101–110 of 485 posts
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That is if the older child is not in kindergarden.
That's 5 or 6 hours a day for 5 days a week. Do you think toddlers just look after themselves for the rest of the time?
Compare this to 480 days of shared and paid parental leave in Sweden at 80% salary. The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...
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)
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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…
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.…
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.
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Most swedes don't want so many kids.
Well I don't want 12 kids, but my mindset changes if enough kids means early retirement ;)
Compare this to 480 days of shared and paid parental leave in Sweden at 80% salary. The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...
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.
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").
[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Arbeit/Arbeitsmarkt/Qualit...
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> 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 m…
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.
almost any Western country
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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I can echo that. 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 t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And what I meant was they have the freedom to go anytime. Obviously the most optimal time is when both parents are available and at home.
> Also, after dad gets home, then it's time for dinner, bath, and bedtime
If you have that little time after work, then that is an entirely different issue.
Compare this to 480 days of shared and paid parental leave in Sweden at 80% salary. The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...
That is enough time to have another kid. I have 12 so far. If I lived in Sweden, I wouldn't have to work. I could keep it going for decades. It's odd that Swedes aren't taking full advantage of the situation.
Why I would change 8 hours to it?
It is also unethical way of life in this planet.
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…
"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.
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.