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Comment by dmm | Hacker News Reader

> IMHO, all employees should get the same amount of time off, regardless of whether or not they have children.

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.

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Re: 1) But parents decide to have children, and they have the responsibility for caring for those "vulnerable people". I'm not saying they don't need more time, but to say they've been put into some untenable situation that must be dealt with by everyone else is absurd. There's never been more access to birth control or knowledge about the reproductive process. There's never been a point in the world where there was less space for another child. Looking from at this from the perspective of what's best for children, having a child is selfish. Adoption doesn't add people to the world and would decrease overall suffering assuming you're a better parent than the foster system.

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...

What's the difference between a woman with an unplanned pregnancy and a woman with another type of unanticipated medical condition that would qualify her for medical leave?

>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?

The "Medical leave" portion of the time off is covered under completely different laws, so I'm not sure which portion of what I've said you're replying to.

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.

"unplanned" Does this women not know how sex works? Does she lack access to IUD's, condoms, abortions? There are rare instances where women have a child against their will, but the number is vanishly small. The vast majority of children are carefully planned _choices_.

1) Should children suffer the mistakes of their parents? It's a question of values.

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.

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