

The Economic Benefits of Paid Parental Leave - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/upshot/the-economic-benefits-of-paid-parental-leave.html

======
oflordal
Being from Sweden with its relatively generous parental leave (~18 months for
both parents, a fairly common company perk is to get 6 of these with 90% pay)
its hard to understand how especially mothers can return to work already after
12 weeks. Will most people in practice work out a deal to take a longer leave
and or be forced to quit?

~~~
ffumarola
The parts about Sweden's law that I love the most:

1) You can take these 18 months intermittently up until the child is 8 years
old. 2) The days can be shared between both parents. 3) Both fathers and
mothers are required to take 60 days each of those 480 days (versus one parent
taking 421+ days).

"Since Swedish men started to take more responsibility for child rearing,
women have seen both their incomes and levels of self-reported happiness
increase. Paying dads to change nappies and hang out at playgrounds, in other
words, seems to benefit the whole family."

Great country (obviously it has other flaws, but this is not one of them) :)

~~~
cpwright
If you can take those days intermittently over 8 years, it seems like that is
an easy cop-out for the dad to take 8 days a year to satisfy the requirement.

------
henrikschroder
Some random points:

1) As an employee in the US you get very little paid vacation per year, and as
a consequence, US companies are _extremely_ bad at planning for people being
absent for longer stretches of time. Contrast with European countries where
everyone takes off for three to four consecutive weeks in the summer, and
consequently European companies _plan_ for it and have a much easier time
handling people being absent.

For longer parental leave to work in the US, paid leave also has to increase,
to force companies into coping.

> opponents of paid leave say it is an economic burden that can be expensive
> for businesses

2) That's a naive and short-sighted way of looking at it. Long paid parental
leave creates a happier population, with happier children, which in turn
presumably are more productive when they reach working age. Accessing a labour
market, _any_ labour market has certain costs. For example, accessing the
Silicon Valley labour market is more expensive than accessing the Midwest
labour market, but the Silicon Valley one has higher quality potential
employees, which justifies the cost.

If you think about it, a labour market doesn't spring into existence in a
vacuum, if you want a pool of college-educated employees, you need colleges,
quality high-schools, middle class parents who value education, and economic
incentives to make going to college a good idea (i.e. a higher salary for
these people). All of this costs money, and the ones paying it are the very
companies that want to hire these people.

3) In the long run, it's very important to switch away from a system of
maternity leave to equal parental leave. Women of child-bearing age are
routinely discriminated against because companies know that they might
quit/focus on the children/work less hours/have long maternal leave etc. By
having equal paternal leave, and making sure that men take as much as women,
this discrimination will disappear.

~~~
cpwright
> In the long run, it's very important to switch away from a system of
> maternity leave to equal parental leave. Women of child-bearing age are
> routinely discriminated against because companies know that they might
> quit/focus on the children/work less hours/have long maternal leave etc. By
> having equal paternal leave, and making sure that men take as much as women,
> this discrimination will disappear.

You aren't going to be able to force a father to take time off, just because
you think he should. Even if he takes a week or two, the vast majority of them
will go back to work in short order.

I would argue it is pretty much impossible to get men to take as much leave as
women. The baby is literally attached the the portion of mothers who breast
feed. It is stereotypical, but in my experience true, that mothers are more in
tune with their infant and end up taking a lot more of the burden than the
father. Ignoring that, single mothers are going to need time off, the father
isn't even in the picture; and that is going to skew things as well.

~~~
henrikschroder
In Sweden, parents get 16 months of paid parental leave, but each parent has
two months reserved, so there's two months each, and then 12 months for the
couple to divide as they see fit. After making the changes to reserve some
time for each parent, paternal leave increased, but it also sent a strong
signal that fathers should perhaps take even more of the parental leave, and
the national ratio is 78%/22% now, and slowly getting more equal. (Among my
college-educated upper-middle-class 30+ parent friends, it's solidly 50/50)

> Even if he takes a week or two

22% of 16 months is 3.5 half months of paternal leave on average. That's
pretty far from "a week or two". This is exactly what I mean when I say that
americans must adjust their view of paid leave first, before adressing
parental leave.

So one super-simple way of making it more equal is to make the parental leave
completely individual. The mother gets 8 months. The father gets 8 months. You
won't reach 50/50, because some fathers will still choose to work instead and
forfeit the paid leave, but you'll move the ratio much further, without force.
You just provide very strong incentives, which is not the same thing.

------
AndrewKemendo
After having three kids myself I know how important the time after the kid is
for creating a family bond and supporting the wife/mother.

I decided early on that even in our minimally funded startup that we would
give any of our (3) employees up to a month of paid leave after a baby. Our
co-founder/CTO will be testing how possible this policy is in April when he
welcomes his second kid and taking a month off right during a critical launch
period.

I understand that it is a risk (everything is a risk in a startup btw) and we
have to put in extra time and cost up-front to get the other team members up
to speed, but I think in the end it will be very much worth it. Worth it not
only as a practical matter for him and his family who are already taking risks
and sacrificing for the company, but as a signal to other tiny startups that
it is possible to do it and not crumble.

------
gamechangr
I am sure there are a hundred benefits of paid leave, but I had a hard time
isolating "The Economic Benefits" from THIS ARTICLE?

Before reading this, I assumed the "economic benefits" would be for the
business owner. Is that what the title suggests to you?

~~~
henrikschroder
The benefits are for society, because you upgrade the entire labour force,
which allows your country to climb the value-chain and switch to industries
with higher productivity per worker, thus increasing GDP, and so on.

The US is generally clueless to this, because there's such a huge influx of
talented foreing workers that offset domestic policies, but smaller nations
are painfully aware of this, and the ones doing great on global
competitiveness are also the ones with the most generous social welfare. This
is no coincidence.

