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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

#561

Post by em-bee »

refurb wrote: post #558
em-bee wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

to follow the existing examples, every child gets government money regardless of income. it's like UBI for minors.

and if you get a minimum wage job as an animation assistant doing inbetweening work, then the laws should make sure that the minimum wage is high enough that you can afford your living costs.

combined both measures will allow you to have children.

if you are self-employed and you are not earning enough money from your art you need to apply for unemployment benefits with all the conditions related to that.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#562

Post by meheleventyone »

sokoloff wrote: post #528
meheleventyone wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it’s three careers. I say just before it if you have two kids close together. Two years is a normal gap. So seven years of subsidy out of three forty year careers. The mother and two children each have forty years of “productivity”.

(I think) That only works if neither child is eligible for this leave during their career. If you imagine Adam and Betty have two kids Charlie and Debbie who have two kids Earl and Felicia who have Gary and Helen… each generation receives N years of leave income from (2M - N) years of work income. You can’t take Betty, Charlie, and Debbie’s work income (or total productivity) against just Betty’s leave income. I thin…

It’s quite hard to follow what you mean there so I’ll assume the extra detail is correct. If you wanted to model more detail think about the growth of the effect if those children have children. That really starts to drive down that percentage.

My point was to show roughly that worrying about the cost of productivity loss when having children is the only way to sustain human productivity doesn’t add up.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#563

Post by angelzen »

emodendroket wrote: post #554
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,…

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…

This is an orthogonal point. I don't see any provision mandating wages or promotions for periods when people are on leave, abled or disabled.

The argument assumes that all people receive the same pay and promotions for the same work. Wage differentials between people from the same age cohort appear because gap years, which are the human approach for infant care, lead to small but measurable delays in the mother's careers.

BTW, this is not an argument that all wage differentials that are observed in the real world are, or should be, explainable this way. It is simply a pushback against rigid Procrustean axioms that risk doing more harm that good.

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/your-employment-rights-in...

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#564

Post by drewzero1 »

nzmsv wrote: post #548
drewzero1 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a father.

True. I think a child would benefit the most from an involved male and a female figure in their lives, but even one is better than none. In other words, ideally that should read "and a father" ;)

Even better! :)

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#565

Post by TheCapn »

mabbo wrote: post #311
TheCapn wrote: post #70

My first child is due January. I sat down with my boss about a month or so ago and told him I'm intending to take parental leave. "No problem" he said, I told him my intention was to take the full 8 weeks I'm entitled to. He didn't say anything right away to that... eventually it was more of a "...that's not typical for the guys around here" We did a bit of back and forth. (I think he went to HR to find out he can't…

I'm about a month behind you, but the difference is that I'm in Canada. I'll be taking 8 weeks, and most people are asking "is that all?". My wife and I get to split 69 weeks, of which neither of us can take more than 61. She's going to take the max, plus her 15 weeks she gets post-birth (76 weeks total) and I'll take 8 right at the start. We get a small amount of government-paid employment insurance, and jobs will e…

I should have clarified that I'm Canadian as well. The 8 weeks I refer to are the extended benefits, my wife is taking the other 61.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#566

Post by TheCapn »

helloworld11 wrote: post #142
TheCapn wrote: post #70

My first child is due January. I sat down with my boss about a month or so ago and told him I'm intending to take parental leave. "No problem" he said, I told him my intention was to take the full 8 weeks I'm entitled to. He didn't say anything right away to that... eventually it was more of a "...that's not typical for the guys around here" We did a bit of back and forth. (I think he went to HR to find out he can't…

Without knowing your company in detail, based on what you describe and general business practices, I'd be willing to bet that they'd fire you in no time if you ever stopped providing value for them. So why be loyal at all? 8 weeks is crumbs, and you even had to fight for that. I mean if you've been a solid employee for X years, briefly asking for a bit of time off for a life changing event should be absolutely fine,…

>So why be loyal at all?

I got severely sick when I started working there... like 2 weeks in and I was hospitalized with a brain infection for a week + another couple weeks at home recuperating. They paid full wages during my absence.

When my father was dying from cancer they did the same thing as I helped move him to hospice and handle the estate.

There's been other things as well where they've gone above and beyond what an employer should do, and maybe "loyalty" isn't exactly how I should frame it, I do feel "safe" working there knowing I'm not about to be thrown out on my ass should something inconvenient happen.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#568

Post by mabbo »

maccolgan wrote: post #492
mabbo wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm about a month behind you, but the difference is that I'm in Canada. I'll be taking 8 weeks, and most people are asking "is that all?". My wife and I get to split 69 weeks, of which neither of us can take more than 61. She's going to take the max, plus her 15 weeks she gets post-birth (76 weeks total) and I'll take 8 right at the start. We get a small amount of government-paid employment insurance, and jobs will e…

The company (not your government) pays for 69 weeks of... nothingness? and then government also pays for the full education up to employment?

Hey, didn't see your reply until now but you're asking a very good question!

Throughout my life, I pay a small additional tax called "EI"- employment insurance. Everyone does. There's a yearly maximum of around $900 (CAD) and it scales based on income level.

The reward for this is that the government pays us $400/week (a little less I think) for those 69 weeks. That's not much, but it's enough to survive.

Overall in my life I likely won't come out ahead on this 'deal' but I'm okay with that. I'd rather live in a society where everyone gets this benefit than one where no one does. Kids grow up healthier, families are stronger, society is stronger. Lower-income families probably come out ahead overall from this, especially when you factor in daycare prices.

My employer's only obligation is that the job must be there when I get back, and punishment for taking my leave is forbidden. That said, there's nothing stopping them from doing more. My employer tops up my pay to 85% of my base salary for I believe 10 weeks of parental leave (might be 8 or 12, I forget).

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#569

Post by octokatt »

xibalba wrote: post #508
octokatt wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With compassion, may I say the following: Some pregnancies are not planned. Some sex is not consensual. Unless we have free abortions available, people with uteruses are sometimes not free to decide not to be pregnant. The decision to support pregnant people is a decision to support the baby. At some point, everyone reading this was a pregnancy, everyone reading this was helpless. One of the core functions of society…

You’ve really bent over backwards to make this about rape, unplanned pregnancies, and abortion. I don’t disagree about abortion, per se, but it’s a separate issue.

I respectfully disagree.

For policies like the ones being discussed, assumptions are being made that everyone involved is making their own decisions. I’m refuting the claim that every pregnancy is the result of informed decisions.

Other gray zones include things like “either my marriage is over or I’m going to try to get pregnant”, or even “I was told I was infertile”, because those are going to truly muddy the issue.

Re: Without parental leave I might be dead

#570

Post by freeflight »

lucaspm98 wrote: post #499
freeflight wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of countries with these socialized services have suffered from the corruption, bureaucracy, and taxation innate with government control. The majority of these countries rank better on these metrics than the US does. > This is with the notable exception of a few countries with vast natural resources providing an economic baseline I can only think of one notable exception on that front, that being Norway…

Scandinavian welfare system is only possible because Scandinavian countries are more or less small and homogeneous. Social stigma is huge part in making sure people do not freeload and do not abuse social safety nets. That social stigma will not work in big, diverse and marred by identity politics countries like the US or even Canada (in my opinion).

> That social stigma will not work in big, diverse and marred by identity politics countries like the US or even Canada (in my opinion).

The social system analogue to the US is not Canada, Canada's policies in that regard are way more resembling of European systems than the US's, that applies not only to welfare systems, but also crime and incarceration [0].

As such, Canada is very much an example of how at least part of these policies can also work in North America, even with its allegedly exceptional scale and diversity.

[0] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I

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