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Comment by jonplackett | Hacker News Reader

I think this is missing the point of equal parental leave and how it creates equality - it's for the mum just as much as the dad, so she can now get a bit of her life back earlier.

I took 3 months leave (wish it was more) when my daughter was born, spread out through the year a month at a time. I loved each month for different reasons and I know each month helped me understand what my wife was dealing with better and the slog of looking after a baby as well as the fun bits, and it helped her understand me better too - she really missed our daughter when she did a month's work and saw how going to work every day wasn't such great a holiday from childcare as she thought!

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These policies have definitively contributed to a big social change. And while it looks on the surface like this is about "fairness for dad", on a macro level the changes mostly benefit women who want to both have kids and a career.

It's no longer a bigger risk for companies to hire late 20-s women compared to late 20-s men - both will go on leave if they get kids.

At my job, I also see way more dads staying home with sick kids or going to "planning day" or similar, compared to when I was growing up.

I think it also establishes a connection between the dad and the kids that makes the dad a better parent down the road. At least spending a lot of time with my infants did change me enough to be a much better parent for the rest of the journey.

Absolutely - and I love the change, in case that wasn't clear. But I think the motivation was about equality for the sexes - and specifically, making it easier for women to work. The rest is just a bonus. A very nice bonus.

I very much agree with this. Having an extended amount of time where I was 100% responsible for my daughter made me feel very different compared to the time spent jointly looking after her. I hope it's made me a better parent.

> It's no longer a bigger risk for companies to hire late 20-s women compared to late 20-s men - both will go on leave if they get kids

True. But now it is a risk to hire people in certain age groups in general. Could this become a "don't hire married people in their late 20s and early 30s" incentive?

It would at least least disperse the risk from "don't hire women of a certain age" to "don't hire people of a certain age" which I think is a win on the margin.

"don't hire married people in their late 20s and early 30s" incentive?" --> "Don't hire people during their most economically productive ages."

Not an economically viable strategy for any company looking to stay in business more than a year or two.

Surely whether it's "their most economically productive age" would depend heavily on how many children they have and how much parental leave they are allowed.

Ah, so "don't hire people who are planning to have multiple children at the peak of their potential economic productivity"?

We know that people in most developed countries aren't even hitting replacement rate, so I don't think that 6 months of leave is going to break the bank.

In my experience, employees who are bad employees and blame it on time commitment to their children have usually been bad employees to begin with. I have a child, spend upwards of 4 hours a day with them on average, and work at a FAANG, while hitting promotion tracks more quickly than my colleagues without children. I know a bunch of people doing the same.

> Could this become a "don't hire married people in their late 20s and early 30s" incentive?

Not for a good company. I've had several employees go on maternity and paternity leave. I've given them respect, and time, and money, in order to make this time of their lives as unstressful as possible.

I've done it because it's the right thing, but these people remember being treated well. They've come back to work and done very well. They feel safer knowing that their day job explicitly supports their families.

The time someone needs off work to care for a new family is a drop in the bucket compared with a whole career, or even a few good years spent at one company. Optimize for the humans, and for the long term.

So you had good people that you wanted to get back? Great. A lot of us employ people who are just average and cannot afford to pay them multiple thousands while they are on leave, paying someone else to cover them, and then they could always decide to leave anyway.

If you can't afford an employee going on paternity/maternity leave, you have an unsustainable business.

Or you have a small business. Not every company is a 10,000 headcount multinational. Over 90% of small business employ fewer than 20 people and small businesses make up 30% of the economy.

Realistically, 1 person missing from a small business can mean 10% of their workforce is gone - and due to the size of the company they may not have people to cover the missing staff.

You don't need to have 10,000 people working for you to be able to afford to hire cover for when people going on parental leave.

10 people or 10,000 people, if you can't afford your staff going on parental leave / long term sick / vacation, you don't have a sustainable business.

> if you can't afford your staff going on parental leave / long term sick, you don't have a sustainable business

You've never run a startup or small business. At the beginning margins can be razor thin, and unplanned or extended leave can have a huge impact.

Parental leave shouldn't be unplanned though, there should be several months of notice surely

There's plenty of small business owners who are perfectly capable of managing the risk of losing staff for whatever reason without it sinking the company. Many business run at a big loss when starting up, never mind razor thin margins. The ones that survive manage their investors, debts, cashflow and staff risk properly.

If you run a business on the assumption that you're going to have all your current employees working for you continuously for the foreseeable future, you're going to have a bad time.

If small businesses in general can't afford an employee going on [mp]aternity leave, that seems like an argument for socializing the cost.

The company doesn't pay employees while they are on leave, social security (or some equivalent) does.

* Could this become a "don't hire married people in their late 20s and early 30s" incentive?*

No. The only real way to avoid this is to just not hire folks who can birth or father children. You'd be mostly safe hiring folks over 45 (Though men over 45 would be more risky than women). This probably isn't a good strategy for an employer.

Marriage doesn't lend itself to children: Having sex does. Having a stable relationship does. Adoption does. On the other hand, lots of married folks don't have children, on purpose or by circumstance. There is no real way to sort folks out.

Maybe. As a new father, though, back to the office from parental leave, I'm not pumping breast milk in the lactation room. 3 times per work day, ~40-45 minutes a pop. This is something my wife is actively dealing with today and it causes her a lot of stress, due to the fact that she's essentially MIA on the job despite the fact that everyone is aware of what's going on and she has full support. The perception that she's not pulling her weight is potentially there, and she struggles with it herself because she also feels like she isn't pulling her weight. It's all really complicated and we'll never truly have equality here, I don't think.

I'm a dad in Norway too, and I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Getting on with their life? It's the time with your kids that's the bit of the life that's more valuable.

Likewise, trying to measure how beneficial it is for the kids sort of misses the point. I'm sure it can be beneficial, but whether they draw lasting benefits from it or not, they value it there and then.

You do get deeply attuned to your babies as a parent - at least, we did. You got uncannily good at guessing what they want, what they feel, from practice and from the biological connection that they are like you in so many subtle ways most people aren't. And of course, two parents will understand their babies in slightly different ways. They're very capable of appreciating this.

Equality before the low == not discriminating in the law.

Now if it say "mom has X leave after birth and dad Y", this is discrimination in the law.

Please note im not saying this is bad, im just saying it is NOT equality.

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