Of course, there's no quick fix here - it's a deepset cultural issue, and getting men to take that leave when it's available to them still seems to take some pushing.
By necessity, all women that have children need to take time off, at least in the pregnancy/birth stage. The productivity lost is generally less if you only need to coordinate one person taking maternal/paternal leave. So the obvious choice is to extend the leave of the person that absolutely must take it.
Biologically speaking pregnancy, birth, and raising children makes serious demands on women that it doesn't on men. Treating people justly requires recognizing these differences.
Painting it as black and white doesn't help.
I (as a man) just had a child a few days ago. I'm perpetually sleep deprived and miserable, but my wife? On top of being in an immense amount of pain due to (minor) complications, she is not able to take any real painkillers, and has to spend an hour breastfeeding every three hours.
there is nothing about her situation that I envy, or that any man compares to post-childbirth.
This argument doesn't make any sense. You should really be arguing that "women should get some leave". What's wrong with her being off for 2 months (directly before and after birth) until she recovers, and then him being off for the next 4-10 months?
If society wants men and women to be on equal footing, and society wants women to be able to have children, and the consequence of having children is not being able to work, which then results in being less economically valuable to an employer, then to "fix" this, society must also make men just as less economically valuable. It all depends how "equal" you want to make the game.
Of course that's not going to fully even the books. Men don't get pregnant. They're not going to breastfeed or recover from giving birth. But that doesn't mean that you can't make things better.
Look at it from the perspective of the family: requiring women to bear the entire burden of childcare in terms of time off work puts a serious damper on their career prospects. By allowing and incentivizing the man in the family to also take time off for childcare, you improve the woman's chances at building a strong career. That should translate to higher income for the family.
What exactly is the point of this? All this does is penalize poor families. No amount of monetary hand out is going to ever devalue the wealth creation ability of work. You cannot pay out the social benefits of working. Women undertake a vital task in giving birth, and they of course need time to recover. However, in that situation, the best thing for their family is not for neither spouse to be uninvolved in the workplace. Forcing men to stay home (rather than choose what is best for their family) simply limits the family's overall ability to create wealth for themselves.
Yes, paternity leave is important and nice, but the truth of the matter is that some women are going to need many months to recover from birth, and men simply do not. Why disadvantage entire families in the name of 'equality'. There is no equality to be had. The woman's body suffered through birth, and the man's didn't. The baby needs the mother nearby to feed it, not the father. What's the big deal then if the man goes back to work earlier?
Can anyone articular why it is better (for families) for men to not return to work when they feel ready, which is almost invariably going to be sooner than their wives? This seems to me a good thing that ensures children have their financial well being looked after.
It's about making hiring a woman less burdensome to employers compared to men by letting men take care of the child when the mother is well but the child still needs at-home care. Of course, how realistic that is hinges very much on what the period of parental leave provided is in the first place. If it's just long enough to let the majority of women hobble back into the workplace after dropping their infants in daycare... well, maybe that's a whole other issue.
I understand that this is the purpose, but I'm questioning why that's a good thing. All this does is hobble the workforce artificially. This is like requiring a man who can lift 50 pounds for his job to take time off twice a week to make up for the guy who -- due to some bodily reality -- can only lift 25. Why is the man who can lift 50 pounds artificially limited in helping his family in the name of 'equality'.
A central point of the women's right movements was that women should work because husband's income was not always reliable. Plus, men could die, leaving a woman without any means of income. However, we have swung in the very opposite direction, where we are now limiting men providing for their families in the name of women working. If women in the workplace require men to take extra time off in order to be 'equal', then it's clear that the arguments used to keep women from the workplace were valid to begin with.
Now, I don't believe in any of this, but this is the underlying logic (whether admitted or not) of various schemes meant to hobble fathers returning to the workplace at whatever time they and their family decide is appropriate.
Painting this as a "deepset cultural issue" and not a matter of practicality and biology is either missing the point, or intellectually dishonest.
> Painting this as a "deepset cultural issue" and not a matter of practicality and biology is either missing the point, or intellectually dishonest.l
What part of human biology dictates that "the husband works in the majority of families"? That should like a deepset cultural issue to me
I don't know if you're intentionally being difficult, but it's a biological fact that the mother carries the child. As you may or may not know, late-term pregnancy carries very a heavy physical burden.
Late stage pregnancy can cause severe nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, severe headache, mood swings, and other very tough issues to deal with. These kinds of symptoms may hinder or entirely prevent an employee from working, requiring them to take leave.
As it seems you aren't aware, the husband does not physically experience any these symptoms. This is not cultural. The husband literally does not have a child inside their body and suffers no physical burden. Therefore, there is no physical impact on the ability to work.
As it also seems you aren't aware, most couples don't have the luxury of having both spouses take leave at the same time, in other words, at least one spouse needs to be working. When the wife is suffering from severe nausea, bleeding, vomiting, cramps, and headaches, it will indeed be "the husband works in the majority of families" (prior to the birth of the child).
There's nothing cultural about it, it's entirely biological. Good day to you.
> CLEARLY
Nope, not seeing you clearly imply anything about "during pregnancy". Especially when the explicit context of the rest of the conversation is what happens after pregnancy (at the top level, "childcare").
So you can fight it two ways, change the culture so that the career harm falls more equitably on men and women both, or create solutions such as backup childcare benefits so the harm does not fall on either.
Not that it's fair, but women stopped washing clothes by hand not because men started, but because laundry machines were invented.
It seems to be a pretty obvious way to handle this situation.
Are Americans so devoted to they work, that they would not take parental leave even at 100% pay?
It seems the simplest solution would just be to offer X% paid time off per Y yrs of service regardless of children/no children with the rule the employee gives the company Z months notice. That way male/female parents can figure out who stays home with kid and childless workers get the same benefit. It is basically like a sabbatical university professors get to go refine their skills. Employees get a certain amount of time/pay to go do 'life' things based on service.
You want paid time off that's government mandated? Go break your leg. You'll get that time off, and it'll be about as enjoyable as maternity/paternity.
The gov't wants more, and healthier babies, they are not concerned that non-reproducing adults consider it unfair.