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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

#331

Post by SuoDuanDao »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #301
familyemta123 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I too think it would be proper to share that information if you feel it would not impact your job search (and let's be frank, if they would do what they did they can't do much worse). Protecting abusers is not a good policy.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#332

Post by gambiting »

xibalba wrote: post #322
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…

> forcing women back into work This is not what happens. No one is being "forced" to do anything. Rather, free individuals (speaking from a U.S. centric viewpoint) make a choice to become pregnant and birth a child. It seems reasonable to me that the result of this private choice should not be the burden of others. Note that FMLA (again, U.S.-centric) grants unpaid leave. In other words, you can't be fired for certai…

>>I may be in the minority on this, but I find it really weird how people, more and more nowadays, believe the consequences private, personal choices should be borne by everyone else

Starting or not starting a company is a completely private decision, yet we as a society have recognized that having entrepreneurs and a functional business culture is very important and actually profitable. So most governments, even the American ones, give grants and support to new companies to prop them up. Even though again, they are the consequence of someone's personal choice - yet the taxpayer bears the burden. Sounds familiar?

Bearing children is a benefit to the society as a whole - someone has to work, someone has to pay taxes, etc etc. So as a society we support mothers by allowing them to take maternal leave, even if having a child is very much a personal choice.

Also I don't see anyone advocating that companies pay mothers through entirety of maternity pay - in most countries it's the public budget that does after some short initial time period.

>>People need to work. If enough people don't, we go back to the default state of reality: poverty, starvation, etc etc.

And within reason, people need to have children or the country you are part of won't have enough citizens to support it within few decades - that's the reality of life.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#333

Post by saiya-jin »

xibalba wrote: post #322
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…

> forcing women back into work This is not what happens. No one is being "forced" to do anything. Rather, free individuals (speaking from a U.S. centric viewpoint) make a choice to become pregnant and birth a child. It seems reasonable to me that the result of this private choice should not be the burden of others. Note that FMLA (again, U.S.-centric) grants unpaid leave. In other words, you can't be fired for certai…

> It seems reasonable to me that the result of this private choice should not be the burden of others.

Wow, clearly you are not a parent, and probably thats good for society. You know, parenting isn't a past time hobby of the privileged, but activity via which all of us came to existence. If we stop it, society, states and whole human civilization will collapse in 1 generation.

Nobody paying for social/medical/police etc services old ass xibalba would enjoy when retired.

But sure, lets maximize profits, lets raise a messed up generation with lack of strong parental touch in first years, child psychologists all agree there is no harm in that, right. I am sure that... 3%? 4%? extra income will make up for that.

As much as I admire the positive aspects what makes US so great, the negative aspects are such a horrible fucked up mess I politely say 'No, thank you' anytime offer comes from across the pond. Can't imagine raising family and growing old in such system, not once I've experienced what many western Europe countries offer.

Side info - recently Swiss improved paid paternal leave to 2 weeks. Just about take it off for my daughter. My company counted it into our social security dues. The added 0.05% of extra costs from each salary mean nothing, absolutely nothing, for anybody. It means the world to me. Thank you, Swiss.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#334

Post by 1-more »

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…

it's so depressing working a good job in the imperial core and having it be like this. The generations of exploitation and extraction we've waged against the natural world and the people outside of the imperial core would at least make some sense if we all got to have the good stuff stuff but we don't.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#335

Post by tibbydudeza »

My wife took a year off (she got 3 months salary) so I worked a second job in the evenings to make up the shortfall.

Thanks to my parents they only went to daycare when they were about 4 years old - the baby section of their daycare took in babies from 6 months old.

To me it looked like those Romanian orphanages you saw after the fall of Soviet era dictator.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#336

Post by tibbydudeza »

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…

Sorry to hear - you did the best under circumstances - you could not help her medically or otherwise but did the only thing in your control - make sure the insurance coverage was there.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#337

Post by DavidVoid »

danShumway wrote: post #227
mbesto wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Some European countries require the parental leave to be shared to some degree. Here in Sweden each parent gets 90 days of parental leave each, and the remaining 300 days can be split in whatever way the parents choose. You also don't have to take all the parental leave at once, you can spread it out over a few years (and 96 of the days can even be saved until the child is between 4 and 12 years old if you want).

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#338

Post by showerst »

burntoutfire wrote: post #326
cure wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's $2983 per month. Biggest costs of life are housing, food and transportation. With one person staying at home, both the cost of transpo and food go down (because: one less person commuting to job, everything can be home cooked and the person staying at home have time to shop smartly and save a lot thanks to it). This lives housing costs. Here, it's all about location. In many areas (assuming renting), you can h…

> That's $2983 per month.

Before taxes. That's in the area of 2400/mo after taxes [1]. My family of 3 pays around 600/mo for health insurance after employer subsidies, so call it 1800/mo. So after rent now you're living (with an infant!) on 800 a month. That's brutal.

My newborn burns nearly that much just on formula, diapers, and life-critical medicine.

[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/paycheck-calculator#nNffey40fm

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#339

Post by kingsloi »

vadfa wrote: post #329
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…

Sorry for your loss, but this is textbook appeal to emotion.

I don't want sympathy or want to invoke empathy. I've heard enough "I'm sorry for you loss" to last me many, many lifetimes.

I just want to share my 2c on how my/our situation was made worse, now my girl is gone, I feel like it would be a disservice to her if I sugar coated my experience. I would've loved to never have worked a single moment during that time. Also, I'm a British guy who used the NHS extensively before I moved here. So there's that.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#340

Post by angelzen »

TuringTest wrote: post #330
angelzen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is a case of metrics getting ahead of reality. Some circles have taken as an axiomatic truth that any disparity in wages between males and females is an intrinsic scandal. Perhaps there are some reasons for that, for example the tradeoff between forcing mothers back into the workforce vs. giving them ample time (order of 12 months) to recover and take care of the new born. For the not parents out there,…

> Some circles have taken as an axiomatic truth that any disparity in wages between males and females is an intrinsic scandal. All babies are created by two humans.* Why should the career of one of them be penalized for it? Why not instead create as a society the tools so that both can share the upbringing and care of the baby while the mother is recovering? * (although the parents are not always the same persons who…

Your question: "Why should mothers take care of infants?" A passing familiarity with mammal biology is required. FYI, babies do not subsist on hamburgers and fries.

Admittedly, it is very difficult to have this conversation when some people hold axiomatically that men and women are biologically interchangeable. Unless we can agree to a minimally reasonable set of differences between men and women in the reproductive realm, before and after birth, we won't get very far.

PS. There is nothing "penalizing" in taking care of an infant. It is a fundamental part of life. Some even see it as rewarding.

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