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French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

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Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#161
post #147
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So it turns into more of a management role, and less like hard labor. Still not really retirement.

Yeah I dont think you'll be lazying about but also that the difficulty is much less than a linear 12x the difficulty of raising one child.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

> 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_(de…

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.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#163
post #91
post #22

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.

Please don’t spread this fake information. 65% is plain wrong! 1800€ is maximum. For tech workers it’s closer to 35%.

One can go also up to 36 months of parental leave, but the rest of the time is unpaid.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#164
post #103
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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 resi…

"Europe" in the sense you speak of just isn't.

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.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

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.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#165
post #156

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 mou…

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.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#166
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

"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 pa…

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.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#167
post #91

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…

3) biology (i.e. sex is not a social construct)

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)

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 cho…

> Give people the choice and most choose to do things preventing children until they have existential crisis.

Do you have some data to back that?

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#169
post #22

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...

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?

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#170
post #22

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...

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.

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