Except that we are talking about why women on average don't make as much during their careers. You are punting and saying, well men have pressure to work more. You are absolutely right, and it should be part of the conversation, but you've not somehow proved that the women being encouraged to prioritize family isn't a problem.
Those pressures are not independent. Any time you say "women are pressured" to do something, there is an implicit "relative to men" added at the end. The same goes for the reverse.
Think about it this way - there are two constant, fixed pressures we are talking about: the pressure to make good money to raise a family, and the pressure to take care of the kids.
We have no way to change the TOTAL pressure - both of those things are fairly fixed (we need to make money and we need to take care of family). The thing we are talking about is HOW those pressures are distributed. Traditionally, the money pressure is more on men and the childrearing pressure is more on women. You can't change any one of those without changing the rest. If you decrease pressure on women to raise children, that in turn raises pressure on men to raise children. This, in turn, would also increase pressure on women to make money, and decrease the pressure on men.
You can choose which angle you come at for the problem, but all of them result in the same thing.
It's two sides of the same coin – women are pressured to pay more attention to family with the exact same mechanisms (society, older relatives, media etc.) that men are pressured into working long hours and being primary breadwinners.
Unfortunately, most comments only mention one side of the problem (that of women being pressured to focus on family), and that leads to reflexive "But what about the pressure on men?" indignant replies. Therefore, it would be good to acknowledge this as a dual issue every time it's brought up, or make it more gender-neutral ("pressure from society to retain outmoded family roles") so friction like the above does not ensure.
Great point—the context of both roles in a partnership is important to the discussion. Having said that, what about single parents who now must do "both" jobs? Women are at a systematic disadvantage in this scenario.
Bottom line for me is that women are doing more unpaid work than men in all cultures. Melinda Gates talks about this at length in their recent letters for 2016[1], and it's a pretty damning picture that whatever the pressures are on men, women have it systematically worse.
There is nothing about cleaning, or laundry, or sick care, or <other thing women are expected to do because they're women> that makes them not like doing unpaid work anymore than men. Nobody likes doing thankless work, and everybody likes getting paid to do work (and enjoy the freedoms that having money permits). This distribution of work is bullshit, especially in this day and age of increased automation where wages based on dual earners is the norm if you want a middle class existence and are average.
> A man who is expected to work 60 hour weeks is much less likely to get custody of his kids.
We're not comparing custody results, here. We're comparing a full custody woman against a full custody man, across all cultures, not whatever intuition you have about custody battles (in the US, seemingly)?
After doing a bit of reading[1], it's not even clear that any of your statements are true.
"In other words, 91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system. How can there be a bias toward mothers when fewer than 4 percent of custody decisions are made by the Family Court?
What do these statistics tell us?
1. Fathers are less involved in their children's care during the marriage.
2. Fathers are less involved in their children's lives after divorce.
3. Mothers gain custody because the vast majority of fathers choose to give them custody.
4. There is no Family Court bias in favor of mothers because very few fathers seek custody during divorce."
> "In other words, 91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system. How can there be a bias toward mothers when fewer than 4 percent of custody decisions are made by the Family Court?
I live in the UK, so I can't comment on how things are in the US, but here it's so completely understood that men won't get the kids that it's relatively rare to try. The only person I know who did (who had a partner who was quite plainly unsuitable to be a parent) still lost out. In such an environment, why would it be surprising that men don't pursue custody?
Further, if the argument goes that mothers spend more time with their children, and therefore ought in general to be more likely to get custody, I don't necessarily argue against that. What I don't understand is why it's okay to say 'Mothers typically spend more time/attention on their children, therefore it's natural that they (on average) should get custody', but it's not okay to say 'Fathers typically spend more time/attention on their careers, therefore it's natural that they (on average) earn more money'.
> Bottom line for me is that women are doing more unpaid work than men in all cultures.
This is true.
> ...whatever the pressures are on men, women have it systematically worse.
I have no idea how that conclusion is drawn. Men, for example, are significantly more likely to get killed in the course of their work. For example, men accounted for 92% of all workplace fatalities in 2014[1]. To me anyway, getting killed sounds at least as bad as, if not worse than not getting paid for your work.
Overall, my opinion is that men and women face different kind of pressures to conform to traditional gender roles. What addresses one must address the other.
>you've not somehow proved that the women being encouraged to prioritize family isn't a problem.
I never said it wasn't a problem. I said in a different comment:
>But gender roles are still a problem, especially for the people who are forced into the roles they do not like.
Now, as someone who does value work life balance more than making a lot of money working long hours, I do personally judge one social pressure as not as bad as the other. But I also understand that there are man who have different priorities who see other social pressures as worse, and I understand that there is a 'grass is always greener' effect.
It isn't a problem. Women generally should prioritize family. Women are generally more nurturing than men. Why are you making this out to be a problem?
