Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Without parental leave I might be dead

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 570 posts

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#461

Post by CheezeIt »

pertymcpert wrote: post #435
jseban wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm against it. Why give people less responsibility and less freedom, as they get smarter and more educated. And why revert to a more costly and inefficient public sector to achieve this. Seems like moving in the absolute wrong direction to me. Socialism and "free stuff" is something that I'm absolutely against in every way. And people have full control over having children. I see no point whatsoever in having paid p…

Do you think that's the right thing to do from a moral standpoint? Are you aware of how callous you are?

It’s callous to not give people free money, that you took from other people?

Is it callous to throw criminals in jail? Is it callous to expect people to save money?

Maybe principles, morality, and justice are callous.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#462

Post by pertymcpert »

smabie wrote: post #459
pertymcpert wrote: post #321

The frequency of people on HN who think that paid parental leave isn't important is frankly disgusting. I'm so disappointed with this community.

You are disgusted that people have different opinions?

If you can be disgusted by what someone says, then of course you can be disgusted by different opinions. Opinions can express the best of humanity, or it's absolute worst.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#463

Post by sokoloff »

meheleventyone wrote: post #401
echelon wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to find reasonable thresholds and weigh the societal pros and cons. > The amazing thing to me is you think the OP was asking for something unbelievable. The five years that OP alluded to is a really long time to not be working. That's 5/40 years for any given career (for a single child), meaning one eighth of a childfree person's productivity has to cover for it. At least at this extreme scale. > Both of u…

Three months each with six months shared. My friends and coworkers who’ve lived in the US describe pre-school childcare as dystopian. Even when expensive. If you think of it as 5/(40 * 2) or if you had two kids relatively close together 7/(40 * 3) the math is significantly better. It’s also very telling that caring for kids is not seen as being productive.

Where does the 40*3 term come from? I'm assuming the 5/(40*2) is 5 years of subsidy out of two 40-year careers. I can't figure where the 3 term is coming from unless it's 2 children from 3 total people or something else that I'm missing.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#464

Post by pertymcpert »

CheezeIt wrote: post #461
pertymcpert wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that's the right thing to do from a moral standpoint? Are you aware of how callous you are?

It’s callous to not give people free money, that you took from other people? Is it callous to throw criminals in jail? Is it callous to expect people to save money? Maybe principles, morality, and justice are callous.

What a pointless comment. It's much more nuanced than giving people free money. Next you'd be saying it's not callous to not help someone out of a burning building unless they paid their taxes for the fire fighters.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#465

Post by bettysdiagnose »

jseban wrote: post #419
pertymcpert wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually proposing that as a solution? Are you against paid parental leave?

I'm against it. Why give people less responsibility and less freedom, as they get smarter and more educated. And why revert to a more costly and inefficient public sector to achieve this. Seems like moving in the absolute wrong direction to me. Socialism and "free stuff" is something that I'm absolutely against in every way. And people have full control over having children. I see no point whatsoever in having paid p…

By your logic the state shouldn't pay for school for children either. It does though because it's an investment, the country is better off for having an educated and literate population. I suspect that one day free childcare will be viewed similarly as free education—something that may cost money but is widely accepted as "worth it" for the sake of society. Anyway I always struggle to understand the all-to-frequent hyper-American hyper-individualistic opinions that are often found on this website. Always seem utterly detached from reality and lacking in basic empathy.

Tbh if you really want to be logically coherent then I encourage you to try to defend ending free education for kids.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#466

Post by bettysdiagnose »

pertymcpert wrote: post #439
bluesquared wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an 18-mo old now. My company "generously" offers 2 weeks of paid parental leave. I went through similar conversations as you, only I was merely asking to use 2 weeks of PTO after my 2 weeks of paid parental leave for a total of 1 month of time off. My management and HR refused that request, I was told that my option was take the 2 weeks of paid leave and then you can take unpaid leave (the legally mandated FML…

The US is full of psychopaths. Just look at the comments in this thread. This amount of backlash against even maternity leave would be incredible in civilized countries.

There does seem to be something uniquely perverse and wicked about US society (at least among the developed nations), and I say that as someone who nevertheless broadly admires the US. So incredibly religious and prone to moralising and yet so utterly, utterly indifferent (at best) towards each other. Baffling.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#467

Post by giantg2 »

999900000999 wrote: post #395
giantg2 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"America's the only county that doesn't offer parental leave, it's not radical to say this leads to poor outcomes." You mean paid parental leave? You should be able to take unpaid parental leave under FMLA for medical reasons. America is not the only country. It depends on if you mean developed country or some other missing adjective. Also, you said parental leave. Many countries only offer maturity leave, and not pa…

>You mean paid parental leave? You should be able to take unpaid parental leave under FMLA for medical reasons. No working class person can just take 6 months off and still make rent. In many countries you can take leave before having a kid or after. America lacks any such framework, or general worker protection. A family member of mine missed significant time from work due to a difficult pregnancy. Lucky the kid was…

Perhaps people should look into disability insurance for longer issues. It would still cover other medical issues too. I'm guessing the person in your example needed more than 3 months off, otherwise they would have been protected. If they were protected, there are lawyers who will take a strong case on a contingency basis.

Where do we draw the line for when a person can be fired - 3 months, 6 months, 12 months? If one is out for 6+ months, their replacement would likely be up to speed and would have to be laid off (assuming same capacity). At some point it makes more sense for the person who is out to seek a new job and allow the current worker to continue.

I don't have RSUs, and I make a lot less than most on this site. I am lucky that my employer provides 10 days of paid family leave in a rolling 12 months. I also have disability insurance. The insurance is attainable for most people (depends on income level but could be as low as $10-15 per month). I think many people don't even think about it. It would be great if our schools taught useful stuff like this.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#468

Post by moron4hire »

htrp wrote: post #434
moron4hire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For people who don't know... Deloitte is a literal partnership so every hour you aren't working and billing is directly impacting the income of your boss (the partner).

Most consultancies operate this way, not just ones organized as a partnership. My boss and his boss weren't partners. I think it had to go up two more levels to finally hit a partner, though there were always other partners involved in the projects (that's part of the grift of partnerships, load up as many high-hourly rate partners as possible).

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#469

Post by foogazi »

showerst wrote: post #338
burntoutfire wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you make less than 35k a year ?

ACA has subsidies for lower income households

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#470

Post by cloudfifty »

jseban wrote: post #371
cloudfifty wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this doesn't seem to be happening. Very well off people in the US still have very very modest vacations and parental leave, very expensive day care etc. What's even the upside if you're just trading universal tax to paying a for-profit corp monthly instead? Skipping the queue through wealth instead of need?

I suspect that "very well off" people in the US most likely have only one breadwinner and one stay at home parent more or less full time. And/or a nanny. The upside like I said, is that you save all that unnecessary work in the bureaucracy around the parental leave systems. Just look at sweden for example, it's a huge mess around the parental leave, they have a centralized agency now to micro manage every single hous…

> Just look at sweden for example

Lucky for me I happen to be Swedish and can call you out on that absolute garbage FUD post that doesn't in the slightest reflect the general Swedish opinion of the parental leave system.

Du borde skämmas, dagisnivå.

Post reply on HN