If I gave you the choice of two employees, one of whom would take 12 weeks of paid leave and one who would take 2 weeks of paid leave, which would you choose?
If you offered both sexes 12 weeks of paid leave, you wouldn't have to make this decision.
I believe some European states solve this by having the state cover ~60% of your wage while on leave so that it's not a giant burden for companies
I think we should strive to have equal maternity/paternity leave, but let’s not deny the origins of the current reality.
(as it happens, fathers can breastfeed, albeit not literally. Mothers can pump breastmilk for fathers to feed to the child, or they can use formula. It's a perfectly viable way to raise a child, and people do)
My point is that OPs argument holds some water. Notably, it suffices to support the statement 'women are more likely to want to be care-taker than men'. There remains an argument about magnitude, and compensating effects, but there is a difference.
Paternal investmemt has at most 6M years (time since split from chimps who have almost none)
When I express my sadness that I have to work and can’t be with children all day long (same complaint my father and grandfather had), my wife often jokes that I should find a husband. It’s funny, but it’s ultimately true. Men are simply better able to do the sorts of things I take on in my family and women at the things my wife does
How do you accomplish that without violating the right to privacy? If a man keeps coming into work and his partner is pregnant, nobody has to know.
The disadvantage women have is that they can't hide a pregnancy forever. Men can go to extreme lengths to hide their relationships. Although rare, it is not unheard of for a man to have two families at the same time, each one hidden from the other, and maintain this state of affairs for years before getting caught (otherwise we'd never hear about it).
Also multiple marriages are illegal in Western countries.
The fact is, an employer has no right to know what, if any, relationships the employee has, let alone the pregnancy status of them.
The fact that employers discriminate against pregnant employees is the problem we should be addressing directly.
The tax forms might be a key: Require everyone to be honest about their underage children, whether or not they are dependents, and give the option to claim fewer dependents on their tax forms.
Yet another option is to handle it much like FMLA. The employer doesn't get the right to know exactly what is going on and the doctor can use medical codes instead of plain English. My ex's psychiatrist did this when he needed time off for a major mental illness (he later went on disability for said illness). The employer doesn't have to know, but he'll need similar notice.
I would hope a reasonable person would never advocate for such intrusion.
Birth records are already there. Most employers won't look unless law, and I agree this isn't the best way to do it. However, if some time off is mandatory, it'd be reasonable for the state to inform the father he's required to take time off after the baby. Following the law would be his responsibility: The employer would only be forced to comply if they knew.
There are already regulations (either through law or company policies) about adding a child onto your health insurance. Most times, folks have to upgrade their health insurance to a family plan if it is their first child. For other children, they already have to report that to health insurance so the child is covered. A reminder from the insurance that the law requires parental leave as well as maternal leave would be prudent. These folks already are handling your information now.
FMLA is already in place. These folks already handle health records, and as mentioned, the reason can stay hidden from employers to an extent.
This is a draconian idea. Besides, employers don't want it! If they didn't want you coming to work, they would lay you off. Otherwise they're going to look the other way. Families living on the edge will do anything to avoid this problem, including leaving the father's name off the birth certificate, if it comes to that.
Perhaps increasing the scope of the worse hire will make discrimination impractical, but it is still going on while it's at roughly 50%.
You can somehow make companies unable to discriminate by relationship status, and that would push it into "age bracket" discrimation.
I believe the problem is more fundamental and a cultural solution is required.
It's all about the culture. Get the culture right and the decrimination goes away.
That is, I'd propose we let some government pay the maternity leave, and finance it from income tax.
This would still exist in this world. You're still down an employee. So you don't hire women or married men.
Also, it doesn't actually happen.
Though, I would probably fund it via a payroll tax so it could remain employer-paid. I don't think it makes any difference to the economics whether you tax the employee or the employer, but changing who pays is an additional decision you'd need to explain and that would be attacked by political opponents. A payroll tax is a smaller change and equally effective, so it's the better option.
I can understand how an employer gets concerned about an employee being gone for 3 or 4 months and whether or not they admit it selecting/biasing against that possibility in hiring rather than just figuring out how to deal with it.
A better solution would just unpaid parental leave for both sexes, with a stipend paid for by the government.
The idea of paying people some percentage of their salary while on parental leave is an incredibly regressive policy and should be banned.
People who make more money for working make more money for not working. That's literally the definition of regressive.
To quote Wikipedia: "In terms of individual income and wealth, a regressive tax imposes a greater burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich: there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer's ability to pay, as measured by assets, consumption, or income."
And that's assuming the government takes the money from thin air. If the government gets the money via a progressive tax, then distributes it in a flat manner, it's overall a progressive tax.
For example, a speeding ticket is a regressive system, because a $200 dollar ticket is a lot more damaging to a poor person than a rich person.
Yes, apparently-flat taxes can sometimes be regressive, for example a flat sales tax can be somewhat regressive because poor people spend a higher percent of their income compared to rich people. But this thread isn't about sales tax, so I don't think the flat tax in this situation is regressive.
Man do I have bad news for you, my company gives people bonuses when they have children.
You want a steady population level, whether via births, or immigration, or both.
We don't want an aging population that has to be supported by a shrinking working-age population, but we don't want to be trapped in a growth bubble either. We want sustainable population with ever increasing quality of life due to scientific and technological advancement.
Population growth might be truly desired if we get to colonizing other planets…
Let’s stop pretending that this is some fantastical idea. Good employers in the United States do this today. Employers across the world do much more than this. Or perhaps you’re ignorant of Sweden’s 240 days of paid parental leave per parent?
We could cap it to only 2 or 3 times per person, to prevent someone just having a bunch of kids for money (although, as a parent, the idea that six months of salary would make having a kid financially beneficial is laughable)
Then I won't notify the company when I've had a child. Simple as.
Don't consider going down the road of "you must declare what is happening in your private life to your private employer" as someone else did either, without at least considering what an absolute breach of privacy that would involve.
There are arguments to be made that this right _should_ exist, but since it doesn't currently its not a reason to stop mandatory leave
Women “need” to take more than zero days off. That’s true, at least in our modern conception of child rearing. Both parents should take at least two months off, especially in the current system where people don’t have much community or family support.
Where do I sign to veto my paternity leave?
As a social responsibility it's not on private businesses to cover the cost. Pay for it through taxation.
Until then - my choice is a competitive advantage.
aka, the sociopathic mentality.
Empathy is not the be all and end all. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...
https://psychcentral.com/lib/neuroscience-sheds-light-on-why...
That's just a law away. Some countries do have private businesses to cover the cost.
Private businesses are not holy cows.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I don't think I'm in a minority.
The scam is that I'm paying for their much better retirement that I will have, considering how population evolves.
So unless drastic measures are taken now, crap retirement is waiting for us. No need to be a math genius to see. Some people is confident that the problem can be solved with taxes, but that's just wishful thinking.
Obvious solution: increase people that will pay in the future. Problem is we have a sky high unemployement. Even if we allow more inmigration, there are no jobs for them.
Another one: using a "capitalization" system. Instead of spending, save what we pay for later. Problem is no party will do that. A few weeks ago there was a massive demostration demanding retirement is updated with inflation. Everybody agrees that our elders deserve the best. Even a gradual transition to capitalization (the most reasonable measure) would cause the party defending it to sink.
Edit: in my previous comment there's a "that" where there should be a "than", maybe that caused a misundertanding?
One of the solutions to this is litigation, like in other countries, and burying any company that does it to the ground (including with consumer backslash and media shaming).
"Matching paternity leave" doesn't solve the problem for single mothers -- and it just provides a broader target to discriminate against.
Isn't that an improvement? If we could broaden it entirely such that everyone falls under the net of "potentially long leave taking" then effectively there would be no discrimination.