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Without parental leave I might be dead

nytimes.com

551–560 of 570 posts

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not untrue. With complete respect, I feel I must add however: Society on the other hand did not do the best it could have done – sheltered and cared for the people in this situation. It isn’t even efficient at any scale or context to just let it ride like this. This breaks people. Grief and burnout burns people up. They shouldn’t have had to keep powering the treadmill, shouldn’t have to had to do anything to…

Noted and agree with you i.r.o our western first world society but he was dealt a shitty deck and did the best he could with the cards dealt.

Absolutely true. Deeply, deeply respectable.

Thank you.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#552
post #400
post #388

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Uhh, it's 3 years where I live (though the welfare money for the last one and half year is very low and lots of mother go back to work before that) I would say 3 year is pretty good as kids starts to gain a lot from socializing after that age. Why would this be absurd? It's perfectly normal. Looking after a toddler is hard 7/24 work with little time to spare. Of course you can go to work and instead pay for a house c…

I believe in taking time away from work to raise kids. In fact, I am taking several years away from work now for that purpose. What I disagree with is who should pay for it. I'm paying for my living expenses and raising my child from my savings that I earned at my generous paying job. I think the government should pay for up to perhaps 3 months for raising kids (and it shouldn't be based on your salary, but tied to s…

I see your point but it smells like kids should be a privilege of the generously paid and financially intelligent.

In Europe the baby boomer generation reached retirement and in the meantime the number of kids per household decreased. There is not enough people to pay the pension of the old and many governments are motivated to increase the number of kids by any means - like making it a financially acceptable or even desired to have 3+ children.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#553
post #101

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> Even if the federal government picks up the bill, it's still a discontinuity in business, something an employer would want to avoid. IMO this as well is something where the DevOps slogan "if it hurts, do it more often" should be applied . The "discontinuity" of an employee leaving temporarily with months of warning in advance is the easy case . If that is a serious problem for your business, it's a failure of compa…

I don't think your analogy is a good one. Women go on maternity leave, not men. So if one group of people are the only ones who get hit by busses, and are in-fact expected to be hit by busses, who in their right mind would hire them?

Men are not invincible robots. They get sick, they quit. They may even gasp like to take paternity leave.

If your organziation isn't shitty, so you can handle a woman taking maternity leave, you also won't get fucked by people getting sick, and can offer paternity leave and sabbatical options to help you attract employees which, newsflash, has recently become rather difficult.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#554
post #213

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> 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...

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,…

I think it is instructive to compare this case to disability. There are perfectly rational reasons, from a cold economic perspective, that an employer would not want to hire any disabled employees, or that a business would not want to build amenities to accommodate them as customers. But we've decided that it is not to society's benefit to have a system wherein the disabled are routinely discriminated against, so we don't allow you to do those things. Why is this case different?

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#555

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>>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…

> So most governments, even the American ones, give grants and support to new companies to prop them up To what grants, specifically, are you referring? As someone who is active in the business formation space in the U.S., I’d absolutely love to get some free capital. Humans have been giving birth since the very beginning. The phenomenon of insisting companies fund child birth is a brand new idea. As in, only the las…

Well for one thing contraception methods were less effective and the wage labor relation didn't exist or was wildly different for most of that time.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subtract commuting time, pumping time, getting ready time, etc out of those 16 hours. And no, there is not going to be a study that shows a discernible difference in childhood outcomes. That’s an immeasurable metric. But it is known that babies extract milk and regulate milk production much preferably compared to pumps, from the woman and the baby’s perspective. And that benefit alone is worth the 0.1% a nation shave…

Why wouldn't we just give the moms a choice? They have unique duties for child rearing so it makes sense to accommodate that as a society. But not all moms might want to partake since there are consequences to their careers (you don't gain experience in your job when you're not doing your job), plus some people hate being stuck home all day.

We did and do give the moms a choice. Look at where it has gotten us. Kids don’t breastfeed as long as they should, labor markets are such that women feel they need to go back to work and pump.

The theory is nice, the reality is less so.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumping exists. Formula exists. And it isn't like we see balanced childcare responsibilities once children are weaned. The disparity in expectations for men and women in childcare roles extend far beyond the biological realities of childrearing.

"The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants be exclusively breastfed for about the first 6 months with continued breastfeeding along with introducing appropriate complementary foods for 1 year or longer." https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/faq/index.htm Pumping is challenging, if not downright degrading. Ask a working mother. It also doesn't work as well as you might think, both the baby and the mother…

If I were trying to argue that my ideas were not sexist I probably would not appeal to "the ancients," who also had ideas about, for instance, the unwisdom of letting your wife leave the house on her own.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#558
post #535
post #514

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What’s wrong with “only people who have enough money should have children”? I mean, that’s just being a responsible parent.

as a society we should not allow people to get paid so little that even a full-time salary is not enough for them to have children. that is what's wrong. if we want a balanced society then we need to enable everyone to have children, not just those who are able to get well paying jobs. in austria and germany this is solved with giving parents tax breaks and unconditional extra money for each child to offset the highe…

So if I choose a career as a not so good artist the government should subsidize me so I can have kids?

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#559
post #458
post #291

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> factually justified (i.e. anti-natalist) position... I want to hear from people who disagree with the original comment Does your mom agree with this "factually justified" position? She might have more patience with you than you'll find among strangers on the internet.

Please don't get personal about this. It can only land as a personal attack and make things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How does one encourage introspection, without getting even the slightest bit personal?

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#560
post #559
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't get personal about this. It can only land as a personal attack and make things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How does one encourage introspection, without getting even the slightest bit personal?

Perhaps by talking about the introspection you yourself have done?
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