I'd be all for policies that supported caring for an ailing spouse or parent also. But let me tell you, taking care of a new baby is about as far from "time off" as it's possible to get. It's hard, stressful work, and if you discourage paternity leave or imply that it's equivalent to vacation time, you're implying that it's womens' work.
If you took some time off to do something else equally taxing I would normally refer to it as time off, probably with a caveat in day to day situations, just like if they were on parental leave.
Thinking about it I probably wouldn't if someone was taking time away from work for reserves work (military, fire service, etc).
Parents get more time off than non-parents and that's unfair? That's an understandable perspective but here's another one.
1) Children don't get to choose whether to be born. Infants and post-partum women are vulnerable people and giving parents time off helps protect these vulnerable people. Looking at this from the perspective of what's best for the child it's clear that paternal leave is very important.
2) People have a choice of where to work and at least in the US, employers are free to choose compensation that they feel will attract the workers they want. I know several people who have chosen where to work based on paternal leave policies.
3) Life is unfair. If I made a list of injustices in the world an infant spending a few extra weeks with daddy isn't even in the first 1000.
2) This is recently becoming a national issue, as it well should be. There needs to be a mechanism in place to protect the employees surrounding parental leave if it's going to be enshrined in national law. I don't think you can make the argument that businesses don't have a history of pushing the costs of regulation onto their employees when possible.
3) By that argument bringing up parental leave at all is a completely moot point. We have nearly 438,000 children in the foster system.[0] 45% of all child deaths are from malnutrition.[1] If I made a list of injustices in the world, a parent being unable to spend every waking moment with their child for a couple months isn't even in the first 1,000.
[0]: http://www.childrensrights.org/newsroom/fact-sheets/foster-c... [1]: https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-a...
>There's never been more access to birth control or knowledge about the reproductive process.
There's never been more access to knowledge about nutrition and preventative health, and yet diabetes and other lifestyle diseases are at all time highs. The US now spends >$200/billion annually on diabetes alone. As a matter of public healthy policy, should we be able to hold people with medical diseases or conditions more accountable based on how much public health information is available?
No one is being sent back to work without medical leave from their attending physician, who is charged with determining when the mother is healthy enough to go home and can go back to work. I absolutely do not, under any circumstances, believe in any being or institution ever getting between a mother and her doctor's right to determine what is medically best for her and her child. That is essentially what society was built to protect.
2) I don't follow what you're trying to say here? If the fed. govt. mandates paternity leave the unfairness will be a bigger issue? Sure but right now FMLA is the law and it allows unpaid leave to care for family.
3) I agree it's moot but I didn't bring up paternity leave, the grandparent did.
That includes you. You can be gay or a Catholic priest, and you benefit.
Ignoring the fact that you had no choice and that benefits may have been different back when you were born, it isn't fair for you to take these benefits as a child and then deny them to the next generation.
The problem isn't that we have too many natalist incentives. The problem is that we don't have enough of them! The replacement rate is below replacement in general, and it's worse in cities.
If children, fine. But I don't begrudge people who do.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/30/567615510...
What I begrudge is being forced to donate _my_ time and money to subsidizing those who have children, at the expense of the things that _I_ value. Subsidizing the creation of the 385,001th child born today is quite low on the things that I would spend money on given the choice. I would rather spend that money on anti-aging research, or prison reform, or a new startup. And if I were inclined to give money to help children, I wouldn't give it to the relatively wealthy parents of children in the US, but to the children of parents who make less than $2/day.
Not everyone will have children, but that are necessary for a vibrant, healthy economy (in the long term) and to provide societal continuance. Therefore, the benefit provided to parents is valuable, both to the parents and to society.
Just provide more time off to everyone and don’t bucket it into specific purposes. Why does your employer need to know whether you’re using your allotted time off for vacation, taking care of a kid, or due to illness? I’d argue it’s none of the employer’s business.
This is a stretch, since "getting sick" isn't generally something one controls directly. At most, it could incentivize illness-risking behavior. However, even then, to be an incentive, the benefit of paid leave combined with being sick during that leave would have to be more attractive than being healthy and working, which is not a foregone conclusion.
Instead, lacking distinct sick leave perversely incentivizes getting coworkers sick (in situations that a sickness is contagious and workers are co-located). Rather, it incentivizes the risky behavior, where the risk is borne by everyone else and, by extension, the employer.