Poland's birthrate on the decline

That is exactly the point.

@Lenka
Women in most cases should get primary custody, I would agree. However, the father should get the kids at least two weekends a month and every other holiday. The woman should not be able to keep the father from seeing the kids. And the woman should not be able to profit from simply having kids. Some women though should never get custody, and yet the laws around the world are written with the presumption that living with the mother will be the best situation.

So which one is it?

@Lenka
There is no definitive answer to that question. Unfortunately, the way the laws are written, antiquated in my opinion, they are written to lean toward the mother. It is what it is. Nothing is fair, especially to children. The children unfortunately are used as pawns by each side.

@PolAmKrakow, but you gave a definitive answer yourself - according to you women are better equipped to take care of children and you stated that in most cases they should get primary custody.


But you just wrote the same thing that I did lol Does that make you a "leftist feminist"? :)


How do women "profit" from "simply having kids"?


PolAm, sorry, but you keep contradicting yourself. The laws lean towards the mother (do they really, though?), because, as you wrote yourself, mothers are better equipped to take care of children. So, for the laws and courts the priority is the good of children. Judging by what you wrote it's usually in the best interest of kids to stay with their mother. Not in mother's interest, not in father's interest, but in kids' interest. That's the most important thing - what's the best for kids, right?

Btw, my neighbour divorced a few years ago and went back to live with his mother (they live upstairs, above my flat) and the guy's son stayed with him, not with the mother. I don't know why. Maybe because the mother went to live in the UK and the boy was already a teen and had to finish his education in Poland. I feel sorry for the kid though, because his father seems to be an as*hole - walls are thin here and I could hear what he was yelling to his son. I hope the mother is better than his father at least...

@Paulina
I said in most cases. Most cases is not definitive. Really the feminist bull$hit is irritating. Can't you and others have a normal discussion without trying to twist statements to fit your own agenda? And then people wonder why there is no compromise between right and left.

How do you profit from having kids? Please tell me in what world that it takes a child support payment of more than 3K USD per month to raise a kid when there is no house payment and no car payment while the mother also works. Explain that to me and how that is fair or just. I have three children, and never has it ever cost 3K per month to raise any of them. Yet, the courts take a percentage of a mans pay regardless of how much he makes, and that is fair or just?

What is usually in the best interest is not always in the best interest. Stop reading what you want to understand and read what is actually written.

@PolAmKrakow, stating that women are better equipped to take care of children sounds pretty definitive though - you didn't use "most" then.

But the point I'm trying to make is that you sound like a hypocrite - on one hand you state that women are better equipped to take care of children and on other you complain that mothers are getting kids, the house and alimonies. So, why are you complaining if that's best for the kids?

Of course, there are exceptions - there are some bad mothers out there and if the father is the better option then he should get the kids, the house/flat and the alimonies. I think that's obvious.


Sorry, but I don't know anything about paying alimonies in the US. As far as I understand in Poland there's no fixed amount of money you have to pay - the amount in Poland is decided by the court on case to case basis depending on child's needs and the income and financial abilities of the parent who's paying the alimonies, etc.


Well, that's pretty obvious, if the father is normal and there's no reason to keep him away from the kids. I don't know about the US, but in Poland if the mother doesn't let the father see his kids he can take it to court and then the court puts specified obligations on the mother and if she still doesn't let him see them despite the court order, she will get punished:

krakow-rozwody.pl/co-zrobic-kiedy-matka-utrudnia-kontakty-z-dzieckiem/

Great point!


Spot on!!!!!


Because you had to!!!!

Simple supply and demand economics!!!
If the workforce nearly doubles because equal pay is in play them men's salaries drop....

Because after getting the house and the alimony they refuse to let the father have access to his children.
And by the grace of God the father does get court ordered time with his kids mommy bear cops an attitude and gets pis sed and decides to get creative and teaches the little kids to say that daddy touched them in a naughty spot.

If mommy touches the kid in a naughty spot that is o.k. but if daddy touches them in a naughty spot he goes to prison.

I guess you have never been to a get down dirty divorce court to see what is best for the kids.

How come? During WWII women replaced men in work places, because men were away fighting the war, but when men came back women lost their jobs to men again and men in the US were earning more than ever, apparently:

pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tupperware-work/

So, what happened? Since when women "had" to start to work?

Milo, I have an impression that some of you guys live in some kind of male La La Land. I'm sure many people (including men) would love not to work and live off money that would be falling from the sky lol, but that's fantasy. Real life can get ugly.

What if husband dumps the stay-at-home wife who never worked in her life? Will she be able to support herself and the kids only from alimonies? What if the ex-husband won't pay the alimonies? Or what if her husband simply dies? What then?

What about her retirement if she never worked?

Also, if women suddenly stopped working who would work as teachers at schools, kindergartens, as nurses, secretaries, hotel maids, cleaning ladies, caregivers, cashiers in Biedronka, hairstylists for women, manicurists, etc? You think that men would be so willing to wipe the asses of old people? And if not, would you expect women to do the jobs that men are unwilling to do and leave all the cool, fun, prestigious and high-paying jobs to men? If that's your take on this then, sorry, but... F U...

There's another problem. How would you feel if you stayed at home with kids and you'd have to ask your spouse for money? Every freaking time you needed something - like a kid asking a parent for pocket money? Would you like that? Of course, couples may resolve this in a less humiliating way - by having a joint account or sth, but in many cases it isn't resolved like that and wives have to ask their husbands for money. This often leads to toxic situations and financial blackmail, or even, as it's called in Polish: "przemoc ekonomiczna", because men use the power they have over their wives in such situation when she has no money of her own:

bankier.pl/wiadomosc/Nienawidze-od-20-lat-Ale-za-co-bede-zyc-Przemoc-ekonomiczna-niszczy-po-cichu-8063259.html

And, finally, women are people too. We have interests, passions and talents too. There are women who like to work, because they love what they do. We have the right to work too, not only you.

@Paulina
Women are most times better equipped. I stated the reasoning for this view being the environment in which they are raised. But you now bring the population decline argument full circle. I will explain.

All the talk about competing with men, is at the very center of population decline. Women not wanting, or delaying childbirth is really the issue. A society cannot survive without children being born. So, you want a career? Ok. There is a price for everyone to pay. The price is not just that womans to bear. Society bears the cost in its reduction.

On to the alimony. In the US, most states do not have alimony, they have what is called Child Support. Child support is a mathematic formula used to calculate how much of a man or womans income goes to pay for raising a child in the event of whichever is given physical custody. This formula is just that, only a mathematic formula. So, if a parent is very successful making say $50 thousand USD per month, the parent having custody is given roughly $15 thousand per month for child support. Someone still needs to tell me how it is possible to spend that kind of money raising a child. The wife will get the house if she gets the child or children. People with money, have either paid off the house, or it is such a big house, that a single parent would never need the space. The woman will also get the car, half of retirement, and half of everything else unless there is a prenup or she has her own money. When the child is of school age, and the parent is working again, not only do the payments continue, but they get raised every two years upon court review, regardless of how much the custodial parent is making. In the US with this formula and system, divorce is profitable for the custodial parent. Before you say $50 K per month income is extreme, in the US that kind of money for a successful person is really not uncommon.

You bring up the point of the person having to ask another for money in the relationship. If a person doesn't get that stuff sorted out prior to starting a relationship, then it is their own fault, whether it is a man or woman it doesn't matter.

Of course, women want to work. Of course, they have passions and want to pursue things. The problem is that in life, you cannot have everything. If you want one thing you have to sacrifice something else. You cannot have it all, man or woman, you simply cannot have your cake and eat it.

As for WW2 working comments, I will only say women filled the manufacturing roles for men. Nearly every building or infrastructure project was completely stopped when women could not fill those roles. There is nothing wrong with a woman not being able to do something as well as a man, nothing wrong with a man not being able to do something as well as a woman and that is the problem with feminism. They do not want to admit that men and women both have things they are better at. XX and XY, it is simple. Traditional roles moved society forward for centuries. When you try to fix what has worked, you usually just fvck things up, and that applies to everything.

No, I will ask what kind of a parent wouldn't want their kid to have the same standard of life. I would rather my kids had a nice house etc

Why would a parent not be responsible to give his/her kids the same support as they would if the kid was with them?
And I would also ask why one parent should not only be almost solely responsible for the kids, hindering earning potential, incrasing stress etc but also bear the bigger financial (or even equal) preassure?

Also, another problem is that the kind of "career" that most of the 4 billion women in the world have are menial physical jobs, sales assistants, hairdressers or office workers, teachers at best. Of course, there is maybe 0.1% of the 4,000,000,000 women who are high level managers, scientists, famous writers, artists or whatnot but it's a tiny minority. Most of the women I know would gladly leave their so-called careers, if only they could afford to stay at home with their children. Unfortunately the economic system we're in practically forces most of them to get jobs.


Exactly.

Or docrors, headteachers, laborants, architechts, lawyers...
And what if it just a job and not a cereer? Still gives other aspect of life, financial independence, a world outside of the house etc.


And I know different women. Plus as a said, they usually imagine things being the same just them not going to work and that is not the case


Lol, so true

OK, 0.3%. But shouldn't we rather consider with more care the fate of the remaining 99.7% of women and create an economic system that would better accommodate them than the tiny minority of career-pursuers? If a woman wants a career - very well, let her have it, but if she wants to stay at home and raise children the system should make it as easy for her as possible and not condemn her, in overwhelming majority of cases, to financial hardship. Our civilisation as a whole needs to appreciate the role of mothers more, and then maybe - just maybe - Europeans can avoid extinction (because that's exactly what negative population growth rates mean).

And very happy about it.


That is your assumption. Women had your system and actually fought quite hard to change it.

Really?? It is amasing you are asking such infantile questions. Men have to right not to deliver the pregnancy with terminal defects or the one which was conceived from incest or rape. While women have to deliver such pregnancies.

We have been talking about it for a few years now.

Let`s be honest - if males could bear kids, the patriarchal society would NEVER ban abortion. Males do it to women to control them. No more!!

No, they didn't. The old system was better than the current one, because more children were born under it, but it was even more cruel to lonely mothers than the current one. As I said, we need a system that would appreciate and reward the role of mothers in society. The old one was overthrown and the new one doesn't work (as we can see from the population growth rates in Europe). Men can do the engineering, medicine, science etc. but there's one thing that they cannot do - bear children. That's why we need a new matriarchal system - designed especially for mothers. It is either that or extinction.

And yes - as I said, if a woman wants a career, let her have it. But if a woman chooses to bear children instead, the society should reward her for it much more than it does the one who chooses career, because what the mother does is way more important.

@PolAmKrakow, you can look at Muslim countries and Africa to see where those traditional roles are getting them :) Where would you prefer to live - in Afghanistan or the US/Poland? That's sad that you overlook women's contribution to our societies and you don't care about women's potential - what they are giving and what they could give to the society.


If it worked, people wouldn't change it. It didn't work for women. Does it work 100% for women nowadays? Well, of course not. But societies evolve and people learn. Hopefully, people will find a way to make it work better. Adapt or die out, sorry.

@GefreiterKania, that would be nice if men would be more considerate towards their wives and help them out more with the kids and at home - then women wouldn't feel so burned out and they could enjoy both having kids and working.

It would also help if the government would solve problems (instead of creating them) longterm, like providing more nurseries, kindergartens, improving health service for pregnant women. It would help too if women giving birth were treated better and had more choice as to what is going to happen to them at hospitals. And if they could get back to their previous work after giving birth. My sister-in-law didn't get her job back, even though her boss promised her she will. My mother went to retirement earlier than she planned so she could take care of my niece, because my sister-in-law was certain she will have that job back. But her boss hired his son instead. My sister-in-law had problems with finding work once employers found out she has a small kid. One of the women that interviewed her asked her in the face what will she do if her kid will get sick. She answered that the kid will stay with the grandma. She wasn't hired anyway.


Somehow men can have it - they have both families and jobs/careers. Men have their cakes and eat it all the time. So why women have to keep making all the sacrifices? You can't make us "produce" children. So maybe it's time to make some changes, if you want your precious population not to die out.


The same thing could be said about many men. Are you telling me that if they could afford not to work and stay at home, they would still choose to work? How about you?

I do agree with you though that mothers and their work at home should be more appreciated and the society should work towards making things easier for them. Because there is no other way if we want the birth rates to go up. You can't force women to have kids, so you have to encourage them to have them. But you won't encourage them by claiming that the only thing they're needed for is bearing children and taking care of them and that the old system when women had no rights was better. This is demeaning and scary. We will fight against you if you try to shove us back into the Middle Ages.

I don't like the way you put it - it's antagonising.
There are plenty of women who have both kids and careers. Those careers may not be as stellar as men's, because those women had to make sacrifices for their kids that weren't required from their husbands, but women clearly manage to have both. If men can have both, then women should not be discouraged to have both either, because they may rebel (just like they did in the past :)).

But that's the point - with current birthrates the future world will be Muslim/African. Is that what we want? OK, then let's leave everything how it is now.


I get, roughly, 2.5 times the average wage in Poland, working my arse off. If I could get the same money for staying at home with my kids, then of course I would!!! I would most likely did a much worse job at it than my wife, so it would make more sense for her to stay at home (which she almost does - working only part time, more for satisfaction than anything else, but unfortunately not every woman is blessed with a husband like me :)); but we aren't a good example - our income is well within what we would call middle-class, and we have no mortgage or loans of any kind to pay off. I was talking about the majority of people who are struggling to make ends meet and who get jobs merely to survive. If the system doesn't accommodate them better, there will be no children. It's about numbers.


Not the only thing, but by far the most important thing.

@Paulina
No Paulina, you will not fight against me because I ignore all the leftist feminist and other extreme movements. Real men just don't gaf about the issues that women want to make up, artificially inflate and complain about. Have your jobs, have your movements, and do whatever you want. There is a very large portion of women who are tired of the agenda driven movement. They want to be women and have a man who not only takes care of them and protects them, but respects them. They want what comes naturally to most people. The role reversal experiment fails, and will continue to fail for so many reasons. But when women start being drafted, or conscripted, or forced to fight for their country like men are, you can sign me up for all the feminist $hit you want. Unitil then, the only right a man has that a woman does not is the right to die protecting them and everyone else. But you know, birthrates and all that stuff have nothing to do with what men want or whats best for any civilization.

What does "plenty" mean? We are talking about concrete numbers - hard statistical data which shows that we have negative population growth rates in native European populations (not immigrants). If there were enough women who could reconcile having careers/jobs with bearing and raising more children, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

I didn't write that we should leave everything how it is now. On the contrary - I've even given you some solutions. Don't you like those solutions? Would you just prefer to shove us back into the kitchen? It's easier for you this way, huh? Well, sorry, but it's too late for that. Women changed and men will have to adapt to those changes or the developed societies will "die out".


Noone is getting that kind of money for staying at home with their own kids. The other spouse has to work.


Women are really only needed for bearing children. Fathers can take care of kids too. And if they suck at it, then they should learn not suck at it :)

Co sidering the poll I posted more and more women choose career.

The thing is you guys repeat the same mantra 'go back to how things were'. They won't. And quite often instead of listening to what women say about it you tell us how we feel or shouldn't want etc.

Yes, but only if that's what a woman wants and on much better economic conditions. Forget 500+ - it's not nearly enough to constitute a real incentive to have children.

A stay at home mum of two should get an average wage, so that it pays off more to have and raise two children than have a sh*tty, minimum wage (or slightly more) job instead. Mother of three - 1.25 average wage. Mother of four and more - 1.5 average wage (four children would be quite enough from the point of view of the society, also to "cover" for the women who would choose careers instead). All that regardless of whether she is a lonely mum or has a working husband (that way we would provide an economic incentive for a traditional family model, as a traditional family would obviously be able to have a higher standard of living).


Not me. I'm talking about a whole new system that appreciate mothers more than any other economic system in the history of mankind. It's the question of survival.

That is a recipe for disaster. Plus, would that be lifelong or just to the kids specific age? And would there be a chance for the men to go for it?

They are really crazy male chauvinists. Women won`t give up they rights they already gained in the past. All this male whining about leftist feminism is useless.

Hey, chauvinists, instead of forcing women to live like their grandmothers did, why don`t you change your own lousy attitude and start taking more care of the household and kids? Also, build more child care facilities. Also, improve the alimony system which allows guys to avoid paying for years. Also, improve the education system. Also, etc etc.


Now, tell us when was the last time that Polish males had to die protecting their females during a war?

I think that it was about 70 years ago. So, do you suggest males have the right to say they can`t change their chauvinist attitude to women because they have to be ready to die for them?????

Lifelong and, of course, equal chances for men. As I said, a brand new system.