I believe it is. As a society, we've decided that being able to continue the population is more important than the fortunes of any particular startup.
Maybe we could take this out of the hands of the startup and have society subsidize it?
I'm writing from Canada. Mother and/or father can share up to 35 weeks of paid leave under the national insurance program. This maxes out at, I think, approx $500 per week. It's not a lot. But it helps.
Regarding societal values, this the same program that would normally pay you temporarily if you were laid off (not by choice). Normally you wouldn't be eligible to collect benefits if you willingly left a job. Pregnancy is generally considered to be a choice, so I think making these benefits available to parents shows society does value the choice to parent and will subsidize it.
Parents who adopt a child receive significant additional benefits on top of the standard allowance.
Recently there have been changes to the program to improve benefits for self-employed. As we on HN know ... sometimes a startup founder isn't "employed" or receiving salary in the usual sense and historically it was difficult for such professionals to receive employment insurance benefits but it's changing.
Anyways, progress? :-)
This. I'm writing from Australia- it looks like we only get $622.10 for 18 weeks, but it seems like a nice middle ground to support new parents. At that low price I would probably agree that 35 weeks is reasonable.
I get confused when people argue strongly against the middle ground position. I don't even want to have kids but I don't begrudge the use of public money in this way- it's a direct investment in the future of society which shields both parents and businesses from undue financial stress without being profligate or forcing too much ideology on the rest of us.
Err no. It wasn't long ago that a family could survive well on a single income with the mother at home, cars paid, schooling sorted and food on the table. Not even remotely feasible on a single income now, unless you're talking executive pay.
Society has by and large chosen to abandon the family when it comes to supporting reproduction. Hell, we're told that we aren't reproducing at rates enough to replace us and that the only solution is bringing in cheap immigrants (got to keep those wages down) rather than making having more kids more accessible to the people already here.
Society has chosen rabid capitalism at virtually every cost possible.
"Oh, I have cancer. But at least I'll be saving money on haircuts soon!"
... not quite good enough.
"Going on an air trip with your family of four? Well, if you divert your attention to handling four parachutes, you're more likely to make a mistake, so you'd better just prepare one parachute just your yourself. That way, when the plane's in its terminal dive, you can abandon your family to their deaths and make it out alive."
Something more like that, although that's absurd.
Your view of the situation is inverted and immoral. A relationship is what might actually make life worth living for you. Your skills are how you get a job, and "ten years of home-making" just means that your lonely, pathetic existence, post-relationship, has a few less luxuries in it.
Someone in an abusive relationship is well-served by getting _out_ of that relationship. If they have no job skills, they're subject to crippling financial pressure to remain in a situation that's harmful to them, in addition to all the other pressure they're already under.
It is not degrading for a parent to choose to prioritize family matters over income.
It is degrading for society to tell a person what their personal priorities will be based on a chromosome.
https://www.google.com/search?q=stay+home+mother+feminism
...and you'll find quotes like:
Feminism doesn’t see our child-rearing, much less all that goes with it, as valuable. There is no glory, no glass ceiling in poo-wiping, or mac and cheese cooking, or alphabet-teaching. There isn’t even value in breastfeeding, which you’d think would be vaunted in feminist circles for using the female body for something only women can do. Alas, it’s just a ball-and-chain, as Huffington Post says: “Breastfeeding has become the last legitimate ‘women’s work’ — the only argument remaining for a gendered division of labor that argues that women’s place is at home with the children.”
...
...we should be doing what we want to do, and what we want to do is not take care of someone else. How could we possibly wa ...nt that? The idea of our happiness is absurd to mainstream feminism.*
...
(Simone de Beauvoir) “No woman should be authorized to stay home to raise her children. Women should not have that choice, because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
...
(Sarrah le Marquand) “Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed"
Yes it is. Just not if you want to live in really nice cities and have a ton of stuff.
If you want to live in a suburb, commute, not own much in the way of technology, and own a house 30% of the size of what people live in now, then yeah, that's doable.
Housing costs have inflated and that's worthy of note. But so have our expectations of comfort and life, and those have outpaced earning potentials.
All of this from a single, blue collar worker's income. The same job that pays $13 an hour today. I, working in the tech industry with a great paying job in a rural city, with a working wife, couldn't begin to reproduce their lifestyle without incurring absurd amounts of debt.
You'll have a hard time convincing me that it's our expectations which have changed the most.
Where I live now (Seattle), hell no. But Seattle was a lot different 30 years ago.
And if I just kept my last job w/ a salary in the mid 100Ks and worked remotely, I'd live like a king in Cleveland. I literally wouldn't know what to buy or where to live. In Seattle I live in a "bad" area in a townhome that I could barely afford during the dip and now I won the idiot's lottery and am sitting on a property that has appreciated by double.
But through it all, Cleveland still exists. And I could easily live in a suburb of Cleveland and get a decent enough bungalow boring house for under 100k that doesn't need any work done to it except a paint job.
I bet I'd get even more value in Detroit or maybe Pittsburgh.
And all this is because women now have careers, instead of being stay-at-home moms?
(Apologies if I misunderstood your comment. I'm trying to connect it to what the GP said.)
That said, it's highly likely there is some correlation between wages (and housing costs) and the doubling the potential labor pool, but that's another topic for another day.