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Comment by crispyporkbites | Hacker News Reader

Her maternity leave was cut from 8 to 6 WEEKS

I had to do a double take there, I read it as months first time. How can a woman give birth and be back at work in eight weeks? Six weeks seems impossible baby or not, the recovery time for pregnancy and birth can be many months.

If I were a woman living in a society like that I think I’d either not have children or not work at all.

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I'm in the US and a coworker came to work the next day after giving birth. There is no time allotted for maternity leave and she had already used her vacation time at the beginning of the year before she was pregnant. I was at a charity event with the CEO and he was laughing about it saying."she was born to breed."

Why is this comment gray?American maternity leave (and prices!) is a joke compared to eg. Europe.

Users on this site are predominantly American. Most Europeans would share the sentiment of the parent comment.

Pretty normal in the United States.

Who looks after the child? I don’t understand how this is possible?

Sometimes a family member such as a grandparent, sometimes a company who the parents of the child pay to look after the child. Businesses which provide this service are called "daycare" in the US.

Daycare workers, grandparents, etc?

and you think that's normal?

Yes? Its routine in traditional societies for non-parents to raise children. The idea of "intensive mothering," where mom is stuck taking care of the baby alone for months or years, is a blip in the history of time. (In Europe, lengthy maternity leaves are also financially costly for mothers. While European countries generally offer "paid" leave, the salary caps are pretty low. France offers up to $650 per week. The median woman working full-time in America makes $800 per week.)

"Under the current system, France offers employed mothers 16 weeks’ paid congé maternité (three to six before the expected date of birth and 10 to 13 after). The total allowance increases to 34 weeks for twins and 46 for triplets.

Women receive 26 weeks, instead of 16, from their third child. They can choose to return to work sooner, but must take a minimum of eight weeks, including six after the birth, to receive pay.

The leave is paid at 100 per cent of salary, capped at €540 net per week. This is the equivalent of a €2,885 gross monthly salary."

2855 Euro gross is fairly normal in France for the bulk of the people who would need this assistance. The $650 is net take home, not gross. You also have to take into account that in France lots of things that are very costly in the USA are free and so you can't directly compare the compensation for paid maternity leave with the income of the median woman in America, that's apples and oranges. You should compare it with either the median pay in France or with the average paid leave compensation in the USA.

Finally, there is the duration of the leave to take into account 16 weeks is going on three months, which compared to the 6 weeks (or less) of maternity leave in the United States is pretty generous.

Is it costly for mothers? Well, that depends on the income of the mother before the maternity leave. But France has figure out - rightly - that if you earn lots of money that you need this assistance likely a lot less than if you do not. And so there is a cap.

Simple, you just pay 1500/mo to someone else to look after them at some sort of group child care company.

Now around $3000/mo in Manhattan/Brooklyn!

https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/1189253197841350661?s=...

Um, depending, either nuclear family, extended family, friends, or other caretakers. Generally involves either pumping or using formula to feed the baby.

This is one of the many reasons why multigenerational households can be a benefit to the individuals within.

When there's a will, there's a way.

We've got three kids in the US, they all started daycare when they were 6-8 weeks old so we could return to work. I don't think there was serious physical recovery still happening then (they were uncomplicated births), but the sleep deprivation is very rough.

Women everywhere agree with you. Capitalism relies on women to create, raise and see to the education of new consumers and workers with little to no help. They are opting out. People everywhere see that the childless have a higher standard of living than parents. In many places there are more people 65+ than those under 18, and that will soon enough be common in most places. The example cited in the article is just a particularly outrageous sample of a much larger problem.

What is the answer? I don't know. As I recently read "Most people can more easily imagine the end of the world than a change in capitalism."

The issue is simply, how do we incentivize people to have more kids? Some countries have figured out...you can use this thing called "government" to create the incentives to solve the problem. Mandatory leave for both new mothers and fathers, massive tax benefits, subsidized childcare, etc.

Countries who have done this, while still being market-based economies (capitalist), have been successful in increasing their birth rate to sustainable levels! Maybe we should try it?

Are you sure there are countries that have figured it out? All I have read is that no country has successfully yet incentivized birth rates above 2.1 after dropping below.

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