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Without parental leave I might be dead

nytimes.com

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Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#211

Post by jeffrallen »

TheCapn wrote: post #70

My first child is due January. I sat down with my boss about a month or so ago and told him I'm intending to take parental leave. "No problem" he said, I told him my intention was to take the full 8 weeks I'm entitled to. He didn't say anything right away to that... eventually it was more of a "...that's not typical for the guys around here" We did a bit of back and forth. (I think he went to HR to find out he can't…

Good on you.

An important lesson we all need to remember: there are two ways to get the time off which is owed to you, the hard way or the easy way. If your boss is really willing to make it the hard way, it's on him/her to find a train a replacement. Get out of there.

I've also seen this with vacation.... A skilled engineer saves up vacation with a well-known to the boss goal of making a 2 month adventure trip. When it's time to go, he's "too valuable" to "lose" for 2 months. He threatens to quit. Now he's "too valuable" to lose over the situation and he gets his vacation. So stupid.

Keeping yourself ready and able to change jobs is unfortunately necessary, because company loyalty is kaput, and the threat of quitting is unfortunately occasionally needed to get proper to treatment.

Unions or humane work cultures would fix this. Not holding my breath in the USA. Europe is way better.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#212

Post by burntoutfire »

DrBazza wrote: post #156
endisneigh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is forcing women back to work?

> Who is forcing women back to work? A modern Western lifestyle. Almost every Western country without fail requires dual incomes to afford a basic lifestyle. The working-dad stay-at-home mum has long gone.

That's not true. A comfortable lifestyle perhaps, but "basic" can be had on just a single average salary.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#213

Post by mbesto »

KaiserPro wrote: post #28

I really cant understand the logic of forcing women back into work after 2-4 weeks. Its just not beneficial for anyone. The mum is utterly frazzled. The employer gets half an employee back Society is conditioned to think that the only practical way to raise a baby is to give up on work/get live in care. now, to look at it from a "my mum managed, I don't want to undermine the american nuclear family" point of view: Ye…

> Its just not beneficial for anyone.

I'm personally a proponent of parental leave, but I'll answer this one point.

"Forcing women" back into work after pregnancy is an attempt my mothers to minimize wage decreases. All of the evidence for wage discrepancies between male and female is due largely to women's role of motherhood.

https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/motherhood...

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#214

Post by colechristensen »

KaiserPro wrote: post #28

I really cant understand the logic of forcing women back into work after 2-4 weeks. Its just not beneficial for anyone. The mum is utterly frazzled. The employer gets half an employee back Society is conditioned to think that the only practical way to raise a baby is to give up on work/get live in care. now, to look at it from a "my mum managed, I don't want to undermine the american nuclear family" point of view: Ye…

I think the core of the problem has a few basic parts:

* the average person/family is trying to live a little beyond their means

* “work needed to do” is like a gas, it expands to fit the hours worked

* rent seeking elements expand to keep #1 true

The takeaway is that there is a lot of “work” being done in the economy that doesn’t need to be done because prices will always rise a little past what people can pay comfortably so… people work too much and think that they need to.

If you cut the lifetime hours worked by half, the standard of living probably wouldn’t change much.

The solution to this is radical modification of the markets which leech away extra income.

One such method would be to control real estate prices by enacting huge taxes on rental property and profits simultaneously making it extremely difficult or impossible to acquire large loans for real estate (owned or rented out). Making owning s home that isn’t your primary residence a huge financial liability and removing the ability to sell it for high prices would crash the market and remove the rent paid to landlords or “rent” paid to banks for mortgages. Both betting industries that take far more value than they give back.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#215

Post by JohnWhigham »

KaiserPro wrote: post #28

I really cant understand the logic of forcing women back into work after 2-4 weeks. Its just not beneficial for anyone. The mum is utterly frazzled. The employer gets half an employee back Society is conditioned to think that the only practical way to raise a baby is to give up on work/get live in care. now, to look at it from a "my mum managed, I don't want to undermine the american nuclear family" point of view: Ye…

I keep saying it: the ERA was a (successful) ruse by the elite class to further dilute and weaken the middle class dressed up with a feminist guise.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#216

Post by kayodelycaon »

moron4hire wrote: post #67
wastedhours wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most men take only a fraction of the allowed time I truly don't understand this, and each time I see the stats on it sit in even greater disbelief. Why would anyone turn down the opportunity to spend, for an awful lot of companies, fully paid time off work to spend time with their new family? Guessing I'm much less "career-minded" than of lot of these guys, but it makes zero sense to me that you wouldn't stretch th…

When I took mine, I was told it was at a particularly convenient time because I had just started at the company (Deloitte, so huge corp) so wasn't deeply embedded in any projects yet, plus my billable time ratio "doesn't count in your first year". I still got a lot of pressure from my bosses to cut it short and work part time while I was out. One of them even questioned my "loyalty to the team" at a holiday party tha…

Same thing happens frequently with ADA. You're not going anywhere other than out as soon as they can find a good excuse, if you're even hired in the first place. Doesn't matter if you can do the work or not.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#217

Post by kingsloi »

I literally worked for most of my child's 8 month life, from her ICU room, I worked the morning of her 9 surgeries, I worked through the genetic diagnosis, I worked through being told my child has brain bleeds, neuroblastoma, is deaf, re-intubated, etc... if my insurance wasn't tied to my work, I would've quit in a heartbeat.

I'm convinced I'll go to my grave with working that time being my biggest regret in life. I had benefits, but was saving the limited time for when my wife returned to work... to only lose it when my child passed.

I couldn't advocate more for maternal/paternal leave.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#218

Post by JohnWhigham »

ashtonkem wrote: post #190
bko wrote: post #7

I believe parental leave should be provided, but I don't see how anyone expects employers to shoulder the burden of providing paid parental (in reality maternity) leave without an implicit bias towards hiring men (or at least paying women less). You can provide the same benefit to men and women, but let's be honest, even when available most men take only a fraction of the allowed time. I guess you can force people to…

> Saying "other countries do it" isn't really an answer. There's no clear solutions Ah, the dark side of American exceptionalism. "Other countries do it" is absolutely an answer. We could, if we wanted to, peruse our way through the policies used in other countries and pick the one that best fits Americas needs and demographic situation. But that isn't possible if we put blinders on and pretend that the experience of…

The so-called "progressives" in Congress couldn't even get paid leave in the transportation bill because they have no spine. It just shows how badly this country is fucked by corporations

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#219

Post by lifeformed »

bradleyjg wrote: post #147
KaiserPro wrote: post #28

I really cant understand the logic of forcing women back into work after 2-4 weeks. Its just not beneficial for anyone. The mum is utterly frazzled. The employer gets half an employee back Society is conditioned to think that the only practical way to raise a baby is to give up on work/get live in care. now, to look at it from a "my mum managed, I don't want to undermine the american nuclear family" point of view: Ye…

Maybe we should look at why three sectors of the economy have had insane cost growth for three plus decades (housing, healthcare, education) and fix that instead of trying to band aid the negative consequences?

You mean there's a choice?! Cool, I'd be happy if we simply just fixed all the massive, complex problems of the entire economy over just having parental leave.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#220

Post by the-smug-one »

charcircuit wrote: post #184
germinalphrase wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this discussion as an exercise in humility, that the mental model of poverty as a result of poor choice may be flawed.

I choose to hone a skill by teaching myself programming and I monetized it at an early age. Anyone can do what I did. I'm not special.

You are very special. Do you meet a lot of different people? Like, different countries, adults with parents from other socioeconomic backgrounds, people with chronic diseases, all of that stuff? Because, to me, it really seems like you don't.
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