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Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

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Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#131

Post by thucydidesofusa »

gumby wrote: post #42
brighteyes wrote: post #17

It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach. One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers, further decreasing the birth rate which is already quite low in many advanced economies. Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact, further d…

> One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers... > Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact... As the article states: how are these factors different for men than for women?

AFAIK, no American authority demands mothers take maternity leave, it's something that American mothers ask for (and tend to complain that it's not generous enough).

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#133

Post by zimablue »

lovich wrote: post #122
zimablue wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK so I tax everybody enough to make indian food free for everybody. Now I'm not forcing you to eat Indian food, technically. But if you hate curries you might feel a certain sense of injustice. We're not cheaper due to the requirements of biology. (screaming) You don't have to have children. Even if you DO have children, and you're female, you DONT have to take extensive time off. I've known multiple successful wome…

A women has to be there for the birth from what I understand, so they de facto have to take off time that men do not. As for your curry example, you might feel injustice but if Indian curry was required for society to continue then you'd have to just deal with it. This undercurrent in this thread where people are outraged at having to spend a cent supporting parents just because they don't want children is mind boggl…

1. Women have to be there for the birth, and let's say it's very hard to work immediately before and after, so that's a month generously. That has no connection with this idea, which is many months of leave. 2. As explained elsewhere, we do not need to raise the population for society to function. If we did, it would be better for everyone if we did it through immigration. The strongest argument you can make that we do need children is the social security setup, but this is artificial. It's very possible for social security to be funded for each generaion BY that generation itself, the system is just set up wrong. 3. Parents are on average far more privileged than me, I object to being forced to support anyone already above me socioeconomically, so should you. 4. I don't expect a magical force, as I said in point 2 the social security arrangement is artifical, and for a bonus point by the time I get to collecting requirement it will have been dramatically cut because even with flat population the current system is unsustainable. It will last just long enough for me to transfer a lot of wealth from the millenial to boomer generation (who are again on average more privileged). That's not a fringe perspective it's mainstream, look it up. So my retirement arrangement will be my savings and ascetism basically. 5. Parents can raise children without giving them lots of time off. We absolutely wouldn't face oblivion if the native American birthrate dropped to zero. It would blow a hole in social security that we'd plug with a wealth/corporate wealth grab tax, otherwise life would continue pretty well.

Bonus point - this isn't a tightness thing, most people who are opposed to this measure would probably be in favour of something that actually directly benefitted children, like a government run early years childcare for poorer children.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#134

Post by jacquesm »

zimablue wrote: post #84
jacquesm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty safe to assume the tyranny of the majority in a democratic system and it is a given that society chose what it did, if it did not it would have changed. 'Given a blank slate' is so far from practice that it might as well be fiction. Utopia is not suddenly going to spring to life, if you want it there is only one way to get there: get into politics, and good luck because the one word you will learn very q…

No, the tyranny of the majority is NOT the safe thing to assume in a democratic system, or that that would be the right thing. Our systems are build to insulate decision making from 51% splits. But we're not arguing that we're about to do something from a blank slate, the blank slate point is that just because society DOES something, doesn't mean that it WANTs to do something, for the same reasons as above we don't d…

You now have 22 posts in this thread (and counting), it seems you are very much upset for having to pay for something that you do not feel that you benefit from. But if you consider that you too are a product of the societies that chose to support children and if you accept that once children are there it helps to have them well nourished, healthy and smart then maybe you'll come to the conclusion that your position is a pretty selfish one.

So when you write 'we' you can substitute 'I' and be closer to the truth, and you don't need to drag in a whole pile of other stuff that is hypothetical rather than real, why ignore the evidence in front of your eyes if you have it?

Hypotheticals are great to argue about things for which we do not have data, they suck at improving over reality when we do.

As or the tyranny of the majority not being the safe thing to assume in a democratic system: the democratic system pretty much codifies the tyranny of the majority, with a few exceptions about forming coalitions where some give-and-take allows a small minority to score some points because they can be the swing vote. But if you want to see the tyranny of the majority at work you need to look no further than that US that you write about.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#135

Post by lovich »

zimablue wrote: post #133
lovich wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A women has to be there for the birth from what I understand, so they de facto have to take off time that men do not. As for your curry example, you might feel injustice but if Indian curry was required for society to continue then you'd have to just deal with it. This undercurrent in this thread where people are outraged at having to spend a cent supporting parents just because they don't want children is mind boggl…

1. Women have to be there for the birth, and let's say it's very hard to work immediately before and after, so that's a month generously. That has no connection with this idea, which is many months of leave. 2. As explained elsewhere, we do not need to raise the population for society to function. If we did, it would be better for everyone if we did it through immigration. The strongest argument you can make that we…

We don't control who comes here with immigration so it is an unreliable source to maintain the population. Today we have an inflow of immigrants but tomorrow that may have reversed.

Parents are not a class of people that structurally have more wealth. A lot of prospective parents save up in preparation for having a child, but those resources are drained by taking care of the child, on top of all the unprepared parents.

Your points about social security are something I agree with but immaterial to the argument. I'm not discussing a younger generation supporting the elderly with social security. I'm discussing literally taking care of you. We don't have 70 year old nurses feeding people in nursing homes. We also need people to actually participate in the economy. If people are aging out work, there needs to be replacement workers.

>Parents can raise children without taking extensive time off

They could, but we don't see that as a good thing with women. This proposed change just makes men and women have an equal cost to the employer when it comes to child birth.

All of these points we are discussing are tangential to that fact really. If you are against parental leave, that's your opinion you have a right to have. While we have parental leave for women however, this change is attempting to fix the prisoners dilemma society has fallen into of valuing male workers more because they can be forced to not spend time with their new child

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#136

Post by RickS »

gumby wrote: post #42
brighteyes wrote: post #17

It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach. One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers, further decreasing the birth rate which is already quite low in many advanced economies. Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact, further d…

> One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers... > Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact... As the article states: how are these factors different for men than for women?

> how are these factors different for men than for women?

For the sake of this argument, they aren't. It's not about which gender they impact. It's about what percentage of relationship participants they impact.

Right now ~50% of relationship partners face credible career setbacks as a result of post-childbirth leave. Changing that percentage to 100% is probably going to have some ripples.

That's not to say it might not be worthwhile, just that it's unlikely to be as simple as "flip a switch, everybody acts the same".

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#137

Post by dsfyu404ed »

zimablue wrote: post #94
lovich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a proposed change to how to run a company, it's not someone's rant about how someone didn't call them xer and how that person is a Nazi. Your opposition to even seeing this post because it includes gender seems like more of a culture war artifact than the post itself

As I said, we generally don't post company minutae unless there's a link to tech or startups. It's not opposition to seeing the post, it's opposition to the general trend of putting gender culture war articles otherwise disconnected to hacker news on the forum because gender activists chose to make SV a battleground. It's not culture war to be bored of the culture war.

>gender activists chose to make SV a battleground.

If you don't like mosquitoes then don't put your company headquarters in the swamp.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#138

Post by gaius »

gumby wrote: post #129
gaius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. So decouple the time off from the reproduction.

Except that the amount for this special case far outweighs the amount typical for PTO.

I’m proposing to up the PTO for any person for any purpose to match. Then everything is equal regardless of reproductive choices.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#139

Post by lagadu »

zimablue wrote: post #116
defen wrote: post #111

How exactly would this be enforced? If a man doesn't disclose that his partner is pregnant, is he going to be fired? I don't see how it could be legal to do so. How is a partner's / spouse's medical condition any business of an employer?

It gets better, what if you're not with the mother. What if it was a one night stand, or you donated sperm to her as a single parent. What if you're not with her, she told you she was on the pill and it wasn't true. What if you're in a non binary relationship (2 fathers?). What if you adopt a young child.

Just look across the pond, many countries solved that over here and we managed to survive.

Re: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

#140

Post by WorshipChildren »

Parental leave of any kind is discrimination against workers who can't have or don't want children.

Know what isn't discrimination? A parent using PTO that everyone gets to care for their kids.

Don't have enough? Can't do without parental leave? Why the heck are you having kids?!" Jesus. Christ.

FORCING people to take parental leave is insanity.

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