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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

#301

Post by chinchilla2020 »

familyemta123 wrote: post #254
commandlinefan wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I created a throw away for this, but during a recent family emergency, my small 100 person company decided to fire me rather than allow my request for 3 months off without pay. They could easily have supported it, and I was a good employee, but instead I heard now they've replaced me with an Eastern European contractor for cheap. So rather than help me in my time of need, after I had saved their ass from some other c…

It might be an ethical move to name and shame this company. It could save a future employee from joining them.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#302

Post by anoonmoose »

echelon wrote: post #290
refurb wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent who got 6 months that barely fucking scratches the surface of the time it take to raise a human. Subsidize me until they are in public school and I’ll high five you.

> Subsidize me until they are in public school and I’ll high five you. I know this is an exaggeration, but it drew my interest. This expects that the rest of us have to work to subsidize you having children for five to six years . I'm wholly on board with helping parents raise children. Children are our future. But at some threshold of subsidization this equation tips and actively offloads the entire burden onto thos…

> offloads the entire burden onto those without children

Are you including "people with children over the age of five to six years" in this group? Because it seems like they would be helping to raise others people's children (in your words) but would also have benefitted.

According to the first Google result I found it looks like in 2018 only 15% of women age 50 were childless. A first-order approximation assuming younger generations have kids at the same rate and it's the same for both genders (neither of these are guaranteed but it's a starting point) would lead me to believe that more than most people have children and would benefit from a policy like this over the course of their lives. People without cars help pay for roads, people without children pay for public schools...I'm not really seeing much here to suggest there's an undue burden on those without children.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#303

Post by kingsloi »

familyemta123 wrote: post #254
commandlinefan wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I created a throw away for this, but during a recent family emergency, my small 100 person company decided to fire me rather than allow my request for 3 months off without pay. They could easily have supported it, and I was a good employee, but instead I heard now they've replaced me with an Eastern European contractor for cheap. So rather than help me in my time of need, after I had saved their ass from some other c…

Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail for me, too. I was worried of that exact situation. I'm a great employee, with a great team/manager, but it's a F500 company, where I'm just a replaceable body.

The best thing I could do for my child is to not rock the boat.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#304

Post by AndyMcConachie »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #294

From the US live in Norway now. In Norway there are a lot of political parties that can matter. All depends on the election. Some grow, some dont, new ones are added, old ones go away. That is a dynamic that is entirely missing in the US. We have parties in the European left and we have parties on the European right, parties in the middle, green party etc etc. I try to get people to understand that we do not have a s…

From the US and live in The Netherlands now.

Europeans can understand the Republican party through their own history. They're basically just corporate fascists. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece all had very similar corporate fascists governments for many years and their policies, politics and backers very closely tracked those of the contemporary American Republican party. Whereas the Dems are a better spoken, slightly more watered down and cuddly version of the same.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#305

Post by lotsofpulp »

yokoprime wrote: post #272
lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This graph shows the gender pay gap trending down in the UK since they implemented parental leave: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... This graph shows women's employment rate trending up in the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

So we're just throwing out random graphs and assuming causality? How about stork population vs birthrate?

I am not assuming causality.

See this comment for explanation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29230197

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#306

Post by kingsloi »

mooreds wrote: post #252
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…

This is heartbreaking. I'm so sorry.

I hate evoking empathy/sympathy, but with my child being gone, I really think it's important to share the real story and things that made our/my situation worse.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#307

Post by chinchilla2020 »

colechristensen wrote: post #214
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 comfo…

This was attempted in New York City and failed miserably.

Property values rise in locations that are highly desirable regardless of government or market intervention. It has more do to with the surface area of the earth than any particular policy.

A government system will result in similar issues - Look at the retirees and trust funder tenants living in mostly-empty 4 bedroom rent controlled apartments in NYC.

You have to allocate the limited space somehow. You cannot fit more people into one square meter of land without building higher or denser, and building higher is not always a simple option.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#308

Post by mschuster91 »

mindslight wrote: post #183
mschuster91 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality. Way too many people only can make ends meet by both partners being full-time employed - and in some cases (such as shown by a recent Last Week Tonight episode) even that is not enough to prevent being homeless. Rents are too high, and wages are too low.

Most people being unable to afford taking even a moderate amount of time off is the deeper problem. The sustainable answer is to fix the underlying economic problems - end this trickle up financial treadmill that has caused the majority to become so poor and disempowered [0], rather than creating a patchwork of allowances for specific system-legible purposes. For example bringing it back into the emotional realm - ev…

Society actually needs all of what you mentioned:

- specific allowances (paid parental leave, paid sick leave) for obvious reasons

- "blanket" paid time off outside of federal holidays for recreation and stuff like parents dying

- extra PTO or working hours reduction to take care of sick/terminally ill relatives

- wages big enough to allow everyone working full time to save a meaningful amount of money

Most developed countries outside of the US have realized this. All countries in Europe have the first two points already covered (paid parental, sick and general time off), Germany has the third one covered since 2012 ("Familienpflegezeit").

The only thing we all seem to be lacking after decades of wage starvation and neoliberalism is the last one - but COVID-related disruption is likely to incite a massive paradigm shift as the market goes from an employer market to an employee market and companies are pulling production back on-shore for a myriad of reasons.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#309

Post by mcguire »

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…

I'm trying to figure out what "further encourages discrimination against people of child bearing age" means...

Anyway, businesses have had to be forced to not do things that turn out to be bad for their business, up to and including not killing their customers and employees. "Obviously it can't be better in all dimensions otherwise everyone would be doing it" is the ultimate conservative arguments, since it means nothing could ever change---obviously we have reached the optimum, right?

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#310

Post by ivan_gammel »

tomp wrote: post #207
ajuc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mexico has 12 weeks. And Greece has 40. And Sweden has 480 days. Poland 1 year. Switzerland 20 weeks. Ireland 26 weeks. UK 52 weeks. Canada 50 weeks. Norway 12 months. Denmark 52 weeks. France 16 weeks for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers. I can go on. There's 120 such countries in the world. BTW that leave is on top of 20-30 days of paid vacations each year and unlimited paid health leave in most of these countries…

> Also notice that some of these countries have higher or similar GDP per capita to USA. In the US, households have 10% more money than the second closest competitor (Luxembourg), and 20% more money than next closest (Germany & Switzerland). I think that's a much better comparison than GDP (which isn't necessarily connected with employment), and shows how these tradeoffs work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable…

In Germany a person with median income will have access to free healthcare and education, good public transportation system and maybe even to an apartment with controlled rent. After you subtract all those expenses you may find that people in Germany may have more money in the pocket than in the USA. Anecdotal evidence does not prove anything, but few Americans who moved to Berlin were actually telling me that despite lower income and higher taxes they have more money here.
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