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Comment by lazzlazzlazz | Hacker News Reader

Two years seems absolutely absurd on many levels.

It is not absurd. We have (I think partially-)paid 2-year parental-leave here in Romania and people and companies manage just fine. Of course, not all of the involved people choose to stay for the whole two years at home, but I have lots of former colleagues and acquaintances that did just that and they were more than ok, even more than that, the companies hiring them managed to stay in business, even if they weren't owned by successful business people like Bill Gates. 6-month only parental-leave is a joke, no parental-leave is barbarous.

Six months? My wife and I receive exactly as many paid days as we have saved up PTO. So, about three weeks each. Any time after that is unpaid, but we’re protected from being fired for three months.

This sounds so wrong to me, and I don't even have kids yet. Until issues like this one aren't resolved then the inequality between men and women (in wages, management positions) will continue to remain the same, no matter the media rhetoric, for the simple fact that many women will choose not to go back to work (it's mostly women that make that sacrifice).

How does the work that would have been done by the person on leave get taken care of?

Does it (1) go undone, (2) do those not on leave have to do it in addition to their normal work, (3) do companies set their staff sizes so that they have extra capacity to take up slack from those on leave, or (4) do they hire temp workers to fill in until the person on leave comes back?

Does it? Most European countries offer 1 year paid maternity leave (quite often it's almost 14 months because PTO is still applies) then you can take another 1 year of unpaid leave. The employer cannot fire you.

If I’m a small business making enough to employ myself and 2 other people, how very carefully would I think about taking on someone whom I might need to pay to not* work at my company for a year?

Where I live: Government pay for it if the company has fewer than 20 people.

That makes it way more feasible for small businesses. Of course that now just makes me think extremely hard before hiring my 20th person.

That’s at least a much less serious limitation to job creation.

I'm not saying it should be fully paid, although I'd welcome some sort of a UBI-like payment to stay at home parent (singular, mother _or_ father) in the first 2 years of their child's life. I'm saying that's what the needs of the child really are. To have to sacrifice that to "reenter the workforce" should really be socially unacceptable.

>Two years seems absolutely absurd on many levels.

Especially "at least" 2 years. As in, 2 years was the minimum and maybe 5 would be better?

It likely would be, actually, but I think 2 years is more economically sustainable. Like it or not, for a society to work, we have to procreate and raise kids. To make raising kids properly (which is already hard work) impossible is idiotic and counterproductive.

Allowing one's children to be raised by strangers is lazy and selfish. And absurd.

I dunno selfish, I could make the argument that raising your child yourself out of some misguided notion that you're the best person for that job is selfish.

Disagree, within the timeframe of this topic. 0-6 months is basically all about the bond between child and parents. Sometime after that, sure, a requirement to socialise comes into play.

What do you mean "socialize"? Do you have kids? Most kids can't even walk until they're about a year old.

That was my point? In that there’s no benefit to the child to be in someone else’s care with a bunch of other kids for the first 6 months at least, and probably quite a lot older than that.

I'm afraid I must disagree. There's no evidence to suggest that the bond between a child and its biological parents is in any way important. Further, it is unlikely that its biological parents are experts on raising children and are thus likely to raise it suboptimally, leading to a poorer quality of life in its future.

Therefore, it is more selfish to raise your child yourself than to have an expert to do it for you.

I shouldn't have to disclaim this by argument by saying that I'm not making a serious recommendation to anyone, but because parents are so defensive and irrational when it comes to how they raise their children, I feel that I must. I don't have kids and don't plan on having kids, so this is merely an intellectual exercise for me.

We of course need procreation to continue the species, but arguably the world is already overpopulated, unsustainably so. Aside from that, there are plenty of orphans in the world that need loving parents.

Choosing to procreate, period, is selfish. And yet we don't scorn people for taking that path.

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