Quote: (12-24-2012 06:44 PM)ghostdog Wrote:
why doesn't society encourage women to have babies FIRST and then when the kids get enrolled in school they can pursue whatever they want.
Because this isn't the most profitable route. As I've said many times before, when it comes to matters like these it is often best to simply follow the money.
Women are generally greater consumers than men. They respond more readily to advertising, view shopping as a more pleasurable task, save less of their income and spend a larger portion of their discretionary income on consumer goods than men do.
We live in a society driven by consumers. It is to the advantage of those driving this society to encourage the best consumers (women) to move into the best position possible to consume.
Women raising families are not in this position, especially if they are encouraged to do so at a young age. By pushing women into the workplace early and diverting as large a portion of this nation's GDP into their hands as possible (not just via employment, but also via alimony/family laws, welfare, and a host of other measures), it can better be ensured that more money is spent and more consumer goods are consumed.
When that cash is more directly in male control as it is in the more "traditional", patriarchal family model, less of it goes to consumption. The goal of the system, therefore, is to get as much of the nation's cashflow into female hands as possible, and to discourage the traditional family model.
The timing of reproduction plays a key role in this. When you push women into the workplace early and push family formation into the background (encouraging later childbirth), you decrease the average amount of time women as a whole will likely spend reproducing and raising children as opposed to working, earning money, and spending it on consumer goods.
They'll start their families later and reach the end of their reproductive lives sooner, whereas an earlier start could encourage many to extend their child-rearing years. For example, a woman who starts earlier and has had 2 kids by age 27 can consider a 3rd or 4th and might go forward with that. On the other hand, a woman who starts later and has 2 kids by 38 has much less time to add to that number.
In addition to this, many women who wait until the end of their prime (18-29) to begin family formation will find themselves unable to conceive at all. Encourage women to wait until they are close to 30 to begin families and you'll get more infertile women than you would if you set that bar down closer to 22-25. This is good for the consumer model, since it adds to the number of women who will devote their lives entirely to a career oriented focus.
On the whole, the encouragement of later family formation for women means more time spent in the workplace, more income in female hands, and (given female spending habits) more money spent on consumption.
Age gap shaming closes a loophole that could undermine this whole dynamic, since older male-younger female relationships are more conducive to the less profitable patriarchal model. When older, established men (say, 35-45) are encouraged to en masse swoop in on much younger women in their prime (say 18-25), it becomes much easier for that woman to slip into a less career-oriented frame (the man is more likely to have the financial means to make this possible).
When she's with men closer to her age with lower earning potential, there is less compulsion to believe that she can throttle back on her career and be taken care of by someone who has more experience and means. She's largely selecting from a pool of guys who, at best, earn figures much closer to what she can earn, and many guys who don't earn much at all.
It is therefore to the advantage of the system to keep as many older men away from younger women as is possible. Too many of those relationships = fewer younger women living the career-oriented, Sex and the City lifestyle and, by extension, fewer women spending.
Finally, there is also the risk that women who see starting a family early as a viable option may become more distant from the consumer-culture as a whole.
Whereas the early/mid-20's career woman who has put family far aside is focused on rising up the ladder and competing with her career-oriented peers (lots of spending goes into this-think "Sex and the City"), the early family starter may end up putting her clan ahead of her credit card. She'll spend more on her babies and the family essentials than she will on more frivolous things like shoes and clothes. She might also end up saving more.
That means a lower contribution to the consumer economy-those who can profit from such an economy do not want to encourage those kind of spending habits.
TL;DR:
It is all about the dollar.