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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

#221

Post by dang »

sershe wrote: post #197
dang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Please also don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes and certainly not by getting nasty about them. Your comment was correctly downvoted because it was a major step further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ok, I admit the edit could have been done better. I'll stop pursuing this path :). However, it was downvoted before the edit for expressing an unpopular, but IMHO factually justified (i.e. anti-natalist) position. I think that was a fair point to make in a discussion of paid parental leave. Again, I don't care about points. I want to hear from people who disagree with the original comment ;)

Parenting is one of the most emotional topics that exists, which means it's flammable material in internet discussions. If you lead by comparing parental leave to "hangover leave", that's already a provocation, and if you throw in more provocative words like "indulging" and "hobby", at that point you're posting flamebait. You're going to get flamewar responses, not a reasonable conversation, and that's against the site guidelines.

If you really want to have a reasonable conversation about a divisive, inflammatory topic, you need to sand off all such sharp edges. That's not a moral or ethical point, just an empirical observation about internet dynamics, which are relatively predictable. That's why we have the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - not as a moral code but as a set of heuristics for more interesting conversation.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#222

Post by Auracle »

charcircuit wrote: post #116
comeonseriously wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive and stop spending money on unnecessary things. Because The Poors waste their money? > You can switch to eating cheap food and minimize your expenses. So, The Poors shouldn't care about nutrition? > If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible. This is so naive.

>Because The Poors waste their money? Either that or they are not using their time well for making money. >So, The Poors shouldn't care about nutrition? cheap and nutritious don't have to be mutually exclusive >This is so naive. It means you are living a life you can't afford.

The thing that isn’t talked about is that a significant portion of the population simply isn’t intelligent enough for a decent paying job. Men of that type can usually go in to a field where they trade their long term health for more pay, but women that’s harder. Either way there’s a good chance you’ll be on disability by the time you’re 50.

I agree that a lot of people make really poor financial decisions, but don’t think everyone has the same earning potential as you.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#223

Post by commandlinefan »

kingsloi wrote: post #217

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…

Did you ask for an extended leave of absence? Many employers are a lot more humane than a lot of employees give them credit for, whether they're bound by law or not.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#224

Post by thex10 »

aerosmile wrote: post #54
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…

I think you might be touching on a taboo that nobody will ever admit publicly: having a baby is no walk in the park, and in comparison sitting in a cubicle and answering a few emails can seem like a massive upgrade.

This is why I, the nursing/birthing parent, went back to work after six (unpaid) weeks. That and I wanted to earn income again...

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#225

Post by cure »

burntoutfire wrote: post #212
DrBazza wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think your frame of reference may be a bit warped. What is an 'average' salary?

The median personal income in 2019 was $35,805 (cf. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N). I think you'd be hard pressed to live on that with a family of 3+ people.

And what about the 50% of people who have a personal income less than the median?

edit: that stat was for 2019, not 2020, my bad

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#226

Post by Auracle »

fileeditview wrote: post #113
charcircuit wrote: post #87

Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive and stop spending money on unnecessary things. You can switch to eating cheap food and minimize your expenses. If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible.

> Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive .. What should e.g. waiters / waitresses do then? Drive to work for hours every day so they can serve coffee to those who can afford to live where they need to work? You make it sound simple but it is not.

I mean, that’s an example where they could easily move. You can wait tables anywhere.

Eventually there wouldn’t be enough in cities and they’d have to raise wages to equalize, but a lot of people can’t even envision not living in a mega-city.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#227

Post by danShumway »

mbesto wrote: post #213
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...

I wonder how much this would change if parental leave was also granted to fathers at similar or equal rates. The article mentions postpartum issues -- this is stuff that isn't really mitigated by having one parent alone care for a kid. If you're struggling with depression by yourself in the house with a kid... it's nice to have more people around to help. Even if you're not struggling with depression, having people around to help with care can let you avoid the worst parts of the whole 3 hours of sleep a night thing.

And from a "nuclear family" point of view, most cultural traditionalists I know would argue to me that it's good for kids to be in multiple-parent households. When people talk about stereotypical traditionalist nuclear families, these are very often families that have extended support structures of multiple people involved in child-rearing.

Opponents to parental leave (even feminist opponents) are in some ways attempting to equalize the time-off risk between mothers[0] and fathers. And that can be done by reducing the mother's time off to zero to match the father, but it can also be done by letting fathers get involved in early child-rearing and giving them more time to help their partners.

----

[0] And nonbinary/transgender/adoptive/etc parents too of course, but I'm just using a shorthand here.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#228

Post by wayfarer1291 »

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…

I am sorry to hear this. As a recent father myself, I find the fact that comparatively few fathers here in the US do (or can) take this leave very sad. The act of caring for our newborn is how we form our attachments and love, and it is ultimately a loss for the dads that choose not to participate in the caring. My dad never really took care of me as a baby (in the feeding, diapers, etc. sense) and is squeamish/ not able to do it with our own child now. Again, a loss for previous generations of men.

Which is all to say - if this company in the slightest gives you more negative feedback about taking leave,.. I would, if I were in your shoes, be looking for a new place. They're not showing you any loyalty, so you don't owe it to them.

A twitter thread from Ezra Klein (also recently took parental leave) that might resonate with you: https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1457771021327503360

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#229

Post by fisherjeff »

bko wrote: post #182
KaiserPro wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a model. its not a study, its a metric collected from the UK for the last 20 years. The arguments for "not hiring women because they'll just go and get pregnant" have largely been settled in the UK. shared parental leave is a thing, its just what happens. Employers that don't facilitate it are punished, either by employment tribunal, or people leaving to join somewhere that does.

> This isn't a model. its not a study, its a metric collected from the UK for the last 20 years. And absolutely nothing else changed in the UK in the last 20 years that may affect this number? Logic would tell you the disincentive exists. Looking at aggregate country data over 20 years doesn't tell you anything about a single policy. > Employers that don't facilitate it are punished, either by employment tribunal, or…

Hmmm, so it seems like the signal we'd expect to see in the time series data is either (1) tiny, and completely buried in the noise, or (2) as you suggest, is large but more than completely canceled out by some other, unnamed, contemporaneous signal(s).

Either way, seems like a net win for women!

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#230

Post by dang »

charcircuit wrote: post #87

Maybe you should not live somewhere so expensive and stop spending money on unnecessary things. You can switch to eating cheap food and minimize your expenses. If you are just making ends meet you are not financially responsible.

Flamewar comments will get you banned here. Personal attacks also will, and your comment crossed into that. Not cool. If you'd please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: you've posted a bunch of other flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments in this thread as well. Please stop doing that. It's not what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227287.

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