French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by sveme » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

sushshshsh wrote: post #366

pi-rat wrote: 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…

>133 days of being paid to sit at home and take care of your kids, which most Americans do for free Do Norwegians work, ever? How do Norwegian businesses make money? You've heard that American businesses are failing left right and center. They can't even make a profit, and they don't pay their employees health insurance or vacation, let alone paternity/maternity.

Someone must be getting all the money that corporations save in the US in contrast to Norway...

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

#372

Post by sveme » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

x87678r wrote: post #365

echelon wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work? I'm all for parental leave, but that's a full year. Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company. What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit? I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much r…

> A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work? That's for each child. I worked with a guy who had 5 kids and with sick leave and holidays he worked Its a good reason why Europe is disappearing as a economic force. OTOH The other reason is not enough children so maybe my coworker ended up helping the economy.

Why the fuck does this become a dick measuring contest? What do you personally gain from being comparatively exploited in the US? Why do you fall for that propaganda when income disparity is only getting worse in the US?

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

#373

Post by IkmoIkmo » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

pi-rat wrote: 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…

Good for you, but that really doesn't add much to the discussion...

Norway has > 800x the oil reserves per capita of France and has not gone through what you could call a political crisis over the past few years regarding aligning the spending level of its welfare state with the economic and budgetary realities, with years of protests and riots, some of which are still ongoing. In the face of this it's quite a bold move for France to go from zero to 28 days for the sake of benefiting gender norms and family relationships in the long-term.

Norway, a rich country of just 5 million people, cannot be used as a comparison without noting all some of the budgetary context. Not just in this discussion, but more broadly on HN. If you're talking about something relatively budget-neutral like say 'same-sex marriage should be able to adopt children, just look at XYZ (e.g. Norway), it works just fine', that's alright. But if you're saying or implying something which has a lot of costs involved like 'fathers should get at least 4.5 months of paid parental leave as a rule, not an exception, just look at Norway' then you can't just leave out cost from the discussion, it makes no sense.

Obviously all of us would prefer long-term paid parental leave, arguing it's nice to have adds nothing to the discussion because there is already universal agreement. Arguing it's worth having, is an entirely different and much more meaningful discussion, but it cannot be be had without weighing the pros against the cons, the biggest one is cost.

And I say this coming from the Netherlands, an also quite rich country that I'd love to see as a model for many other countries. But such discussions should include budgetary context, among others.

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

#374

Post by sveme » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #321

echelon wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work? I'm all for parental leave, but that's a full year. Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company. What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit? I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much r…

Folks love to talk about these marginal 'perks' in Social Democracies, and the benefits experienced by the least fortunate, but you never hear about the costs of these programs or their impact on the finances of the average household. All these great benefits are, of course, funded via massive taxation of the middle and upper classes. You can see the (relative) impact in the data, which reveal household incomes to be…

Does it matter if people are so much happier and feel so much more secure in nordic countries compared to the US?

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

#375

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

ptyyy wrote: post #339

pi-rat wrote: 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…

Around the start of August I finished up my 6 weeks here in the US and it was definitely not enough. 133+ days would have been nice, but here in Freedom-Land™ I was lucky to get the 6 weeks I was given. I know a few new dads who got no paternity leave from work, or 1-3 days. Absolutely ridiculous in this day and age.

We have 12 weeks for "primary care giver" and 6 weeks for "secondary care giver". I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. From the bit of reading I've done on legal blogs, companies open themselves up to legal liability if they so much as permit a culture in which it's assumed that women are primary care givers and men are secondary much less pressure men to take the lesser amount. I wonder if there are a lot of companies who are still pressuring men to take the lesser amount and just rolling the dice on the legal liability. Otherwise why bother with the "primary vs secondary" distinction at all, since they presumably can't enforce it? Maybe they're hoping it will be honor-system? Or maybe they hope they can pressure everyone to make their other spouse (who most likely works outside of the firm) be the primary care givers?

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

#376

Post by piokoch » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #105

cluoma wrote: 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…

"Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].

I can only speculate as to why."

I thought the answer is simple - father cannot breastfeed a baby (even though gender is only a social construct, as some people claim, nature is still nature and reality is still reality).

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

#377

Post by dtech » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

sushshshsh wrote: post #366

pi-rat wrote: 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…

>133 days of being paid to sit at home and take care of your kids, which most Americans do for free Do Norwegians work, ever? How do Norwegian businesses make money? You've heard that American businesses are failing left right and center. They can't even make a profit, and they don't pay their employees health insurance or vacation, let alone paternity/maternity.

They are paid by the government, not by the businesses. Most European governments manage.

Norwegians have a massive unfair advantage due to that sweet sweet oil money.

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

#378

Post by joelbluminator » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #321

echelon wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work? I'm all for parental leave, but that's a full year. Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company. What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit? I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much r…

Folks love to talk about these marginal 'perks' in Social Democracies, and the benefits experienced by the least fortunate, but you never hear about the costs of these programs or their impact on the finances of the average household. All these great benefits are, of course, funded via massive taxation of the middle and upper classes. You can see the (relative) impact in the data, which reveal household incomes to be…

The U.S is still the world hegemon. It means they can basically print away as much money as they want and sell their debt to other countries that use USD because the USD is the reserve currency of the world. So the U.S can keep piling on debt and show magnificent gdp growth yet not have it's currency devalued. Europe doesn't operate like that both out of cultural reasons and because it isn't a hegemon (The Euro is less important than the Dollar). If (once?) the U.S loses it's special reserve currency status, you will see a massive USD devaluation and salaries would look a lot more similar to Europe. The U.S current success is much more due to historical reasons than any policy/taxation reason.

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

#379

Post by briandear » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #358

sokoloff wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salaries for devs in Europe are quite a bit lower than the SF/NYC/Seattle/Boston/Austin markets. You can look at it as they’re “buying” these (and other) benefits via lower salaries across the entire market.

Tech salaries aren't lower in Europe because of free healthcare and education funded by our higher taxes, they're lower because we don't have a huge government funded defense tech sector, we don't have mammoth sized, trillion dollar SW companies with a global monopoly like FAANGs that create hundreds of thousands of highly paid jobs, we don't have massive VC funds throwing money at every founder that promises to crea…

> We have very welcoming immigration laws

Really? How easy is it for an American to get a work visa in France? It’s pretty damned difficult. I lived there for four years with a non-working visa and even getting that was difficult. And every year I had to show my bank statements, health insurance, and provide proof that I owned my house there.

Also to your other points, only one of the FAANGs has been around for more than 25 years. Yet the salary differential has been around a lot longer than that. In fact, it was much worse.

And why doesn’t Europe have massive VC funds? It’s pretty simple, taxes on gains are confiscatory, creating a disincentive to take big risks.

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

#380

Post by ptyyy » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #375

ptyyy wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around the start of August I finished up my 6 weeks here in the US and it was definitely not enough. 133+ days would have been nice, but here in Freedom-Land™ I was lucky to get the 6 weeks I was given. I know a few new dads who got no paternity leave from work, or 1-3 days. Absolutely ridiculous in this day and age.

We have 12 weeks for "primary care giver" and 6 weeks for "secondary care giver". I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. From the bit of reading I've done on legal blogs, companies open themselves up to legal liability if they so much as permit a culture in which it's assumed that women are primary care givers and men are secondary much less pre…

> I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary.

My company leaves that decision to the couple. The couple chooses who is primary and secondary. My wife got 12 weeks as the primary caregiver. Our situation is a bit weird because we work for the same company.