Instigator / Pro
10
1597
rating
22
debates
65.91%
won
Topic
#3328

Biological women are psychologically better suited than biological men to raise and care for children.

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
3
Better sources
4
2
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
1
2

After 2 votes and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Novice
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
One day
Max argument characters
15,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
9
1484
rating
1
debates
0.0%
won
Description

Psychology:
The scientific study of mind and behavior.

Psychological:
Affecting, or arising in the mind; related to the mental and emotional state of a person.

Suited:
Right for a particular purpose or situation, because of having all the qualities that are needed

Burden of Proof:
Shared

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Right away I have to disagree with pro's assessment of BoP "If CON does not prove this to be false, CON has lost the debate" pro has to first give warrant for it being true. Granted, pro is swiftly able to do just that.

The core of pro's argument is distilled as follows: "Young children need empathy, attention, and comfort. Women are on average, better suited to provide this to the young."
The core of cons seems to be that men are better with money, therefore better parents.

R1:
Pro builds a good case with lots of sources, and con phones it in with a simple declaration that men make more money so are in general better suited.

R2:
In gist... Pro clarified that he worded the resolution to avoid certain obvious k's, and generally disagrees with cons assessment of his case.
Con adds warrants to his case about money being more important, including a surprisingly clever twist on the sex pay gap using PewResearch for support.
Con adds that mothers get lonely (presumably fathers don't?), that empathy is not better than rationality, that men tending to abandon children doesn't reflect on if they are good parents, and finally (in response to pro's weakest argument) that playground behavior is not indicative of adult behavior nor is false praise superior to rational criticism.

R3:
Pro accuses con of Strawmanning his case. Cleverly uses a financial site to show to women are psychologically better with money than men (even if culturally that isn't rewarded with more of it), and raises the point that the pay gap is largely due to men working more and deprioritizing their children (with a quote mined from cons own source).
Con phones it in again, drops almost everything, and raises this rather obvious strawman (without defending the other allegations of Strawmanning) of pro's case: "They would be better parents if they quit their jobs and came home to gaze empathetically on their shivering children, according to Pro." Con further doesn't defend on that huge sex pay gap angle but still calls men better planners (I sincerely hope they didn't plan their way into that >$100K debt).

Arguments: pro
While I like concise, con ended up dropping way too much. I do agree with con that money is required to properly care for children, but this debate showed that men are less good at that, which is only magnified if they are raising children.
Looking back at the empathy angle, it feels like a dead end.
Men being more likely to abandon children, of course did them no favors (even if there are some men who extra not abandon their children to counterbalance this). Comparatively, women wanting to raise children, is a very favorable indicator of their psychology towards it.

Sources: pro
Pubmed.gov was good, the Berkeley.edu one not so much at first glance (con did well against this, but in the final round pro did an amazing job defending it as written by a doctor as a direct interpretation of findings from scientific research).
Cons own pew research one was directly quoted against him (more on that in the main analysis).
There were plenty more (mostly from pro), but those were the most interesting to me.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

This debate turned out to be a lot more intense than I predicted, it was close, ferocious and a spectacle.

The twisting of sources by Con was clever but Con's actual own sources were .com type stuff and while pewresearch is reliable as it gets, the rest... for a formal debate... It doesn't warrant the source point.

Pro's most crucial error was allowing Con's framework of tasks required to raise and care for children to remain totally uncontested (Con's R1).

In fact, Con was extremely cunning by leaving it as 'and', not separating which was 'care for' and which was 'raise' meaning if Pro failed to contradict or elaborate on it, all Con had to do (which Con did) was prove the 'raise' without the 'care for' part in any specific manner and the 'and' aspect of the resolution is moot.

Pro's case began to solely hone in on the 'care for' aspect of the resolution, which Con noticed and went about working around Pro's line of attack by completely taking hold of the 'raise' aspect. One example of this working so well is that when pro said women like to work with people, men with objects, this became almost identical to Pro's Round 3 but it arbitrarily claimed that women are more emotional and men more rational (firstly you can be high in both and lacking in both but I won't regard that as Con didn't bring it up). Con refutes both at once by pointing out that a rational, clearer thinker is going to both make more sound decisions for the children and teach them more rational ways of going about life.

Pro retorts to this by... lying about Con every single Round, which is why I docked the conduct mark. It's one thing to flex and paint a biased image but we are talking constant gaslighting and lying about what Con has said or done. Pro said Con has dropped points, which while Con didn't directly rebuke the rationality point, it was reflected against Pro and Con certainly made points that were relevant to the resolution, Pro is knowingly lying when saying things like as follows:

"CON makes baseless points, with no substantiative meaning

CON has made no claim relevant to the resolution. "

after an OPENING ROUND by Con that actually was not involving rebuttal to be fairer to Pro as it was concise and left Pro with more to input in both bolstering Pro's own case and rebuking Con's.

Then, when Con takes it on board, (every single criticism Pro gave to Con, literally every single one was taken on board and made up for in Round 2 by Con), Pro then snarkily talks with the following tone for the remainder of the debate:

"CON made a series of points and "refutations," and most of them are strawmen or easily refutable points.
Unfortunately, I dont think any of them work. I will tear through them "

"This is simply CON pointing out the obvious."
"I'll let the voters observe how ridiculous this claim may be. "
"I commend CON for attempting to refute my arguments, but CON has obviously failed to do so. "

There's a fine line in debating between cocky and confident and Pro really pushes over a line that I am comfortable with.

In fact this goes beyond conduct, it is fallacious logic and is precisely what made me want to vote Con all the more.

Con literally took each point Pro criticised in round 2 on board and in Round 3, Pro is still shitting on Con making it out like Con isn't trying and is failing to address things and back things up.

The ENTIRE A-to-G point by point listing of what is involved in raising and caring for children provided by Con is simply waved away by Pro with the following statement:

"CON seems to be arguing whether men or women are better suited to raise children regarding things like "financial resources and patriarchal cultures," which has nothing to do with whether they are psychologically better suited, a mistake on his part. Having said this, the voters can almost discard CON's entire round 1 case. "

but never once explains why we should discard them, when in fact Con was the only participant in the debate to give proper framework for voters to ascertain what raising and caring for entails (Pro presumed we'd know being more empathic vs systematic/rational was somehow an important factor).