28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant.
All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)
Good for you, but that really doesn't add much to the discussion...
Norway has > 800x the oil reserves per capita of France and has not gone through what you could call a political crisis over the past few years regarding aligning the spending level of its welfare state with the economic and budgetary realities, with years of protests and riots, some of which are still ongoing. In the face of this it's quite a bold move for France to go from zero to 28 days for the sake of benefiting gender norms and family relationships in the long-term.
Norway, a rich country of just 5 million people, cannot be used as a comparison without noting all some of the budgetary context. Not just in this discussion, but more broadly on HN. If you're talking about something relatively budget-neutral like say 'same-sex marriage should be able to adopt children, just look at XYZ (e.g. Norway), it works just fine', that's alright. But if you're saying or implying something which has a lot of costs involved like 'fathers should get at least 4.5 months of paid parental leave as a rule, not an exception, just look at Norway' then you can't just leave out cost from the discussion, it makes no sense.
Obviously all of us would prefer long-term paid parental leave, arguing it's nice to have adds nothing to the discussion because there is already universal agreement. Arguing it's worth having, is an entirely different and much more meaningful discussion, but it cannot be be had without weighing the pros against the cons, the biggest one is cost.
And I say this coming from the Netherlands, an also quite rich country that I'd love to see as a model for many other countries. But such discussions should include budgetary context, among others.
Then don't compare to Norway. Compare to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland or any of the others mentioned elsewhere here.
I also find your argument a bit weird. Why not start an discussion about if the cost is worth it (which is what you want to discuss) instead of picking on the details of the country in question?
> In the face of this it's quite a bold move for France to go from zero to 28 days for the sake of benefiting gender norms and family relationships in the long-term.
We didn't go from zero to 28 days of paternity leave. We doubled it, from 14 to 28.
Indeed. In Norway fathers and mothers must each take 15 weeks. And then in total there are either 49 weeks (with 100% pay) or 59 weeks (with 80% pay), so you can divide the remaining weeks between the two.
But there are some inequalities in the system still. For instance, the father can only take the shared weeks if the mother is in "activity" (working or studying). While in Sweden there is no such requirements.
And I am not sure what happens with the father's share if the mother is out of work and ineligible for proper ompensation. In that case the mother gets a one-time, approx €10 000, compensation, but I think the father does not get anything except two weeks off in connection with birth.
A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work? I'm all for parental leave, but that's a full year.
Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company.
What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit?
I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much responsibility. If every company in the world had to do this and the governments and taxes supported it, I'd be all for it.
I'm not passing judgment, just really curious how this works. I certainly favor parents getting plenty of time to adjust and spend time with their newborns. But I wonder if this is too much for companies to bear when they have to compete with companies that don't do this.
It's the government paying. Up to a fixed amount. But most high earners are in a position where the company will pay the difference as a perk.
If it were companies having to pay, that would probably lead to some aversion about hiring people without children in the right age. But that's probably an aversion lots of companies in other countries have about women. "Will they have kids and leave the workforce soon?".
I strongly believe giving dads a lot of paternity leave is good for equality. Of course dads should have the same opportunity as moms, but males taking paternity leave has an indirect good effect on woman in the work force as well. No longer is it assumed that they will be gone for X months in their 20s/30s, compared to men. Some argue the rules should be "X days, split as the parents see fit". But that is what historically has put the pressure on the man to work and the woman to stay at home.
If you want to force an even split or not depends on if you see the system as something that enables people to make choices that are good, or something that makes them do what you think is good (for the parents in question or for the society in general).
I know a couple that had two children. He wanted a third child. She wanted a PhD. The current Swedish system enabled them to have a child and let him take virtually all the leave while she finished her PhD. But some social engineers would rather not let them have that choice, because the aim is a perfect 50/50 split for all couples in a column of a report somewhere.
(Or even worse, they would be fine with this particular case, but would object if it was she that wanted the third kid and he that wanted a PhD, because a 50/50 split in aggregate also looks pretty good, and this would work towards that in the present situation...)
No, the aim isn't "to fill a column of a report somewhere". That's just unnecessary snark from you.
It's a difficult thing to balance. Ideally one should be able to split as wanted, based on one's life situation. But when one is free to choose, one often can find that the freedom is only imaginary. There will be pressure from society/employers/etc to do it a certain way. Lots of countries where it's expected that the father forego all paternity leave, or his career at the company will be done.
Yes, that was snarky. Still, it's not expected that Swedish fathers forego their leave and Sweden has not mandated a 50/50 split yet. Maybe it's worth treading lightly as we're clearly heading in the right direction. Then some other couple like my friends won't have to be eggs for the impatient makers of the equality omelette.
Sure, call it individualism to view people like my friends as the ends of your policy. What shall we call it when the policy treats them as a means to some other greater end?
Folks love to talk about these marginal 'perks' in Social Democracies, and the benefits experienced by the least fortunate, but you never hear about the costs of these programs or their impact on the finances of the average household. All these great benefits are, of course, funded via massive taxation of the middle and upper classes. You can see the (relative) impact in the data, which reveal household incomes to be ~40% lower than in the US , household debts which are ~double than US household debts, and household savings which are half those in the US:
Household Income in US dollars (2018) [3]:
Denmark - $34,712
Norway - $39,555
Finland - $34,497
Sweden - $34,301
Iceland - Not reported
USA - $50,292
Household Debt as % of disposable income (2015-2018) [1]:
Denmark - 281%
Norway - 239%
Finland - 145%
Sweden - 189%
Iceland - Not reported
USA - 105%
Household Net worth as % of net income (2014) [2]:
Denmark - 553% ($191,900) <-- The dollar amounts are my math, based on household income above.
Norway - 318% ($125,700)
Finland - 359% ($123,800)
Sweden - 526% ($180,400)
Iceland - Not reported
USA - 601% ($301,700)
Taxes in the usa are not accurate above, you need to add in healthcare and social security type payments too. Our tax rate is as high with those things included.
I know it's quite attractive to compare one-dimensional statistics internationally, and I won't say it has no uses. But it can also be misleading and we have to be careful about understanding the appropriate context.
For example, there is no word on comparing household income on a purchasing power parity basis. You'd want to reflect prices, which may be higher/lower.
There is no word on the fact household sizes in the region in and around Scandinavia are typically very low, quite a bit lower than the US. (fewer dependents, lower required income for the same standard of living).
There is no word on average vs median statistics, the former favouring less equal countries like the US in the statistics, but the latter painting a more accurate picture of the typical household.
There is no word on expense requirements. Yes, direct social transfers (e.g. rental assistance) would be part of the disposable income statistics. But indirect subsidies (e.g. social housing rents, substantially below market rate, or universal healthcare insurance premiums far below market rates, or universal tertiary education costs far below market rates) are not part of these statistics.
For example, the fact university is free in Denmark, is absolutely not part of the household income. The fact public healthcare is free in Denmark, is not part of household income statistics. Yet the quality of both is very good.
There is also no word on the differential interest rates. For example, Denmark currently has negative mortgage rates. Obviously that increases household debt. But any additional household mortgage debt for example is actually creating a net income for these very same households. You can debate whether these interest rates signal economic issues, that's a fair discussion, but the point still stands that 'not all household debt is equal'. You cannot say 'high debt is worse', when many EU countries have interest rates from -0.5% to - 1.5% and the US has interest rates of 2 - 3%, and compare them.
Same with net worth, it all ties in to every other aspect of the welfare state. In the US you have a minimal welfare state and thus must accumulate net worth for retirement, kids' education, medical copayments etc etc. In many North/west EU countries education, healthcare, housing is all free or strongly subsidised and publicly funded, requiring much lower accumulations of private net worth to attain the same quality of life.
In short, the data you cite is not incorrect, but your conclusions are shortsighted and need far more interpretation and context to approximate the truth of the matter.
Surprisingly large differences in household debt! What are the major contributors to these differences?
USA seems to be in the middle. Right next to Germany, which one might think more similar to the Nordic countries compared to US. Where as Canada is higher than Finland.
I don't know about the other countries, but "most" Norwegians are house owners (and therefore have pretty large debts, up to 6x their yearly income).
The government offers heavy incentives that promote owning a house/apartment, making renting long term a pretty bad economic option. If you plan to live somewhere for more than 2-3 years it's cheaper to own than to rent.
Mortgage rates are typically far lower. My rate is about 1.5%. In Denmark it's -0.5%, yes you get paid to borrow.
If you look at mortgages, you have two negative cashflows: the principal you pay back, and the interest you pay on the loan. Of these two, the interest is actually the only cost. (taxes/insurance is separate because they're typically paid regardless of whether you have a mortgage, you'd still pay this even if you bought the home in cash without a mortgage.)
Paying back principal is not costing you anything. As in, suppose you had a $100 loan and you paid it back, you now have $100 less cash but also $100 less of a loan. You're not any richer or poorer. Similarly, if you do the opposite: borrow $100, sure you have $100 in cash, but you're not richer, because you still owe $100.
In that sense, if you borrow $250k for a home and over the years, earn $250k and use it to pay off the house, you've not 'lost' $250k. You still own it, it's just locked up in the home. If you sell the home, you get the $250k back, assuming the price hasn't changed.
But the interest, that's gone forever. That's where the real cost is in carrying a mortgage.
As such, the borrowing capacity and housing costs that someone can bear, is substantially influenced by mortgage rates. In the US these are 2-3% or so, in Denkmark it's negative 0.5% or so. These interest rates essentially dictate how favourable it is to buy, and how much more prices can rise, while still being affordable. Just compare the monthly fees of a 3% interest mortgage to one with a 1% interest mortgage. Or more informative even: compare how much you can borrow with say $1k a month in mortgage fees (principal+interest, or just interest whatever you want), when the interest rate is 1% or 3%.
For example, a $200k loan at 3% is $300k in total fees. A $280k loan with 0.5% interest is also $300k in total fees. And that's including principal. If you take out the principal, the difference is far greater.
On top of that there's significant tax benefits to home ownership in much of Europe, like deducting interest payments from your taxable income to a very large extent. The combined effect is that a lot of households have tons of debt which is actually very affordable and not problematic. (until interest rates will rise, which will get ugly... but most economists expect low rates to be the 'new normal'... we'll have to see. And a lot of the rates get fixed for 10-30 years so the impact if it happens, is not very direct).
> Folks love to talk about these marginal 'perks' in Social Democracies, and the benefits experienced by the least fortunate, but you never hear about the costs of these programs or their impact on the finances of the average household.
What process would you use to come up with a set of quantitative criteria that would measure costs and benefits?
The U.S is still the world hegemon. It means they can basically print away as much money as they want and sell their debt to other countries that use USD because the USD is the reserve currency of the world.
So the U.S can keep piling on debt and show magnificent gdp growth yet not have it's currency devalued. Europe doesn't operate like that both out of cultural reasons and because it isn't a hegemon (The Euro is less important than the Dollar).
If (once?) the U.S loses it's special reserve currency status, you will see a massive USD devaluation and salaries would look a lot more similar to Europe.
The U.S current success is much more due to historical reasons than any policy/taxation reason.
>Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company.
In Canada, your maternity/paternity wages come out of the Employment Insurance system, so everyone chips in. Mothers or fathers can split the leave, which is 52 weeks or more. Seems like a good system.
But some of your concerns are valid; from the employer's standpoint, planning around your staff having children isn't easy. Sometimes new parents decide to never come back to work, and in this country aren't required to provide special notice.
> A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work?
That's for each child. I worked with a guy who had 5 kids and with sick leave and holidays he worked <6mo a year for 7 years straight and when he did turn up he was too tired and uninterested to do anything useful.
Its a good reason why Europe is disappearing as a economic force. OTOH The other reason is not enough children so maybe my coworker ended up helping the economy.
I interpreted the "this", in "this is nonsense", to refer to the claim that excess leave from having 5 kids is causing economic decline in Europe. I don't think he was claiming that someone in Europe having 5 kids was nonsense.
Tech salaries aren't lower in Europe because of free healthcare and education funded by our higher taxes, they're lower because we don't have a huge government funded defense tech sector, we don't have mammoth sized, trillion dollar SW companies with a global monopoly like FAANGs that create hundreds of thousands of highly paid jobs, we don't have massive VC funds throwing money at every founder
that promises to create the next Instagram and we don't have the US treasury free-debt money printer. Combine all that with a shortage of skilled workers due to the high cost of higher education in the US and the very restrictive immigration policies, even for skilled labor (H1Bs are still way tougher to get than a work visa for Europe). So basically the US has huge demand for talent with low supply which results in high wages.
Instead we have the opposite. We have very welcoming immigration laws(which waters down salaries) we have plenty of skilled grads as education is basically free(which waters down salaries again), so in my college town I can't pretty much throw a rock without hitting someone who's doing a PhD in DS/ML/AI but we have no massive local companies that can utilize all that talent and no big VC funding so all those bright minds end up working in lame webshops/consultancies or in some research institute that gets bought up by FAANGs the minute it comes up with a good idea.
So basically, we have a huge supply of talent(local and imported) but a low demand(compared to the US) wich results in lower salaries.
To summarize, this is why we can't compete with the US on the tech front, not because of our taxes but because the US can outspend us.
When I'm considering where to hire my next team or open my next office (both things which I've actually done, including a European dev office [in Prague]), I assure you that I look at as much of the entire picture as I can. That includes the cost of benefits, cost of taxes, labor policies, education and size of workforce, etc.
The more labor costs an employer in category X, the less the employer has left to offer labor in categories Y and Z.
Really? How easy is it for an American to get a work visa in France? It’s pretty damned difficult. I lived there for four years with a non-working visa and even getting that was difficult. And every year I had to show my bank statements, health insurance, and provide proof that I owned my house there.
Also to your other points, only one of the FAANGs has been around for more than 25 years. Yet the salary differential has been around a lot longer than that. In fact, it was much worse.
And why doesn’t Europe have massive VC funds? It’s pretty simple, taxes on gains are confiscatory, creating a disincentive to take big risks.
Don't know about France but in spring Germany has removed the hoops companies needed to jump through to hire non-EU workers so hiring an outsider isn't much more difficult now than hiring a local. So maybe try Germany instead.
But also huge language barriers, especially for small shops, not speaking the local language is seen a disadvantage.
> we have no massive local companies that can utilize all that talent and no big VC funding
That is not because Europe has less money, but because they have different risk profiles and competencies regarding investing. In some European countries governments are the biggest venture capitalists, which speaks to the inefficiency and desperation created, which explains the lack of unicorns booming up.
This is not just a money issue, it is also a culture and competence issue.
>In some European countries governments are the biggest venture capitalists
Yeah, this x1000.
In my area, most startups survive by government and EU grants so the thinking pattern of most startups here is "what do we do to get more grant money?". You can't create successful SW companies like that. Not to mention, the elephant in the room, the fact that those government grants are often accorded by favoritism instead of merit(connections, nepotism, etc.)
"Buying" perks is ok-ish - the difference with state-regulated perks is that the employer has no way to tell 'no' to say, paternity leave. In other case, you never get the certainty that you'll be allowed to use your perk when need it.
> I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off
On one hand I guess you could compare it to American manufacturing vs. manufacturing in e.g. Vietnam, India, China where companies often fly under local labor laws and workers are worked to unreasonable hours.
On another hand I also do think there is something to be said for better mental health => better work output at least in skilled jobs. A fact that many American companies don't seem to get.
Yes, the government will subsidise this, although exact details vary, for example government might choose to arrange that they pay the employee over this period instead.
It's not magic, obviously overall the economy is still paying for this to happen, but then the US system isn't magic either, babies don't magically receive any benefits from parents who are actually working all the time and barely see them for a handful of hours per week. So the question is only: Is it a good idea? Because if it's a good idea then paying for it is just a question of mechanics. Same for universal healthcare, the provision of safe drinking water, literacy programmes, you name it.
Just gut feeling - this might not be a hit towards competitivity because it might actually be worth to have well-balanced employee. I find a similarity to good quality code - hard to prove its usefulness with just numbers, but it does pay off.
Americans seem to struggle with their economy, yet still seem to look in the wrong direction when they try to find the cause.
The pay is capped at some amount. But if you're working a job where you earn above that, most employers will pay the difference as a perk anyway.
And yes, the "aktivitetskrav for mor" is stupid. There are some other subtleties as well. I helped make the original digital application in 2015, and there was a lot of edge cases. Like if you're a fisherman your pay should be documented a different way. Fun times.
1. The two weeks at birth aren't legally full pay (most employers pay you anyway).
2. Yes if the mother doesn't qualify the father doesn't qualify. I think that there has been a court case that found that this is not legal. But the law has not yet been updated.
I can confirm this. I'm an American living in Norway and I have had two children. My wife is also American, and we moved to Norway while she was pregnant with our first child. Because my wife had not been working we were not entitled to the normal benefits. Time has passed, and my wife got a job in her career field. We are now expecting a third, and because of covid-19 my wife has been unable to work the required minimum during her pregnancy. So we are looking at having a third child without the normal benefits! From the American perspective this is still great. We get "free" healthcare and a nice lump-sum grant, but I (the father) don't qualify for paternity leave and the lump sum grant is not huge in comparison. The grant is like 1/6th of the amount that most families get with their leave.
You probably did this already, but make sure to double check that your wife really did not work enough under any possible requirements.
I know someone who had only substitute positions for shorter periods in the ten months before birth. But after several rounds of back and forth with NAV (even after birth), she got her benefits. She had to argue that staying at home would cause her to loose income (showed that she had to say no to some substitute work because of birth), and give them detailed lists of all hours she worked. Somehow it amounted to "enough".
Around the start of August I finished up my 6 weeks here in the US and it was definitely not enough. 133+ days would have been nice, but here in Freedom-Land™ I was lucky to get the 6 weeks I was given. I know a few new dads who got no paternity leave from work, or 1-3 days. Absolutely ridiculous in this day and age.
We have 12 weeks for "primary care giver" and 6 weeks for "secondary care giver". I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. From the bit of reading I've done on legal blogs, companies open themselves up to legal liability if they so much as permit a culture in which it's assumed that women are primary care givers and men are secondary much less pressure men to take the lesser amount. I wonder if there are a lot of companies who are still pressuring men to take the lesser amount and just rolling the dice on the legal liability. Otherwise why bother with the "primary vs secondary" distinction at all, since they presumably can't enforce it? Maybe they're hoping it will be honor-system? Or maybe they hope they can pressure everyone to make their other spouse (who most likely works outside of the firm) be the primary care givers?
I've seen this a lot in the US, and at least in the North East, it seems like a lot of companies are moving away from this model. It's a really difficult policy to even enforce without being discriminatory against men.
At this point in my career I take it as a red flag against the company. Women obviously still face many more hurdles than men when it comes to workplaces and an expanding family, and both genders deserve more paid time off in the US when the family grows, but policies like this end up specifically targeting men more often than not.
By default it defines men to be a less important care-giver than women.
I generally agree. I'm not especially interested in litigating which gender is worse-affected since you can spin it either way (e.g., "By default it defines women to be less important employees"). Suffice it to say it's more restrictive to men than to women (i.e., men don't have the option to take longer leave if they wanted to); however, there may be second order effects that are harmful to women (a firm that discriminates like this may be less likely to hire women because they would de facto be more likely to take off longer). In any case, it's all wild speculation.
> I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary.
My company leaves that decision to the couple. The couple chooses who is primary and secondary. My wife got 12 weeks as the primary caregiver. Our situation is a bit weird because we work for the same company.
Yeah, in that case it makes sense, but if your wife worked for a different company, what's stopping you from claiming to be the primary caregiver even if your wife does the majority of the child care work? Or vice versa? This policy seems unenforceable in this circumstance which is surely more common than both spouses working for the same company.
While I agree your situation sounds better, I had zero days (and due to work being shitty, barely saw my son for the first 3 months), so I'd call it a successful start.
The OP won't have seen much of their child's first 3 months either. Their time with their child probably started when the child was 8 months old and lasted until the child was about 12 months old...
why do you assume that? With my second child I took 4 months of parental leave (2 of which simultaneously with my wife) & divided between ages 0-2 & 10-12 months old.
I can't speak for other countries, but both parents cannot take parental leave at the same time in Norway. Some choose to use vacation days while the other parent has parental leave, but it's a fair assumption to make that one of the parents were working while the other was on parental leave.
Also they just finished their pappaperm which they said was 133 days over the summer and that means their child likely started in nursery in August or September as is the child's legal entitlement if they were born before August last year or in September last year...
I get that you did something different but the OP's case really does sound like they did what most Norwegian fathers do... (I'm not knocking it because that time was truly special for me.)
Fair enough I didn't know Norway disallowed parallel leave. The way we did it is normal in Germany at least among my social circle.
But I also think that aside from not sleeping at night (which depending on if the mother breastfeeds the father may not be able to help much with anyway) the first few months before the kid starts crawling are actually easier than the subsequent few years. For us it was mostly about spending that special time together as a family.
Our first daughter was born a few weeks ago. I took off the first week, but it had to come out of my PTO (and I only have 2 weeks total per year). My wife had to quit her job so she could recuperate and spend time with the baby. She had a rough c-section and is still in bed in a lot of pain. I'm trying to work, take care of her, and take care of the baby.
I wrote a long angry paragraph about US politics and culture here, but on second thought, for my mental sanity I need to drop it.
SO and I have been seriously discussing moving somewhere else and plan to once the pandemic eases up enough for travel to be easier. We're still not 100% sure yet where to go though.
You can have more, with the "congé parental", which has different conditions though:
You need to have been in your current company at least a year
The duration changes based on the number of children you have. up to 1 year for 1 children, 2 years for 2, 5 years for 3 or more.
It can't be denied by the employer
Your contract is suspended, but the employer has to take you back with an equivalent contract once your back
The (big) downside is that you are paid a small allocation during this time. When you already have a really low salary it can be quite interesting, but when you have a higher salary it can be a big pay cut.
Romania, bang average country (GDP per capita almost equal to world average), not even classified as a high income economy and with a GDP per capita 1/6th of the US one is currently offering up to 18 months of maternity leave at 80% pay. There is a paternity leave, I forgot how long, I think it's at least a few weeks if not months.
If there's a will, there's a way.
Oh, our external debt is about 40% and our tax rates are largely comparable to Western ones. So far the only signs of collapse seem to be coming from Communist era buildings :-p
As my dad who still lives there told me, unless you know someone in the system or pay the doctors bribes or go to their private offices(because of course) they won't lift a finger to help you and just leave you sink in the healthcare bottomless pit of endless misery, bureaucracy and waiting lists where you keep being bounced around like a hot potato that nobody gives a damn about. If you actually want to be taken care of the right way, you have to pay up or know someone in the system.
And once you end up in the underfunded public hospitals, you then have to pay the nurses to take care of you and not leave you in your own sh!t, buy medicine, toilet paper and food out of pocket as what you get there is lacking or sub-standard. Basically, if you're poor, you're f*cked.
But yeah, at least on paper, some Romanian laws still got some things right, even compared to richer countries. Too bad that major corruption is eating all that away.
Well we would have money for proper healthcare but due to corruption we don't have money as a lot of it goes into the pockets of politically influencial despots.
Everything being bought with public funds ends up being bought through middle men at 10x the price.
You only get born once. I think its right of the child, moreso than that of parents, to be looked after at birth. It does not happen that often that we should be talking about affordability.
On the other hand, can we afford mutinationals paying no taxes?
No, it's more a matter of culture. Any wealthy industrialised country can easily afford this. The difference is in how much value they attach to family, child care and parenthood.
For all its talk about "family values", the US doesn't seem to care much about families; it's one of the few countries in the world without paid maternity leave (the others are Papua New Guinea, Lesotho and Swaziland), and it has the highest maternity death rate in the developed world.
And the US is not a poor country by any means; this is really a matter of culture and values.
The hidden subtext in this discussion is that the US does not do these kind of things because of their culture. The US is not a poor country. It is in fact one of the richest countries in the world. It's a political decision not to take care of their people. There are countries that really are poor that do a better job at this than the US.
I suspect many others here are. And I very clearly was. Exactly because the US is the most notorious country not providing these kind of things, despite being one of the richest countries in the world: that's a cultural issue.
Meanwhile, many countries much poorer than the US do a lot more. Maybe not quite as much as Scandinavian countries, but they do something.
Yes, in the sense that rich Western countries can afford things like that. And many do, whether they’re ”petrostates” or not. But what about the richest country of them all? Tell me that the US couldn’t afford it if they really wanted!
Any nation with a mandatory retirement age/state pension that normal people live long enough to revive for at least one year, necessarily has enough money to let typical parents look after their kids for at least six months per parent per child.
Necessarily has enough money to pay the social security amounts for that time (in exchange for pushing everyone’s full retirement age back by two years, not one [0])
The bigger problem is I think the average US SS beneficiary takes home around $1400/mo (and they would be Medicare-eligible, unlike most new parents). My mortgage alone is a substantial multiple of $1400/mo.
[0] The one year for one year trade ignores the growth at Treasury rates between the age-at-use and current retirement age. That could easily be 35 years which is a doubling at 2% interest rates, so we’d have to push back everyone’s social security retirement age back by 2 years to fund a max of $1400/mo for 1 year for each child. If we ever return to 4% Treasury rates, that would be 4 years delay for everyone to fund it. 8% is over 15 years’ delay (mathematically is slightly under 15, but so few people draw 15 years that the actual delay would likely be 16 or more years) and we’ve had 8% Treasuries during my adult lifetime.
I don’t see why you are counting future earnings rather than present earnings.
Thought experiment: imagine next year from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, literally every 25-year old stops working and simultaneously everyone who was due to retire in that year has their retirement delayed by one year.
The total size of the workforce remains constant.
If this became a permanent feature of society [0], GDP, average corporate income, and tax revenue, would all be constant.
Private pensions as well as states pensions would also pay out less in total, as there would be less years between retirement and death. How much would your pension pay, relative to parental leave, if someone equivalent to you were to reach pension age today? Because that’s the amount available for paternity in this thought experiment, not the number that your actual pension will be worth when you reach pension age.
[0] For a one-off year it would appear higher, but that’s an illusion caused by old people having more experience and therefore higher productivity and income; it obviously wouldn’t remain true once those 25-year-olds with one fewer years of experience each became 65.
I take your point on not accounting for interest growth. Well explained. Thank you.
My actual retirement is my defined contribution 401(k) account. The amount I put in now grows until I draw it down in retirement. There’s no one who will give me a year of their 401(k) drawdown, of course. What 401(k) money I and my wife don’t spend is part of our estate and inherited just like any other type of private savings.
Defined benefit plans (“private pensions”) are rare (and becoming more rare) for the current workforce.
Social Security is more than a rounding error in the retirement picture, but it’s by far the minority of income for most professional jobs. That’s literally the only “pension style money” that’s available to me and it’s about $1400/mo as far as I can tell. That's not going to take the typical 25-year old new parent very far I don't think. (It's slightly over the federal minimum wage for one full-time worker.)
$1400 is average. Assuming a decent professional salary and depending on when you retire, it could be closer to $2,000-$3,000.
But of course your basic point stands. Absent a separate defined-benefit pension (which still exist from older jobs in some cases), SS is fairly minimal by itself even if you own a house.
You are though, by definition, taking away an average benefit from those who would retire to give to parents, so I think average is the right reference figure when contemplating "what would the parental benefit be if funded from social security delays?"
Actually Norwegian parental leave is not that generous by the standards of similar countries. There is one year total of leave shared between mother and father (or other mother).
Germany has a much more restrictive system though. 65% and a cap that pretty much anyone with a college degree will hit. So in reality you look at 30-50% for most people. Still nice, especially given the job guarantee, but very restrictive in who can take it if you have bills to pay.
In my experience the Elterngeld usually replaces one income in a double income family. Of course one will "loose" money if the cap hits, but hey its 1800 EUR per month for up to 14 months just for being a parent. I think it is awesome even if it is just 30% of your regular salary.
The problem just is that it's often infeasible to replace the higher income. And since women in their early 30s are (unfortunately) often paid worse on average than men (due to many factors), women stay out longer and lose out even more.
On the other hand, in Norway you can get 100% up to a quite large maximum. As opposed to 80% capped at 1000SEK per day in Sweden.
Edit: Living in Norway is more expensive though. So a family of low income might not have been able to sustain themselves if the compensation was lower.
"save" as in, return to shareholders as value (ATAT) or invest for future (Amazon)?
Keep in mind that the top 5 companies in the US are doing wildly better than the top 3000, who are in turn doing wildly better than the x hundreds of thousands of small businesses we have in the US.
I can assure you that the average waiter or call center worker is not getting the same benefits as a Google employee, and I can further assure you that the average restaurant (pre covid ofc) doesn't have the same profit per capita as any publicly traded company.
Anecdotally, my (US) employer started offering paternal leave a few years ago and most new fathers are using it. We allow it to be split, so many will do 2 weeks initially, then in 1-2 week chunks over the next several months.
Here in "flyover country, USA" I was looked down upon for asking to use two weeks of my own PTO after my company's new 'generous' two week paid parental leave. That request was constantly pushed off until the week of my wife's induction, when it was formally declined. I was told the request was 'excessive' and that generally the woman needs more time to recover but the father doesn't need much time.
I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line. I'm grateful that we have a healthy 4-month old baby, but this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable. Better parental rights, better funding for education and health - better take care of your workers and your future (children) and they will be able to take better care of you.
I understand if you want anonymity here but please share this story with the name of the employer on glassdoor or an appropriate forum. If our government won't protect us from these practices then we must shame such employers, and avoid selling them our labor to the greatest possible extent.
> this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable.
Here's the problem: we're stuck in the mindset that profit is so important that we need it to be compatible with compassion or else we'll just sacrifice compassion.
Is it that, or is it that our economy is highly competitive and without government intervention with universal requirements those kinds of perks mean your product costs more relative to your competitor, meaning nobody buys your product?
As a counterpoint also in fly over country w/ a 4 month old, I was basically given as much time as I wanted. Granted I only took a few weeks because I was jonesing to get back, but I have peers that have taken months off.
This isn't to discount your general point about lack of compassion, just to discount what seemed to be the assumption that it is always the case and/or is related to the middle of the country.
I'm sure I could. My employer doesn't mind anything within reason, there's no max vacation or anything. I sympathize w/ GP as their employer is more strict, I just wanted to add my anecdote so others reading don't assume 100% of employers are like that (granted, most likely are).
Fair enough. My point is that for people in the US (and countries with similar regulations) they seem to assume that parental leave is something that must be done directly connected to the birth of the child, and when that's up there's no going back. The story is very different here in Sweden where people can save their "parental days" for years if they so chose.
I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line.
I honestly wonder what effect one person taking off this time would have on the bottom line. If you are that critical to your company, you could probably negotiate for a higher salary. Otherwise, this is just callousness, which I guess is expected from unchecked capitalism.
It is absolute Capitalism. Apparently, Americans have gotten used to it because supposedly the only other option to us is "Socialism". There is no middle ground. God forbid we ask for Capitalism with a little bit of social safety net.
I wish that victim-blaming quote would once and for all fade into it's rightful place of crap writing. It's as if that Canadian never spoke with an actual impoverished American.
> When people can’t easily identify who will be the ultimate beneficiary of a particular state program or policy — that is, whether the rich or the poor will come out on top — then support for that program plummets.
makes me wonder how this should change in times of industrial grade trolling and disinformation campaigns. And if the compass is so fragile, why is that?
> The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time.
This isn't just an apriori fact of the culture, but an intentional result of the structure of the leave.
90 days are reserved for each parent (there's an exception for single parents) i.e. if the father doesn't take those 3 months they are lost. Apparently before this policy came into effect, fathers would typically take very little leave. But once there was an incentive to take 3 months they began to take longer periods and split the overall time more evenly.
So even though it's part of the culture, it's not impossible to understand how it came to be, and therefore not impossible to replicate elsewhere.
Germany also has quite generous parental leave. 14 months to split between parents as they see fit. But no single parent can take more than 12 and it's only 65%.
12 of the 14 months can be doubled as well, up to 24 months, at half the regular salary replacement. A good option if a parent wants to work part-time.
It's not just tech workers, pretty much any academic will hit that limit. And if you live in an expensive area, 1800 Euro can be a severe cap. With mortgages to pay, it can be unrealistic for the father to take more than the minimum of two months off.
House sales have hit an all-time high last year. The share of foreign buyers has increased over the past decade but is still insignificant. So someone is definitely buying houses and tech workers tend to be paid quite well in comparison to others.
Only 25% of the working German population earns less than around 2300€, 1800€ is, at minimum, a 22% reduction in salary for 75+% of the workers. The median is about ~4100€, so more than half of a pay cut for 50% of the working population.
So yes, it's a good amount but still much less than the minimum 80% here in Sweden.
No, I wasn't aware that it's 1800€ net, when I see figures on wage/benefits I always consider it pretax as that is how we talk about them in Sweden, never net salary.
The money paid by the government is based on the net salary and is tax free (I think with so called "Progressionsvorbehalt", which means it increases your tax rate just like any other income, but the tax rate is only applied to the rest of your income that year). Usually salaries are posted/compared based on gross, when you compare jobs/employers, etc. But when talking about government programs, the net is more important, because that is what people based on their family situation (being married, number of kids, etc.) actually get. Otherwise you just talk about how much the government is paying itself.
Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
I can only speculate as to why.
1) Our cultural wiring runs deeper than just "sex is a social construct"
2) The German system is still quite complicated. As countless online calculators and private consultancies helping you filling out the forms prove. As well as the above statistic itself, since financially it would make more sense if the father took as much leave as possible (if he earns more, the family gets 65% of "more").
> Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
This statistics is simply misleading. It says that 2% of the fathers with children under 3 years old are currently on parental leave at any given time.
Let's say you split the 14 months of parental leave so that the mother takes 12 months and the father 2 months (which I commonly see). So within the first 36 months of the child's life there is a 2 in 36 chance that the father is currently on paternal leave in any random month. So basically you have to multiply that 2% by 18 to get the total number of fathers who take paternal leave: 36% if they all take the minimum number of months.
No, the statistics are pretty clear: The share of all parents who were on p/maternal leave during the 2018 microcensus. They don't claim anything else and are a pretty good approximation: How big a share of p/maternal leave offered do fathers and mothers take.
"which I commonly see" is not something that is statistically sound. And neither is just multiplying it. If fathers would on average take 1 month out of 24 offered this wouldn't exactly count as a success for the programme or gender equality.
everything else being equal - i.e. both parents having the same salary, career prospects, desire to work vs. spend time with baby, energy levels, etc. - it's simply more efficient for the woman to take care of the baby, as she's the only one that can feed it (or, more specifically, her feeding the baby is very likely medically better than using baby food)
It’s possible (and we did) to arrange for the father to feed using frozen breast milk. It’s not quite as convenient as evolution’s version, but it’s certainly possible.
I don't really get your point here about point 2. If the father earns considerably more, then it would certainly result in less money coming into the household overall if he then takes more leave at 65% as opposed to no leave at 100%. Why would he do that?
I think your link is slightly misrepresenting the situation as it surveyed parents with kids <3 and <6. In terms of early parental leave (ie. the time covered by Elterngeld), I would think the percentage of men taking time is much higher.
At least anecdotally, many of the fathers I've talked to take the 2 months at the very minimum.
It's simple: In the German system, it makes sense for the person earning less to stay at home, because that means the loss of income in the partnership will be minimized. Since men are still earning more in many relationships in Germany mostly women take the parental leave.
This issue could be fixed easily, by adding up the income of both partners and then paying 65% of the sum.
But instead in Germany you get 65% up to a maximum amount of 1800 Euro of the person taking the parental leave. So if your salary is higher than roughly 2800 Euro (after taxes/netto) you will get even less than 65% of your income during parental leave. So if there are two partners, one above 2800 Euro and one below it is clear that the one below should take the parental leave. So the mathematics of the German system together with a gender imbalance in salaries guarantees a conservative split of the parental leave.
If our government wouldn't be so incompetent one could think that they invented these rules on purpose. But that would imply that they can do math. And that is a conspiracy that is so absurd nobody would believe that.
I have a much simpler explanation. Most people can't afford it. The median income in Germany is ~44k/yr. If we assume the woman earns a bit less, we can already see why it's more common for the mother to take the paternal leave. It's less of a hit on the finances. If the dad takes it, or both, they might not be able to sustain themselves for long.
If I imagine the women earning a bit less, I imagine them getting 65% of less.
Whoever of the parents is earning less, in most cases it would make more sense for the less compensated parent to just switch into part-time, if he/she isn't already working a tax-free "mini-job", while the higher compensated parent takes the leave. This yields the highest income per hours@home.
But that's usually not what people optimize for, they optimize for max total income, because rent or mortgage payments etc aren't based on a percentage of income but fixed amounts. Sure, it's great if you only work one hour a month and get 1000€ for that instead of working 100 hours and getting 4000€. But if your rent is 1100€, what good does that do?
The results aren't the same though. If you want maximum total income and you'll take a percentage cut of one of two salaries, you'll take the cut for the lower salary. If you optimize for maximum income per hours worked, you'd take the cut on the higher salary.
Oh I re-read the comment again and realized they are suggesting part-time lower-income PLUS paternal leave higher-income. That's weird on multiple levels: You want, as you said, optimise for total income; and you want to spend as much uninterrupted time with your kid as possible.
This option gives you neither.
Rather, I have a colleague who took paternal leave with their partner and afterwards switched to part-time for a bit.
This is clearly cultural. If I hadn't taken my several months of leave when my kids were pre-daycare age, that would have been effectively me being an "absent father" in the eyes of people around me. It simply isn't a very acceptable thing to do.
You get paid (80%). You can't get fired. Choosing not to do it means you don't want to do it, or you chose something else over your parental leave. Not only would skipping parental leave not be seen as normal by my social circle, it wouldn't be seen as normal by my manager or colleagues. I'd be getting questions like "you took zero weeks of leave when your son was born? why?".
Although I believe it’s best for the family to have the father take some time (as much as they can!), I think it’s sort of no ones business if he chooses to take time and how much time he takes. If you’re not getting 100% of your pay then there could be situations where that creates financial stress for example.
So maybe it doesn’t mean you don’t want to do it but simply can’t afford to do it.
> So maybe it doesn’t mean you don’t want to do it but simply can’t afford to do it.
That would of course be an acceptable excuse. I meant that for my particular situation since my peers know I can afford it, they would also know I chose not to because I dind't want to (not acceptable), or because I felt my career would suffer (not acceptable).
Regarding #2 - at least in Berlin a lady from Gesundheitsamt helped us fill the paperwork and it was one of the best experiences I had with any public servant.
> Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
> I can only speculate as to why.
This is actually pretty simple: Germany's culture is still deeply rooted into old gender roles - father provider and mother educator.
To give a context of the culture and legal system, as of today, unmarried fathers don't get legal custody automatically, and if they apply and the mother refuses, they need to go to court. This is even a recent change; until 2009, if the mother refused, there was no chance, and until 2013, the father had to go to the European Court of Human Rights.
Germany has a very surprising family culture in the Northern Europe context - the surrounding countries are considerably more progressive. An educated guess is that the Nazi regime promoted the father provider/mother educator model, and it's taking a very long time to move on.
Yes. The German old perspective is detailed in the Zaunegger vs. Germany case in the European Court of Human Rights, because the German judge voted against recognizing legal custody (only one in six to do) as human right, and gave a justification with historical grounds.
Can the downvoter(s) clarify their position? I'm familiar with the subject, and this is informed opinion, not prejudice. If somebody disagrees, it's interesting to see their opinion and information.
"Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
I can only speculate as to why."
I thought the answer is simple - father cannot breastfeed a baby (even though gender is only a social construct, as some people claim, nature is still nature and reality is still reality).
Not completely true though. Salary caps are in place that restrict the amount you can get. While for full time parental leave that's capped at 1800 Euro/months, for part time they restrict the eligible amount you're allowed to earn. For anyone working in tech that means if you work part time you're likely to get only 150 Euro per month, even if you only make half the money. Not really better than just reducing your hours outside of parental leave.
France has both paternity leave and parental leave, which are different things.
France has 1 year parental leaves, which may be extended up to a total of 3 years (and more in case of twins, etc). But they are unpaid though the employee may then qualify for various benefits.
There is also a 'birth leave' of 3 days. So when you have a baby you can have a 3 day leave at birth, then the now 28 day paternity leave within the next 4 months, and an unpaid 1-3 year parental leave.
Iirc, the first leave is on full pay by the employer, the second on capped pay by a special state benefit (but employers can top up), and the third is unpaid though, as mentioned, other benefits exist subject to conditions.
The idea being that one leave is for attending the actual birth (in France mothers are usually kept in hospital for a few days after birth in order to recover and to be taught how to look after a baby, fathers are welcome during the day), one leave is for bonding with the new born baby, and the third leave is, if needed, to look after the baby until (s)he reaches free nursery school age.
French admin is always as simple as can be, not ;)
In my case, at the time I worked for a company that offered a lot of annual leaves (I had about 8 weeks a year) so took normal annual leaves instead of the paternity leave after the initial 3 day "birth leave" in order not to lose money as the paternity leave cap was quite lower than most engineers earn.
This hits home hard: my newborn is now one month old, and I had to forgo the 11 days of leave.
Why? Because there’s a hard cap on the salary: I ran the numbers for me for the current 11 days in France it means over 1k€ of income just vanish, and it’s not like we can make loans, rent, and other fixed expenses disappear, right at the moment where we have to shell out money for the hospital and general baby equipment. If it were 28 days that would be over half of my salary going poof.
Union agreements say that for the employer to fill in the remainder it’s required I’d be in this company for at least two years, but I joined only a year and a half ago.
It so happened that I took barely any off days during this time so I took a month to bond, which sure took its toll on me (not the bonding of course, the lack of time off for over a year)
The Swedish paternity leave is caped at 1006 SEK per day (94€), while the French one is capped at 89€ per day.
That's not a very large difference, the main difference is that the Swedish one never goes over 80% of your salary while the French one goes up to 100%.
I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy -- unless your job is entirely useless, the business must replace your position during your absence in order to continue normal operation; even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found..
So then what exactly do you return to? It can't be your old position exactly -- you were replaced. So its more like a vague promise that the business will rehire you into some arbitrary position? Or even worse, make up a new position of equivalent power upon your return?
You can't know. It's supposed to be whatever I did before, or equivalent. Basically if they replace me I can make a fuss about wanting my position back or an equivalent position. In any case, you can't e.g. be at a worse pay grade even if you have a lower "position" than before.
I have never seen it be a problem.
> even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found..
We do 5 or 6 weeks holiday every year without problem, not sure why that would be such a big issue. Actually since I had kids I distribute out my remaining parental leave days to a couple of weeks per summer, so from ages 0-8 my summer holidays have been 7 or 8 weeks every year. No manager would even ask a question about this.
> So its more like a vague promise
Well it's the law...
But most importantly so long as people want to take paternal leave, I think even the promise of being rehired is good enough. The key to the system working is that everyone does it. I wouldn't want to work for a manager that hadn't.
The business just can function at a diminished capacity.
E.g. the team which had 5 developers now has 4.
If you're in a more singular position (manager etc.), then the entire's department workload can be rearranged so that your work falls onto one or multiple of your colleagues while you're gone. Since apparently most bigger orgs are in constant flux, it's not hard to do.
Also, since it's the norm that people disappear for long periods of time, businesses can hire with some slack (e.g. hire 110% of needed capacity) to easily absorb absences.
> I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy -- unless your job is entirely useless, the business must replace your position during your absence in order to continue normal operation
Just because you cannot get fired for going on parental leave does not mean that the company cannot hire a substitute for your absence. This is typically what happens.
I think it's quite healthy for the business TBH. In Scandinavia this is the norm, at a medium sized company there will probably always be someone on parental leave at any given time. You expect it, and therefor deal with it by reducing the bus factor up front.
First of all, if a company fires someone because they are on parental leave, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Now how a company handles employees depends. In some cases you hire a temp, in others your colleagues covers your responsibilities.
I work as a developer and in the places I've worked it has never been a problem. You leave and while you're gone your responsibilities are shared by other colleagues. When you're back you resume your old position. It's true that you might not get back to doing exactly the same work as before you left, but in my experience that's rarely a problem. In my case it's been quite the opposite and an opportunity to take on new things. I think this is quite common
It's true that the employer overall needs to keep more staff around since some percentage will be away on parental leave and your need to cover those fluctuations. For small companies this can be a problem but in general I think this system has great acceptance with the public.
Since it's normal, companies adapt and it isn't really an issue at all. I've never seen anyone in my jobs (IT) that have been "replaced" in any way shape or form.
What do you do when somebody goes on vacations or gets a broken leg? Stop the business :)?
Here people have 26 days of paid leave + 1 year of combined paternity+maternity leave per kid + paid health leave whenever a doctor decides it's needed.
Businesses work just fine - they simply hire more people to offset the fact that everybody is expected to be out of office X% of the time. Also there are temporary contracts and B2B contracts if needed (less protection but also less taxes so they are quite popular with IT people).
Companies just plan for redundancy in roles so they are ready when people need to take parental leave or sabbaticals. It isn't that difficult for a company to handle, but companies in countries where this isn't the norm just plan and hire for it.
DICE recently published three interviews with dads who are going on extended parental leave (one for 5 months and two for 7 months) [1,2,3]. They are all producers but I think their experiences are somewhat indicative of the work culture in many Swedish (tech) companies.
The following excerpt is from [3]:
There are parts of my surrounding family that expressed their concerns, “if you go away, your career is going to suffer”. I’ll be honest and say that I also had similar concerns the first time I went away. And when I returned, I came back to a slightly different role. That sent up a flag for me. The team had been restructured and I was now asked to support a leader as opposed to be a leader - like I was before I left. I was to support Lars Gustavsson, our Creative Director and the famous Mr. Battlefield. So while I was no longer THE lead, I was still in the leadership group plus I was now learning from a seasoned pro. So it worked out and ultimately I feel my career was not negatively impacted in any significant way.
For this parental leave I worked with my manager Adam Clark (Head of Production) to establish a departure plan which started in Summer 2019. We planned which areas I would work on, and we created a rough initial plan for the transition period. We spent the remainder of the year fulfilling that plan at quarterly intervals.
The result of this early planning is that my role will be covered in full while I am away. My lead position will be covered by another Producer who has worked with me for the past quarter, being onboarded regarding all crucial functions. This type of commitment to planning gives me confidence to go on leave, knowing I will come back to a similar well planned roadmap in 2021.
Additionally a number of my colleagues have been transparent on what they want me to do when I return. Both Ryan McArther (Sr Producer) and Andreas Morell (Sr Producer.) have had sit downs with me and detailed the role they want me to take upon my return. That again, gives me confidence to leave and enjoy my time away.
> I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy
That's one of those miracles that happen when people pay the right amount of taxes!
It's incredible what social democracy can do for you if you stop fighting it in the name of the war to socialism!
Isn't it?
Personally I don't understand how is it viable to have a society where the GDP is astronomical and people have to spend their own money to pay insurance companies that make billions in profits, while women have no right to a fully paid maternal leave.
Unless in those countries people are considered like cogs in the machine...
Sweden used to have this really nice system where you got extra money whenever both parents took more than 30% of the days. We got several unexpected transfers of 300€ because of this, which for us at the time was a huge boon.
When my daughter was young (in Sweden), this system was in effect, but was calculated per calendar year and not on the total number of days. We took around half the number of days each, but because we switched close to the new year, it looked like each year was like one week for one parent and the rest for the other, highly uneven both years. I don't know if that was a quirk of the system that they fixed or not, but we got 125 SEK or something as an equality bonus as a result.
Yes, though in total the split between myself and my partner was pretty much even, we got one of the "equality bonus" amounts and missed the others. It was hard to understand how it worked, we did not plan with it in mind and when it happened it seemed pretty random. I haven't kept up to date with the rules but I think they just quietly scrapped the "equality bonus" idea. I'm glad they did. While I am certainly happy I had the opportunity to be with my children because of the system, I do not miss all the hours spent trying to plan with all the rules in mind. My dream system would be a lump sum and the right to take unpaid time off work while the children are young...
But in all seriousness, Germany and Sweden (and the USA for that matter) all have sub-replacement fertility rates. I understand that you believe that people will reproduce like rabbits, especially if incentivized, but the data doesn't reflect that.
In every system there are those that game the system. The question is: does the benefit for the majority outweigh the cost of those abusing the benefit?
This is only problem with that is out economic system. Normally I would assume that would clearly point out the perversion of it, but that seems to be just a dream. Otherwise humanity isn't really in danger of dying out.
You think people not having children are abusing the system? I know many who just don't want to become parents at 40 anymore, so they will never have children. That decision is also influenced by economic situations.
I am a Swede - there is no way that I want 12 kids. From both a personal point of view, and for the environmental reasons (though I get it if you are adopting).
With that many kids the older ones are probably helping raise the younger. My wife's cousin has 5 kids (in relatively short intervals, I think there's less than 10 years between the oldest and youngest) & the 2 oldest ones help out a lot.
Even if we're being that cynical - taking on much more work than you can handle and increasing your expenses multiple multiple times for the next 20 years - that's not retirement.
Sweden also pays you per kid. At 11 kids you'd get about $24k a year since it scales up. As long as you live in a cheap area you don't have to spend that much money on the kids, since you don't pay for education or healthcare or daycare. Also since you are on parental leave you still get that money.
Countries like Sweden have many forms of welfare. A lot of people are working for cultural and pride reasons and not because they would be living under a bridge or on Howard St if they weren't working.
But it doesn't matter. I don't care if someone decides they want 12 kids, even if it is to avoid work. As long as those 12 kids are taken care of - and it isn't causing the women health issues at all - I'm not concerned, though I hope that at least some of those 12 are adoptions or foster children.
Some people really like to raise children, multiples.
But lets not forget that children are work. More children, more work. The thought that you are 'retiring' and relaxing just isn't so: for 14+ years, you always have a diaper to change, you always need to keep a childproof house, you always need to toilet train someone. For some years, you always have a preteen to watch over. Someone just going off to college. Etc.
But again, this isn't the norm. Even large families rarely have so many children. The amount of folks that try to have 12 children is such a small portion that it isn't worth worrying about and honestly, just parrots right-wing fears that folks are having children to get money from the government.
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that people want to be sexually active and don't want children until they have an existential crisis and many existing people are unplanned happenstances.
Educated people don't have enough children to replace themselves, and its not because they are too busy.
Give people the choice and most choose to do things preventing children until they have existential crisis. Remove the choice and people are have children at twice the rate, pretty much coinciding with when they become sexually active.
Average age of first birth by country, across years.
In a place like the US you can get more granular data down to the county level and see the same thing. Economic centers having the same trends in first birth age as other developed nations.
There is an even distribution of sexual activity, you might just have to trust me on that one, but there might be some study to cross reference and show thats a constant.
Given the same result occurring in so many places, the evidence suggests people aren't interested in children until they are afraid they can't pass on their genes in a healthy way. Fix that and I would expect to see the age increasing another ten years. Fix the stamina deterioration and I would expect to see the age increasing further again.
You seem to ne completely writing off many other factors that could make having kids later (at which age are people wealthy, independent, secure about their future, committed in a relationship, etc... compared to X generation ago ? How much access to people have to contraception ?) , as well as factors that could make you have kids earlier (peer pressure, cultural norms, etc...).
"People being more selfish" might definitely be a factor, but you might come across as considering it like the factor, which would required exceptional data..
> you might come across as considering it like the factor
I used the word suggest and chose it specifically. I did consider those things and chose not to write a dissertation to convey the exact same concept as the word "suggest". Do with it what you will.
It is possible to be reductive because the same thing happens in so many places. I think there are very few exceptions to "educated, choices, access to contraception" where "cultural peer pressure to have children young" actually works.
I’d say it’s probably more like there aren’t many Swedes who could deal with a house with 12 kids. The after school logistics alone must be a nightmare.
Either that, or there’s something plugging the loophole the GP mentions.
What about the difficulty of having 12 pregnancies? You'd have to set aside 12 years in the first place. A woman in such a family isn't planning on working.
Women don't need to be off work for the entire pregnancy nor the entire year after giving birth, though. If you are splitting your maternity leave with your spouse, you might not take an entire year off. You might just take the time that pays you more instead of being paid less: I don't know how it is other places, but you aren't getting paid for maternity leave if you don't work. (IIRC, in norway, the man doesn't get much leave if the woman isn't working).
Your job is probably protected while on maternity leave too.
I*d say that one of the main difficulties with 12 pregnancies is the actual pregnancies - they are hard on the body and honestly, it isn't recommended that folks have a pregnancy a year - if one even is able to have so many. The more likely situation is that having 12 children means some of those children are fosters or adoptions. And at that point, I don't actually care if someone has 12 children so long as they are good parents.
The fertility rate is about identical or even a little lower among Swedes with at least one foreign-born parent [1], although there is some difference for foreign-born Swedes [2].
Even in the UK (from where I come) it's only first generation migrants that have many children, the second generation seems to fall in line with the society. From my anecdotal experience.
This is very sensible to me as a way to stop discrimination. If you make it so economically the impact of a birth is similar for men and women, you reduce the incentive to discriminate.
80% salary, with a cap of 1006 SEK (110 USD) a day. While paid leave is great, it's not just 80% of your salary. There are a lot of maximums. This isn't to say this is bad or "I gotcha!" but rather to share a bit more information.
I work at one of the large U.S. tech companies and am currently on parental leave. Fathers get four months of leave at 100% pay, and my health insurance covered every penny of the $500k birth (there were a lot of complications). My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have this perk at this company, and I don’t take it for granted at all. It’s mind-blowing to me that U.S. companies are not required to offer any leave to the fathers. My previous company did not offer leave, so a lot of my male coworkers just used a few vacation days and then were back at work.
My wife and I are very busy taking care of the baby essentially all day, so I have no clue how this work is so often done by one parent, much less having both parents working full time.
The U.S. needs to get its act together in the 21st century. A lack of mandated PTO and a lack of leave cannot be good for the long term mental health of the country. I would gladly pay more taxes to ensure everyone had this perk.
Sure. The delivery was at Lucile Packard and my wife had preeclampsia, so they had to induce. Labor was 24 hours and delivery was 4 hours, and our daughter came out not breathing. She had the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly around her neck and had also inhaled a lot of meconium. They immediately took her to the NICU and performed various procedures to get the meconium out. She wasn’t able to breath on her own for a over a week, but eventually she recovered and we were able to take her home. Delivery was $112k and the remainder was the NICU.
It really irked me that here in Canada the options were generally skewed towards mothers remaining home. You can split 40 weeks of parental leave, but many employers won't provide parental benefits and those that do often only provide parental benefits to mothers. For instance, my employer at the time provided wage top-up for women on leave but nothing for men.
Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in society at large that ultimately contribute to the wage gap.
Of course I stayed at work, and of course my wife now has enormous gaps in her work history, and so of course my yearly gains in income have outpaced hers.
Well we can’t do anything about employers, that’s why relying on employers as a social net is ridiculous (what’s the % of people that have parental benefits from their employers? Surely a minority)
This needs to be managed through the government. Quebec has done a good job at it. And yes, it can be used by either the father or the mother without any problem.
The problem is smaller employers, which simply can't afford to shoulder the burden of paid maternity leave for 1 of their 10 employees. You can set up a graduated system like the UK has, where all employers have to pay and can reclaim a variable amount. But one way or another, any benefit the government won't foot the bill for is a benefit many parents won't get.
Right, but the funding available for such a benefit is limited. If employers were required to offer the top-up to both men and women equally, I expect many companies on the smaller side would have to stop offering it to stay within their budget.
Honestly, so many of the problems in our work culture is caused by small businesses who don't want to play by the rules that I'm okay with just letting them hang.
This is the same argument that's used to justify lack of paid sick leave, lack of protections against discrimination (Title VII only applies to companies with 15 or more people), working people who don't have employer-provided health insurance, etc. Every single abuse a company can visit on its employees is magnified several times by small businesses.
It's time for the government to decide that small businesses not playing by the rules are a net negative for society and just let them go.
It's not a matter of willingness to play by the rules. A company with 5 employees is always going to struggle to handle a sudden 20% increase in labor costs, no matter how much its owner has good intentions.
It's certainly consistent to say that everyone should just work for big businesses who can absorb these kinds of costs. But I think we have to acknowledge that this process, where regulations end up building a wall only big businesses can easily climb over, would be called "regulatory capture" in a different context. Government funding really seems to me like the better alternative.
As a Swede the replies you get to this reasonable comment is like being sent back to the ~1970. The only thing that's "biological" is that women usually take the first months of parental leave and the father the second (and sometimes they overlap).
There's nothing whatsoever that's reasonable, and certainly not biological, about limiting that second period for the father.
Biology tends to be structurally sexist as well. The only solution is to essentially force fathers to stop working as well during this time. This is equality of outcome.
Why would it possibly make the world a better place if fathers were forced to not work?! Forcing someone to stop working would likely piss a lot of people off, and would generally hurt the companies these fathers work for.
It's a worldview that's pretty common. You equalize inherent advantages by denying everyone them when you cannot add them to some people. For instance, you cannot operate a store of a certain size without accommodating disabled people. i.e. even non-disabled people are denied the ability to shop there.
Another example (that is very different) is where UC Berkeley was forced to pull course videos it had put up because it didn't have a disabled-accessible version of them. The videos presented an advantage to normative people.
The world-view does not admit Pareto-optimal changes since benefit to some slice of humanity that is chosen based on immutable (or socially-considered inherent - like religion) characteristics is implicitly assumed to push everyone else back unless the benefit accrues to them as well.
> equalize inherent advantages by denying everyone them when you cannot add them to some people
So should we force men to take testosterone blocking drugs since testosterone gives an unfair advantage? The hormone is a main driver of competitive-ness and aggression and strength, which in business overall and especially some fields is a huge advantage.
Or give smart people some drugs to make them a little less smart, to even them out with everyone else.
The world is full of inequities, that’s a part of life.
Why would it possibly make the world a better place if fathers were forced to not work?!
Because they would be able to bond with their children during paternity leave, which is a huge positive for father and child.
Forcing someone to stop working would likely piss a lot of people off, and would generally hurt the companies these fathers work for.
So it’s better to hurt children then ‘companies’?
Edit: I agree that fathers should not literally be forced to take leave. That would be dictatorial. The grandparent poster used the term essentially forced, which implies strongly encouraging both parents to take the offered leave. For example, if they would still receive most of their salary during this time, and their position were protected.
The father should be able to choose when and how he bonds with his children. It isn’t for the state to decide the fathers work schedule that is best for him to raise a child. That’s government overreach. It’s one thing for the government to say you may stop working. It’s another thing entirely for them to force you to do so.
I'm not advocating for this, but I find the thought worth exploring.
I think with rasing children there's a question of where lies the responsability and consequences? Laws mandate many things that are meant for you to clean up after yourself and not leave a mess which others have to be burdened with.
In theory, one could argue raising a child is a similar scenario, and I think we already have many laws around it to some extent.
So it could be said that both parents must share the burden, and thus they could both be mandated to take time off. Or it could be argued that this will lead to children raised better and who will be more productive to society at large, so also could justify mandating it, etc.
I'm not really into the idea, because it assumes a lot and I feel so many situations related to parenthood are much more complex, so it's hard to blanket say what is best for all parties, but I feel it's not unprecedented to make laws around responssabilities of a parent towards their child.
Every worker deserves the same opportunity to spend time with their children.
The government wouldn't be forcing any father to do anything. The government would be forcing companies to provide all workers the privilege of time off for parenting. A father who didn't want to bond with his children could use the time off to go fishing, take up woodworking, watch youtube videos, or work on a side-business.
> People are offered leave, that's good, if they don't want to take it, it's none of anyone's business really
Hum... wouldn't that depend on why you're not taking them?
Say you're not taking them because of social pressure?
Say you don't want to take them because doing so will put you up for promotion before your co-workers who do?
Say you don't want to take them because it result in a loss of money (if say employer offers reduced pay only)
And maybe others. But I feel some of those reasons call for further discussion. Like, it shouldn't be that you don't take them due to social pressure, lower pay, or to get ahead. None of these seem equally fair to all employees.
If you really just really were someone whose favourite thing to do is go to work day in, day out, then ok sure. It be hard to argue against that, but like... really?
"wouldn't that depend on why you're not taking them?"
No, definitely not.
You've made no argument here.
It's not the company or the government's business why someone would want to take family leave - or not - same for vacation time, or where someone would go, or what they do frankly.
Unless it's illegal or really adversely affecting the company, or obviously if the company is trying to 'suppress' people from taking vacay etc..
Forcing vacations and such things, to achieve some kind of ideological and probably unscientific premise is a bridge too far.
It could be seen as workers rights, that's my point.
If the company is promoting those who don't, that can be seen as retaliation against those who do.
If companies don't provide adequate pay for employees who have a child, it can be seen as punishment for those who bear the burden of children for all others.
And if you're not taking them because of social pressure, well then it's a vicious cycle, since no one takes them due to pressure, and now it invalidates the point of giving them in the first place. So possibly something needs to be done to break the cycle.
Etc.
I'm not saying any of this is reason enough to push for enforcement or anything like that. But it's also not simply a matter of "not being anyone's business". For example, it can very much be my business if I want to be able to take some time off, and not lose out to my co-workers on the next promotion just because I wanted to take some time to take care for my new born. Same could be said for sick leave or other.
So I guess we could reframe the debate in terms of:
Is it fair for a man who would like to take some time to care for his new born, that doing so could hurt his career? And off course, that asks a greater question: Do we want to promote fatherhood and give incentives for people to have kids and care for them properly? Or would we rather incentivize full time careers with little to no downtime and complete dedication to work?
"So it’s better to hurt children then ‘companies’?"
It's your subjective opinion that not having 'dad's around 24/7 is going to 'hurt babies'.
In all pragmatism, there's no need for 'a second parent' to take 30 days off, and I'll bet most guys, while they wouldn't mind 'some time' - probably don't need or want 30 days.
7-14 days is reasonable for second parent.
There's no optimizations here, I think we are 'mostly past' these issues, whatever tinkering we do is academic.
Subsidized childcare is a different story though, that has major impact, for better or for worse, there's still a lot of experimentation going on there.
For example, we all pretty much agree at least on 'kindergarten' before that, it's still different from place to place.
Why is the father the second parent in all of this? The implication in your reply is that the mother is the "primary" parent.
> In all pragmatism, there's no need for 'a second parent' to take 30 days off, and I'll bet most guys, while they wouldn't mind 'some time' - probably don't need or want 30 days.
Speaking of subjective opinions, here's another one.
Nobody is forcing a parent to take 30 days, or 3 months off to spend with a child. If you get the time off and want to spend it golfing, go for it. But it means that the large number of fathers who _do_ want to take time off are now able to, and more importantly, a mother isn't forced to take 6-9 months out and suffer in their career for it.
Fathers would certainly not be pissed off. They'd get to work on being a father.
> Forcing someone to stop working would likely piss a lot of people off
Which people? Most humans are going to be parents some day, and even those that aren't can see that living in a world where every child has same opportunity in terms of having both parents with them for the first few days, weeks, or months of their lives is a net positive for society.
Which father doesn't want time off to be with their children if it doesn't otherwise impact them negatively (ie. they were taken of by their fellow man)?
> and would generally hurt the companies these fathers work for.
I don't believe that to be true. A company is a group of humans. Giving those humans time off to parent makes healthier, happy humans and a healthier and more effective workforce.
Mandating 40 weeks off strikes me as excessive, but I think there are reasonable arguments for mandating 2 weeks or a month - it's hardly an unprecedented imposition. Forcing people to not work is a common strategy for addressing systemic issues. For example, many bankers are required to take a contiguous 2 week vacation at least once a year as an anti-fraud measure.
FWIW, Canada's leave is not mandatory to take, and employers aren't beholden to continue providing compensation. The parent on leave receives Employment Insurance from the Feds.
The restriction on employers is that the parent on leave must be able to resume their employment after leave unless their position has been removed entirely, and even so that can cause problems for employers.
There's nothing biological about working a job. Why are women forced to stop working when they have a baby? Stop pretending our social problems are science based.
And yes, there are options for them to carry on but society pretty much forces most women to stop working, due to aforementioned social pressures, structural sexist policies and expectations we put on women.
If all men and women were forced to take 6 months off, we would see far more women succeeding in the workplace over the long term, as they would not be disadvantaged by choosing to have a baby.
This means we as a society get more people working overall in more jobs, being more productive, solving more problems and building a better future for us all. Capitalism is not zero sum- men do not lose when women succeed, quite the opposite. Limiting our workforce to 50% of our population is bad policy, even if you're sexist and in favour of men over women, you must understand the economic benefits of increased paternity leave.
> There's nothing biological about working a job. Why are women forced to stop working when they have a baby? Stop pretending our social problems are science based.
I agree with your last sentence but, like, having a child is one of the few situations where the biological "bias" really is unavoidable, at least for the first couple months.
So women are by default at a disadvantage in that situation, which makes forcing the same work absence onto the father even worse for the family's income as a whole.
What we need is to make sure that that kind of prolonged absence from work doesn't impact either parent too much. At least some 100% paid parental leave would be a good start and enabling remote work, which is possible in the vast majority of jobs, would not only improve the mother's situation, but also allow the parents to freely balance who stays with the child more, increasing equality all-round.
If a company gives you a negative score due to a gap that's explained by taking time out to look after a baby then you're probably better off not working there.
If it's just one employer, that would be their loss. If it's all employers, that would be your loss. And the reality is much closer to the latter than the former.
A negative score due to a gap is the same as a positive score due to an extra years employment, and that's a harder mindset to overcome. Only the most toxic of workplaces would say "hey, they took a year out to raise a child, no way" but many workplaces would say " these two candidates appear equal except this one has an extra year's experience in $foo"
You're trying to defend this practise by suggesting it's 'only the most toxic workplaces', but that's not the case. Given two candidates who both have 5 years experience but one has a gap of a year to raise a baby, lots of companies will chose the other candidate. Talk to parents. Understand the problem. Companies assume that if you've taken a year once then you'll probably do it again if you have a second child, and consequently they avoiding hiring you. Don't be an apologist for those companies that do it.
I’ve been involved in many recruitment processes. Companies are far more scared of you having done lots of short jobs than of having taken gaps, especially if the gaps are easily explained away as “time spent caring for family” or “self-directed study”
It's not so much the gaps that are the problem as it is the effect that the delay has on growing compensation.
For every gap there's missed yearly/quaterly reviews, there's missed opportunities for promotion, and there's a stall in your compensation growth overall. When you come back to work you typically come back at the wage you left.
I call BS on that one. What about the fact that switching companies is by fare more effective than staying at the same company salary-wise? Then it should also be a problem to employers if someone stayed at a single company for a long time as it constitutes as "missed opportunities for promotion"
Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery.
Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off.
There is nothing sexist about this. It is more efficient to extend one person's required time off than it is to give two separate people time off. An extended maternity leave generally means that one company needs to find one replacement or otherwise shuffle work. Maternity + paternity leave means you need to do that, 2x.
I fully support longer paternity leaves because I do think it is important for having equality in the workplace. But the idea that it's society that is sexist in this regard is ridiculous.
Honestly I don't think we will really have equality until babies are grown in test tubes, and that's not society's fault.
But you can't close the salary gap between men and women by only mostly having women taking childcare responsibilities.
So if you introduce mandatory and equal leave for both parents, not only do you get happier parents, but you also don't advantage men over women for their biology.
That's all there is to it really, pretty simple and already implemented in plenty of countries.
Yes, that's why I literally said I support longer paternity leave in the end of my comment.
Paternity leave is an example of society taking biological differences and the reality of bringing a child into the world (that it asks a helluva lot more of the mother than the father) and making everything more equitable.
The purpose of my comment was not to say paternity leave doesn't make any sense. It was to say that the lack of it is not an example of sexism. It's an example of men and women being different and therefore the non-egalitarian default being different for men and women. That's not sexism.
This has nothing to do with payment. People work jobs in society. Even if you don't live in a society where you get paid a wage for working that job, time still needs to be taken off work to have a baby.
It's more economically efficient (it takes time and effort to replace the work that was being done by someone, regardless of how employers are remunerating employees) to extend that person's leave than to arrange for two separate leaves for two separate jobs when there was no necessity for the second person to take time off in the first place.
It's emergent behavior based off efficiency and the harsh realities of childbirth (i.e. men and women have very different parts to play in childbirth). It's not sexism.
> Not doing everything you possibly can to make everyone equal when it comes to sex is not sexism.
If something inherent in our society - having children - causes one gender to have unequal opportunity it's sexist to be against counter-measures due to some sort of bullshit "biology" argument.
Yet again, there's nothing biological that mandates that women should be disadvantaged due to having children. It's artificial and modern Scandinavia proves it.
Huh? Biology absolutely does mandate that. Unless wires have been completely crossed here, when you say "women should not be disadvantaged", you are presumably talking about employment / work.
The entire purpose of employment is to output work that is useful to other people / society at large. If you are not doing that, there is no reason for you to be gainfully employed by anyone else. Therefore, please note that any time I say "productivity" in the rest of this comment, I mean it in the sense of doing productive work for other people, e.g. employment.
As a side-effect of childbirth, women lose productive capacity. Men do not. This is not a societal choice, it is a physiological reality. It will continue to be true up until the moment women no longer need to carry a baby around in their wombs for 9 months in order to bring new humans into the world. Note I'm just talking about pre/perinatal here, not long-term child rearing.
Any "disadvantage" occurs naturally as a result of loss in real usefulness (for a time) when it comes to employment. Now, you want to compensate for that natural loss in productivity by mandating that men artificially lose productivity in the form of paternity leave. I agree with you that this is probably[1] a good idea. But not wanting to overcompensate for actual biological differences is not sexism. This clearly doesn't fall into sexism because it doesn't apply to all women. It only applies to women that can + want to have children. The discrimination is not based on sex, it's based on a demonstrable loss in productivity that occurs naturally and by choice.
Again, this is very much unlike the disadvantage experienced by black Americans before the Civil Rights Movement, which was not a result of natural processes but rather a result of completely arbitrary bigotry and absolutely not in any way, shape, or form brought on by a choice made by black Americans.
[1] I say probably here because obviously paternity leave only applies to men who are having / have had children, so you will continue to have a similar problem (discrimination based on a loss in productivity), except now the sides are not "women having children" vs. everyone else but rather "people having children" vs. everyone else (i.e. people that don't want children). As I said though, I agree and still think this is better than the completely natural version of events, where only the woman side of the equation loses productivity, because at the end of the day in situations like these it is both the woman and the man who are choosing to bring a child into the world. And even though it is a choice to do so, it is obviously the kind of choice which we need people to make otherwise society will cease to exist, which is why I am happy to compensate for the loss in productivity due to this choice. That being said, once test-tube babies are both easy (easier/safer than natural childbirth) and normalized, I probably won't be able to countenance advantaged maternity/paternity leave (at least before the "birth" of the baby), because then it will be an entirely optional choice and you would be effectively punishing people that choose to have babies in the test-tube fashion.
It's artificial due to society treating child rearing as womens work. That's a social construct. In Scandinavia it's seen as an event handled by _both_ parents, equally. So both parents are expected to be just as absent from work as the other. This results in women not being singled out as a more "risky" employee over men. This is the default. That history has been cruel to women is no reason to treat what you describe above as the default. To assume that men need not take part in child raring before the child is ready for daycare is a sexist assumption.
You're treating a biological difference (the actual birth) of a few weeks as a valid reason for a much larger societal disadvantage.
Finally, child rearing should not be seen as a "loss of productivity" but as unpaid work, since without it, as you also noted, we would cease to exist.
Please re-read all of my comments with the fresh understanding (though it really shouldn't be as this was obvious from context and even explicitly stated) that I'm not talking about child-rearing. I'm talking about the pre/perinatal period when I am talking about a loss in productivity that women face by necessity due to biological reality.
I realise that you're now being deliberately obtuse but still; what is parental leave if not child-rearing?
The biological part is a couple of weeks, child-rearing that parental leave is a part of is for at least 12 months until daycare can take over. Fathers can and should do that as well. So in the end the amount of time away from work should be the roughly equal. So once again, if this sums up to equal portions away from work, which there is no reason not to, is there a biological argument for lower wage etc for women?
Do you also think that pregnant women get their salary deducted for their supposed loss in "productivity"?
Please let me know why this statement isn't true:
> To assume that men need not take part in child-rearing before the child is ready for daycare is a sexist assumption.
I am not being deliberately obtuse about anything, though I am starting to question your reading comprehension if I'm totally honest. Most of the questions in your comment can be answered if you'd care to actually read over my previous comments again. And then there is the last bit.
> Please let me know why this statement isn't true:
>> To assume that men need not take part in child-rearing before the child is ready for daycare is a sexist assumption.
This can be answered quite simply with: that statement is in fact true. Not sure why you feel like I should answer such a question, as I haven't implied anything like that.
> Any "disadvantage" occurs naturally as a result of loss in real usefulness (for a time) when it comes to employment. Now, you want to compensate for that natural loss in productivity by mandating that men artificially lose productivity in the form of paternity leave.
You call men caring for the child as artificial. But the fact is that beyond a couple of weeks the mother's "loss in productivity" is just as artificial as the father's, or do you actually think that women usually start to work again after just a couple of weeks on average?
I didn't think I would need more than 1 week off, but my wife needs a break from watching a newborn all day (and all night). I'm glad in a way that with COVID, I can stay home a day or two a week and it's not a big deal, and I'm also forced to take off 1 day per pay period.
>First, fathers' increasing involvement in childcare led to higher labor force attachment among mothers. This may have raised the opportunity cost of an additional child. We also find that men reported lower desired fertility after the reform, possibly due to their increased awareness of the costs of childrearing, or to a shift in preferences from child quantity to quality.
These honestly sound like good things to me. Fathers raising children increased the chance for women to participate in the labour force, men become more aware of what it takes to raise a child, and the quality of child rearing increases.
Don't think more children was necessarily the point of the policy.
Having children is more important to society than having workers. It is a grim fact that the calculus of life in almost any Western country is that you can have maybe one child, but better none, if you want to have a decent life.
We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
I think what's important to society is for individuals to have free and self-determined lives, we're not rabbits on a farm.
People in Western countries don't do any calculus because they can't afford children, they have fewer children because that's what people want if they're not under pressure. In fact economically speaking, the opposite is true, the birth rate is high precisely in places in which people are poor, because children are the social safety net as well as the work force for manual labour.
Also if we reproduce at say, a modest rate of 1.7 there will be still more people in 2200 than there were in the 1950s. How are we heading for extinction exactly?
That's a ridiculous overstatement. We live in Germany & have a lot of relatives in Austria. We have 2 kids & know lots of people in both countries with kids, it is very possible to have a decent life while having more than 1 child & earning median German/Austrian income (last I checked our household income is almost exactly at the 50th percentile for German households with 2 adults and 2 children).
I suspect the same is true to a lot of other western countries.
(this doesn't mean I'm otherwise of a different opinion than you regarding whose welfare to optimize - a state is for its people not its corporations)
> Spain found that parental leave resulted in fewer children.
That's long been known to be true of social support and safety nets generally, so it's not a surprise that it would be true of parental leave, which is a subset of that.
Paternity leave can be a great thing for father/child bonding, and for equalizing opportunity for women (who face greater social/practical pressure to take their leave), who can fall behind male colleagues by taking their leave. Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave, and in the US a lot of men don't because it is frowned upon socially in many companies.
One possible way to incentivize men to take paternity leave is to do so indirectly, by rewarding companies where a large percentage of eligible fathers take the full leave. This would reverse the current dynamic, which is: if you take the full leave, you're putting your family above the company, and not being a team player. Instead, taking the leave would make you a team player and help the company fulfill the goal.
It may not be politically correct. But the vast majority of women prefer prioritizing their children over their careers. The vast majority of men prefer being the provider for their families.
> Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave
if you're free to choose, you might be pressured to exercise the freedom not take the leave under threat of e.g. being made redundant. sometimes not being able to choose is all-in-all better for everyone, and that's disregarding the cost of making a decision.
That's all great in theory, but in practice you are always forced one way or another. If you are not forced to take paternal leave, then social pressure forces you to not take it.
It's possible women prefer that because society has systemically reinforced it by normalising that gender role as an ideal for girls to grow into, while boys are steered toward a different direction
I say this as a father who prioritised my kids over my career, with a wife who prioritised her career over our kids. I know quite a few stay-at-home-mums who would much rather the adult interaction you get from a day at the office. It's just my experience, but it leads me to think there's nothing "innate" about men or women wanting to rear children
"Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave"
There's no reason to force anyone to do this.
The statement is dystopian. If you offer it to people, and they legit don't want to take it, anything beyond that you're the problem, not the solution.
I have worked in law and tech. I have seen many men who took hardly any time off in law firms because it was heavily frowned upon. In tech, it is much less frowned upon, as evidenced by the fact that many big tech companies offer the same leave to fathers as mothers.
I believe the reason for the different behavior is not that lawyer dads don't care about their kids/wives as much as techie dads. Rather, I believe it is because in the cultural context, they feel pressure not to take much leave. So by putting pressure on companies to make the option a real one for fathers, I think we could make fathers happier (and kids/mothers also) by allowing them to choose the option that they would want if they could do so without repercussions.
Also, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field for mothers. So while I will agree that we don't want to force people to do anything (and my suggestion actually does not force anyone to do anything), there can still be valid reasons that a society would want to incentivize people in certain ways for the good of the society as a whole.
In The Netherlands a similar law was put in effect in July 2020. I'll reap the benefits of this very soon (my partner is due tomorrow). I don't believe its fully paid though (IIRC 70%). Before this it was two days. TWO days!
This is our second child, and from the first one I know I still had lack of sleep the first 48 hours. The first week is the roughest (especially for two autistic parents an absolute hell with lack of sleep plus all kind of new stimuli), with the following months almost as severe. I believe it is incredibly woman unfriendly (I'd even call it misogynist) to give men no time from work.
On the father and mother this leads to less fatigue, burn-out, and on long-term better output. For the child, I believe its difficult to see the effect on this on short-term. For example, the effect of father-child bonding might not be seen on the short-term, and its also no guarantee, so you'd end up with some kind of correlation in a study. Proving a causation on this is going to be difficult.
I think the issue isn't that someone may be forced to take the leave when they don't, rather there are hidden incentives for them to not do so when they do. There's a heck of a lot of room between the latter and the former.
On another note we are seeing fertility levels fall in many countries to the point where it's becoming an economic hazard. Parental leave thus becomes a social good. A smart market friendly solution, that would also be a win for families, would be to do more in terms of culture to encourage fathers to do this. In Japan, I've noticed high ranking male ministers almost uniformly taking parental leave to set an example to emulate. I'll add that such an initiative should still leave freedom for people to make their own choices for their own circumstances.
Nudging parental/father's leave in order to increase fertility levels seems like a drop in the bucket... Why not tackle the real issues? Pay people more, tax them less (lower income taxes, increase capital taxes), make property cheaper. Yeah that includes a good parental leave pay (possibly more than 100%, in order to specifically encourage fertility in highly educated women/couples). That will have 100x greater effect in terms of fertility, in addition to being a "social good" in other regards.
All those things you listed involve difficult trade-offs.
Increased capital taxes would on the margin decrease capital expenditures, and thereby hurt income growth in long-term due to lack of productivity gains. That's the last thing we'd want if our goal was to increase income. IMHO both income and capital gains taxes should be cut substantially.
Cheaper property necessitates more property, and at least here in US not building in the suburbs has become presidential campaign fodder. The most economically productive cities like SF have some of the most complex zoning and planning regulations that make boosting supply challenging.
If I had to guess what the right answer would be, it'd be higher minimum wages + stronger unemployment benefits that are designed to get folks back to work. Germany's post-Hartz system is an example of the latter. Higher minimum wages would force people out of work, but they would also motivate higher cap-ex in automation. Higher labor costs would make certain overly expensive automation projects more tractable to corporate management. The unemployed would get an opportunity to retrain for better, higher paying jobs and do so while having basic needs met.
You can probably see though how this solution is basically impossible in the current political climate.
I support long paid family leaves, but I find this framing odd:
> The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company. But the law leaves many parents at the mercy of the state in which they live (only three, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, grant paid leave) or their employers’ individual plans.
Why shouldn’t different states have different leave policies. It’s no weirder for different states to have different leave policies than for Germany to have a different leave policy than France.
For sure. In CA, for example, I think parental leave is (at least partly) categorized as "temporary disability". Employees pay are forced to pay into temporary disability insurance, so it makes sense that when they are then eligible, they get to draw from that fund. It does get weird when a company offers certain benefits to employees in one state versus another though. I'm sure many companies top-up the benefits available in low-benefit states in order to avoid bad feelings/confusion among employees.
Meanwhile the Swiss people voted to have two weeks of paternity leave instead of one day. The icing on the cake is that the actual initiative asked for four weeks but the parliament made a counter-proposal of two weeks after which the intiative committee withdrew their proposal of four. 60% of the voters were in favor.
Two weeks in one of the highest gdp per capita countries of the world. Two. Measly. Weeks. It was just one single day up until now. Let that sink in.
All employer-paid employee benefits ultimately come with a reduction in salary. The reason is simple - companies do not look at your salary when deciding if it is worth hiring you. They look at total compensation (salary + benefits). The larger the benefits, the lower the salary.
A bit less money but a healthier society is still an improvement in the way of life. If you only measure everything in money, you're going to miss out on a lot.
Chances are that if your employer isn't willing or able to pay for benefits they're also not willing or able to pay for a maximal salary though. You're probably just missing out on benefits rather than being paid the value of them. The companies shareholders and owners make more profit though, so if you're getting compensation in stock you are benefitting indirectly.
a. what is the total compensation paid to the employee?
b. how much value will the employee produce?
If `b` is less than (`a` + opportunity cost), then "no hire". What percentage of `a` is salary is simply irrelevant to the business decision.
Your supposition is only correct if the business manager is winging it and has little idea what is going on financially in the business. The field of "cost accounting" is devoted to figuring these things out. Getting a good handle on it is key to running the business efficiently.
To be fair, slow to decide[1], but then actually implemented once decided[2], is a common swiss political pattern. Consider how late universal female suffrage was, and how many female presidents, from how many different parties, we've had since them.
[1] Did Einstein really say "if the world were going to end at midnight, then I'd want to be in Bern, because they'd get around to it sometime around 1:30"?
[2] This is said to be a characteristic of Quakers as well. Maybe all consensus-prioritising systems?
As a Swede who just moved to Switzerland, who has a child coming up and will be affected by this, I find it pretty reasonable. Of course, I'd prefer to take more time off to be with my child, but I don't expect tax-payers to finance that — that's between me and my employer. The other side of the story is that in Switzerland you make so much that unpaid leave is usually quite feasible. If you're in tech the compensation is probably less than 50% anyway.
In Denmark we also only have two weeks paternity leave. But then between 7-12 months to split between mother and father. However, the most common (in my experience) is that the mother uses the full leave.
It's important to note here that paid means 67% of you net salary but only up to 1800€. While this is nice, this is not enough to just live off for most people (that don't have a lot of savings).
> this is not enough to just live off for most people
I don't think many people can pull the "the state doesn't provide enough to have kids" card in Germany to be honest. At some point people have to understand that yes, having a kid means you will have less money at the end of the month and will most likely result in personal sacrifices.
Before people think that this policy is all roses, a close friend of mine is the CEO of a multi billion dollar international business. They don’t hire anyone from France because the French government makes it so difficult to fire a bad hire. Maybe you could argue that the French are better off without them, but people love working for them and they have great pay and benefits. I’m sure there are a number of companies that France and Germany miss out on due to policies like these. Companies simply can’t always pay people to not work for 6 months to a year, so they’ll go somewhere where they don’t have to.
In exchange for fewer top paying jobs, France, Germany and most other European countries in fact, favor a more equally distributed income and opportunity. This is motivated by a few centuries of experience: in turns out a more equal distribution (I.e. fewer poor) means less poverty related costs (financial and mental).
Somehow companies are getting by just fine paying all of that leave in Europe (in fact, government pitches in too). It's just the kind of world you want: more disparity and lots of poverty in exchange for a lottery ticket to wealth or a solid baseline and fewer economic tophits.
It is wishful thinking that policy makers understood (or even understand today) the 'tradeoff' or have any real awareness of the systematic effects of said labour policies.
Many of the 'side effect' realities, for example as cited by the OP are very real, and go somewhat unmeasured or sidelined.
Europe is not doing very well, it's treading above water, fumbling from crisis to crisis without any obvious pathways out. After the US-driven 2008 crisis, there were years of serious problems with the Euro, to the point wherein Italian banks (and others) were teetering on failure, two national governments were overthrown by the EU (Greece, Italy) there was a major migration crisis ... and then COVID hit. All of this with very problematic demographics, a rising China and an antagonizing US - it does not bode well.
That France (and arguably Spain and Italy) did not undergo similar labour reforms similar to 'sick man of the 1990's Germany' has created ongoing damage.
It's not all a 'one sided story' but there need to be intelligent labour reforms.
The commenter echoes real sentiments across the business community with respect to hiring, even if it's not so perfectly accurate - 'firing' people in France is actually very difficult and a legit barrier to anyone wanting to expand there, among other things.
People don't need to take a year off when they have children. They can, at some reduce pay perhaps, that would be a nice option, but the community doesn't need to share most of that burden.
Those policies are discussed in the open, don't generalize your countries dysfunctional political culture to the rest of the world. Also, don't assume then that your legislators considered the externalities such as poverty and working poor of such a disparate society.
Europe is fine, don't confuse the absence of tophits for an absence of a strong middle class. I'm tempted to say Europe is in fact one of the most resilient economies at the moment for this reason, but that is not a very relevant debate here.
What people need should be for them to decide. Staying with your newborn until the age of 1 does not seem wildly out of the ordinary for us a species (we notably born prematurely anyway). And then requiring equality also does not seem unnecessary to me ( in order to give families the choice of whose career to sacrifice).
You couldnt demonstrate better why I will never leave Europe for work, I just don't share that Protestant work ethic to which so much seems to be sacrificed. There are other things in life. Perhaps not yours, but certainly in mine. I wish everybody to opportunity to have a life outside of work, even if they decline to make use of the right.
EU as an economic space has huge internal periphery with all the typical problems thereof (high unemployment, flight of young qualified workforce elsewhere). It is quite easy to visualize, actually.
My wife is a huge fan of Spanish culture. We travel there often (pre-Covid, but hopefully also post-Covid). Andalucía is by far the worst region in Western Europe I have seen, as far as hopelessness and lack of future prospects goes.
Who'd have thought that warm weather causes unemployment?
Or perhaps being a post-Roman nation causes unemployment?
Even though I'm partly kidding, I'm partly not.
Some of these things are so consistent, I wonder if we gloss over them and should contemplate they are underlying issues whereas 'employment policy' may be less relevant than we think. Maybe in some cultures people like to work more than others.
Obviously Europe is not perfect, and any huge area has different problems, some large. But the specific problem I was responding to isn't, and may very well be the opposite (in large parts of Europe at least, Andalucia is of course well known for its problems, even within Spain).
It's the opposite. French labour policy for example is a giant political boondoggle. It's one series of short-signed populist back-room deals after the next.
What 'serious reform' looks like is the 'Hartz concept' [1] - nothing like it exists really in the rest of the EU.
The results of French labour policy mean consistently almost 2x the unemployment rate of US/UK/Germany, for example. [2]
This is not an example of 'strong' it's an example of 'very weak' and it hurts quite a lot of people.
A perfect example of shortsighted, populist, untenable policy: Hollande's 'Supertax' on the rich [3]. This was an an act of self-destruction, not construction.
While Hartz is widely viewed as being a giant success, none of the French economic reforms made sense, and none of them have helped.
And FYI Europe doesn't have a middle class, and remember includes places like Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Greece, S. Italy which are actually quite poor.
European nations individually have 'decent' Gini coefficients, but if you do the 'EU-wide' coefficient it's quite bad. Average Slovak is nowhere near the average Swede.
CEO of a multi billion dollar international business
Companies simply can’t always pay people to not work for 6 months to a year, so they’ll go somewhere where they don’t have to.
Why ‘simply can’t’ a ‘multi billion dollar international business’ offer paid parental leave, if so required by law? This does not make any sense, large international corporations will do business wherever they can profitably.
I wasn't saying that this particular multi-billion dollar can't afford it. Just that there are many smaller companies that can't.
This particular multi-billion dollar company certainly doesn't want to pay it. And so they get their employees from other places. They still do business in France and have customers there. They are a SAAS company. They just don't hire from there.
Also, they do offer paid parental leave. Just not an entire year of it.
I don't know about French employment law but in Germany you can fire anyone for any reason. The only difference is that the contract doesn't expire on the day you fired that person. Instead it will expire in a few weeks (its a bit more complicated but not by much). If you fire the employee during probation (first 6 months) then the employment contract will expire immediately. If you can provide a good reason with proof you can also fire them immediately. Of course this gets abused by employers so you have heard stories where workers sue but only because the employer screwed up. If an employee were to force himself back into a job through a lawsuit then he could be fired but this time with the proper procedure and be forced to leave after a few weeks or months (depends on the contract). In other words, those who sue their employer because of a wrongful termination merely want the paychecks that they have been promised in their employment contract, they aren't doing so because they want to stay forever at such a company.
If you can't decide within 6 months whether a hire is bad or not then that's on you. If you fail to fire them the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th year and so on then that's on you. How do another 4 weeks make your company worse? Maybe the french have an obviously worse system but I see Americans complain about practically any employment law that isn't theirs. They don't complain because it's bad, simply because it's different.
> I don't know about French employment law but in Germany you can fire anyone for any reason.
You don't seem to know about German employment law either because that's simply wrong. Basically in every company with more than 10 employees you can't fire anyone who has been with the company for more than 6 months, except for very few specific reasons which are listed here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCndigung_(deutsches_Arbe...
Exactly. However, laying off people is possible. May cost you, is more complicated and takes more time than you might expect. But German HR departments are well capable of that.
In most jobs nowadays, you have probation time, then time-limited contracts (maximum 2 x 1y) and then an unlimited contract. As a result, you can end contracts within the first 6 months, after a year and after two years w/o discussions or problems. That gives everyone enough time to sort out "bad hires" w/o any risk. Afterwards, a certain degree of protection starts, but money and reasonable rationale can end any contract.
It is just very different than the US "hire and fire" thing. In Germany and other places it is expected that as an employee I have a certain degree of stability in my life.
> And hiring laws aren‘t determined by the employee‘s nationality.
Hiring laws aren't, but firing laws are. When I worked as a corporate lawyer, we had lawyers who specialized in knowing the employment laws in various countries and advising companies on the process for exiting, the cost for doing so, etc.
I'd also disagree that people aren't paid by companies during parental leave. They are often topped-up by companies. This was the case at the law firm where I worked, and at the R1 university my wife works for. I'm sure it is also the case at FAANG, which have generous corporate leave policies.
Firing laws are not dependent on nationality, but the location of the employer. If you are based in France, you have to adhere to French laws, simple as that. If you hire a French in the UK, the UK rules apply.
But I guess that's clear to everyone, I was just taking issue with GP's statement that his friend does not hire the French. He probably does not hire in France.
I'm not going to pretend that parental leave doesn't have its downsides. Of course it also results in companies hiring more people to account for the loss of productivity. It isn't cheap, even if the government is footing the bill.
You can staff your Paris office full of Californians, the labour laws that apply are still the French ones.
So I guess that you meant this generous multi billions $ company has no operations in France?
If so, then I don't understand why they wouldn't hire competent French staff if their operations are located in other countries where other local labour laws apply, regardless of your nationality.
In countries where the government pays the leave it’s not a big deal. In these countries we just planned for higher headcount. Usually not a problem for software dev because non-US salaries are so much lower in the first place.
In countries where employers are on the hook for some or all of the cost, we just factored it in to the employee costs. Again, because software engineers were paid so much less in those countries it wasn’t a dealbreaker.
At least in the software field, the US salaries are so much higher that the overhead is not a big deal in European countries.
We had a lot of young people who wanted to relocate to US offices when they discovered the salary differences, though.
No this the state will continue paying you. Companys just need to hold the place ready for return. But yeah jump to conclusion which suits your ideology.
For "cadres" ("executives" but really anyone with a job title requiring university degree like engineers) then the trial period can be extended to 8 months in France. By then you should know if you have made a bad hire.
If treating their workers with decency is such an insurmountable hurdle then yes I would argue that we are much better off without your friend's company.
Earlier this year we established 16 week parental leave (all types of parents). For a small company like ours, this is not an easy decision, but I believe it will eventually pay off in the long run.
I'm originally from Europe and moved to states as an adult. My home country Slovakia, has very generous parental leave (up to 3 years[0]). I always struggled with the "ruthlessness" of US policies around healthcare, parental leave, education, etc.
I was very happy that the company finally matured enough that we could offer a parental leave without suffering the loss of a productive employee for an extended period.
We also adopted other European practices, like guaranteed severance after 3 months of "test" period with guaranteed healthcare (COBRA) for 2 months.
I honestly wish that these were a standard in this country, that this wouldn't be a differentiating factor for us, but I think we have quite long way to go.
Good. I consider 14 days of paternity leave the absolute minimum; less than that is just irresponsible, because you really shouldn't leave the mother alone during that time. Official maternal care is rarely full-time. Also, those maternal care people can teach you a lot of useful things about how to take care of your baby that are also important to learn for a father.
More time is better because of extra bonding with the new family, and it can be stressful for the newborn to go to fulltime childcare before they're 6 months old (after that, I think at least some childcare is good for socialisation).
I love the generous paternal leave Scandinavians get. When I had my kids, Dutch paternity leave was only 2 days: one for the birth itself, and one for registering your baby's birth. Only in 2019 did they expand that to a whole whoppingly insufficient week.
For both kids, I took 3 months off. For the first, it initially was two weeks; not sure if I took it as days off or sick care or something; I hadn't planned to take time off originally, until I suddenly realised I simply couldn't go to work, so I called in and said I couldn't work. After those two weeks, I went back to work, and after my wife's maternity leave had ran out and she was eager to get back to work, I took 3 months parental leave (might have been unpaid; not sure). For the second it was unpaid, because I'm a freelancer, but I don't care. This stuff is more important.
> The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company.
Sure, you'll still have your job. And your employer might even have its own leave program to pay you for time off. But you could just never receive assignments again, so if you're working for a consulting company your billable rate will tank and then you'll get PIP'd for "lack of productivity" and then "laid off" because you can't do anything about your boss gatekeeping work away from you.
In Sweden each parent can get up to 240 days (8 months). It's still being debated if the duration is too long, causing more problems than the benefit it brings the child and the family.
Our former CTO was asked what paternity leave he thought tech employees should have (in a country with no legal requirement for it) and he said, "4 months", which then made it into everyone's contracts.
Only he thought he was being asked about Maternity leave and now the company is honouring that deal even a 18 months after his departure. It makes me want to have a child real soon before they rewrite that clause.
I think my brother who had his first child two months ago is going to be a little disappointed that it wasn't passed a few months ago. (though he used a bunch of PTO to stay with his wife and their child)
There seems to be some confusion between paternity leave and parental leave. Figure 1 (page 6) in document [1] gives a good comparison between among EU countries., where paternity leave is represented by a black bar.
I'm dumb and don't know anything about maternity/paternity leave. What prevents someone from being hired by a company, taking leave due to a child in X days, taking the salary the government forces the company to give you, and quitting Y days after you return? What if X and Y are a month or even one day? Could companies could be scammed for a year of salary while getting only a few days of value out of their employee?
Why not get into the topic of taxes in a discussion of social security? :) They're the two sides of the same coin. There seems to be little discussion in here on the tax cost of this paternity leave law.
In Denmark you are not entitled to a full salary during your leave. You are entitled to around 2k€ per month from the government (if you qualify).
However, it is a quite common employee benefit, that the employer pays full salary for part of or for the entire parental leave. The employer is then reimbursed from the government for the first 2k€ every month.
Nothing prevents you from quitting when you get back from parental leave. Except that you probably already have a lot on your mind with a little child - why add the extra pressure of switching jobs?
> Well, the scam doesn't scale well. You need to make a new child each time.
Indeed. I keep hearing that line of argument from Americans in particular: "But but but if healthcare is free, what will stop people from living an unhealthy life and having society pay the cost??" – eh, the fact that having cancer and heart problems in order to scam society is just a really really unattractive and unscaleable idea?
Of course not, but pets like dogs are (to some extent) a luxury that do have a footprint that is not to be ignored (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/08/02/whats-yo...). You are probably the only person who really benefits from your dog. So it's somewhat selfish to get one in this regard.
Human beings on the other hand will care for us when we are old and senile. They will contribute to society. They will build the future. And if we don't give them a good loving start, the future they build will probably more selfish. Reproduction happens anyway so paid parental leave just increases the well-being not only of the parents but also of their children.
Beside that without human beings the future is irrelevant, because there is no human being who cares for it. If we all stop having children at some point in the future, how many people will care about carbon footprints anymore? I mean the animal world will find its way anyway, regardless of what we leave behind.
I think you're missing the point of parental leave. Parent's raising a newborn often don't even have the time to take care of themselves because it's so much work to care for the baby.
> Studies have shown that paternity leave can set the tone for fathers’ long-term relationships with their children and families. Children whose fathers took at least two weeks of paternity leave reported feeling closer to their dads even nine years later, according to a joint study of sociology professors at Ball State University and Ohio State University, which also found that paternity leave is linked to lower divorce rates.
Causation/correlation.
Coming from a country where the father can take 30 days. Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers and two weeks is enough.
Of the fathers I know who took the full 30 days, they did so for home improvement projects not because they were actually needed that much.
> Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping.
I took 3 months off for my first and 4 months for the second. My wife was pretty miserable through the first month. Breastfeeding is exhausting, as well as being woke up at various time of the night. I'm glad I was home so I could take care of the rest.
I agree that afterwards things got easier, and we were able to enjoy some vacations.
But still there is a huge difference between spending a few hours at the beach with the baby and going back to work whole day.
This was our experience as well. There was no way I would have left my wife alone for the first 4-6 weeks. Even though we didn't have any complication and a relatively "easy" birth. First month was just survival mode. I took 5 weeks off (4 weeks paid paternity leave and another of annual leave) . I'm glad I was around. It increased my confidence as a father too.
Frankly that sounds like your partner had problems with depression. Not everyone's experience is the same but requiring 3 months full time care by two adults for a toddler is not the norm.
It’s a totally different story with 2 or more children.
Your toddler won’t be quite as accommodating to the schedule of a newborn. Having two parents at home makes it much easier to manage a newborn, erratic sleep schedules, and other children.
That kinda depends on your working hours, which pretty everyone who doesn't encounter the problem seems to forget.
Two or three days a week I'm alone with my daughter for most of the afternoon and evening. My wife works retail and isn't home until right around our daughters bedtime.
If I worked in retail, you could easily end in a situation where I'd be home during the first opening hours of the daycare, but not be home for 4 hours in the afternoon and evening where daycare isn't available.
You seem to have been down voted but I don't think you're totally off base.
I'm the father of 4 kids, currently aged 2 months - 5 years, and I took 1-2 weeks off for each one. I think that one week about what is really needed for fathers in baseline cases, although special cases (premature births, post-partum depression, health problems with the mother or child, etc) definitely need more.
The problem is that you can't really "bond" with a baby as a father (in a two-way sense). They don't realize you exist, and they don't really start to get to know you until some time later, maybe after 6 months.
I think longer leave probably makes sense for the first baby, because that is a big life adjustment and it's easier to handle when you don't have to worry about work. But for baby numbers 2+, I just don't see that longer leave is necessary in baseline cases. So I'm not sure it's right for the state to require that employers offer longer paid leave.
That said, generous parental leave policies are still a nice bonus for parents and can be a competitive edge for companies in hiring. My firm has offered 6 months' paid parental leave.
> Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers.
So are you saying the father doesn't need to be there for the child after two weeks? Or are you saying he only needs to be there to help the mother after two weeks?
I've heard of some maternity leave policies that differ based on type of birth (longer time off for caesarean), and it would actually make sense to give fathers the same so that they can help the mother. Of course, you are absolutely right that some fathers take leave but don't spend it caring for wife/child. I'm not sure how to get around this problem, but it seems that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, to use a terribl(y appropriate) turn of phrase. We just have to understand that some people will abuse the policy, but that overall there is a net benefit (to fathers, children, and mothers) to offering it.
That's great for you! Many babies cry a lot and make it difficult for one parent to care for them, shop for groceries, prepare food, etc. My friends and I have found that mothers who are nursing at all hours are generally too tired to do everything else around the house, especially if there are other kids.
Glad to hear there are some folks whose kids don't require as much care, but I'd say most moms would say that they are sleep-deprived and not fully functional for months after the baby is born. It might not take another full-time adult, as you say, but it sure is helpful to have the father around to take care of things and give the mother some respite.
This is hilariously out of touch. Shopping for groceries with an infant (or an infant + toddler) is a challenge for a single parent. It is absurd to say that you can shop for groceries at any time of day — you have to go when the kids are not napping (ever have two kids on different nap schedules?) or nursing, and then you have to manage getting them into and out of car seats, shopping carts, etc.
Your comments strike me as so out of touch that I wonder if you are simply trolling.
I think it depends on the kids. I have 4 kids under 6, and I've never had a problem shopping with any combination of them, especially as infants (although the most recent one, at 2 months old, has never been out due to COVID).
But I could definitely see it being a big problem if you happen to have kids who tend to cry in & around a shopping cart. I think it's just the luck of the draw.
I'm also not a single parent, although we always do the shopping trips solo.
Why would you need to shop for groceries any time?
If mother stays with a kid father can do all the shopping on the way home from the work. What's som complicated about that?
Also, in my country home delivery services are very popular with moms. You can indeed do grocery shopping any time. Now, during pandemic, those services are popular with everyone, of course.
Are you only reading the first few words of my sentences or something.
One parent is with the kids, the other goes shopping. Same for cooking. Both of these activities can be completed once the other parent comes back from work. Just because one person works does not mean they are completely unavailable to help in any way.
No, I've read your comments carefully. I even read them to my wife, who had a good laugh. This latest comment tries to reframe the grocery shopping bit to involve both parents, but this isn't what you originally said. You said a parent can go grocery shopping anytime, but now you're saying they can do it anytime after the other parent is home and watching the kids. That's a pretty big difference.
Also, after dad gets home, then it's time for dinner, bath, and bedtime. Mom could run off to the grocery at dinnertime, but most families try to have meals together so that's not a great option. And mom has to be home at bedtime, at least if she is nursing.
I think that depends entirely on you situation. I had two weeks leave, and three weeks of vacation right after, meaning I stayed home with my wife and daughter for the first five weeks.
For us that was barely enough, and based on our experience, fives weeks should be the absolute minimum period for the father to say home after birth.
So what if some father take the time to do projects around the house. At least they're still there to spend time with their child and the mother.
Not sure why you're mixing things up so much. In Sweden both parents get two weeks leave from the birth of the child which is separate from the parental leave. Then usually the father go backs to work and let the mother take the first few months of parental leave, and then the father takes a few months after that.
Don’t have kids myself but I’ll point out that due to the natural social filtering of those around us whom we spend time with being more similar to ourselves than not, your perspective may be more valuable as a data-point .... though I suppose to settle this we’d need to look at how rigorous the study was, etc.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my question :).
All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)