Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap
wsj.com
wsj.com
Of course I'm not serious, but then I personally don't care if there is a wage gap as long as it is not being caused by workplace discrimination against women.
If instead it's the case that the wage gap is caused by women (disproportionately to men) making an informed choice to de-prioritize work in order to prioritize childcare, then I am totally alright with that.
Maybe the impact of the wage gap is too big even if it's caused by women making informed choices. We could choose to offset it directly, for example by subsidizing children -- kind of like a basic income just for kids. By doing it that way we could make the system largely agnostic about whether it's a father or a mother deciding to prioritize childcare over work in any particular case.
Unfortunately, too many people thinking "why should I pay for raising someone else's kids?".
Well why should I?
Despite all the hemming and hawing over the wage gap issue, it's clear where the wage gap comes from: childcare, childcare, childcare. Even if women, in general, are making an informed decision to de-prioritize work, it's not a rational decision at the societal level if men don't also make that decision in equal numbers. No one faults a woman for making that decision for themselves and their family. But on a societal level, we're not going to see wage equality until men are given an equal chance to make these same decisions in a way that's not dictated by age-old stereotypes of masculinity and breadwinners.
I think mandatory paternity leave would help here. I also think on-site childcare, or subsidized childcare given to employees as a benefit like healthcare, could benefit both mothers and fathers and help influence more women to stay in the workforce. The costs of subsidizing childcare for a 30-something manager are probably lower than the costs of finding and training someone new to replace them if they're forced to leave the workforce to care for a newborn. There are a number of interventions the private sector can take that can be integrated around pregnancy, birth, and raising newborns that can make work a bit more rational for both mothers and fathers and help retain employees.
Why are you sure of this? Doesn’t this assume that men and women’s natural dispositions to work and childcare are identical? Are they? If so, how do we know?
The shape of the current market could be the reflection of discrimination alone, but I suspect there are other factors.
To me, it seems very difficult to isolate what market phenomena are due to culture and which are due our nature, or what the balance between the two is.
I like the idea of paternity leave (though I feel a little bad for those citizens that choose not to have children), but I doubt it’s going to close the wage gap, or result in a 50/50 split of house wives with working husbands and house husbands with working wives.
Most professional people I know have quit working because they want to take care of their children. Most only work or return to work because they have to.
I've decided recently, just now actually: I don't buy this.
Why would an employer discount a woman's value just because she may, at some point, take time off to care for a child?
Men also leave jobs. Shouldn't employers discount men's value because they may, at some point, leave?
Employers do not pay women less just because they can have children one day. In fact, young women earn more, on average, than young men.
> Clearly the way to close the wage gap is to get women to stop having kids.
That’s one way, the basis of the rest of this comment is then predicated on this being the only way, and as such only has to deal with this.
> I personally don't care if there is a wage gap as long as it is not being caused by workplace discrimination against women.
This a statement that almost every reader agrees with and allows a reader to justify the position that follows (I.e. great, can’t argue with that)
> If instead it's the case that the wage gap is caused by women (disproportionately to men) making an informed choice to de-prioritize work in order to prioritize childcare, then I am totally alright with that.
There is the massive assumption here, “the wage gap is caused by women” without any evidence to back it up. But the author has already trained the reader in the previous statement that they are saying something they agree with, and that the only problem we are solving is to stop women having children (the first statement).
The comment ends with a slight retraction, “maybe, ...” but does not deny the core of the argument. This allows the author to looks like they have presented a balanced view, but it’s anything but.
> That’s one way, the basis of the rest of this comment is then predicated on this being the only way, and as such only has to deal with this.
Did you completely skip over my very next sentence? The one that starts with Of course I'm not serious, ...?
> There is the massive assumption here, “the wage gap is caused by women” without any evidence to back it up.
This on the other hand is a completely fair thing to note. I'd suggest splitting that out into a separate comment, because a discussion of the available evidence is a good thing to have independent of how you may feel about my rhetorical approach in my original comment.
One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers, further decreasing the birth rate which is already quite low in many advanced economies.
Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact, further disadvantaging couples from having children.
Overall, it's an interesting idea, and definitely worth discussing.
So I say bring on mandatory leave! The vast majority will be much happier.
Think about what this means. The things that correlate strongly with fertility are: low income, low education, high religiosity. If you look at the pool of all children being born they're going to end up ever more disproportionately in low income, low education, highly religious households over higher income secular households in developed nations. I used to feel similarly to you, but in considering this the very people 'responsibly' choosing not to have children are the exact people that should be reproducing to no end if we want a better tomorrow for everybody. And this is without even considering genetic factors. Responsible fertility is, paradoxically, anything but responsible for those who would have the wherewithal to consider such things in the first place.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
What you really seem to be saying is you’d like people who aren’t like you to stop reproducing and people who are like you to reproduce more.
The richer you are, the higher chance of success of your offspring, so you don't need to roll the dice as much.
Fixed it for you.
> Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact...
As the article states: how are these factors different for men than for women?
The he whole point is to eliminate one of the primary causes of gender inequality in the workplace. Spreading the burden of parenting is exactly the right thing to do.
For the sake of this argument, they aren't. It's not about which gender they impact. It's about what percentage of relationship participants they impact.
Right now ~50% of relationship partners face credible career setbacks as a result of post-childbirth leave. Changing that percentage to 100% is probably going to have some ripples.
That's not to say it might not be worthwhile, just that it's unlikely to be as simple as "flip a switch, everybody acts the same".
Cue George Carlin: https://amp.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/33jmhl/george_carli...
We could easily have a system where each generation pays for its OWN social security, you just let the government screw you by spending the current account on wars.
Population is a much bigger question than a specific, stupid government fiscal policy.
So social security doesn't have to be that shape and an equally large young American population isn't necessary to sustain the current older population. Deeper than this thread but I guess relevant, a lot of hours go into producing products for the 1%, or jobs which don't make sense which our system protects because it's built around having 100% employment so we force you into a min. wage job in order to pay the rest of your income in benefits from taxes on the top percent. If our system didn't optimize to 100% employment and had more extensive welfare you'd see much higher unemployment and the trains would still run.
Whether the current global population levels are unsustainable is up for debate. What is not up for debate, and is already apparent in Western nations as well as other booming economies such as China and Japan are the severe implications of demographic change and the disruptive effect of an aging population on a nation's economy.
This is why making babies in rich countries makes economic sense. If you want to fight overpopulation, then you need to fight for women's rights and education in countries where birth rates are too high. For every baby that you're not having, 20 others are born into poverty.
Japan had low growth and higher happiness for a couple of decades now.
Even taking all that, economically useful != right. It's economically useful to burn the forests and raise the oceans but it's not right.
Japan is facing a demographic crisis[1]. Among developed nations, their problem is the most extreme because of very low rates of immigration, and a continuously dwindling replacement rate.
Nobody's talking about increasing population. We're well below replacement rate, and that's terrifying. The environment is not going to be helped by developed nations collapsing under their own demographic weight.
To reiterate my point: abstaining from having children in the West does a) nothing to reduce overpopulation b) severely impacts local economic capacity without benefit to the environment. Said economic capacity is currently at the forefront of developing sustainable energy models.
In order to reduce overpopulation, fighting for women's education and women's rights has proven far more valuable.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.de/japan-fertility-crisis-2017-4...
I think the flaw with your framing is it's essentially ahistorical. The only way we all got here is by having ancestors. We all consumed quite a lot of resources getting to adulthood. If you're all that concerned about improper subsidies, surely you're eager pay back, with interest, the large one that you've received?
One: Your parents taking time off benefits them a lot more than you. It might benefit you a bit but it doesn't benefit you to see your dad from 0-3 months and not your mum, you're too young to know. People assume that it's a big benefit but actually I'd imagine having your parents somewhat around from the ages of 1-3 is far more important than constantly around from 0-1.
The other flaw is bigger really, basically it's a logical fallacy. Read my point to the other comment with this argument, it doesn't actually make sense. You can't expect people to be in favour of the conditions that lead to their existence, if you were the product of rape you should be pro rape? What if we were a species where all birth was via the rape and murder of the father, you'd still be telling people they're ethically obliged to be in favour of reproduction? Just because someone has benefited from something which had something else in the chain of causation doesn't mean that they have to be in favour of that thing. I benefitted massively from the colonial history of my country, for example.
I'll clear up one misunderstanding, though. The point isn't that one should be in favor of the particular conditions of one's birth. It's that one should be in favor of the continued existence of humanity, and do so such that the conditions for future humans are at least as good. Basically, Rawls' veil of ignorance.
By the way, I don't think your misunderstanding was an honest one. If you get to the point that you're suggesting your opponents must be pro-rape, maybe that's a sign you're too wound up to have a good discussion.
Also, so many things are subsidised by governments that if you were to pick and chose what you approve of by you paying for it and not using it then you’ll not use much.
On the softer side of things, having kids is a good thing, supporting people as much as possible when they have kids with flexible paid leave is a good thing, and I hope more companies and countries continue to improve levels of support for new parents.
1. 11 billion may be too much.
2. This isn't uniform across the globe. Japan's population is shrinking due to a very low birth rate, and that may be a bad thing (loss of cultural and genetic diversity, for example). And this is the more relevant aspect given the context.
Color me skeptical. If previous prognostications are and indicator, humanity in general cannot predict the future more than 5-10 years out with reasonable accuracy.
Another way of saying this is that the confidence interval on global population estimates 80 years into the future is most likely large enough to render the estimate meaningless.
Listen, if you want the government to incentivize having children, then establish tax consequences. Same way as the government can force you to pay a tax penalty, the government could force people older than a certain age who are still childless to pay a "societal development" tax. The proceeds of the tax go towards paying for free childcare.
/not sure if I'm serious about the above or not
Comparing Sweden, which has mandatory paternity leave, to other countries with parental leave, the the amount of money you get paid during leave is the major factor in whether someone takes it or not.
https://qz.com/587763/how-swedens-daddy-quota-parental-leave...
Not doing any work 2 months in would have seemed wasteful, and being expected to go 100% at 7 months in would have been inconvenient for both of us.
Not everyone has access to this, but I feel really grateful that I did. It seems like the best arrangement possible, at least for us.
It begins with “Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap”. Not, what would be valuable for men.
A woman who just gave birth just spent an increasingly personally costly, and completely requisite (so long as the pregnancy is wanted), nine months simply getting to the maternity leave portion of the process. I can’t immagi how a woman would perceive for men to gawk at it even being suggested they be forced to take maternity leave. If a man won’t take maternity leave the woman must and that is after the pregnancy they just sacrificed during.
Given the SCOTUS hearing at the moment, for such a tone deaf comment to be on HN says all you need to know.
Instead, please follow the site guidelines and (a) assume good faith, and (b) react to the most plausible interpretation of what someone said, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Both of those are necessary for thoughtful conversation, which is what we're trying for here. That still leaves plenty of room to disagree, and then your disagreement will be much higher-quality, be more likely to convince others, and much more likely to lead to interesting (a.k.a. unpredictable) responses.
When a woman takes off for pregnancy it is known up front it is for several months, and she is also indisposed during that time (can't answer questions or take quick phone calls, because she is not able to perform at peak levels while convalescing). So an employer accounts for the loss of that duty in different ways such as shifting responsibilities. And many of these ways become a limit to career success. Imagine she is closing a large sales deal but has to leave before close due to pregnancy - so she is no longer the clear performer in that sale, as it is closed by someone else. This reduces her effectiveness on paper (becomes a detractor) due to gender differences (becomes unequal).
A man has been given flexibility to give and take that same time in a way that permits some juggling of work and family supporting efforts - i.e your example case. You worked part time, she could really not do that in her case. This lets you stay active in your role (little effect on your responsibilities) when she could not.
So wouldn't it be ideal for the mother's partner to be able to participate 24-7 to help her recover and to help both parents bond closely with the child? And not be expected to be tugged back by ties to work?
FWIW I had a lawyer who was messaging with clients from the delivery room. So not sure about your stereotype.
I know for a fact pregnancy is hard on the body - my experience was nearly 12hrs delivery and my wife was in the ICU for 3 days following. It took months to recover completely.
In your rush to defend your personal 'stereotype'; I hope you understand that being able to message clients from the delivery room is unusual. No matter what your intent in saying this, never underestimate the serious nature of childbirth.
Women can make a choice to do something that will impact their career negatively. Men don't have that choice.
People who don't intend to have children subsidising people who do (who are on average already richer and more privileged) is deeply messed up. This only makes sense from a very narrow middle class upper-echelon-gender-equality is the most important thing in society lense.
People who don't intend to have children subsidising
people who do (who are on average already richer and
more privileged) is deeply messed up.
So if being born means that I have to approve of any measure which causes more births, then logically I should be in favour of for example reducing contraceptive programs in Africa, etc.
Being born doesn't automatically force you to support population increase or be a hypocrite. Even if you had a moral obligation to maximise (total number of people that will ever live), then that number is probably larger (because of humanity surviving into the future) if we drastically cut population in the present.
The wage gap is a problem, but there is nothing that says we have to solve it (or that it can be solved) using this particular knob.
To your argument I also personally don't know there is any reliable way to equalize this problem. Men and women are created differently, and nature is unfair - just ask the fly and the spider. The social contract means we so far mostly anyway agree it is better treat equally than to force equality (shades of Bergeron is poignant - and yes this inches us closer).
As submitted and on article: Want Equality? Make New Dads Stay Home
Updated: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap
If you think that there's a change X' that would be better yet, you should definitely propose it. But if you're just saying, "I don't care about fixing a problem that benefits me if the solution isn't perfect for me," you can see how that's not the most compelling of arguments.
I think it wasn't worth it because of an arbitration clause or whatever, but I wasn't going to risk my time, money, and energy required when I just had a baby.
It's not mandated (yet) by law, so why bother to set-up bad goodwill? Just to bait people into joining?
It seems a very poisonous scheme with little benefit for anyone.
Sounds like you need a group lawsuit. Firing one person - could be coincidence. Firing three? Starting to look like a pattern of punishment. The more people you can get on the lawsuit, the stronger your case.
One reason is that it's hard to understand just how much work it is if you haven't done it on your own for long stretches, and it helps for both partners to know that both partners know how hard it is and have taken a turn at it.
Another is the self-reinforcing competence thing -- if one partner always packs for going out, say, then the other partner is likely to take longer and do a worse job when they try packing, so it's easier for everyone if they don't, and you end up thinking only one person is good at parenting. To some extent it's fine to specialize, but having to do everything during the day on my own for a few months made it really clear that both of us can be good at any given thing if need be.
One thing I was surprised by (but shouldn't have been) is just how much wealth you're showing off by taking paternity leave. Telling people you're taking 12 weeks of paternity leave in America is basically telling them you have plenty of money and a job you can afford to walk away from, which pretty much crosses the line into boasting about things you shouldn't boast about. I ended up playing it down more than I expected, which kind of sucks, since it's an awesome thing that more folks should be able to do.
Employers prefer frugal workaholics with no obligations but these individuals impose externality on "normal people". We're rich enough, no need working above 8h/day.
I'd go all the way and make it illegal to provide work without compensation (internships, 80h work weeks etc). And I'd to try limit oversupply of labour by further limiting standard workweek below 40h.
Example: You and your husband would like to breastfeed your baby for the first 6 months but you are unable to express? Too bad, your husband has to take paternity leave and you will have to go back to work.
From my experience, there is a connection between mother and child from birth that is nurtured and strengthened through breastfeeding. I would vehemently oppose the state enforcing any interruption in my child's wellbeing as we see fit as parents.
I don't understand how depriving families
of choices is going to be a good thing.
Consider the prisoners' dilemma [1], where the global optimum is for neither side to defect, but the Nash equilibrium is for both sides to defect. If both sides could be deprived of the choice to defect, both would enjoy a better outcome.
Unless you are against state intervention in cases like these, then you are already accepting that the state can interfere. At that point the question is a matter of degree
Okay, fair enough. I will vehemently oppose any state interruption that goes against medical recommendations. You will not believe the string of NHS nurses and caregivers who tried to ensure that we breastfed our child.
I just can't be charitable with the whole "well the state already does..." arguments.
In free societies, the state interfering with child rearing is a serious matter.
In totalitarian regimes, it's par for the course.
Just start with making it tax funded, not employer funded.
The authors compared promotion rates before and after these gender-neutral parental policies were adopted, relative to trends in comparable institutions that did not alter their policies, while also accounting for an array of influences, like where each economist was trained. They found that men who took parental leave used the extra year to publish their research, amassing impressive publication records. But there was no parallel rise in the output of female economists.
From: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/business/tenure-extension...
I didn't push a human being out from between my legs. Because of that I'm capable of working. I would like to be useful to my family. Working is one way I can do that.
If I work while my wife is on leave and the gender pay gap is worsened. I don't care. If my wife stays home to recover from her ordeal and the gender wage gap is worsened. She doesn't care.
The gender wage gap is so abstract and cynical at this point. It is beyond meaning. People aren't allow to live their lives the way they see fit because of some stupid number.
Shocking I know but there is no such thing as the "average woman". If her wage is different from the "average man" it has no bearing on the earnings of a specific woman with specific goals and habits.
But who cares about individual women and what they want? We want the top level statistics to be equal!
/s
Beyond all of that, this change isn't about what the right level of child care is. It's about the fact that managers and companies discount women workers of child bearing age to a degree that they do not for men, because if a couple is having a child the woman is going to have to take some amount of time off. The suggestion from this article would be like adding an interface of IParent over the male and female classes, and having the employers make hiring/firing/promotion decisions based off of the interface rather than the concrete class. If you don't do this the two groups of people, men and women, will be treated differently based on the circumstances of their birth. As a culture we've made a value judgement that this sort of discrimination is a bad thing, so why would we not mitigate it?
For two reasons. One simple and one complex.
The first and simple reason is that you're applying rules categorically. If I live in a multi-generational household I don't need to stay home and care for the children to the same degree as a more "typical" family. Compelling me to stay home reduces my earnings with no added benefit to my wife or family. In fact you've hindered my family's ability to progress economically. You've hurt a specific woman to help the average woman. As I've illustrated above, the average woman does not exist. Mandatory leave helps a statistical category but not women.
The second more complex reason has more to do with economics.
We already know that women who have never married earn more than men of the same category (the gap is not large or worth considering).
> As far back as 1971, single women in their thirties who had worked continuously since high school earned slightly more than men of the same description. As far back as 1969, academic women who had never married earned more than academic men who had never married.[1]
From this we can gleam two things. 1: Women are not being "treated differently based on the circumstances of their birth" (at least in a way that disadvantages them in terms of salary). 2: Mothers are being treated differently based on their behaviors.
I hope the first statement is self-explanatory but the second might need additional context.
How does an employer know if a women will give birth in the next five years? The obvious answer is "they don't". So if that's the case how do businesses know to pay mothers less than never-married women? Because they're not paying mothers less. They're paying never-married women more. People with more continuous years of service are more able to capitalize on opportunities in the workplace and are never in a position to be rendered redundant by a replacement.
If you compel men to take paternal leave, you open them up to all the detriments that mothers face. You take a family who's member has already taken an earnings hit and doubled down.
The gender wage gap (as it exists in the United States in 2018) is not a concern. Efforts to fix the gap will result in lower wages for fathers not higher wages for women (the terms "fathers" and "women" were chosen with significant care).
tl;dr: Fixing the pay gap between never-married women and mothers will solve the gender pay gap as a corollary.
1. https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/pay-gap-studies-dispr...
>From this we can gleam two things. 1: Women are not being "treated differently based on the circumstances of their birth" (at least in a way that disadvantages them in terms of salary). 2: Mothers are being treated differently based on their behaviors.
I hope the first statement is self-explanatory but the second might need additional context.
Women are being treated differently here because when a man and woman decide to have a child, the woman is guaranteed to have to take leave and that is known and accounted for before hand. Mandatory parental leave makes that cost be the same regardless of gender. It is disingenuous to say women aren't being treated differently and only mothers are, when men don't get the same treatment despite being fathers
>If you compel men to take paternal leave, you open them up to all the detriments that mothers face
I view this more as spreading the burden of child rearing across society which I agree would increase the burden on men and companies. It is a completely necessary part of being biological life and continuing our society, but as we currently stand we just demand that a subset of society takes care of it on their own dime. If paternal leave was mandatory for children we would be treating men and women equally, because women have no choice but taking leave when they have a child, and we would be promotion better care for the children which is in our own best interests. We are k type breeders, not r type, and we have shown a better return on investment by giving better care to less children.
>The gender wage gap (as it exists in the United States in 2018) is not a concern.
That is an opinion, not a fact.
That was understood in my post. Long periods of paid leave inhibits earnings growth and leaves you vulnerable to replacement regardless of gender.
This is what was meant by "Fixing the pay gap between never-married women and mothers will solve the gender pay gap as a corollary."
> Women are being treated differently here because when a man and woman decide to have a child, the woman is guaranteed to have to take leave.
Yes there is a guaranteed recovery period. And, yes, depending on how long you are absent this leave will effect earnings. But...
> men don't get the same treatment despite being fathers
Men who take long paternity leave suffer the same income stagnation as women.
"Still, most men can’t afford to take more than a few days off after the birth of a new child. Especially because parental leave can depress long-term earnings [...] regardless of gender."[1]
Compelling paternity leave does not increase the earnings of mothers. It decreases the earnings of fathers. Which may very well shrink the gender wage gap but it makes families poorer and less able to provide for themselves and their children.
To be trite, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
> I view this more as spreading the burden
This, I believe, is our fundamental disagreement. You think a burden is being spread more thinly whereas I think you've created additional burdens. In my opinion, and I believe the data backs me up, this strategy reduces fathers and does nothing to help mothers (economically).
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/the-ris...
One night stand? This depends if she knows it was you. If she does, the responsible thing would be to notify you that she was pregnant as a result of that. It gives you time to prepare to help.
If you aren't with the mother, it really would depend on the relationship. Can you not help the mother out by going to the store? Delay your paternity leave until she starts working and keep your child while the mother is at work? Take the child to the doctor and other such things? People deal with this sort of thing with divorce, so I fail to see how this is different. Again, if you wouldnt get parental rights, however, you'd not have paternity benefits.
I suspect they'd handle non binary relationships as they are handled now. If the woman doesn't choose one as a father and the man steps forward and claims the child, they might request a dna test. They already handle such things in courts at the time. The other option is for neither man to be on the birth certificate, nulling their paternity rights... and thus their paternity leave.
Most places have leave for adoption, even if it isn't a young child. I fail to see how this would change at all. It would simply make sure the leave would be for both parents.
This is called politician's syllogism.
1. We must do something 2. This is something 3. Therefore, we must do this.
It's a logical fallacy.
I don't see a clear link to hacker culture, if anything it's less relevant to developers as we often have some form of flexible working already.
The link I can see is that it's part of the gender culture war that has somehow become focussed on SV.
It's good advice for how to run my company.
Your opposition to even seeing this post because it includes gender seems like more of a culture war artifact than the post itself
It's not culture war to be bored of the culture war.
This isn't a gender war article either as far as I can see
If you don't like mosquitoes then don't put your company headquarters in the swamp.
Much of the gains of two-income parents goes into house prices to be closer to good schools - i.e. zero sum competition, while company incentives are to encourage people not to have children, or defer children until too late to maintain population, and essentially stopping the next generation of employees from being born.
And then you mix migration driven by climate change into the mix, and it's very easy for populist politicians to whip up narratives of being overrun, not least because on a historical scale it's true (and of course it's always been true, everywhere has always been in the state of being overrun, with ebbs and flows).
The dynamics here aren't good and it's hard to see how they're going to change any time soon, short of a crisis.
Except for Japan (probably China when it comes to it), most will import labor. Globalization (in terms of corporations) isn't just about taking jobs overseas it's also about brining people from overseas in (in the US H1Bs for professionals, for example).
Superrationality provides nicer solutions to classic problems like the Prisoners Dilemma, but superrationality "is not mainstream". (Economists don't get it.)
The article discusses that if you make it mandatory you get the company culture to adapt that parental leave should not be a career-affecting thing.
It will never not affect your career. Even if you work for a wonderfully enlightened company that is happy to have you take six months off at full pay, the people who are continuing to work in that time are going to be gaining experience and increasing their skills, and will have a better shot at raises and promotions.
It also seems utterly against my rights as a human, and unconstitutional.
Heck, in high pressure firms where anyone taking parental leave is inviting career stagnation or termination (fully justified by having HR set up a paper trail of unsatisfactory performance evaluations), you'd be downright crazy to disclose the birth of your child.
2) Historically, no one bought insurance on the individual market. It's been absurdly expensive. That was why the individual mandate under Obamacare is/was important. It forced healthy people to buy insurance, and thus drive down the price.
3) It's illegal discriminate based on parental status.
And why should someone who wants to be a mother and a careerist have to accept more career penalties than someone who wants to be a father and careerist?
And why should a woman who doesn't want children have to pay a penalty for the choices of those who do?
For the same reason that men do. After all, society as a whole has decided for some reason that children are a good thing, and that the cost of having them should be born by all, even those without.
Is this not a thread about how society has NOT yet decided such a thing?
The argument is "should we subsidize children" and you're substituting "does society want to subsidize children" and then for THAT you're substituting "do we currently subsidize children".
You can only go from 1 to 2 by assuming something like tyranny of the majority.
You can only go from 2 to 3 by assuming that the current system is exactly what society would choose if they decided now. Which is obviously silly, given a blank slate drug laws, marriage laws and tax breaks would all be different for a few examples.
'Given a blank slate' is so far from practice that it might as well be fiction.
Utopia is not suddenly going to spring to life, if you want it there is only one way to get there: get into politics, and good luck because the one word you will learn very quickly once you've arrived there is 'compromise'.
But we're not arguing that we're about to do something from a blank slate, the blank slate point is that just because society DOES something, doesn't mean that it WANTs to do something, for the same reasons as above we don't decide everything by referendum. The US numbers on single payer, medicaid for all, drug laws and etc are miles away from the policy, your argument is like looking at marijuana being illegal in most states a few years ago and using it as evidence that they want it to be illegal.
So when you write 'we' you can substitute 'I' and be closer to the truth, and you don't need to drag in a whole pile of other stuff that is hypothetical rather than real, why ignore the evidence in front of your eyes if you have it?
Hypotheticals are great to argue about things for which we do not have data, they suck at improving over reality when we do.
As or the tyranny of the majority not being the safe thing to assume in a democratic system: the democratic system pretty much codifies the tyranny of the majority, with a few exceptions about forming coalitions where some give-and-take allows a small minority to score some points because they can be the swing vote. But if you want to see the tyranny of the majority at work you need to look no further than that US that you write about.
Hypotheticals aren't a silly debating tactic, they're an important component of logic and reason, see the discovery of SR.
You clearly do not understand the concept of the tyranny of the majority, it's not what this thread is about but since you asked...
The tyranny of the majority refers to the problem with voting systems where anything that 51% agrees to, no matter how unjust, will pass, especially where it harms the 10%. The reason why it does not apply to western democratic systems: Major changes can require supermajorities. Constutions and rights laws restrict the range of possible laws that can be passed. Citizens do not vote directly on outcomes but elect a representative who is expected to consider things more deeply on their behalf.
Our current setup puts this entirely on the wife and leaves the husband out of it. Requiring paternal leave would both equalize make and female employees in the eyes of employers _and_ allow for the parents to provide care to the child without driving themselves into poor health or depression
I'm happy to give parents time off. I'm happy parents get more sick days where I'm at to take care of their young children. I'm happy my taxes, in part, go to this.
We actually need children. And parents have more responsibilities than I do. I want children to be educated and well cared for. The most selfish reason is that I want competent folks to take care of me when I'm old: The other is that I want humanity to be better when I leave the earth.
There are costs and benefits to everything. Besides, I had/have the choice of becoming a mother and getting those benefits - though there is a lot to lose as well. And it isn't me.
I think some folks are reacting to the forced paternity leave bit. And in one sense, I understand - but women don't realistically have those choices and I think most doctors would rather women didn't get right back to work. The other bit, as you've said in another reply, is that women get stuck with the assumption that she's going to take maternity leave and there is nothing the company can do about it. If it is extended to males, companies would have to worry about that with everyone and they'd rather not, thank-you-very-much.
Offering is, I think, is both wonderful and not enough. If I understand correctly (immigrant here), Norway used to require some paternity leave and had a portion of parental leave that could be split between the two parents. At some point, the government quit making paternity leave a requirement, but still leaving it in place if the father wanted it and still allowing parental leave to be split between the parents.
... and fewer fathers took paternity leave at that point.
The thing with not only offering but requiring such things is that it helps to change societal norms and expectations as long as they are offered for enough time. When it is simply optional, safeguards need to be put into place. I'm not the one to ask what the safeguards should be at the moment :)
Because of clear biological differences you can’t simply substitute a man for a woman.
As such this article is suggesting that we can make men worse off career wise to even things up.
But that only makes sense from a narrow gender-equality perspective.
It makes much more sense to look at it from a family unit perspective where it’s a good thing for the man to take on the career burden to help his family.
> And why should a woman who doesn't want children have to pay a penalty for the choices of those who do?
Because it is critical to the basic maintenance of our society. The same reason I pay a penalty for a large number of government services I don’t use.
The proposed change simply makes me and women both have the same cost to the employer up front. As it stands currently men are slightly cheaper due to the requirements of biology, and managers keep that in mind when comparing otherwise equal employees. It does not fix the difference between employees with kids and employees without so it is not a perfect solution
> it's clear where the wage gap comes from: childcare, childcare, childcare.
I've decided recently, just now actually: I don't buy this.
Why would an employer discount a woman's value just because she may, at some point, take time off to care for a child?
Men also leave jobs. Shouldn't employers discount men's value because they may, at some point, leave?
If you have two candidates, male and female, both are likely to have a number of risk factors: they’ll leave, they’ll seek raises, etc. But, to address your question, the woman also has some probability of having a child and taking mat leave. All other things equal (probability of other risks), the woman will likely have a higher overall risk, since she’s more likely to take mat leave.
That all being said, you’re not “allowed” to discriminate based on that. And, as a man, I’ve never experienced sexual discrimination as far as salary goes. But there’s an answer to your question as to why childcare could be the primary factor.