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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

#411
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…

Wow... Our first daughter was born a few weeks ago. I took off the first week, but it had to come out of my PTO (and I only have 2 weeks total per year). My wife had to quit her job so she could recuperate and spend time with the baby. She had a rough c-section and is still in bed in a lot of pain. I'm trying to work, take care of her, and take care of the baby. I wrote a long angry paragraph about US politics and cu…

Hope your wife gets through this soon and gets better.

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

#412
post #339
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.

I was thinking, 6 weeks sounds pretty sweet! I had 3 days (in Japan).

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

#413
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…

Wow... Our first daughter was born a few weeks ago. I took off the first week, but it had to come out of my PTO (and I only have 2 weeks total per year). My wife had to quit her job so she could recuperate and spend time with the baby. She had a rough c-section and is still in bed in a lot of pain. I'm trying to work, take care of her, and take care of the baby. I wrote a long angry paragraph about US politics and cu…

For what it’s worth, I agree with everything you didn’t write.

The good part about moving elsewhere from the US is that you can go anywhere sort-of-western and have things get a lot better.

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Having more than 2 kids as a couple is actually pretty rare. Kids/woman ratio is way under 2 everywhere in Europe [0]. So this is just nonsense. 0: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

His coworker certainly did have 5 kids, regardless of what the average birth rate is.

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

#415
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing net and gross salary.

No, I wasn't aware that it's 1800€ net, when I see figures on wage/benefits I always consider it pretax as that is how we talk about them in Sweden, never net salary.

The money paid by the government is based on the net salary and is tax free (I think with so called "Progressionsvorbehalt", which means it increases your tax rate just like any other income, but the tax rate is only applied to the rest of your income that year). Usually salaries are posted/compared based on gross, when you compare jobs/employers, etc. But when talking about government programs, the net is more important, because that is what people based on their family situation (being married, number of kids, etc.) actually get. Otherwise you just talk about how much the government is paying itself.

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

#417

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…

> have very welcoming immigration laws

But also huge language barriers, especially for small shops, not speaking the local language is seen a disadvantage.

> we have no massive local companies that can utilize all that talent and no big VC funding

That is not because Europe has less money, but because they have different risk profiles and competencies regarding investing. In some European countries governments are the biggest venture capitalists, which speaks to the inefficiency and desperation created, which explains the lack of unicorns booming up.

This is not just a money issue, it is also a culture and competence issue.

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

#418
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…

Do you have kids?

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

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to force an even split or not depends on if you see the system as something that enables people to make choices that are good, or something that makes them do what you think is good (for the parents in question or for the society in general). I know a couple that had two children. He wanted a third child. She wanted a PhD. The current Swedish system enabled them to have a child and let him take virtually…

Ugh, more myopic individualism. How about this: after we mandate even split and the culture changes, we give parents back the right to allocate it as they see fit. Hell, if we want to converge faster and get back to parental choice quicker, we might mandate 3:2 men's vs women's paid leave. Annecodes like your female PhD candidate story are no basis for determining policy.

Sure, call it individualism to view people like my friends as the ends of your policy. What shall we call it when the policy treats them as a means to some other greater end?

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to force an even split or not depends on if you see the system as something that enables people to make choices that are good, or something that makes them do what you think is good (for the parents in question or for the society in general). I know a couple that had two children. He wanted a third child. She wanted a PhD. The current Swedish system enabled them to have a child and let him take virtually…

No, the aim isn't "to fill a column of a report somewhere". That's just unnecessary snark from you. It's a difficult thing to balance. Ideally one should be able to split as wanted, based on one's life situation. But when one is free to choose, one often can find that the freedom is only imaginary. There will be pressure from society/employers/etc to do it a certain way. Lots of countries where it's expected that the…

Yes, that was snarky. Still, it's not expected that Swedish fathers forego their leave and Sweden has not mandated a 50/50 split yet. Maybe it's worth treading lightly as we're clearly heading in the right direction. Then some other couple like my friends won't have to be eggs for the impatient makers of the equality omelette.
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