You can frame it the way you have if you want to, but to some cultures, having the government tell people what they can and can't do is the only way to ensure true liberty for all.
...that is just to examplify that the freedom from/to distinction requires a very specific worldview to function as a robust differentiator.
I see how you can frame it as "freedom not to have reproduction affect your career". But for one thing that still won't work. Time off is time off and income correlates with total hours worked in your life. For another, I don't think all of society agrees that we should pay for your freedom to have children without incurring any costs. We don't need more children, the world population is still increasing. There's this strange train of logic now that because aging populations become poor (because we massively overpromised on pensions) we need native children. 1. We can use immigration. 2. If your system cannot support the decreasing population necessary for the world to get through the next centuries, you need to fix the system not encourage breeding.
Also what about incels, gay people, people who just don't want children? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class peoples ability not to have their kids interfere with their law career.
In practice if you're young, junior or working for a jerk (or a high hours constant death march startup) the choice becomes work through and let partner do it alone, or get fired. For the rest it is a case of how confident you are in your tenure, seniority and perhaps number of years in the workplace how you will react to your employer hinting strongly to just take a couple of days.
What's needed is strong enough legislation such that anyone who wants to support their partner can, and the few who have to work can do also. I'd much prefer for it become an accepted norm, and for those who don't to be the unusual case. It has benefits for both the parents and the child.
Your last point immediately begs the question what about all the rest? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class kid's education, healthcare, child allowance etc. Why on earth are they paying for pensions of those no longer working? That way lies the abolition of all social safety nets and ultimately pay yourself or sink. I don't want to live there thank you. :)
If you're poor/young bad boss/start up and have kids it's tough yes. It's also tough if you don't have kids, and they're a choice.
It's kind of pointless to argue left/right, dismiss me with a label if you want. This only exists in a few very left wing countries so I don't think opposing it puts me on a fringe somewhere.
The point is that maternity/paternity leave is the rest of society subsidising parents, who are not doing anything useful by adding to existing overpopulation. Not whether I'm left wing or right wing. If you want to make life easier then I'd go for basic income over selective welfare that disproportionately benefits the already privileged.
That's a very surprising claim. All the psychological consensus that I've seen says that the continuous presence of people of reference (preferably the parents) is a positive influence on the early development of children.
Giving birth ranges from "extremely exhausting" to "life-alteringly horrendous" (sometimes life-threateningly). Breastfeeding, something widely recognized as extremely beneficial to the infant, is incredibly demanding, and they will do it 10+ times a day when they're newborns. If nothing else, we're mammals - our infants really aren't ready to be dumped in to daycare when they're 2 weeks old.
As it stands, we do not have a way to take the burdens I named above and split them between fathers and mothers equally. In light of that, women will _always_ have to deal with employers worried about whether they'll have a kid. Making paternity leave equal levels the playing field.
Instead of making it "mandatory" you can make it "use it or lose it" and that might do the trick, unless you work for a horrible company (though many people do...). Nobody seems to mind mandated vacation days where I live. In fact, it's the only way to make sure vacation is actually taken (see also: BS "unlimited vacation")
Having children is a choice.
If you're about to say that women will be discriminated against on the basis that they might have children, it would be easy to allow them to be docked pay. This has an immediate "ugh" reaction because as a society we put mothers and bearing children on a pedestal. Having children is a bad thing for the world, and those who choose to have children are definitely the more privileged.
You do end up in a hole where "it is a choice but everyone who takes it is penalized" is the actual result.
(at least for some time)
If it is out beneficial, it is not a choice anyway or one only rich can afford. You said it yourself.
However, it's worth noting that countries with high gender equality (including shared parental leave) tend to have below-replacement birthrates. It kind of makes sense that letting people have a kid and stay in the workforce means fewer kids - being a working parent with 1 kid is hard enough (even with leave). Even with fully shared parental leave, having a kid is more expensive if you have a career. By contrast, if having a kid knocks you out of the workplace entirely it makes the cost of having another lower. My wife and I have a kid and we have indeed thought "well, if we have two kids the creche fees nearly double, and the math doesn't work out, so if we're going to stay a two-income family we really can only have one".
And we all end up paying for crap we don't want to. Buying a house is a choice but before I left the US my taxes subsidized the insanely stupid mortgage interest tax deduction. I HATE paying for roads through taxes. I think they should be completely tolled and made to support themselves, and that if the externalities were priced in most travel would be via bike/ebike/walking/public transport. But I don't get much choice; my taxes pay for them. We have sprawling roads _everywhere_, there's no peace and quiet _anywhere_, and civilisation (including today's children) may die a horrible death as a result.
That's oversimplified as there more options and scenarios but the fairly common situation. Like you say it takes away women being seen as such a liability from becoming mothers from what I saw in my little bubble while living there for a few years. Also as fathers have all this time off it encourages the mother back to the workforce. And for me it really helped in my day to day baby duties involvement.
I've brought this up many times to people pushing for better women's rights in the workforce as something they should fight for if they do want a more equal workplace vs more an egocentric position of leave/benefits for themself.
I somewhat agree. If we want to level the playing field, we can’t have extra rights and priveleges for women because clearly they become a liability.
I think it is necessary but not sufficient though. I read here about github and the unlimited vacation policy which in practice is a no vacation policy. Just because men can take off doesn’t mean they will at least in the short term. We must keep this policy stable for decades to effect change.
> One way of handling this is making paternity and maternity leave nearly equal, and mandatory.
"mandatory" means making paternity leave compulsory for employees. I could be wrong, though.
Sometimes, a right or measure has to become mandatory to ensure people enjoy it.
If you get penalized for not voting all the modern democratic idealism which portraits voting as a right is pretty stale.
I completely get why the classic Greeks came up with it, though. They were obviously far more tribal in their culture.
The problem isn't that maternity leave disrupts companies individual companies. So does sleep, and they're both part of normal human life. The problem is that the system in effect has the effect of a) discriminating against woman and b) suppressing the birth rate. If you are planning at a national level, suppressing the birth rate for a tiny economic boost right now is a high road to nowhere.
And the birth rate will go up if men are forbidden to work for half a year when having a child? That seems highly doubtful, it might as well go further down because some people actually like their work.