161–170 of 617 posts
I'm glad this exists. When I had my kids I worked white collar jobs for large wealthy corporations, and I got exactly zero days each time. This attitude change is a step in the right direction. The problem is the people who in my opinion who need this the most (the working classes) are the ones least likely to get it (at least here in America).
Edit: changed parental leave to paid parental leave
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does anything get done? If it were a three person company, one person is now gone for 14 months and legally can’t be replaced? A nightmare for the other two employees.
You can hire a replacement on a 14-month contract. If your company can deal with an employee getting hit by a bus / winning the lottery and quitting, then it can deal with an employee taking maternity/paternity leave.
Example: our childcare facility employs two people, and replacements are VERY difficult to find at the moment.
I strongly dislike the idea of any government-mandated paternal leave. Staying home from work is not free, and the cost of it comes out of my salary. I personally want some paternal leave even with its costs, but I'd prefer that negotiation to stay between me and my employer. I don't want some bottom threshold set by a third party.
So does every other aspect of caring for people (police, fire, education).
>but I'd prefer that negotiation to stay between me and my employer
Hey that works great if you are one of those people that is invaluable to your company, or can easily negotiate and move into a better job. Do you know how that would go for 99.9% of people?
"Hey boss, I'm pregnant, isn't that great! Can I have 12 months paid off so I can take care of my family?"
"Erm, how about 3 days?"
"Ok I see how this goes, fine how about 2 weeks?"
"No forget it, you're fired. I'll just hire someone who isn't having a baby to replace you. Good luck!"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But both genders can feed the baby. It is not a rare situation where a mother doesn't have enough milk to feed a baby without additional food. What other things are mother-only things in your opinion?
Also: pump and store the milk. It’s not hard. Dads can feed breastfed babies too! Just out of a bottle.
Seems a bit bizarre seeing that mothers in most cases will need to spend more time with their babies. After all, there are certain things like breastfeeding that only a mother can do.
Would make more sense to point out how ridiculously short maternity leave is in many places. Like the US isn't it a couple of weeks or something and not even paid? I noticed when visiting the US that breastfeeding was not very normal. Like they don't even teach it in a standard hospital. Finnish moms are getting longer maternity leave than most countries in the world with this system. If other countries can manage wi…
On the contrary, that was one of the first things they teach after giving birth (apart from diaper changing). They also stressed heavily on the importance of nursing and set us up with a lactation consultant if we needed help in the future.
Many comments laud this as a step towards gender equality, which is a noble goal. However, I do wonder about the unforeseen consequences. All mammals (afaik) are raised by mothers. Humans are mammals. Humans do a good job of making changes to our nature, and for the most part those changes have resulted in better lives. However we still have things like nuclear families. Children aren't taken away from parents and ra…
This is a straw man argument. It's not possible to conduct such a study scientifically because it would be unethical and that's not what this policy is promoting.
Mammals are polygamous by nature and humans are no exception. We have only changed this in the last several thousand years and the benefits have been substantial enough that it's now the model in most of the world. I expect gender equality in the workplace to move in that direction.
But will they force Dads to take it? As a Dad who had two kids, I would much rather pay for childcare than take paternity leave. Would someone like me be held back artificially to promote equality? EDIT: Not a freak, don't care for the infant stage. Happy to dote when they start to turn into people.
It seems like you may not care, but that infant stage is the most critical for bonding and attachment. You're potentially sacrificing your ability to have a strong or deep relationship with your children in the long-term, regardless of how present you are later on. But as I said, perhaps you're making that tradeoff knowingly.
My family is of Norwegian extraction and I'm a dad too. My wife has a completely different relationship with my kids than I do. She also had to go through a great deal more to birth them than I did. Her parental leave was as much about medical recovery as it was bonding time with the kids. And, to put this delicately, but as something that needs to be stated because it's true and important for the discussion: she has…