I did spend a lot of time with my children in their earliest days because it was the right thing to do, but I don't feel either they or I particularly gained from it (than if I'd spent a bit less, say). Do I feel the time I spend with them now they're older pays serious dividend for their futures? Absolutely.
I own a company and can spend an above average amount of time with my children.. but are companies or the government going to support the majority of parents spending prolonged periods of times with older children? Sadly I can't see it happening, but I think that's a more important task than having two parents on tap for a newborn. All purely IMHO, of course.
I took 3 months leave (wish it was more) when my daughter was born, spread out through the year a month at a time. I loved each month for different reasons and I know each month helped me understand what my wife was dealing with better and the slog of looking after a baby as well as the fun bits, and it helped her understand me better too - she really missed our daughter when she did a month's work and saw how going to work every day wasn't such great a holiday from childcare as she thought!
It's no longer a bigger risk for companies to hire late 20-s women compared to late 20-s men - both will go on leave if they get kids.
At my job, I also see way more dads staying home with sick kids or going to "planning day" or similar, compared to when I was growing up.
Likewise, trying to measure how beneficial it is for the kids sort of misses the point. I'm sure it can be beneficial, but whether they draw lasting benefits from it or not, they value it there and then.
You do get deeply attuned to your babies as a parent - at least, we did. You got uncannily good at guessing what they want, what they feel, from practice and from the biological connection that they are like you in so many subtle ways most people aren't. And of course, two parents will understand their babies in slightly different ways. They're very capable of appreciating this.
Now if it say "mom has X leave after birth and dad Y", this is discrimination in the law.
Please note im not saying this is bad, im just saying it is NOT equality.
But the biggest benefit of all was in the lives of my older children. When a new baby comes along, their mother is almost entirely occupied caring for the newborn (my wife wanted to exclusively breastfeed our children, so that is a lot of why it played out this way), so having me there to spend time with them each day during those first few months and take them places and reinforce the fact that they are loved just as much as ever was immensely important. I've seen so many older siblings change, develop resentment, begin misbehaving during that transition period. My kids all handled it extremely well and I think I played a role in that.
I sincerely believe every father should have paid time off when a child is born. It's not about one person in the family, it's about how the entire process of bringing a new person into the home affects everyone.
It's amazing and really really hard.
That's how it seemed to me, too. When my second child was born, I was working for Facebook so I got a nice chunk of paternity leave. My wife was breastfeeding, so she was basically with the baby all the time. The most helpful use of my time often wasn't to be the second parent in the same room as the baby, it was to go do something else with our 2-year-old so that he could still do fun stuff that the baby wasn't ready for, and so that at least my wife only had to deal with one kid at a time.
Also, women will still leave the workplace in droves to care for newborns and the young. That's just what a lot of them prefer to do, and I think it's the right ordering of priorities, for both parents. There's really no way to properly rear young children if both parents have full-time jobs and actually try to advance their careers at the same time.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FM.NE.ZS?en...
That having been said, I'm glad this is being introduced. In difficult cases like ours, for instance, this would have been huge help, for reasons not entirely related to work.
A man and a woman can decide that whats best for them is that he not take leave, but for the benefit other people he should take parental leave.
Even if he enjoys working, even if the mother has decided she wants to stay home, even if they need opportunity that work brings (such as the opportunity to get promotions). Even if there are a hundred reasons for a man to not want to take leave, even if taking leave is worse for him, his partner and child, he must take leave so that other people who he may never meet have an advantage.
Yes, encouraging a few weeks off work is good for the family, but forcing someone to take 7 months off of work is massively disruptive. Not even to speak of the disruption on small businesses, that may not be able to accommodate a person leaving for that period of time. If you run a business of 10 people, a single person is 10% of your workforce, and just due to the size you may not have staff to cover the missing expertise.
Forced long-term paternity leave is a system, that explicitly harms the outcomes of one group (working fathers) to provide benefits to others (working mothers, and non-working people in general).
My understanding of the research around personality development is that something like 80% (BS statistic I know) of the personality is formed in the first 5 years of development. The early few years are when we get conditioned with the core emotional programming: "I am safe" vs. "I am at risk" - "I am lovable" vs. "I am unlovable." etc. which plays a huge role down the line in lifestyle, relationships, and life in general.
Probably not a big deal whether it's the father or mother at the young age, but having adults around to be available to the emotional needs of the young child seems to be extremely important. Maybe easier to split the "full time job" of parenting in this critical period?
If you want to nerd out, check out "Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self - The Neurobiology of Emotional Development" by Allan Schore
There's just a huge difference between a 3-month-old baby, who can't recognize faces yet and spends most of the day sleeping and eating, and a 3-year-old child who is running, jumping, telling stories, making friends, and learning to read. For a 3-month-old baby, I doubt that parents do much more than a random babysitter. For a 3-year-old child, there is a clear difference.
And how much in the first five months?
I honestly don't know how parents who have to go back to work do it (especially in a family where one parent goes back to work very soon). There's so much work for the mother that without the father also being there, it seems to me it would create a major rift in the relationship when it comes to understanding what the other person is going through. I theorize that the father not being there (and being at work) during those early months is a foundation of the collapse of a spousal relationship years down the road, for many couples.
Of course there are people who don't have that but that is a sad state whether you have children or not.
While I agree that the benefits of involved parents are most notable for kids at an older age, I think that the effect on the parent is largest at the beginning. Humans don't demonstrate their love by providing care, they provide care that turns into love. It is in the unrequited acts of service like changing diapers, feeding (bottle or breast), and rocking to sleep that build the parents feelings for the kid.
I have a kid about every 600 days. (have 12 so far) Out of that 600 days, it looks like I'd work just 164 days. It would be 2-day weeks for decades.
That is quite a way to run a country. I think it only works because there are very few births in Sweden.
I mean, I also think it's significant for the baby & dad. But even ignoring that.. holy shit does the mother need support.
Maybe some moms don't, maybe they happen to have an easy baby.. have parents closeby to easily help.
But other mothers have a terribly difficult time, post-natal depression.. you name it. Having the dad around for support means everything during that time- I can speak from experience.
As someone that thought I spent a lot of time with my baby before starting pappperm it was an awakening - but also a wonderful bonding experience.
Yes time as a baby is important. Dad's shouldn't have to wait until their kids grow up before they get to know them.
In a dark humoured way, and beyond the essential need to create an unbreakable bond beyond infant & parent, you can be replaced and better optimised by an iterated Roomba. :)
But with each passing day/year the desire/need to spend time with your kids should grow.
Our kids are teenagers now>
And I agree that it feels like an hour spent with them today provide all of us more value than an hour spent with them as infants/toddlers.
Both are important, but I think I’m less replaceable today than yesterday.
We are now having our second child (now in Norway), and while the father quota is great, they now require the mother to be "in activity" (i.e. working) if the father is to have anything more than his quota. This feels like an unnecessary restriction, which we didn't have in Sweden.
Firstly, we're trying hard to close the gender pay gap. Giving fathers the same amount of free time as the mothers goes a long way here.
Secondly, it's fantastic for the father-baby bond and it makes both life and work as a young parent so much easier.
Thirdly, the cost is not large. Businesses are already absorbing the lost productivity caused by the fathers being exhausted. This formalizes it.
In our project management course we learned a rule of thumb that for new parents you have ~25-30% less FTE available during the first year of the child's life (due to care for sick children, getting sick themselves, being exhausted from lack of sleep etc.)
Exactly! And in both Norway and Sweden you can be part time on leave. For some time I had 25% leave, which meant that I was working, but could go early when tired from a long night of baby cries or stay at home one day when my wife needed to get something else done. And this time I will be on 80–90% leave, which means I am at home, but can pass by the office once a week to catch up with my students.
My wife has roughly 4.5 months between banked PTO and FMLA/disability leave.
I'm sitting at home right now watching/changing/feeding our baby while my wife is out at doctor's appointments taking care of her health. Having the flexibility to practice a modicum of self-care without neglecting the health and happiness of our child has been such a huge boon to our family.
If anyone has any questions about the experience, feel free to ask.
I occasionally log in to read my email to keep up-to-date with happenings among the team, but I haven't needed to respond to anything since I went out.
Our team made an effort in the last year to reduce some of the silo-ization of knowledge and increase our 'lottery factor', and I think those efforts have helped make sure that the team was prepared for one of us going out on leave. At the very least, nobody has called me up saying "hey, your systems are on fire!", so that's been nice.
What we likely would have done instead is staggered my wife's medical leave with a shorter chunk of my own PTO rather than both of us being home at the same time, and put the baby into childcare earlier than we're currently planning on doing.
There are many reasons, it seems to me that external circumstances are shaping a lot of them.
I think that this is much better to left it to parents to decide how to split that based on their personal preferences, than to force equal split in all cases.
As parental leave is a legal right (not given by the employers), employers simply have to comply with the parents' wishes. In the past employers often frowned upon men taking parental leave, but the younger generation has absolutely normalized this behavior.
It should also be noted that during leave, the government picks up (part of) your regular paycheck - so you don't cost your employer anything while you're not there. (except administration overhead etc)
The parental leave doesn't have to be taken in one block and you can also convert it into 'parental part-time'. A somewhat common pattern that double-earning professional parents choose nowadays that I've seen with some of my team members is something like: 1. simultaneous leave for both partners in the 1-2 months after birth 2. leave of one partner for a few months after that while the other partner works full-time 3. a few months of simultaneous part-time (e.g. 3/days week) where on any given day, one partner is at home 4. full-time work of both partners for a while once the kid is old enough for day-care 5. another month or so of simultaneous parental leave after 1-1.5 years that's used for a vacation.
This is broken.
If you've been with your company for less than a year, you are legally entitled to zero days of paternity leave and if you take unpaid time off, your job is not protected.
Now, this is talking in general and not about tech per se, so if someone is really lucky they work at somewhere that doesn't expect them to do work every week to keep their job.
exactly! Single payer universal health insurance will also take care of the numerous doctor's visits that follow. Oh wait...
The main reason is fight against the discrimination from employers who think hiring women is inconvenient because they can go on parental leave for very long.
I noticed for my two sons how much of a difference it makes being around your kids when they are young. You cannot cannot substitute short time with "quality time." The amount of time you are there matters a lot to small kids.
I think it is healthy for children to have both a mother and father who is actively present in their lives. You need a gender equality oriented society for that. If women are offered poor pay and opportunities it encourages women to stay home the whole time while men do all the work. That is bad for both parties. Men see little of their kids and kids don't get the experience with dad that they benefit from.
Meanwhile the mother may get a lot more time with the kids but she also suffers from having no career or independence. The relationship also suffers as one does not have a work life experience and child caring experience to share and talk about.
"Globally, paternity leave can increase fathers’ involvement within families and this has benefits for the children, the co-parent, the father himself, the economy and society."
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/06/16/involved-d...
There was so many dads just walking around the city/parks in the middle of the day pushing prams. It was so nice to see.
I suppose none of them have to deal with people dismissively describing spending time with their families as "babysitting", either.
Not sure how literally this was meant (and a lot of the rest of the thread assuming a mother/father) but studies show kids do just as well with two parents of any gender.
We shouldn't exclude them either.
Every mention needs to include a long list of every possible combination, no matter how rare and edge case. /s
I agree as well, but not so much in the ages of 0-6 months. The biggest bonding for me when I was on parental leave was definitely with my older children, who I was now the primary caregiver. That time was really special and meaningful to all of us.
Don’t get me wrong. I love holding my new born, but (for me) it wasn’t the same type of bonding experience.
If the parental leave policy were taken away, would parents take more or less time to spend with their kids than before the policy took place?
The paid parental leave is up to the parents to decide the split between them.
I think it is a great idea for fathers to be encouraged more to take a share of the paid parental leave.
This could go some small way in helping remedy income disparity between genders.
I was deployed and/or travelling a lot when our boys were young.
Another poster questioned the value of time with infants as opposed to when they are older.
I do think bonding with infants and toddlers is super important for both parent and child.
But it can also feel like a robotic and laborious grind.
As my boys enter high school, I most enjoy our ritualised time together during daily school drop offs and pick ups.
Engaging with them, guiding them on their own journey, and observing how far they have come.
I have few regrets, but one of them is not spending more time wth my kids when they were younger, which probably feeds the extra effort in recent years to spend more time with them as they grow into young men.
You can’t get time back. Make the most of every minute.
(It's crap, but it's the same crap.)
No, I mean most workers, under FMLA.
> How long is the leave?
12 weeks.
> Is it paid?
No.
Congrats Finland.
That's working days or what? In Latvia (Estonia neighbour) you may get 12 months (60% of money calculated from amount BEFORE taxes) or 18 months (43,75%). And dad can leave, too.
https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/38051-on-maternity-and-sicknes... Section 10.6. Amount of Parental Benefit
With the current direction of US politics, as a US citizen, I find myself increasingly entertaining the thought of becoming an ex-pat.
Top countries I've thought about have been the Nordic countries - Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, Iceland and have considered the Netherlands as well.
They seem to have reasonable blended economies with social policies that make (more) sense.
No country/systems is perfect and I'm always willing to try something new for a time.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hav...
Dads get 6 month non-trasferable paid leave.
They were not going to be able to fire him without repercussions. He was not required to let them know during the interview.
The mother gets 14 weeks (6 weeks before due date, 8 after) that is the "proper" leave and is mandatory for the mother.
After that, one or both parents can choose to take a leave where the government pays you 2/3 of your net salary, capped at 2000 EUR. If only one parent takes then it is limited to 12 month and it is extend to 14 months in case both parents decided to take it.
>14 months paid leave
Certainly you meant weeks... FMLA only covers 12 weeks of unpaid leave here in the United States.
At a gut I feel like I’d be less likely to have kids, not more, if I felt like I was burdening other people by accepting benefits like this. I have no worries as an American having as many kids as I want because I make a good salary, can afford them, and won’t take more than a weeks, maybe two weeks time off, as my wife, despite being just as qualified for software engineering as me, wants to stay at home and raise children. Heck, I won’t even be “overburdening” the school system as my wife is home schooling them, despite living in a “good” school district.
Being charitable I’d hazard the point of this is to encourage population growth, but I suspect it’s playing out more like “have two kids and that’s as many as you should have”, and any more would introduce strong social pressure to stop.
Maybe it’ll work out that lots more Finns will be born, I’m curious to see how it goes in twenty years.
Don't take this the wrong way, but that is such an American way of thinking. You guys are so preoccupied with thinking about somebody getting something they don't deserve that you forget about thinking about what is good for everybody else.
Consider this, Nordic countries have generous public services in all walks of life. If we applied American logic to Nordic countries we should expect the following outcomes:
1. Nobody works, because unemployment benefits are so generous. 2. Everybody is on never ending education, because education is next to free. 3. Everybody has 10 kids because of long parental leaves. 4. Everybody is sick and unhealthy because nobody cares about their health because hey health care is free.
Of course no Nordic countries is anything like this. We have the highest work participation rate in the world (more than supposedly hard working Japanese). Nordic people are quite healthy and live long. Most people just have 2 kids. The average birth rate is something like 1.7 to 1.8 in Nordics. In other words we are under replacement.
So our system definitely helps getting more kids as countries with less generous services have much lower birth rates. Look e.g. at developed asian countries how terrible their birth rates are. Yet the generous system does not lead to some abundance of kids.
Let us get real. Having kids is a lot of work. I love my kids to bits but I don't want more than two. I also enjoy my work and other things. So does my wife. Why would we want tons of kids? Some weirdos probably do, but so what? Why should not I and other Norwegian benefit from a great system because a couple of oddballs exist than abuse the system?
Put some trust in your fellow man. People are not all selfish and self centered assholes ready to take, take and take whatever they can get their hands on.
As to your gut feel: once you get used to the idea that the Welfare State is something that you can not opt out of and how strong it is at leveling out society, I am sure you wont feel like you are "burdening other people". After I moved here and started leaving 43% of my paycheck to the government, 14% to income-based (not actuarial risk based) health insurance and paying 19% for VAT and seeing how little I was keeping of that "good software engineer income", I started worrying less about my burden and more about how I could get some of my fair share back.
I live in Denmark (but I suppose it's somewhat similar in Finland), there is very little social stigma to recieving support from the state.
Because such support is everywhere: child care is supported, parents are given money for each child under 18, when you turn 18 you get educational support, university is free (in fact you get educational support), when graduating you get unemployment support the next month while looking for a job.
I don't think we think of receiving benefits as burdening others, it's more a matter of solidarity. Most people more or less pay off the cost they incur to the state through taxes. So accepting benefits isn't shameful.
Note. it is possible to not get benefits, my little brother said no to educational support during highschool (while he was living at home). It was ~200 USD/month -- but he is a special case, most 18 yearolds do not say no to free money :)
(My little brother later did accept educational support during university ~1k USD / month).
The thing is, kids are damned expensive today. When you are not working, you are forgoing "normal" salary. The mother will get ~80% of the pre-pregnancy salary, up to a limit which is not very high. There are afaik no "virtual salary increases" here, at all. We even have "barnbidrag" and "flerbarnstillägg" meaning you get a small amount of money per month per child, and that amount goes UP with more kids. So if you have 7 kids you get even more money per child than if you would have 2 kids. Still nobody has 7 kids to "make money", because its still a loosing proposition. There is a template about how much a kid costs here until theyre 18, and its about $104,000.
Sure, you could stay at home and being poor for 10 years or so but how much fun is that really? =)
I mean, really, how do people think like this?
When I was in the EU, I knew a woman who had 4 kids, each ~1/1.5 year appart. So she would have a kid, be out 6 month, go back to work for 6 month, have another kid, rinse and repeat 4 times :) .
It was a total nightmare for her employer because they couldn't let her go, and they couldn't hire anyone permanently to do her job. They could only use short term contractors who would stay 6 months (barely enough time to get up to speed) and then leave. I don't know if she was "abusing" the system, I mean, it was her right by law to do that, but after popping the 4th one she left work to be a stay at home mom. I don't know how well her employer took it :)
Every child has the right to spend time with their parents. Every child has the right to an education. And so on. You should not be given less parental time just because you were born with nine siblings. It's not your choice.
I believe the "unwashed masses having lots of children and draining the wellfare systems" is a quite popular far right anti-immigration trope. And while that may even be true somewhere, as long as it remains individual cases, the economic impact on society is still net positive as long as those kids get an education and a job.
So it's all connected, free school and good social support.
As a parent you can never make a profit from it anyhow. There are of course people who don't know how to work and actually don't want to contribute. But they are far apart.
The easy solution would be to have this set up for the desired number of children. 1-3 children: 100% of the benefits, >3: 20% or something similar.
I was home with my kid when he turned 1 until he was 1.5 using this system in Sweden. Being a guy, I didn't breastfeed him. Kid still appear functional.
Mother's can and do express milk to be fed to babies in bottles; the fact that a baby is on breastmilk doesn't require the mother to be with them 24/7, and formula is a thing that exists.
What other things are there?
For many reasons, a mother might not be willing or able to breastfeed her child or to do so exclusively, so you'd need additional feeding arrangements in those situations.
Even if the mother is breastfeeding, in practice she might appreciate being able to express some of her milk and have the father feed the baby sometimes.
Things could be much more even with early years childcare than they are in many places at the moment, and in my experience there are a lot of mothers and a lot of fathers who wish it were so.
What other things are mother-only things in your opinion?
And in those cases the mother needs extreme support. Like a father around to help her out with all the little things constantly and to give her a break.
It seems fairly bizarre that you think caring for a newborn is a 1 person job no problem!
I noticed when visiting the US that breastfeeding was not very normal. Like they don't even teach it in a standard hospital.
Finnish moms are getting longer maternity leave than most countries in the world with this system. If other countries can manage with their short maternity leaves, I am sure Finnish mothers can manage too.
I mean I agree with you in principle that moms are needed for longer time than dads, but too often such questions are raised in an a disingenuous fashion to push back against gender equality.
What we do in Norway is that moms get some extra time at work for things like pumping. I believe the first year you get something like 1-2 hours at work for breast feeding.
As a dad I was feeding my child milk which had been pumped earlier.
Not sure how you would notice that when visiting, but, yes, they do.
On the contrary, that was one of the first things they teach after giving birth (apart from diaper changing). They also stressed heavily on the importance of nursing and set us up with a lactation consultant if we needed help in the future.
Those months can be taken at any time in the first year and normally overlap the mother's parental leave, so the husband can help her and spend time with his baby.
I ended up just taking four weeks vacation for my first kid and it made all the difference. I strongly believe that giving flexible and generous vacation time to all parents/guardians will have a positive impact on society. The challenge is that these impacts are hard to measure with a spreadsheet.
We also have $8.25/child/day government-subsidized daycare.
They announced their paid parental leave policy one year to much fanfare.
That was handy as we were having my second child.
I filled out the paperwork for the parental leave and .... they told me I didn't qualify because I didn't live in California... so unpaid leave for me it was.
Government policy is the only way to go with this stuff. Otherwise it will be a benefit only available to a few.
That being said, I'm inclined to proposals here which fund it through Social Security or a Social Security like system, which would level the playing field between small and large businesses.
If all it’s competitors have to, what’s the difference?
If you’re really concerned make an exemption for small businesses that allows them to claim the costs back from the government.
Edge cases like this are irrelevant, most Americans are employed by enormous companies that can most definitely afford it.
Because it tips the scale in favor of large companies vs. small. Small firm cashflow is lumpy, large firm cashflow is smooth, and payrolls need to be met.
> Edge cases like this are irrelevant,
17% percent of the work force is employed by firms with fewer than 20 employees, 27% by firms with 50 or fewer.
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/fin/
https://tradingeconomics.com/finland/personal-income-tax-rat...
The US has a lower top income tax rate of 37%:
https://www.debt.org/tax/brackets/
Other more democratic socialism leaning countries redistribute income tax from the wealthy to fund the needs of the general population, but the US just gives that money to people who are already rich. Supposedly this raises all incomes, but incomes have not risen appreciably since the mid 1970s:
https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/15558/producti...
You're confusing Finland with Norway and their national fund.
Huh? We don't have any sources of oil. We do have oil refineries but not any wells or drilling. You may be thinking of Norway.
And to answer the question that is going to be asked: "But then you don't get paid?". Correct, but when I do work my pay is around double to triple, so I can take a whole lot of parental leave before it becomes financially irresponsible.
As a dad, if I were to choose, I'd rather spend a larger chunk of time with my kid from 2 and up. That is a very good period of time when the kid forms important habits and through games lots of things can be taught. This is actually a goal of mine, I want to save enough and take a few years off from work (or maybe find a part-time gig) and spend some good quality time with my kid.
I’m incredibly grateful for the combined 4 months I got to spend full time with my two children and can only recommend taking the time if you can.
Men who don't have the experience of caring for a child even for a short while cannot make good decisions about what's normative of a civilization. Good policies will not be enacted if men do not "see" children.
But hey, fellow men, guess how we break down that stigma? It's by having a lot of normal, everyday guys acknowledge children's existence in friendly, wholesome ways -- even if it's just a wave or a quick greeting.
If a greater percentage of men would do this, then there would be far less nervousness about undeserved, incorrect assumptions.
Hardly think that has anything to do with making good decisions about civilization
Just saying, don't take other adults not interacting with your child as some overarching statement about gender in society.
When I’ll have a baby I‘ll have to breastfeed, after having carried him for nine months, and having him exit through my private parts.
Give me my extended, non trasferrable maternal leave!
Edit: since some people are misunderstanding my point: extending the paternal leave costs money. I would rather prefer those money being spent on more maternal leave.
Some money is spent into this, I would rather see the money being spent to increase mother’s leave.
I've never understood parental leave. If I want to go on a vacation, I have to plan for that and save time to use for it. If you want to have a child, you should have to plan to save your time to take and spend with the child or be in a financial place where one parent can quit their job to stay with the child. It's not like you go to sleep one night and wake up to find a baby next to you that was delivered by a stork. My fiance and I plan to try to have a child once we're married in May but it's something we will save our time off for during the early days of its life because we are choosing to try and have a child.
If a company wants to offer this as a benefit, that's awesome, but I don't understand why governments need to create law to make it a mandatory thing. Having a child is a choice.
And I'm saying this as someone with no kids, but I did have the displeasure of growing up with my family overseas at various wars throughout my childhood.
It's still less costly than immigration.
Can you explain this? Its hard for me to imagine how letting someone through a border could cost more than providing healthcare and education to an individual for 18+ years.
If a government really wants the increase the tax base, how could you possibly find a better ROI than letting skilled working age people immigrate?
Pretty much all of my friends with kids the women went back to work within a few weeks and the men didn't take time off.
I can't see how sitting at home with a child that will have no memories of you sitting at home with them, that will sleep half the day and cry the other half, for 12 weeks (U.S. FMLA) or 14 months (apparently Germany) will make any significant difference in the child's adult life.
I personally want some paternal leave even with its costs, but I'd prefer that negotiation to stay between me and my employer. I don't want some bottom threshold set by a third party.
But for society as a whole this makes financial sense. In Nordic countries we have the worlds highest female labour participation rate. That is a lot of extra tax dollars.
It also means higher birth rate which benefits the economy. Look at asian countries with birth rates around 1.2 which where slow at adopting these kinds of systems. Nordic countries are more like 1.8.
Over time such a low birth rate will be a huge financial burden for a country. Any taxes you saved from not having paternal leave will be lost in taxes to pay for caring for a huge elderly population.
So does every other aspect of caring for people (police, fire, education).
>but I'd prefer that negotiation to stay between me and my employer
Hey that works great if you are one of those people that is invaluable to your company, or can easily negotiate and move into a better job. Do you know how that would go for 99.9% of people?
"Hey boss, I'm pregnant, isn't that great! Can I have 12 months paid off so I can take care of my family?"
"Erm, how about 3 days?"
"Ok I see how this goes, fine how about 2 weeks?"
"No forget it, you're fired. I'll just hire someone who isn't having a baby to replace you. Good luck!"
The government mandated exempt employees? Just curious.
Why should it come out of you salary? Why can't it be fully paid?
Finally, a country that understands that one of the driving forces of gender inequality is the asymmetry of experience caused by maternal leave.
The asymmetry of experience is actually caused by child bearing, which can only be done by women. Maternal leave is downstream from that.
Childless women earn just as much as men. Forcing fathers to take family leave does fix the asymmetry between parents (mothers vs fathers), but will exacerbate the difference between parents and non-parents by penalizing not just mothers, but also fathers for having children, vs. non-parents who don't (need to) have a career break.
I think that no discussion/policy about parental leave is complete without some kind of incentive for people to have kids (or a discussion about whether we should encourage that at all or not - looks like it might be sensible in Western countries).
People who do not conform to gender expected behavior usually get punished by society, even if politically the same society want the opposite to happen. Giving people the choice to break conformity is still a positive move, and in the long term culture might change enough that taking parental leave (and sick days) won't have a negative effect on both career and wages.
compare this with the former communist country of Romania, today an EU country: 126 days for women, 5 days for men. income during those times is payed for by the state (80%).
societal discrimination against women is deep, and the law can certainly help, but it's only part of the problem. in some places a huge overhaul of society needs to happen. my fear is that the forces that want to keep society as-is are usually much stronger than the ones that want change.
Not true
At a different company (much much larger) I was able to take 2 weeks (out of 3 the company provides) of vacation when my son was born and I am two months away from my third and final child where I expect to do the same. I wish I was able to spend more time with them (and my recovering Wife from the caesarean) but as the primary income for our household we wouldn't be able to survive on things like FMLA. It is very disappointing seeing how modern the rest of the world is in terms of healthcare, maternity/paternity leave, education, etc...
Edit: changed parental leave to paid parental leave
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247563.
If someone isn't planning on having kids, they might not think it affects them, so be prepared to convince them otherwise, too.
> The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires large organizations to offer employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child, sick relative or their own illness. Although a growing number of states have passed or are considering paid family leave laws, there is no nationwide equivalent.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...
I'm all for fathers spending time with their children, but this kind of framing annoys me.
The feminist narrative, which governments seem to swallow, is that fathers don't want to spend time with their children, and force mothers out of their careers.
The reality is probably that it is primarily a financial issue. Fathers spending more time with their children means less money for the family, in most cases. Not only is the compensation usually lower than the salary, many dads also fear disadvantages in the job when they stay away for too long, which would also result in less money for the family.
And yes, there are also reasons why it is expected primarily of fathers to provide for the family. It is not just an arbitrary social construct.
I think that is all in your head because you are so anti feminism.
Look we have been through this in Norway for years now. Reality is that many men felt uncomfortable making that choice because there was an expectation in society that staying home with your child was a mothers job and a silly indulgence for men.
Once we made part of the leave reserved for men, they suddenly had a simply argument for the boss "sorry man, we got to take it or we loose it."
It reduced the stigma for men to stay home with the child. It also changed how bosses viewed it. You could say it was a bit of clever social engineering.
> The reality is probably that it is primarily a financial issue. Fathers spending more time with their children means less money for the family, in most cases.
When you get full pay during leave as in most Nordic countries, that is not the issue. The issue was the stigma attached to men being home.
A lot can be achieved when your country floats on oil. The Government Pension Fund Global, aka the Oil Fund, was worth about $195,000 per Norwegian citizen in 2018.
If others had this kind of safety net they might behave in a similar manner.
Petrostates can afford a lot of leisure time for their citizens.
So what's the United State's excuse?
(A lot of US citizens are somehow unaware of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...)
And Norway had this BEFORE we had any oil.
Never mind the whole inconsistency in your rant. Why do you think the oil fund is so F...ing huge? Because we DON'T spend a lot of oil money. We save it.
EDIT: Not a freak, don't care for the infant stage. Happy to dote when they start to turn into people.
> Not a freak, don't care for the infant stage. Happy to dote when they start to turn into people.
That is kind of a selfish attitude. The early stage is a lot of work, but why should you skip the work while your wife has to do it all?
I remember back in that time. I was quite happy to go back to work the first weeks, because I found it quite exhausting with the first child. Work was super relaxing in comparison.
I think it is only fair and square that one shares the load. I had my parental leave when my kids were 8 months or so. I actually forget exactly the time. But it was quit manageable by then and while a fair amount of work it was also a rewarding experience.
> Would someone like me be held back artificially to promote equality?
What about your wife's career. Isn't she held back if she had to spend all the time taking care of the kids? Why should she not be given similar opportunities as you?
Nobody forces the moms either (though I do understand that dads don't breast-feed every 3 hours without sleep).
The point is that this means the "she will be off for X months" becomes less of a biological parts thing against women and more of a life-stage thing. Though the ageism might still strike here, as people plan to have kids later in their lives.
> Happy to dote when they start to turn into people.
Also specifically for the leave itself, a significant part of my paternity leave was just partner support by picking up everything else that was previously shared including shopping, cooking, laundry. Otherwise, it was just about generally being awake without worrying about the clock.
This all came to highlight when I went back to work after 3 months away, the transition to a 9-5 schedule was bad for everyone involved.
said with love
It seems like you may not care, but that infant stage is the most critical for bonding and attachment. You're potentially sacrificing your ability to have a strong or deep relationship with your children in the long-term, regardless of how present you are later on. But as I said, perhaps you're making that tradeoff knowingly.
It's up to you of course, I'm just curious.
But to answer the question more literally I suspect there would be no penalty.
> they're not at an age yet where I can fully appreciate time with them.
Now that sounds closer to the truth. It's not about what's best for "them", it's about how you can _enjoy yourself_ more.
Why shouldn't their husbands stay at home?
Let's put this in perspective: Finland's population is around 5.5 million people. That's somewhere between the populations of South Carolina and Minnesota.
Get a grip people -- The United States is not even remotely equivalent to Finland in terms of demographics and population. Find a nice U.S. State that doles out great Parental benefits, and move.
If all of America paid the same %-taxes as Finnish people do the system would absolutely work. It isn't magic. It's just that your country has decided, over a number of years, that health-care should be covered by insurance, and employment, rather than taxes.
If your politicians want to make a change, and get the appropriate votes, you absolutely could do the same thing as is done here.
Reading thru the comments, it sounds like New Jersey has great parental benefits, but you will be sharing them with a few more million people than Denmark, so ymmv.
It comes down to this: you sound like a complete idiot comparing social programs of these small Countries to <any> large Country. Stop.
Is it conceivable that fathers actually don't want to spend that much time at home and that the Finland Government is strong-handing them into doing it?
One frustration I have in this topic is that it is seldom mentioned that any parent with any savings and a decent job has the option of taking unpaid leave and take as much as they want with their kids, but choose not to. That is a very strong case for revealed preferences.
To move back up: I'm saying there might be a good reason mothers should be given maternal leave and that there might not be as good of a reason for men to be given paternal leave. Gender equality doesn't mean both genders are the same.
In fact I would argue this in many ways makes things MORE normal not less. Fathers in hunter and gatherer societies would have spend far more time with their children than a modern father.
A hunter and gatherer spend around 8 hours per week hunting. The rest of the time the family was quite close together.
> I'm saying there might be a good reason mothers should be given maternal leave and that there might not be as good of a reason for men to be given paternal leave. Gender equality doesn't mean both genders are the same.
Of course genders are not the same. But there is no reason to encourage difference just for the sake of it. The fact is that giving fathers and mothers leave works great for families.
I have lived through this myself. Your kids are much better off for it, and so are the parents.
Statistics speak for themselves. Nordic countries score well on family friendliness, child development and happiness.
Edit: Historically it has not been uncommon for the mother to die while giving birth. So it has always been important for us to accept other caregivers than our birth mothers.
Aka Pygmy Men breastfeed (some men can lactate a little) Most Women outside these tribes don't look for it in a man. Whereas there's do.
Social Services does take children away from there parents and raise them instead.
It's only culture that says just the bad children.
Colonialism commonly took natives away to be raised by society instead.
The kibbutz movement used collective child rearing. They thought it was the only way for equality.
Nuclear families are mostly a western thing. Plus we see more and more young people living together in shared housing.some in a family atmosphere. Why not shared child rearing?
Of course if there are good reasons then someone can provide them righ
This is a straw man argument. It's not possible to conduct such a study scientifically because it would be unethical and that's not what this policy is promoting.
Mammals are polygamous by nature and humans are no exception. We have only changed this in the last several thousand years and the benefits have been substantial enough that it's now the model in most of the world. I expect gender equality in the workplace to move in that direction.
As a species that grew out of bands of hunter gatherers, tribes and communities have played a huge role in raising children. Our modern circumstances are the exception — two parents, often shouldering the burden largely on their own.
And yes, gender equality has not been tried fully in a society yet so it's hard to know.
