and she is seemingly indefatigable at doing things at home I have trouble standing for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time.

Your citing of the LA times article, which was written by a seeming narcissist, doesn’t do much to bolster the argument in your favor. He said this after all:

“You’re the best father” or “You’re the father of the year” were compliments frequently tossed in my direction. Of course these statements were true, but they were nevertheless unsettling. I was spending roughly the same amount of time parenting as my wife — and they thought that made me special.

Oh! Of course these statements were true. Father of the year, most obviously.

The rest of the article you wrote, I largely agree with. Anne Marie might have been in a different section of the magazine due to the length of her article, which is longer than her husbands. It was also the cover story. Her husband did not get the same treatment, and I’d reckon being on the cover is a better billing.

If the only way we can get to mandatory parental leave is by starting with maternity leave, then that’s what has to be done. We’re decades behind our peers in this regard, and it’s shameful.