[talkingtab]

This measures fatherhood in terms of time spent with children. I question whether that metric is of any value what so ever. Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops?

This article, and the place it has on Hackernews and the quality of "commments" raises serious questions for me about Hacker News as a whole, the moderation, the readers and mechanism.

My complaint is not that this kind of thing exists. My complaint is that something better does not.

[saghm]

> Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops?

At the risk is stating the obvious, crops do not have the ability to notice whether or not the farmer spends time with them. If you think that a child won't notice that one of their parents doesn't spend time with them and will be affected by it, I don't know what to tell you.

[adammarples]

But do they notice the difference between 4 hours and 5 hours? Or are they noticing something else entirely?

[jermberj]

To make the analogy proportional (according to the article), the difference would be something like "do they notice the difference between 1h 40m and 5 hours" (i.e. 3x more). My money would be on yes, they'd very much notice.

[pchristensen]

When it comes to kids, quantity has a quality all its own. Yes, there are better and worse ways to spend time with kids, but between engagement, enrichment, play, laundry, cooking, feeding, changing diapers, etc, there's just an immense amount of time to fill and work to do. By these metrics, doing the dishes probably isn't counted as "parenting", but since it lets your partner spend time with the kid, or rest and recuperate, it's a good proxy.

If you don't believe me, fold a load of laundry the next time you visit a friend with little kids. Or play with their kid for half an hour so the parent can let their guard down for a bit. It has an incredible impact.

[tmvphil]

Yes yes the goal of life is to flourish and this metric doesn't measure flourishing directly so what's the point? And indeed is the fact that we talk about observable metrics rather than whatever else I had in mind not an indictment of this forum, nay, society at large?