Something between the European standard expectation of a year's leave and the American top-end norm of 12/6 primary/secondary is probably the right answer here.
But this is all a tangent. It is totally unreasonable to criticize Basecamp for policies that are on the high side of normal in the market they operate in.
Really, what's happening is that Basecamp has been forthright about something most companies are deliberately opaque about, and people on message boards are beating them up for it. If their policies were bad, I wouldn't care, but their policies on parental leave are in fact quite good for this market, so this is some bullshit.
Does it create a suboptimal situation at the workplace. Sure, sometimes. However, since the management probably have taken long parental leaves themselves they are very understanding and willing to accommodate the next generation of parents.
In short - troublesome in the short run for certain companies, very beneficial for society as a whole in the long run.
Exactly. Low fertility rates is something that most rich countries struggle with, so to me it does seem like a good idea to invest in good childcare policies.
Here in Canada, we get a year that can be divided in different ways. Almost everyone takes it when they have kids, so it's the norm. We pay for it (60% salary to a hard max IIRC) through "Employment Insurance" which is basically a jointly funded payroll tax. Employers can choose to top up if they want. Some do.
Honestly, I can't imagine any other way of getting through that first yet without this set up.
Easy, just take a look at companies in EU outside of Germany. The three years of paid maternity leave is slowly turning into lifetime unemployment for a lot of people. Then we act surprised when the companies are scared of hiring full time and decide to leave and take most of the jobs away with them.
I'm pretty much always on the side of workers in any discussion of labor vs. employers...but, there's also small business to consider. I think there's some kind of happy medium to be found, where workers are treated well and small businesses can survive long enough to become somewhat bigger businesses. In the US this is codified into law; rules and regulations that apply to large companies may not apply to smaller mom-and-pop shops.
My company couldn't afford to give an employee more than a few months paid time off; we're a four-person company, and we'd literally run out of money if a quarter of our work wasn't being done for months. On the other hand, if we had a hundred employees, we'd barely notice if one or two people were out for a while.
As others have pointed out, maternity/paternity leave in other Western countries are heavily subsidized through government assistance programs. The costs are not completely shouldered by the business.
I'm not opposed to such subsidies being implemented in the US.
Japanese leave policies are historically pretty simple: the government says you get X weeks, buuuuut X is an inconvenient number for us, so you probably want to look around the room and conform to the practices of your coworkers, which are closer to Y days. Also, for you ladies: remember that the traditional expectation is that you have unlimited maternity leave when you leave formal employment after marrying or having a child. (Some re-enter when the child goes to school. This is largely not compatible with career advancement, with rare exceptions like e.g. translation/interpretation.)