[mothballed]

I think it's natural that someone, whether you believe in biological differences or not, will relatively prefer child-rearing to some other tasks that the family needs to do. Modern society has brainwashed females in particular into believing that equal-childcare should be a thing and they're being robbed if one is "avoiding it" (even your rhetoric exhibits this brainwashing).

It doesn't have to be the wife per-se. When I was building our house, I did most of the carpentry. My wife hated it and did very little of that. My wife hates driving the tractor. My wife hates driving any vehicle. My wife hates doing the plumbing and electric. My wife hates taking care of the pets, so I take care of them. My wife doesn't like practicing self-defense and security for the house, and there are lots of dangerous animals and criminals here, so I handle that. I do not ask my wife to do any of those things except at worst a few small % of the time compared to when I do them. This does not bother me at all because different people prefer different things.

Modern society has brainwashed people to think they need to share child-care and ideally equally. I think this is highly misinformed utopian vision. Voluntary preference based division of labor is smart and helps us all enjoy our lives more. Very rarely do couples have absolute equal relative preference for all the tasks, even if they dislike all of the tasks.

It seems obvious that if you brainwash people to think labor sharing by exchanging tasks is "avoidance" that you increase the chance one of the two parties will just veto any additional children. But if you bring this up then it's straight to whataboutism but women also don't enjoy it which totally misses the mark about relative preference that results in imbalanced childcare, which can be evaluated even when both people dislike a task. Unless you totally reject sexual dimorphism, you should be at least open to the possibility as well that females on average might have higher relative preference for child-rearing than other things, as long as feminists aren't shaming them left and right with artificial impositions that somehow they're being robbed if a man is "avoiding" it by exchanging labor to do something else.

[david-gpu]

Treating childcare as a chore to be assigned to whichever parent dislikes it the least is not in the best interest of the children. They benefit from having two engaged parents.

[mothballed]

It's truly glorious that what's in the "best interest of the children" is whatever matches the stranger outsider's philosophical goals. Of course who could argue with "engagement." That sounds great! The devil of that is in the details, and not necessarily mean anything approaching equal time spent child-rearing. "Interest of the children" spoken by some outsider to try and force others to act towards their philosophy, might be responsible for more atrocities and misdeeds than anything else in history.

Personally I don't take your omniscient approach. I believe the parents are nearly always better position to determine the interests of their children than some random dude on HN, than the outsider trying to impose their goal of their particular vision of "engagement."

[david-gpu]

I am merely explaining why I take care of my kids. Your reaction suggests that you feel attacked by that, when it is not my intention at all. Where do you think that reaction may be coming from?

[1dom]

You're not saying what your position clearly - instead you're "just asking questions", and it's rubbing some people up the wrong way (including me, sorry). It looks like you're not apologising for that because "it wasn't your intention".

If you're sincerely trying to engage in good faith, I feel you should be apologising for your role in sending it in the wrong direction unintentionally.

To be clear, I'm not taking a position in the debate here, just commenting that the way your engaging is legitimately a bit annoying if you're not aware. The other person getting really angry isn't the best look either, but I'm sure they already know that.

[mothballed]

I see, this is all one big misunderstanding and you were only talking about taking care of your kids, not referring to how anyone else might take care of their children. And now I need personal introspection for my psychological weaknesses. You are fucking good at this. I might suggest a career in family therapy or family law, because although this gas lighting won't work on me, they use the same kind of duplicitous rhetoric and you'd fit right in and get it to work on plenty of people.