Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#401

Post by danans » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #396

danans wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why anyone in his/her self-interest would not. If I could take all the time in the world to play with babies and be paid my current salary to do it, that's honestly my dream life. Because your dream life is not everyone else's dream life. There are a lot of good reasons people want to work. Many people actually enjoy practicing their skill, and want to get back to it when they can. Any such policy would…

> Because your dream life is not everyone else's dream life. There are a lot of good reasons people want to work. Many people actually enjoy practicing their skill, and want to get back to it when they can. Certainly, but the number of times the leave is taken was not the issue at hand. The commenter said you don't have to take the full leave. However, empirical data in countries and societies that do have long paren…

> So while not everyone's dream life involves taking out the full term of parental leave, it is most people's.

This statement "it is most people's [dream]", not being manifestly obvious, requires a citation to a statistically significant survey of people asked if they would take a full year of paid leave from their jobs, regardless of the tradeoffs (there are always some tradeoffs). Either that or it requires a qualification like "in my opinion".

And that opinion can't be used as a general argument against the benefit of paid parental leave. Just as the existence of people who want to take less than the maximum leave can't be used to argue against the benefit for people who want to take the full amount.

This sort of benefit isn't a "natural" right based on people's individual desires and dreams. It's a practical policy implemented via institutions to deal with the modern reality that often both parents are required to work to maintain a middle-class standard of living.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#402

Post by danans » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #397

danans wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That means ten years off work? You are an outlier in terms of how many children you want. This sort of benefit is intended to help with people who have the median number of children (1.9 in the US today) [1]. The way to deal with outlying cases like yours is to rapidly phase out the benefit as you move far above the median, so you only get the…

A phase out benefit makes a lot of sense if the reasoning behind parental leave is that the government wants to encourage a certain number of children. That is almost never the stated reasoning behind these kinds of laws. Usually, the justification is 'family-friendliness' or for the benefit of the child. In that case, there is no justification for a phase out. If the justification is 'family friendliness', then a ph…

> Usually, the justification is 'family-friendliness' or for the benefit of the child. In that case, there is no justification for a phase out

Family-friendliness absolutely is a policy goal that encourages people to have children, but any such policy has a target population and also has limits. The objective of these policies is usually to assist median income and median sized families, not outliers.

An example of this today is the Child and Dependent Care Assistance Plan (DCAP) [1] which parents in the US use to pay for childcare with pre-tax dollars.

This benefit is restricted to around $5,000 a year, regardless of how many children you have. It also cannot be claimed unless all parents are either employed or are full-time students.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p503

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#403

Post by charlie0 » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

thetrb wrote: post #281

charlie0 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here. I heard at my old job that a woman who was having a job orientation got nauseated and was throwing up. She came back stating she was pregnant and due to the law she could not be fired and was entitled to some sort of leave. For HR the position is technically filled, so they aren't able to hire someone else without making exceptions. While I think maternity leave is great, I think there should be some…

Wow, calling a pregnant woman "leech-like" is one of the most misogynistic things I've ever read on HN.

I have no issues with maternity leave at all and I support it, with some exceptions obviously. I do have issues with people trying to game the system as this particular woman was.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#404

Post by paulddraper » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #347

paulddraper wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of tech companies, 2 weeks of paid paternal leave is pretty good.

Major law firms generally give 16-18 weeks of maternity and 4 weeks of paternity leave.

9% of U.S. companies offer any paid paternity leave. [1]

[1] https://www.thebump.com/a/paternity-leave-for-men

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#405

Post by 908087 » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

apexalpha wrote: post #380

908087 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't call her "leech-like", they called her behavior "leech-like".. and it was. Should pregnant women be exempt from any type of judgement regardless of their behavior?

Or perhaps implementing a Canadian/European style parental leave program paid by taxes would mean this woman wouldn't have to act like this to get some support before/after having a child.

Or maybe people should wait until they're in a position where they don't have to resort to such behavior in order to support their offspring.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#406

Post by CloudNetworking » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

acid__ wrote: post #280

CloudNetworking wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or humans. Does he hire humans? humans can and do fall sick from time to time. Ew.

Maybe he recognizes that different humans have different probabilities of being suddenly unable to work for extended periods of time, and is able to weigh various factors (rationally or not, fairly or not) instead of being a 100% all-or-nothing strawman.

I've got the same probabilities as my wife to go on parental leave. It so happens that when she has a son, I've got a son too!

MAGIC

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#407

Post by tathougies » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

danans wrote: post #401

tathougies wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because your dream life is not everyone else's dream life. There are a lot of good reasons people want to work. Many people actually enjoy practicing their skill, and want to get back to it when they can. Certainly, but the number of times the leave is taken was not the issue at hand. The commenter said you don't have to take the full leave. However, empirical data in countries and societies that do have long paren…

> So while not everyone's dream life involves taking out the full term of parental leave, it is most people's. This statement "it is most people's [dream]", not being manifestly obvious, requires a citation to a statistically significant survey of people asked if they would take a full year of paid leave from their jobs, regardless of the tradeoffs (there are always some tradeoffs). Either that or it requires a quali…

I have never argued against the benefit of paid parental leave. The claim that it is most people's dream life (A claim which you reject) implies that it provides some benefit to the people receiving it; otherwise, why would they opt to take it.

I made no claim as to the 'naturalness' of this right. I honestly don't really care, because that is completely non-germaine to my argument, which is that a year long leave leaves many companies vulnerable to the possibility of leachers like myself, and many others, for whom it's very straightforward to have a child every year or so. This is not a problem with shorter leaves. Most people cannot have two children in two months.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#408

Post by int_19h » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 3:18 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #357

int_19h wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. And why not do so for them specifically? If you still have protections apply to larger companies, then it becomes a matter of choice for employees to choose small or large. But if you apply to everybody, and it kills small businesses, you're strictly worse off - if you can't land a job at one of those larger places, you're outright unemplo…

I mean you could do it, but then you have some different issues at the margins like the incentive to hire people off the books to not fall into a more regulated category. And also there's a big ethical question here if you create an excemption for small business, because you create a two class workforce where parents in small companies lack what is arguably a very fundamental right. So I guess it is a complicated iss…

> And also there's a big ethical question here if you create an excemption for small business, because you create a two class workforce where parents in small companies lack what is arguably a very fundamental right.

The way I see this, the fundamental right here is to have paid parental leave in general, not a right to have it at any particular workplace specifically. Thus, so long as those who need it can get a job that offers it, I don't see any pragmatic reason to require all businesses to do so. So long as it's clear in advance - so people who e.g. don't plan on having children can go seek employment with small businesses. It's not an insignificant part of the population, so why remove an option for them?

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#409

Post by kzrdude » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

souprock wrote: post #215

kzrdude wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

480 days together. Of those, 90 days each are non-transferrable (between the parents).

Wow. I would almost never work. I'm having my 12th kid soon, and my wife doesn't work. At 390 days (roughly 13 months) per kid, I could pretty much just not work. Why don't people do this in Sweden? There are so few kids!

Having kids is expensive (even when health care and education is free, they eat and wear clothes and play sports and stuff!). People also want to work and not just raise kids, I think. I don't know of anyone with half that many kids.

I think the Swedish culture is also very practically minded. (Romance is dead!) Which means the practical drawbacks from having a big family (car size, expensive vacations etc) will weigh a lot.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#410

Post by ncallaway » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

Noumenon72 wrote: post #354

ncallaway wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman You've just created far more financial risk for your company by doing this. It's flat out illegal, and if you're caught doing this the punishment will probably bankrupt your company. Further, it's disgusting and any small business owner that does this deserves to have their business destroyed.

You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do. For example, we might make a law saying mothers shouldn't leave their children alone at home. Then we could say "You horrible mother, you left your kids alone, you're going to jail". But we are not the ones who have to spend our whole day watching the kids, trapped and exhausted. We should recognize the higher contributi…

> You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do

You should be less quick to make assumptions.

I am the owner of a small business with a handful of employees. I am the that bears the cost of such policies.