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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

#171
post #151
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I don't want 12 kids, but my mindset changes if enough kids means early retirement ;)

I think having 12 kids is a lot harder than going to work...

What work, and what resources do you have in each respective situation?

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

#172
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good start would be outlawing negative scoring of candidates due to gaps.

If a company gives you a negative score due to a gap that's explained by taking time out to look after a baby then you're probably better off not working there.

A negative score due to a gap is the same as a positive score due to an extra years employment, and that's a harder mindset to overcome. Only the most toxic of workplaces would say "hey, they took a year out to raise a child, no way" but many workplaces would say " these two candidates appear equal except this one has an extra year's experience in $foo"

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

#173
post #4

It really irked me that here in Canada the options were generally skewed towards mothers remaining home. You can split 40 weeks of parental leave, but many employers won't provide parental benefits and those that do often only provide parental benefits to mothers. For instance, my employer at the time provided wage top-up for women on leave but nothing for men. Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in societ…

It's not "structurally sexism", it's biology. Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery. Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off…

Do you think the work stops once the baby is born? This is exactly the effort that these parental leave laws tries to cover.

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

#174
post #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 busine…

Since it's normal, companies adapt and it isn't really an issue at all. I've never seen anyone in my jobs (IT) that have been "replaced" in any way shape or form.

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

#175
post #4

It really irked me that here in Canada the options were generally skewed towards mothers remaining home. You can split 40 weeks of parental leave, but many employers won't provide parental benefits and those that do often only provide parental benefits to mothers. For instance, my employer at the time provided wage top-up for women on leave but nothing for men. Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in societ…

It's not "structurally sexism", it's biology. Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery. Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off…

But you can't close the salary gap between men and women by only mostly having women taking childcare responsibilities.

So if you introduce mandatory and equal leave for both parents, not only do you get happier parents, but you also don't advantage men over women for their biology.

That's all there is to it really, pretty simple and already implemented in plenty of countries.

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

#176
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). An…

Obviously Europe is not perfect, and any huge area has different problems, some large. But the specific problem I was responding to isn't, and may very well be the opposite (in large parts of Europe at least, Andalucia is of course well known for its problems, even within Spain).

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

#177
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

So there must be something about the cold making Swedish fathers take so much more parental leave?

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

#178
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I think the issue isn't that someone may be forced to take the leave when they don't, rather there are hidden incentives for them to not do so when they do. There's a heck of a lot of room between the latter and the former. 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 soluti…

Nudging parental/father's leave in order to increase fertility levels seems like a drop in the bucket... Why not tackle the real issues? Pay people more, tax them less (lower income taxes, increase capital taxes), make property cheaper. Yeah that includes a good parental leave pay (possibly more than 100%, in order to specifically encourage fertility in highly educated women/couples). That will have 100x greater effect in terms of fertility, in addition to being a "social good" in other regards.

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

#179
post #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 busine…

First of all, if a company fires someone because they are on parental leave, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Now how a company handles employees depends. In some cases you hire a temp, in others your colleagues covers your responsibilities.

I work as a developer and in the places I've worked it has never been a problem. You leave and while you're gone your responsibilities are shared by other colleagues. When you're back you resume your old position. It's true that you might not get back to doing exactly the same work as before you left, but in my experience that's rarely a problem. In my case it's been quite the opposite and an opportunity to take on new things. I think this is quite common

It's true that the employer overall needs to keep more staff around since some percentage will be away on parental leave and your need to cover those fluctuations. For small companies this can be a problem but in general I think this system has great acceptance with the public.

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

#180
I'm dumb and don't know anything about maternity/paternity leave. What prevents someone from being hired by a company, taking leave due to a child in X days, taking the salary the government forces the company to give you, and quitting Y days after you return? What if X and Y are a month or even one day? Could companies could be scammed for a year of salary while getting only a few days of value out of their employee?
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