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French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

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Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#431

Post by read_if_gay_ »

matsemann wrote: post #391
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, but that really doesn't add much to the discussion... Norway has > 800x the oil reserves per capita of France and has not gone through what you could call a political crisis over the past few years regarding aligning the spending level of its welfare state with the economic and budgetary realities, with years of protests and riots, some of which are still ongoing. In the face of this it's quite a bold m…

Then don't compare to Norway. Compare to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland or any of the others mentioned elsewhere here. I also find your argument a bit weird. Why not start an discussion about if the cost is worth it (which is what you want to discuss) instead of picking on the details of the country in question?

> Why not start an discussion about if the cost is worth it

That’s exactly what GP did. He pointed out that whether the cost is worth it depends on how much you can afford. In Poland it’s two weeks, by the way.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#432

Post by fastball »

alex_duf wrote: post #175
fastball wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "structurally sexism", it's biology. Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery. Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off…

But you can't close the salary gap between men and women by only mostly having women taking childcare responsibilities. So if you introduce mandatory and equal leave for both parents, not only do you get happier parents, but you also don't advantage men over women for their biology. That's all there is to it really, pretty simple and already implemented in plenty of countries.

Yes, that's why I literally said I support longer paternity leave in the end of my comment.

Paternity leave is an example of society taking biological differences and the reality of bringing a child into the world (that it asks a helluva lot more of the mother than the father) and making everything more equitable.

The purpose of my comment was not to say paternity leave doesn't make any sense. It was to say that the lack of it is not an example of sexism. It's an example of men and women being different and therefore the non-egalitarian default being different for men and women. That's not sexism.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#433

Post by read_if_gay_ »

sveme wrote: post #374
marcusverus wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks love to talk about these marginal 'perks' in Social Democracies, and the benefits experienced by the least fortunate, but you never hear about the costs of these programs or their impact on the finances of the average household. All these great benefits are, of course, funded via massive taxation of the middle and upper classes. You can see the (relative) impact in the data, which reveal household incomes to be…

Does it matter if people are so much happier and feel so much more secure in nordic countries compared to the US?

Correlation is not causation. Happiness might be affected by a lot of things other than the respective social systems.

By the way, asking out of legitimate interest, do you have any statistics on that?

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#434

Post by amai »

woodpanel wrote: post #105
cluoma wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany also has quite generous parental leave. 14 months to split between parents as they see fit. But no single parent can take more than 12 and it's only 65%. 12 of the 14 months can be doubled as well, up to 24 months, at half the regular salary replacement. A good option if a parent wants to work part-time.

I can echo that. Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1]. I can only speculate as to why. 1) Our cultural wiring runs deeper than just "sex is a social construct" 2) The German system is still quite complicated. As countless online calculators and private consultancies helping you filling out the forms prove. As well as the above statistic itself, since financially it would make more sense if t…

It's simple: In the German system, it makes sense for the person earning less to stay at home, because that means the loss of income in the partnership will be minimized. Since men are still earning more in many relationships in Germany mostly women take the parental leave.

This issue could be fixed easily, by adding up the income of both partners and then paying 65% of the sum.

But instead in Germany you get 65% up to a maximum amount of 1800 Euro of the person taking the parental leave. So if your salary is higher than roughly 2800 Euro (after taxes/netto) you will get even less than 65% of your income during parental leave. So if there are two partners, one above 2800 Euro and one below it is clear that the one below should take the parental leave. So the mathematics of the German system together with a gender imbalance in salaries guarantees a conservative split of the parental leave.

If our government wouldn't be so incompetent one could think that they invented these rules on purpose. But that would imply that they can do math. And that is a conspiracy that is so absurd nobody would believe that.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#435

Post by misun78 »

black_knight wrote: post #188
pi-rat wrote: post #156

28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant. All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mou…

Indeed. In Norway fathers and mothers must each take 15 weeks. And then in total there are either 49 weeks (with 100% pay) or 59 weeks (with 80% pay), so you can divide the remaining weeks between the two. But there are some inequalities in the system still. For instance, the father can only take the shared weeks if the mother is in "activity" (working or studying). While in Sweden there is no such requirements. And…

Parents must take the leave? whats with such an involuntary enforcement?

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#436

Post by stephenitis »

throwaway62948 wrote: post #354

I work at one of the large U.S. tech companies and am currently on parental leave. Fathers get four months of leave at 100% pay, and my health insurance covered every penny of the $500k birth (there were a lot of complications). My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have this perk at this company, and I don’t take it for granted at all. It’s mind-blowing to me that U.S. companies are not required to offer any leave t…

500k for a lot of complications seems a tad excessive. Do you mind elaborating?

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#437

Post by throwaway62948 »

stephenitis wrote: post #436
throwaway62948 wrote: post #354

I work at one of the large U.S. tech companies and am currently on parental leave. Fathers get four months of leave at 100% pay, and my health insurance covered every penny of the $500k birth (there were a lot of complications). My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have this perk at this company, and I don’t take it for granted at all. It’s mind-blowing to me that U.S. companies are not required to offer any leave t…

500k for a lot of complications seems a tad excessive. Do you mind elaborating?

Sure. The delivery was at Lucile Packard and my wife had preeclampsia, so they had to induce. Labor was 24 hours and delivery was 4 hours, and our daughter came out not breathing. She had the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly around her neck and had also inhaled a lot of meconium. They immediately took her to the NICU and performed various procedures to get the meconium out. She wasn’t able to breath on her own for a over a week, but eventually she recovered and we were able to take her home. Delivery was $112k and the remainder was the NICU.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#438

Post by jahaja »

fastball wrote: post #428
jahaja wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think this is about economical efficiency?

Because that's reality? It's emergent behavior based off efficiency and the harsh realities of childbirth (i.e. men and women have very different parts to play in childbirth). It's not sexism.

What's your point? You said:

> It's more economically efficient [..] to extend that person's leave than to arrange for two separate leaves

This isn't about what's economically efficient, it's about what certain societies think is well spent money.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#439

Post by fastball »

jahaja wrote: post #438
fastball wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's reality? It's emergent behavior based off efficiency and the harsh realities of childbirth (i.e. men and women have very different parts to play in childbirth). It's not sexism.

What's your point? You said: > It's more economically efficient [..] to extend that person's leave than to arrange for two separate leaves This isn't about what's economically efficient, it's about what certain societies think is well spent money.

My point is literally the first sentence of my comment.

> It's not "structurally sexism", it's biology.

Re: French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

#440

Post by peterjussi »

setr wrote: post #169
car wrote: post #22

Compare this to 480 days of shared and paid parental leave in Sweden at 80% salary. The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...

I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy -- unless your job is entirely useless, the business must replace your position during your absence in order to continue normal operation; even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found.. So then what exactly do you return to? It can't be your old position exactly -- you were replaced. So its more like a vague promise that the busine…

Companies just plan for redundancy in roles so they are ready when people need to take parental leave or sabbaticals. It isn't that difficult for a company to handle, but companies in countries where this isn't the norm just plan and hire for it.
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