French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave
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All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)
Also they just finished their pappaperm which they said was 133 days over the summer and that means their child likely started in nursery in August or September as is the child's legal entitlement if they were born before August last year or in September last year...
I get that you did something different but the OP's case really does sound like they did what most Norwegian fathers do... (I'm not knocking it because that time was truly special for me.)
But I also think that aside from not sleeping at night (which depending on if the mother breastfeeds the father may not be able to help much with anyway) the first few months before the kid starts crawling are actually easier than the subsequent few years. For us it was mostly about spending that special time together as a family.
But there are some inequalities in the system still. For instance, the father can only take the shared weeks if the mother is in "activity" (working or studying). While in Sweden there is no such requirements.
And I am not sure what happens with the father's share if the mother is out of work and ineligible for proper ompensation. In that case the mother gets a one-time, approx €10 000, compensation, but I think the father does not get anything except two weeks off in connection with birth.
2. Yes if the mother doesn't qualify the father doesn't qualify. I think that there has been a court case that found that this is not legal. But the law has not yet been updated.
I know someone who had only substitute positions for shorter periods in the ten months before birth. But after several rounds of back and forth with NAV (even after birth), she got her benefits. She had to argue that staying at home would cause her to loose income (showed that she had to say no to some substitute work because of birth), and give them detailed lists of all hours she worked. Somehow it amounted to "enough".
Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company.
What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit?
I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much responsibility. If every company in the world had to do this and the governments and taxes supported it, I'd be all for it.
I'm not passing judgment, just really curious how this works. I certainly favor parents getting plenty of time to adjust and spend time with their newborns. But I wonder if this is too much for companies to bear when they have to compete with companies that don't do this.
If it were companies having to pay, that would probably lead to some aversion about hiring people without children in the right age. But that's probably an aversion lots of companies in other countries have about women. "Will they have kids and leave the workforce soon?".
I strongly believe giving dads a lot of paternity leave is good for equality. Of course dads should have the same opportunity as moms, but males taking paternity leave has an indirect good effect on woman in the work force as well. No longer is it assumed that they will be gone for X months in their 20s/30s, compared to men. Some argue the rules should be "X days, split as the parents see fit". But that is what historically has put the pressure on the man to work and the woman to stay at home.
I know a couple that had two children. He wanted a third child. She wanted a PhD. The current Swedish system enabled them to have a child and let him take virtually all the leave while she finished her PhD. But some social engineers would rather not let them have that choice, because the aim is a perfect 50/50 split for all couples in a column of a report somewhere.
(Or even worse, they would be fine with this particular case, but would object if it was she that wanted the third kid and he that wanted a PhD, because a 50/50 split in aggregate also looks pretty good, and this would work towards that in the present situation...)
How about this: after we mandate even split and the culture changes, we give parents back the right to allocate it as they see fit.
Hell, if we want to converge faster and get back to parental choice quicker, we might mandate 3:2 men's vs women's paid leave.
Annecodes like your female PhD candidate story are no basis for determining policy.
Sacrifices for the greater good.
It's a difficult thing to balance. Ideally one should be able to split as wanted, based on one's life situation. But when one is free to choose, one often can find that the freedom is only imaginary. There will be pressure from society/employers/etc to do it a certain way. Lots of countries where it's expected that the father forego all paternity leave, or his career at the company will be done.
You can look at it as they’re “buying” these (and other) benefits via lower salaries across the entire market.
Instead we have the opposite. We have very welcoming immigration laws(which waters down salaries) we have plenty of skilled grads as education is basically free(which waters down salaries again), so in my college town I can't pretty much throw a rock without hitting someone who's doing a PhD in DS/ML/AI but we have no massive local companies that can utilize all that talent and no big VC funding so all those bright minds end up working in lame webshops/consultancies or in some research institute that gets bought up by FAANGs the minute it comes up with a good idea. So basically, we have a huge supply of talent(local and imported) but a low demand(compared to the US) wich results in lower salaries.
To summarize, this is why we can't compete with the US on the tech front, not because of our taxes but because the US can outspend us.
The more labor costs an employer in category X, the less the employer has left to offer labor in categories Y and Z.
Really? How easy is it for an American to get a work visa in France? It’s pretty damned difficult. I lived there for four years with a non-working visa and even getting that was difficult. And every year I had to show my bank statements, health insurance, and provide proof that I owned my house there.
Also to your other points, only one of the FAANGs has been around for more than 25 years. Yet the salary differential has been around a lot longer than that. In fact, it was much worse.
And why doesn’t Europe have massive VC funds? It’s pretty simple, taxes on gains are confiscatory, creating a disincentive to take big risks.
But also huge language barriers, especially for small shops, not speaking the local language is seen a disadvantage.
> we have no massive local companies that can utilize all that talent and no big VC funding
That is not because Europe has less money, but because they have different risk profiles and competencies regarding investing. In some European countries governments are the biggest venture capitalists, which speaks to the inefficiency and desperation created, which explains the lack of unicorns booming up.
This is not just a money issue, it is also a culture and competence issue.
Yeah, this x1000. In my area, most startups survive by government and EU grants so the thinking pattern of most startups here is "what do we do to get more grant money?". You can't create successful SW companies like that. Not to mention, the elephant in the room, the fact that those government grants are often accorded by favoritism instead of merit(connections, nepotism, etc.)
In Canada, your maternity/paternity wages come out of the Employment Insurance system, so everyone chips in. Mothers or fathers can split the leave, which is 52 weeks or more. Seems like a good system.
But some of your concerns are valid; from the employer's standpoint, planning around your staff having children isn't easy. Sometimes new parents decide to never come back to work, and in this country aren't required to provide special notice.
Household Income in US dollars (2018) [3]: Denmark - $34,712 Norway - $39,555 Finland - $34,497 Sweden - $34,301 Iceland - Not reported USA - $50,292
Household Debt as % of disposable income (2015-2018) [1]: Denmark - 281% Norway - 239% Finland - 145% Sweden - 189% Iceland - Not reported USA - 105%
Household Net worth as % of net income (2014) [2]: Denmark - 553% ($191,900) <-- The dollar amounts are my math, based on household income above. Norway - 318% ($125,700) Finland - 359% ($123,800) Sweden - 526% ($180,400) Iceland - Not reported USA - 601% ($301,700)
[1]https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm [2]https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-... [3]https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm#in...
The OECD definition of disposable income is after healthcare and social security costs (http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46).
What process would you use to come up with a set of quantitative criteria that would measure costs and benefits?
USA seems to be in the middle. Right next to Germany, which one might think more similar to the Nordic countries compared to US. Where as Canada is higher than Finland.
The government offers heavy incentives that promote owning a house/apartment, making renting long term a pretty bad economic option. If you plan to live somewhere for more than 2-3 years it's cheaper to own than to rent.
Mortgage rates are typically far lower. My rate is about 1.5%. In Denmark it's -0.5%, yes you get paid to borrow.
If you look at mortgages, you have two negative cashflows: the principal you pay back, and the interest you pay on the loan. Of these two, the interest is actually the only cost. (taxes/insurance is separate because they're typically paid regardless of whether you have a mortgage, you'd still pay this even if you bought the home in cash without a mortgage.)
Paying back principal is not costing you anything. As in, suppose you had a $100 loan and you paid it back, you now have $100 less cash but also $100 less of a loan. You're not any richer or poorer. Similarly, if you do the opposite: borrow $100, sure you have $100 in cash, but you're not richer, because you still owe $100.
In that sense, if you borrow $250k for a home and over the years, earn $250k and use it to pay off the house, you've not 'lost' $250k. You still own it, it's just locked up in the home. If you sell the home, you get the $250k back, assuming the price hasn't changed.
But the interest, that's gone forever. That's where the real cost is in carrying a mortgage.
As such, the borrowing capacity and housing costs that someone can bear, is substantially influenced by mortgage rates. In the US these are 2-3% or so, in Denkmark it's negative 0.5% or so. These interest rates essentially dictate how favourable it is to buy, and how much more prices can rise, while still being affordable. Just compare the monthly fees of a 3% interest mortgage to one with a 1% interest mortgage. Or more informative even: compare how much you can borrow with say $1k a month in mortgage fees (principal+interest, or just interest whatever you want), when the interest rate is 1% or 3%.
For example, a $200k loan at 3% is $300k in total fees. A $280k loan with 0.5% interest is also $300k in total fees. And that's including principal. If you take out the principal, the difference is far greater.
On top of that there's significant tax benefits to home ownership in much of Europe, like deducting interest payments from your taxable income to a very large extent. The combined effect is that a lot of households have tons of debt which is actually very affordable and not problematic. (until interest rates will rise, which will get ugly... but most economists expect low rates to be the 'new normal'... we'll have to see. And a lot of the rates get fixed for 10-30 years so the impact if it happens, is not very direct).
By the way, asking out of legitimate interest, do you have any statistics on that?
For example, there is no word on comparing household income on a purchasing power parity basis. You'd want to reflect prices, which may be higher/lower.
There is no word on the fact household sizes in the region in and around Scandinavia are typically very low, quite a bit lower than the US. (fewer dependents, lower required income for the same standard of living).
There is no word on average vs median statistics, the former favouring less equal countries like the US in the statistics, but the latter painting a more accurate picture of the typical household.
There is no word on expense requirements. Yes, direct social transfers (e.g. rental assistance) would be part of the disposable income statistics. But indirect subsidies (e.g. social housing rents, substantially below market rate, or universal healthcare insurance premiums far below market rates, or universal tertiary education costs far below market rates) are not part of these statistics.
For example, the fact university is free in Denmark, is absolutely not part of the household income. The fact public healthcare is free in Denmark, is not part of household income statistics. Yet the quality of both is very good.
There is also no word on the differential interest rates. For example, Denmark currently has negative mortgage rates. Obviously that increases household debt. But any additional household mortgage debt for example is actually creating a net income for these very same households. You can debate whether these interest rates signal economic issues, that's a fair discussion, but the point still stands that 'not all household debt is equal'. You cannot say 'high debt is worse', when many EU countries have interest rates from -0.5% to - 1.5% and the US has interest rates of 2 - 3%, and compare them.
Same with net worth, it all ties in to every other aspect of the welfare state. In the US you have a minimal welfare state and thus must accumulate net worth for retirement, kids' education, medical copayments etc etc. In many North/west EU countries education, healthcare, housing is all free or strongly subsidised and publicly funded, requiring much lower accumulations of private net worth to attain the same quality of life.
In short, the data you cite is not incorrect, but your conclusions are shortsighted and need far more interpretation and context to approximate the truth of the matter.
It's not magic, obviously overall the economy is still paying for this to happen, but then the US system isn't magic either, babies don't magically receive any benefits from parents who are actually working all the time and barely see them for a handful of hours per week. So the question is only: Is it a good idea? Because if it's a good idea then paying for it is just a question of mechanics. Same for universal healthcare, the provision of safe drinking water, literacy programmes, you name it.
That's for each child. I worked with a guy who had 5 kids and with sick leave and holidays he worked <6mo a year for 7 years straight and when he did turn up he was too tired and uninterested to do anything useful.
Its a good reason why Europe is disappearing as a economic force. OTOH The other reason is not enough children so maybe my coworker ended up helping the economy.
0: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
On one hand I guess you could compare it to American manufacturing vs. manufacturing in e.g. Vietnam, India, China where companies often fly under local labor laws and workers are worked to unreasonable hours.
On another hand I also do think there is something to be said for better mental health => better work output at least in skilled jobs. A fact that many American companies don't seem to get.
And yes, the "aktivitetskrav for mor" is stupid. There are some other subtleties as well. I helped make the original digital application in 2015, and there was a lot of edge cases. Like if you're a fisherman your pay should be documented a different way. Fun times.
Actually Norwegian parental leave is not that generous by the standards of similar countries. There is one year total of leave shared between mother and father (or other mother).
Edit: Living in Norway is more expensive though. So a family of low income might not have been able to sustain themselves if the compensation was lower.
Of course. Like so many other things, it's a matter of priorities.
On the other hand, can we afford mutinationals paying no taxes?
For all its talk about "family values", the US doesn't seem to care much about families; it's one of the few countries in the world without paid maternity leave (the others are Papua New Guinea, Lesotho and Swaziland), and it has the highest maternity death rate in the developed world.
And the US is not a poor country by any means; this is really a matter of culture and values.
???
Meanwhile, many countries much poorer than the US do a lot more. Maybe not quite as much as Scandinavian countries, but they do something.
The bigger problem is I think the average US SS beneficiary takes home around $1400/mo (and they would be Medicare-eligible, unlike most new parents). My mortgage alone is a substantial multiple of $1400/mo.
[0] The one year for one year trade ignores the growth at Treasury rates between the age-at-use and current retirement age. That could easily be 35 years which is a doubling at 2% interest rates, so we’d have to push back everyone’s social security retirement age back by 2 years to fund a max of $1400/mo for 1 year for each child. If we ever return to 4% Treasury rates, that would be 4 years delay for everyone to fund it. 8% is over 15 years’ delay (mathematically is slightly under 15, but so few people draw 15 years that the actual delay would likely be 16 or more years) and we’ve had 8% Treasuries during my adult lifetime.
Thought experiment: imagine next year from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, literally every 25-year old stops working and simultaneously everyone who was due to retire in that year has their retirement delayed by one year.
The total size of the workforce remains constant.
If this became a permanent feature of society [0], GDP, average corporate income, and tax revenue, would all be constant.
Private pensions as well as states pensions would also pay out less in total, as there would be less years between retirement and death. How much would your pension pay, relative to parental leave, if someone equivalent to you were to reach pension age today? Because that’s the amount available for paternity in this thought experiment, not the number that your actual pension will be worth when you reach pension age.
[0] For a one-off year it would appear higher, but that’s an illusion caused by old people having more experience and therefore higher productivity and income; it obviously wouldn’t remain true once those 25-year-olds with one fewer years of experience each became 65.
My actual retirement is my defined contribution 401(k) account. The amount I put in now grows until I draw it down in retirement. There’s no one who will give me a year of their 401(k) drawdown, of course. What 401(k) money I and my wife don’t spend is part of our estate and inherited just like any other type of private savings.
Defined benefit plans (“private pensions”) are rare (and becoming more rare) for the current workforce.
Social Security is more than a rounding error in the retirement picture, but it’s by far the minority of income for most professional jobs. That’s literally the only “pension style money” that’s available to me and it’s about $1400/mo as far as I can tell. That's not going to take the typical 25-year old new parent very far I don't think. (It's slightly over the federal minimum wage for one full-time worker.)
Edit to add some stats/refs:
[0] - 4% of private sectors workers have only defined-benefit plan (down from 60% in the 1980s) 14% of private sector employees have access to both - https://money.cnn.com/retirement/guide/pensions_basics.money...
[1] - https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/factsheet/defined-benefit-frozen....
But of course your basic point stands. Absent a separate defined-benefit pension (which still exist from older jobs in some cases), SS is fairly minimal by itself even if you own a house.
You are though, by definition, taking away an average benefit from those who would retire to give to parents, so I think average is the right reference figure when contemplating "what would the parental benefit be if funded from social security delays?"
Thanks for the compliment, I’m glad to see I’m improving :)
If there's a will, there's a way.
Oh, our external debt is about 40% and our tax rates are largely comparable to Western ones. So far the only signs of collapse seem to be coming from Communist era buildings :-p
As my dad who still lives there told me, unless you know someone in the system or pay the doctors bribes or go to their private offices(because of course) they won't lift a finger to help you and just leave you sink in the healthcare bottomless pit of endless misery, bureaucracy and waiting lists where you keep being bounced around like a hot potato that nobody gives a damn about. If you actually want to be taken care of the right way, you have to pay up or know someone in the system.
And once you end up in the underfunded public hospitals, you then have to pay the nurses to take care of you and not leave you in your own sh!t, buy medicine, toilet paper and food out of pocket as what you get there is lacking or sub-standard. Basically, if you're poor, you're f*cked.
But yeah, at least on paper, some Romanian laws still got some things right, even compared to richer countries. Too bad that major corruption is eating all that away.
- clean hospitals
- punctual appointments
- basic services covered
Everything being bought with public funds ends up being bought through middle men at 10x the price.
You need to have been in your current company at least a year
The duration changes based on the number of children you have. up to 1 year for 1 children, 2 years for 2, 5 years for 3 or more.
It can't be denied by the employer
Your contract is suspended, but the employer has to take you back with an equivalent contract once your back
The (big) downside is that you are paid a small allocation during this time. When you already have a really low salary it can be quite interesting, but when you have a higher salary it can be a big pay cut.
Anecdotally, my (US) employer started offering paternal leave a few years ago and most new fathers are using it. We allow it to be split, so many will do 2 weeks initially, then in 1-2 week chunks over the next several months.
My company leaves that decision to the couple. The couple chooses who is primary and secondary. My wife got 12 weeks as the primary caregiver. Our situation is a bit weird because we work for the same company.
At this point in my career I take it as a red flag against the company. Women obviously still face many more hurdles than men when it comes to workplaces and an expanding family, and both genders deserve more paid time off in the US when the family grows, but policies like this end up specifically targeting men more often than not.
By default it defines men to be a less important care-giver than women.
Norway has > 800x the oil reserves per capita of France and has not gone through what you could call a political crisis over the past few years regarding aligning the spending level of its welfare state with the economic and budgetary realities, with years of protests and riots, some of which are still ongoing. In the face of this it's quite a bold move for France to go from zero to 28 days for the sake of benefiting gender norms and family relationships in the long-term.
Norway, a rich country of just 5 million people, cannot be used as a comparison without noting all some of the budgetary context. Not just in this discussion, but more broadly on HN. If you're talking about something relatively budget-neutral like say 'same-sex marriage should be able to adopt children, just look at XYZ (e.g. Norway), it works just fine', that's alright. But if you're saying or implying something which has a lot of costs involved like 'fathers should get at least 4.5 months of paid parental leave as a rule, not an exception, just look at Norway' then you can't just leave out cost from the discussion, it makes no sense.
Obviously all of us would prefer long-term paid parental leave, arguing it's nice to have adds nothing to the discussion because there is already universal agreement. Arguing it's worth having, is an entirely different and much more meaningful discussion, but it cannot be be had without weighing the pros against the cons, the biggest one is cost.
And I say this coming from the Netherlands, an also quite rich country that I'd love to see as a model for many other countries. But such discussions should include budgetary context, among others.
I also find your argument a bit weird. Why not start an discussion about if the cost is worth it (which is what you want to discuss) instead of picking on the details of the country in question?
That’s exactly what GP did. He pointed out that whether the cost is worth it depends on how much you can afford. In Poland it’s two weeks, by the way.
We didn't go from zero to 28 days of paternity leave. We doubled it, from 14 to 28.
Our first daughter was born a few weeks ago. I took off the first week, but it had to come out of my PTO (and I only have 2 weeks total per year). My wife had to quit her job so she could recuperate and spend time with the baby. She had a rough c-section and is still in bed in a lot of pain. I'm trying to work, take care of her, and take care of the baby.
I wrote a long angry paragraph about US politics and culture here, but on second thought, for my mental sanity I need to drop it.
SO and I have been seriously discussing moving somewhere else and plan to once the pandemic eases up enough for travel to be easier. We're still not 100% sure yet where to go though.
The good part about moving elsewhere from the US is that you can go anywhere sort-of-western and have things get a lot better.
I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line. I'm grateful that we have a healthy 4-month old baby, but this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable. Better parental rights, better funding for education and health - better take care of your workers and your future (children) and they will be able to take better care of you.
Honestly, would have just looked for a new job and dipped.
This isn't to discount your general point about lack of compassion, just to discount what seemed to be the assumption that it is always the case and/or is related to the middle of the country.
Here's the problem: we're stuck in the mindset that profit is so important that we need it to be compatible with compassion or else we'll just sacrifice compassion.
I honestly wonder what effect one person taking off this time would have on the bottom line. If you are that critical to your company, you could probably negotiate for a higher salary. Otherwise, this is just callousness, which I guess is expected from unchecked capitalism.
The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...
It's odd that Swedes aren't taking full advantage of the situation.
Either that, or there’s something plugging the loophole the GP mentions.
Your job is probably protected while on maternity leave too.
I*d say that one of the main difficulties with 12 pregnancies is the actual pregnancies - they are hard on the body and honestly, it isn't recommended that folks have a pregnancy a year - if one even is able to have so many. The more likely situation is that having 12 children means some of those children are fosters or adoptions. And at that point, I don't actually care if someone has 12 children so long as they are good parents.
Some people really like to raise children, multiples.
But lets not forget that children are work. More children, more work. The thought that you are 'retiring' and relaxing just isn't so: for 14+ years, you always have a diaper to change, you always need to keep a childproof house, you always need to toilet train someone. For some years, you always have a preteen to watch over. Someone just going off to college. Etc.
But again, this isn't the norm. Even large families rarely have so many children. The amount of folks that try to have 12 children is such a small portion that it isn't worth worrying about and honestly, just parrots right-wing fears that folks are having children to get money from the government.
Why I would change 8 hours to it?
It is also unethical way of life in this planet.
Let’s not project western purity codes to the entire planet. This planet still has countries with high mortality rates, infant and otherwise.
According to you.
But in all seriousness, Germany and Sweden (and the USA for that matter) all have sub-replacement fertility rates. I understand that you believe that people will reproduce like rabbits, especially if incentivized, but the data doesn't reflect that.
In every system there are those that game the system. The question is: does the benefit for the majority outweigh the cost of those abusing the benefit?
You think people not having children are abusing the system? I know many who just don't want to become parents at 40 anymore, so they will never have children. That decision is also influenced by economic situations.
Educated people don't have enough children to replace themselves, and its not because they are too busy.
Give people the choice and most choose to do things preventing children until they have existential crisis. Remove the choice and people are have children at twice the rate, pretty much coinciding with when they become sexually active.
It's not that hard to understand or perceive.
In a place like the US you can get more granular data down to the county level and see the same thing. Economic centers having the same trends in first birth age as other developed nations.
There is an even distribution of sexual activity, you might just have to trust me on that one, but there might be some study to cross reference and show thats a constant.
Given the same result occurring in so many places, the evidence suggests people aren't interested in children until they are afraid they can't pass on their genes in a healthy way. Fix that and I would expect to see the age increasing another ten years. Fix the stamina deterioration and I would expect to see the age increasing further again.
"People being more selfish" might definitely be a factor, but you might come across as considering it like the factor, which would required exceptional data..
I used the word suggest and chose it specifically. I did consider those things and chose not to write a dissertation to convey the exact same concept as the word "suggest". Do with it what you will.
It is possible to be reductive because the same thing happens in so many places. I think there are very few exceptions to "educated, choices, access to contraception" where "cultural peer pressure to have children young" actually works.
Do you have some data to back that?
12 of the 14 months can be doubled as well, up to 24 months, at half the regular salary replacement. A good option if a parent wants to work part-time.
Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
I can only speculate as to why.
1) Our cultural wiring runs deeper than just "sex is a social construct"
2) The German system is still quite complicated. As countless online calculators and private consultancies helping you filling out the forms prove. As well as the above statistic itself, since financially it would make more sense if the father took as much leave as possible (if he earns more, the family gets 65% of "more").
[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Arbeit/Arbeitsmarkt/Qualit...
Whoever of the parents is earning less, in most cases it would make more sense for the less compensated parent to just switch into part-time, if he/she isn't already working a tax-free "mini-job", while the higher compensated parent takes the leave. This yields the highest income per hours@home.
But that's usually not what people optimize for, they optimize for max total income, because rent or mortgage payments etc aren't based on a percentage of income but fixed amounts. Sure, it's great if you only work one hour a month and get 1000€ for that instead of working 100 hours and getting 4000€. But if your rent is 1100€, what good does that do?
Does it matter?
This option gives you neither.
Rather, I have a colleague who took paternal leave with their partner and afterwards switched to part-time for a bit.
This statistics is simply misleading. It says that 2% of the fathers with children under 3 years old are currently on parental leave at any given time.
Let's say you split the 14 months of parental leave so that the mother takes 12 months and the father 2 months (which I commonly see). So within the first 36 months of the child's life there is a 2 in 36 chance that the father is currently on paternal leave in any random month. So basically you have to multiply that 2% by 18 to get the total number of fathers who take paternal leave: 36% if they all take the minimum number of months.
"which I commonly see" is not something that is statistically sound. And neither is just multiplying it. If fathers would on average take 1 month out of 24 offered this wouldn't exactly count as a success for the programme or gender equality.
At least anecdotally, many of the fathers I've talked to take the 2 months at the very minimum.
> Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
> I can only speculate as to why.
To give a context of the culture and legal system, as of today, unmarried fathers don't get legal custody automatically, and if they apply and the mother refuses, they need to go to court. This is even a recent change; until 2009, if the mother refused, there was no chance, and until 2013, the father had to go to the European Court of Human Rights.
Germany has a very surprising family culture in the Northern Europe context - the surrounding countries are considerably more progressive. An educated guess is that the Nazi regime promoted the father provider/mother educator model, and it's taking a very long time to move on.
Interesting. Do unmarried fathers have any financial responsibility for the child?
everything else being equal - i.e. both parents having the same salary, career prospects, desire to work vs. spend time with baby, energy levels, etc. - it's simply more efficient for the woman to take care of the baby, as she's the only one that can feed it (or, more specifically, her feeding the baby is very likely medically better than using baby food)
You get paid (80%). You can't get fired. Choosing not to do it means you don't want to do it, or you chose something else over your parental leave. Not only would skipping parental leave not be seen as normal by my social circle, it wouldn't be seen as normal by my manager or colleagues. I'd be getting questions like "you took zero weeks of leave when your son was born? why?".
So maybe it doesn’t mean you don’t want to do it but simply can’t afford to do it.
That would of course be an acceptable excuse. I meant that for my particular situation since my peers know I can afford it, they would also know I chose not to because I dind't want to (not acceptable), or because I felt my career would suffer (not acceptable).
I can only speculate as to why."
I thought the answer is simple - father cannot breastfeed a baby (even though gender is only a social construct, as some people claim, nature is still nature and reality is still reality).
This issue could be fixed easily, by adding up the income of both partners and then paying 65% of the sum.
But instead in Germany you get 65% up to a maximum amount of 1800 Euro of the person taking the parental leave. So if your salary is higher than roughly 2800 Euro (after taxes/netto) you will get even less than 65% of your income during parental leave. So if there are two partners, one above 2800 Euro and one below it is clear that the one below should take the parental leave. So the mathematics of the German system together with a gender imbalance in salaries guarantees a conservative split of the parental leave.
If our government wouldn't be so incompetent one could think that they invented these rules on purpose. But that would imply that they can do math. And that is a conspiracy that is so absurd nobody would believe that.
One can go also up to 36 months of parental leave, but the rest of the time is unpaid.
Fellow German here, I don't know of anyone in my friend circle rich enough to be able to put together the downpayment for a home...
So yes, it's a good amount but still much less than the minimum 80% here in Sweden.
This hits home hard: my newborn is now one month old, and I had to forgo the 11 days of leave.
Why? Because there’s a hard cap on the salary: I ran the numbers for me for the current 11 days in France it means over 1k€ of income just vanish, and it’s not like we can make loans, rent, and other fixed expenses disappear, right at the moment where we have to shell out money for the hospital and general baby equipment. If it were 28 days that would be over half of my salary going poof.
Union agreements say that for the employer to fill in the remainder it’s required I’d be in this company for at least two years, but I joined only a year and a half ago.
It so happened that I took barely any off days during this time so I took a month to bond, which sure took its toll on me (not the bonding of course, the lack of time off for over a year)
That's not a very large difference, the main difference is that the Swedish one never goes over 80% of your salary while the French one goes up to 100%.
So then what exactly do you return to? It can't be your old position exactly -- you were replaced. So its more like a vague promise that the business will rehire you into some arbitrary position? Or even worse, make up a new position of equivalent power upon your return?
I work as a developer and in the places I've worked it has never been a problem. You leave and while you're gone your responsibilities are shared by other colleagues. When you're back you resume your old position. It's true that you might not get back to doing exactly the same work as before you left, but in my experience that's rarely a problem. In my case it's been quite the opposite and an opportunity to take on new things. I think this is quite common
It's true that the employer overall needs to keep more staff around since some percentage will be away on parental leave and your need to cover those fluctuations. For small companies this can be a problem but in general I think this system has great acceptance with the public.
Just because you cannot get fired for going on parental leave does not mean that the company cannot hire a substitute for your absence. This is typically what happens.
If you're in a more singular position (manager etc.), then the entire's department workload can be rearranged so that your work falls onto one or multiple of your colleagues while you're gone. Since apparently most bigger orgs are in constant flux, it's not hard to do.
Also, since it's the norm that people disappear for long periods of time, businesses can hire with some slack (e.g. hire 110% of needed capacity) to easily absorb absences.
Also, by your argument it is not viable to hire women of fertile age. Which, in Sweden at least, is really out of touch with reality.
The following excerpt is from [3]:
There are parts of my surrounding family that expressed their concerns, “if you go away, your career is going to suffer”. I’ll be honest and say that I also had similar concerns the first time I went away. And when I returned, I came back to a slightly different role. That sent up a flag for me. The team had been restructured and I was now asked to support a leader as opposed to be a leader - like I was before I left. I was to support Lars Gustavsson, our Creative Director and the famous Mr. Battlefield. So while I was no longer THE lead, I was still in the leadership group plus I was now learning from a seasoned pro. So it worked out and ultimately I feel my career was not negatively impacted in any significant way.
For this parental leave I worked with my manager Adam Clark (Head of Production) to establish a departure plan which started in Summer 2019. We planned which areas I would work on, and we created a rough initial plan for the transition period. We spent the remainder of the year fulfilling that plan at quarterly intervals.
The result of this early planning is that my role will be covered in full while I am away. My lead position will be covered by another Producer who has worked with me for the past quarter, being onboarded regarding all crucial functions. This type of commitment to planning gives me confidence to go on leave, knowing I will come back to a similar well planned roadmap in 2021.
Additionally a number of my colleagues have been transparent on what they want me to do when I return. Both Ryan McArther (Sr Producer) and Andreas Morell (Sr Producer.) have had sit downs with me and detailed the role they want me to take upon my return. That again, gives me confidence to leave and enjoy my time away.
[1] https://www.dice.se/news-articles/life-at-dice-why-3-dads-ar...
[2] https://www.dice.se/news-articles/life-at-dice-why-3-dads-ar...
[3] https://www.dice.se/news-articles/life-at-dice-why-3-dads-ar...
- Someone leaves for 8 months of maternity leave
- Org hires a replacement with determined-end contract
- Org loves this new person
- New person also enjoyed their time in this position, made new contacts and learned new skills which they can leverage elsewhere
- Org also now knows who to contact immediately when there is another opening or new full-time position
A growing company or government office can absolutely benefit from the "overhead" of such extensive parental leave, it's just subtle.
You can't know. It's supposed to be whatever I did before, or equivalent. Basically if they replace me I can make a fuss about wanting my position back or an equivalent position. In any case, you can't e.g. be at a worse pay grade even if you have a lower "position" than before. I have never seen it be a problem.
> even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found..
We do 5 or 6 weeks holiday every year without problem, not sure why that would be such a big issue. Actually since I had kids I distribute out my remaining parental leave days to a couple of weeks per summer, so from ages 0-8 my summer holidays have been 7 or 8 weeks every year. No manager would even ask a question about this.
> So its more like a vague promise
Well it's the law...
But most importantly so long as people want to take paternal leave, I think even the promise of being rehired is good enough. The key to the system working is that everyone does it. I wouldn't want to work for a manager that hadn't.
Here people have 26 days of paid leave + 1 year of combined paternity+maternity leave per kid + paid health leave whenever a doctor decides it's needed.
Businesses work just fine - they simply hire more people to offset the fact that everybody is expected to be out of office X% of the time. Also there are temporary contracts and B2B contracts if needed (less protection but also less taxes so they are quite popular with IT people).
That's one of those miracles that happen when people pay the right amount of taxes!
It's incredible what social democracy can do for you if you stop fighting it in the name of the war to socialism!
Isn't it?
Personally I don't understand how is it viable to have a society where the GDP is astronomical and people have to spend their own money to pay insurance companies that make billions in profits, while women have no right to a fully paid maternal leave.
Unless in those countries people are considered like cogs in the machine...
> So its more like a vague promise
You can' t be fired. It's by law.
France has 1 year parental leaves, which may be extended up to a total of 3 years (and more in case of twins, etc). But they are unpaid though the employee may then qualify for various benefits.
There is also a 'birth leave' of 3 days. So when you have a baby you can have a 3 day leave at birth, then the now 28 day paternity leave within the next 4 months, and an unpaid 1-3 year parental leave.
Iirc, the first leave is on full pay by the employer, the second on capped pay by a special state benefit (but employers can top up), and the third is unpaid though, as mentioned, other benefits exist subject to conditions.
The idea being that one leave is for attending the actual birth (in France mothers are usually kept in hospital for a few days after birth in order to recover and to be taught how to look after a baby, fathers are welcome during the day), one leave is for bonding with the new born baby, and the third leave is, if needed, to look after the baby until (s)he reaches free nursery school age.
French admin is always as simple as can be, not ;)
In my case, at the time I worked for a company that offered a lot of annual leaves (I had about 8 weeks a year) so took normal annual leaves instead of the paternity leave after the initial 3 day "birth leave" in order not to lose money as the paternity leave cap was quite lower than most engineers earn.
This isn't just an apriori fact of the culture, but an intentional result of the structure of the leave.
90 days are reserved for each parent (there's an exception for single parents) i.e. if the father doesn't take those 3 months they are lost. Apparently before this policy came into effect, fathers would typically take very little leave. But once there was an incentive to take 3 months they began to take longer periods and split the overall time more evenly.
So even though it's part of the culture, it's not impossible to understand how it came to be, and therefore not impossible to replicate elsewhere.
My wife and I are very busy taking care of the baby essentially all day, so I have no clue how this work is so often done by one parent, much less having both parents working full time.
The U.S. needs to get its act together in the 21st century. A lack of mandated PTO and a lack of leave cannot be good for the long term mental health of the country. I would gladly pay more taxes to ensure everyone had this perk.
Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in society at large that ultimately contribute to the wage gap.
Of course I stayed at work, and of course my wife now has enormous gaps in her work history, and so of course my yearly gains in income have outpaced hers.
This needs to be managed through the government. Quebec has done a good job at it. And yes, it can be used by either the father or the mother without any problem.
You can, indeed, mandate equal practices by employers and enforce that requirement.
This is the same argument that's used to justify lack of paid sick leave, lack of protections against discrimination (Title VII only applies to companies with 15 or more people), working people who don't have employer-provided health insurance, etc. Every single abuse a company can visit on its employees is magnified several times by small businesses.
It's time for the government to decide that small businesses not playing by the rules are a net negative for society and just let them go.
It's certainly consistent to say that everyone should just work for big businesses who can absorb these kinds of costs. But I think we have to acknowledge that this process, where regulations end up building a wall only big businesses can easily climb over, would be called "regulatory capture" in a different context. Government funding really seems to me like the better alternative.
That isn't the only solution, but it's one that could work and would make the world a better place.
Because they would be able to bond with their children during paternity leave, which is a huge positive for father and child.
Forcing someone to stop working would likely piss a lot of people off, and would generally hurt the companies these fathers work for.
So it’s better to hurt children then ‘companies’?
Edit: I agree that fathers should not literally be forced to take leave. That would be dictatorial. The grandparent poster used the term essentially forced, which implies strongly encouraging both parents to take the offered leave. For example, if they would still receive most of their salary during this time, and their position were protected.
It's your subjective opinion that not having 'dad's around 24/7 is going to 'hurt babies'.
In all pragmatism, there's no need for 'a second parent' to take 30 days off, and I'll bet most guys, while they wouldn't mind 'some time' - probably don't need or want 30 days.
7-14 days is reasonable for second parent.
There's no optimizations here, I think we are 'mostly past' these issues, whatever tinkering we do is academic.
Subsidized childcare is a different story though, that has major impact, for better or for worse, there's still a lot of experimentation going on there.
For example, we all pretty much agree at least on 'kindergarten' before that, it's still different from place to place.
> In all pragmatism, there's no need for 'a second parent' to take 30 days off, and I'll bet most guys, while they wouldn't mind 'some time' - probably don't need or want 30 days.
Speaking of subjective opinions, here's another one.
Nobody is forcing a parent to take 30 days, or 3 months off to spend with a child. If you get the time off and want to spend it golfing, go for it. But it means that the large number of fathers who _do_ want to take time off are now able to, and more importantly, a mother isn't forced to take 6-9 months out and suffer in their career for it.
The government wouldn't be forcing any father to do anything. The government would be forcing companies to provide all workers the privilege of time off for parenting. A father who didn't want to bond with his children could use the time off to go fishing, take up woodworking, watch youtube videos, or work on a side-business.
I mean, you can do these things with your kids.
Enough with this, and the 'Swedish shaming' as noted above.
People are offered leave, that's good, if they don't want to take it, it's none of anyone's business really.
Hum... wouldn't that depend on why you're not taking them?
Say you're not taking them because of social pressure?
Say you don't want to take them because doing so will put you up for promotion before your co-workers who do?
Say you don't want to take them because it result in a loss of money (if say employer offers reduced pay only)
And maybe others. But I feel some of those reasons call for further discussion. Like, it shouldn't be that you don't take them due to social pressure, lower pay, or to get ahead. None of these seem equally fair to all employees.
If you really just really were someone whose favourite thing to do is go to work day in, day out, then ok sure. It be hard to argue against that, but like... really?
No, definitely not.
You've made no argument here.
It's not the company or the government's business why someone would want to take family leave - or not - same for vacation time, or where someone would go, or what they do frankly.
Unless it's illegal or really adversely affecting the company, or obviously if the company is trying to 'suppress' people from taking vacay etc..
Forcing vacations and such things, to achieve some kind of ideological and probably unscientific premise is a bridge too far.
If the company is promoting those who don't, that can be seen as retaliation against those who do.
If companies don't provide adequate pay for employees who have a child, it can be seen as punishment for those who bear the burden of children for all others.
And if you're not taking them because of social pressure, well then it's a vicious cycle, since no one takes them due to pressure, and now it invalidates the point of giving them in the first place. So possibly something needs to be done to break the cycle.
Etc.
I'm not saying any of this is reason enough to push for enforcement or anything like that. But it's also not simply a matter of "not being anyone's business". For example, it can very much be my business if I want to be able to take some time off, and not lose out to my co-workers on the next promotion just because I wanted to take some time to take care for my new born. Same could be said for sick leave or other.
So I guess we could reframe the debate in terms of:
Is it fair for a man who would like to take some time to care for his new born, that doing so could hurt his career? And off course, that asks a greater question: Do we want to promote fatherhood and give incentives for people to have kids and care for them properly? Or would we rather incentivize full time careers with little to no downtime and complete dedication to work?
I think with rasing children there's a question of where lies the responsability and consequences? Laws mandate many things that are meant for you to clean up after yourself and not leave a mess which others have to be burdened with.
In theory, one could argue raising a child is a similar scenario, and I think we already have many laws around it to some extent.
So it could be said that both parents must share the burden, and thus they could both be mandated to take time off. Or it could be argued that this will lead to children raised better and who will be more productive to society at large, so also could justify mandating it, etc.
I'm not really into the idea, because it assumes a lot and I feel so many situations related to parenthood are much more complex, so it's hard to blanket say what is best for all parties, but I feel it's not unprecedented to make laws around responssabilities of a parent towards their child.
Another example (that is very different) is where UC Berkeley was forced to pull course videos it had put up because it didn't have a disabled-accessible version of them. The videos presented an advantage to normative people.
The world-view does not admit Pareto-optimal changes since benefit to some slice of humanity that is chosen based on immutable (or socially-considered inherent - like religion) characteristics is implicitly assumed to push everyone else back unless the benefit accrues to them as well.
So should we force men to take testosterone blocking drugs since testosterone gives an unfair advantage? The hormone is a main driver of competitive-ness and aggression and strength, which in business overall and especially some fields is a huge advantage.
Or give smart people some drugs to make them a little less smart, to even them out with everyone else.
The world is full of inequities, that’s a part of life.
> Forcing someone to stop working would likely piss a lot of people off
Which people? Most humans are going to be parents some day, and even those that aren't can see that living in a world where every child has same opportunity in terms of having both parents with them for the first few days, weeks, or months of their lives is a net positive for society.
Which father doesn't want time off to be with their children if it doesn't otherwise impact them negatively (ie. they were taken of by their fellow man)?
> and would generally hurt the companies these fathers work for.
I don't believe that to be true. A company is a group of humans. Giving those humans time off to parent makes healthier, happy humans and a healthier and more effective workforce.
The restriction on employers is that the parent on leave must be able to resume their employment after leave unless their position has been removed entirely, and even so that can cause problems for employers.
And yes, there are options for them to carry on but society pretty much forces most women to stop working, due to aforementioned social pressures, structural sexist policies and expectations we put on women.
If all men and women were forced to take 6 months off, we would see far more women succeeding in the workplace over the long term, as they would not be disadvantaged by choosing to have a baby.
This means we as a society get more people working overall in more jobs, being more productive, solving more problems and building a better future for us all. Capitalism is not zero sum- men do not lose when women succeed, quite the opposite. Limiting our workforce to 50% of our population is bad policy, even if you're sexist and in favour of men over women, you must understand the economic benefits of increased paternity leave.
I agree with your last sentence but, like, having a child is one of the few situations where the biological "bias" really is unavoidable, at least for the first couple months.
So women are by default at a disadvantage in that situation, which makes forcing the same work absence onto the father even worse for the family's income as a whole. What we need is to make sure that that kind of prolonged absence from work doesn't impact either parent too much. At least some 100% paid parental leave would be a good start and enabling remote work, which is possible in the vast majority of jobs, would not only improve the mother's situation, but also allow the parents to freely balance who stays with the child more, increasing equality all-round.
For every gap there's missed yearly/quaterly reviews, there's missed opportunities for promotion, and there's a stall in your compensation growth overall. When you come back to work you typically come back at the wage you left.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ter...
Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery.
Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off.
There is nothing sexist about this. It is more efficient to extend one person's required time off than it is to give two separate people time off. An extended maternity leave generally means that one company needs to find one replacement or otherwise shuffle work. Maternity + paternity leave means you need to do that, 2x.
I fully support longer paternity leaves because I do think it is important for having equality in the workplace. But the idea that it's society that is sexist in this regard is ridiculous.
Honestly I don't think we will really have equality until babies are grown in test tubes, and that's not society's fault.
It's more economically efficient (it takes time and effort to replace the work that was being done by someone, regardless of how employers are remunerating employees) to extend that person's leave than to arrange for two separate leaves for two separate jobs when there was no necessity for the second person to take time off in the first place.
It's emergent behavior based off efficiency and the harsh realities of childbirth (i.e. men and women have very different parts to play in childbirth). It's not sexism.
> It's more economically efficient [..] to extend that person's leave than to arrange for two separate leaves
This isn't about what's economically efficient, it's about what certain societies think is well spent money.
> It's not "structurally sexism", it's biology.
And it is sexism to ignore the effects to womens careers if this is not shared.
Paternal leave is a privilege, not a right.
Not doing everything you possibly can to make everyone equal when it comes to sex is not sexism.
So what?
> Not doing everything you possibly can to make everyone equal when it comes to sex is not sexism.
If something inherent in our society - having children - causes one gender to have unequal opportunity it's sexist to be against counter-measures due to some sort of bullshit "biology" argument.
You can be not sexist without supporting every possible measure to attempt to achieve a perfectly egalitarian society.
Biological differences are not artificial.
The entire purpose of employment is to output work that is useful to other people / society at large. If you are not doing that, there is no reason for you to be gainfully employed by anyone else. Therefore, please note that any time I say "productivity" in the rest of this comment, I mean it in the sense of doing productive work for other people, e.g. employment.
As a side-effect of childbirth, women lose productive capacity. Men do not. This is not a societal choice, it is a physiological reality. It will continue to be true up until the moment women no longer need to carry a baby around in their wombs for 9 months in order to bring new humans into the world. Note I'm just talking about pre/perinatal here, not long-term child rearing.
Any "disadvantage" occurs naturally as a result of loss in real usefulness (for a time) when it comes to employment. Now, you want to compensate for that natural loss in productivity by mandating that men artificially lose productivity in the form of paternity leave. I agree with you that this is probably[1] a good idea. But not wanting to overcompensate for actual biological differences is not sexism. This clearly doesn't fall into sexism because it doesn't apply to all women. It only applies to women that can + want to have children. The discrimination is not based on sex, it's based on a demonstrable loss in productivity that occurs naturally and by choice.
Again, this is very much unlike the disadvantage experienced by black Americans before the Civil Rights Movement, which was not a result of natural processes but rather a result of completely arbitrary bigotry and absolutely not in any way, shape, or form brought on by a choice made by black Americans.
[1] I say probably here because obviously paternity leave only applies to men who are having / have had children, so you will continue to have a similar problem (discrimination based on a loss in productivity), except now the sides are not "women having children" vs. everyone else but rather "people having children" vs. everyone else (i.e. people that don't want children). As I said though, I agree and still think this is better than the completely natural version of events, where only the woman side of the equation loses productivity, because at the end of the day in situations like these it is both the woman and the man who are choosing to bring a child into the world. And even though it is a choice to do so, it is obviously the kind of choice which we need people to make otherwise society will cease to exist, which is why I am happy to compensate for the loss in productivity due to this choice. That being said, once test-tube babies are both easy (easier/safer than natural childbirth) and normalized, I probably won't be able to countenance advantaged maternity/paternity leave (at least before the "birth" of the baby), because then it will be an entirely optional choice and you would be effectively punishing people that choose to have babies in the test-tube fashion.
You're treating a biological difference (the actual birth) of a few weeks as a valid reason for a much larger societal disadvantage.
Finally, child rearing should not be seen as a "loss of productivity" but as unpaid work, since without it, as you also noted, we would cease to exist.
The biological part is a couple of weeks, child-rearing that parental leave is a part of is for at least 12 months until daycare can take over. Fathers can and should do that as well. So in the end the amount of time away from work should be the roughly equal. So once again, if this sums up to equal portions away from work, which there is no reason not to, is there a biological argument for lower wage etc for women?
Do you also think that pregnant women get their salary deducted for their supposed loss in "productivity"?
Please let me know why this statement isn't true:
> To assume that men need not take part in child-rearing before the child is ready for daycare is a sexist assumption.
> Please let me know why this statement isn't true:
>> To assume that men need not take part in child-rearing before the child is ready for daycare is a sexist assumption.
This can be answered quite simply with: that statement is in fact true. Not sure why you feel like I should answer such a question, as I haven't implied anything like that.
> Any "disadvantage" occurs naturally as a result of loss in real usefulness (for a time) when it comes to employment. Now, you want to compensate for that natural loss in productivity by mandating that men artificially lose productivity in the form of paternity leave.
You call men caring for the child as artificial. But the fact is that beyond a couple of weeks the mother's "loss in productivity" is just as artificial as the father's, or do you actually think that women usually start to work again after just a couple of weeks on average?
What I noticed is the time out for having children doesn't really interrupt a woman's working career that much. Not to mention women typically work up till the 7 to 8th month of pregnancy. So what gone for six months, two years? Out of 40-45 years of working? That's a couple of percent.
But boy does the system punish them for it.
Yes, this is true. Neither the actual mother nor the actual father is required to care for the baby after delivery. Believe it or not, this is how adoption works. That is one half of the point I've been making this whole time.
But now, if you go back and read my original comment, you will see the bit about how extending the leave of someone who is already on one is much easier than setting up two leave-of-absences. This has nothing to do with sex/sexism and "believing women should stay home and raise the kids" and everything to do with the fact that this is just the reality of replacing someone with actual responsibility. If you've never been responsible for replacing someone who quit/took leave, then this might not be obvious to you, but it takes much more time and effort to replace two people for T/2 amount of time (each) than it does to replace one person for T amount of time. Hopefully you can see how this then relates to maternity/paternity leave.
And that is the second half of the point I've been making since my original comment.
So what happened to the "it's actually just biological" argument?
> how extending the leave of someone who is already on one is much easier than setting up two leave-of-absences
So your argument relies on that it's more of a hassle for managers to arrange two parental leaves rather than one even though they have ~6 months to prepare? This might be the weakest rationalization I've ever heard.
This is blatantly sexist also. "Well, it's easier to just extend one, and whoops, this just happens to always be the mother". The result of this strange rationalization is of course a deep skew to mothers being home and bearing the brunt of the negative effects of it.
This "well, it's more of a hassle to managers" when it's usually entirely different workplaces, different managers and 6 months to prepare it is frankly laughable. How could you think that that is of even remotely proportional importance to the negative effects of always extending the mother's leave?
> So what happened to the "it's actually just biological" argument?
It's still there. The question is "why is the default to give women maternity leave and not have like equal maternity and paternity leave or something?". You (and GC) are claiming this is rooted in sexism. I am claiming it is rooted in biology. Making decisions based on actual physiological differences between the sexes is not sexism. Not letting women participate in men's boxing because they'll get destroyed is not sexism, it is recognizing that there are literal biological/physiological differences between the sexes.
> So your argument relies on that it's more of a hassle for managers to arrange two parental leaves rather than one even though they have ~6 months to prepare? This might be the weakest rationalization I've ever heard...
What argument? My only argument is that this is not sexist. In order for something to be sexist, you need to be discriminating based on sex. Discriminating based on time lost is not sexism. "Small" differences have outsized effects when compounded across millions of people. Sure, if you take a single instance of this and look at it it doesn't seem like much. Unfortuntately though, we're talking about society-wide effects here. We're talking about why a society as a whole has adopted certain norms, not why an individual manager might do something. And honestly you're underestimating how much of a pain it can be to temporarily (that's how leave works) replace a valuable team member. You can't just actually replace them because they'll be coming back eventually. Do you hire and train up a new person only to fire them after the leave? Or keep them on when the other returns, so now you have two people when previously you only needed one? Or do you try your best to foist their work onto existing team members even though hopefully the entire reason that employee existed in the first place was because their work could not be easily handled by others. It's not easy.
> This "well, it's more of a hassle to managers" when it's usually entirely different workplaces, different managers and 6 months to prepare it is frankly laughable
Well, yes, exactly? Replacing two different people in two different workplaces with different managers is more of a hassle than if it was one manager and one team replacing two people. Thanks for helping make my point for me.
If you perpetuate, support, or defend a system that knowingly creates an unequal outcome depending on the persons sex, you're a sexist. This isn't something that's undetermined, it's a fact. We know that if there's only leave for the mother, the mother is disadvantaged in the work place.
To take it really slow:
* Two people get a child, mother and father.
* The mother needs a couple of weeks after child birth to recuperate.
* The mother can take additional leave beyond that, the father can't take any leave at all.
* Whoops! Who's gonna work and who's gonna take care of the child now?!
This is a sexist system since it blatantly throws the responsibility of child-rearing on to the mother. Not granting fathers parental leave REQUIRES mothers to do it. And the only way this is accepted and seen as a default is because of traditional, sexist, gender roles where the mother is assumed to do the child-rearing.
The whole "it's more administration!" argument is just so pathetic that I won't bother commenting on it any more. Not even the most right-wing nut here in Sweden would try to argue that the administrative overhead is a significant problem. You also just skipped the actual point in my last paragraph - the question about proportionality.
So if you introduce mandatory and equal leave for both parents, not only do you get happier parents, but you also don't advantage men over women for their biology.
That's all there is to it really, pretty simple and already implemented in plenty of countries.
Paternity leave is an example of society taking biological differences and the reality of bringing a child into the world (that it asks a helluva lot more of the mother than the father) and making everything more equitable.
The purpose of my comment was not to say paternity leave doesn't make any sense. It was to say that the lack of it is not an example of sexism. It's an example of men and women being different and therefore the non-egalitarian default being different for men and women. That's not sexism.
There's nothing whatsoever that's reasonable, and certainly not biological, about limiting that second period for the father.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
These honestly sound like good things to me. Fathers raising children increased the chance for women to participate in the labour force, men become more aware of what it takes to raise a child, and the quality of child rearing increases.
Don't think more children was necessarily the point of the policy.
We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
almost any Western country
I suspect the same is true to a lot of other western countries.
(this doesn't mean I'm otherwise of a different opinion than you regarding whose welfare to optimize - a state is for its people not its corporations)
Surely people in poor countries can afford to have kids even less than people in rich countries?
Nevertheless OP made their claim about more than 0-1 kids, not >2.
Yes, of course, humanity's biggest problem is currently that we're basically going extinct because we're not reproducing enough.
People in Western countries don't do any calculus because they can't afford children, they have fewer children because that's what people want if they're not under pressure. In fact economically speaking, the opposite is true, the birth rate is high precisely in places in which people are poor, because children are the social safety net as well as the work force for manual labour.
Also if we reproduce at say, a modest rate of 1.7 there will be still more people in 2200 than there were in the 1950s. How are we heading for extinction exactly?
That's long been known to be true of social support and safety nets generally, so it's not a surprise that it would be true of parental leave, which is a subset of that.
One possible way to incentivize men to take paternity leave is to do so indirectly, by rewarding companies where a large percentage of eligible fathers take the full leave. This would reverse the current dynamic, which is: if you take the full leave, you're putting your family above the company, and not being a team player. Instead, taking the leave would make you a team player and help the company fulfill the goal.
There's no reason to force anyone to do this.
The statement is dystopian. If you offer it to people, and they legit don't want to take it, anything beyond that you're the problem, not the solution.
I believe the reason for the different behavior is not that lawyer dads don't care about their kids/wives as much as techie dads. Rather, I believe it is because in the cultural context, they feel pressure not to take much leave. So by putting pressure on companies to make the option a real one for fathers, I think we could make fathers happier (and kids/mothers also) by allowing them to choose the option that they would want if they could do so without repercussions.
Also, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field for mothers. So while I will agree that we don't want to force people to do anything (and my suggestion actually does not force anyone to do anything), there can still be valid reasons that a society would want to incentivize people in certain ways for the good of the society as a whole.
This is our second child, and from the first one I know I still had lack of sleep the first 48 hours. The first week is the roughest (especially for two autistic parents an absolute hell with lack of sleep plus all kind of new stimuli), with the following months almost as severe. I believe it is incredibly woman unfriendly (I'd even call it misogynist) to give men no time from work.
On the father and mother this leads to less fatigue, burn-out, and on long-term better output. For the child, I believe its difficult to see the effect on this on short-term. For example, the effect of father-child bonding might not be seen on the short-term, and its also no guarantee, so you'd end up with some kind of correlation in a study. Proving a causation on this is going to be difficult.
Until a few years ago, NY did not require paternity leave at all.
On another note we are seeing fertility levels fall in many countries to the point where it's becoming an economic hazard. Parental leave thus becomes a social good. A smart market friendly solution, that would also be a win for families, would be to do more in terms of culture to encourage fathers to do this. In Japan, I've noticed high ranking male ministers almost uniformly taking parental leave to set an example to emulate. I'll add that such an initiative should still leave freedom for people to make their own choices for their own circumstances.
Increased capital taxes would on the margin decrease capital expenditures, and thereby hurt income growth in long-term due to lack of productivity gains. That's the last thing we'd want if our goal was to increase income. IMHO both income and capital gains taxes should be cut substantially.
Cheaper property necessitates more property, and at least here in US not building in the suburbs has become presidential campaign fodder. The most economically productive cities like SF have some of the most complex zoning and planning regulations that make boosting supply challenging.
If I had to guess what the right answer would be, it'd be higher minimum wages + stronger unemployment benefits that are designed to get folks back to work. Germany's post-Hartz system is an example of the latter. Higher minimum wages would force people out of work, but they would also motivate higher cap-ex in automation. Higher labor costs would make certain overly expensive automation projects more tractable to corporate management. The unemployed would get an opportunity to retrain for better, higher paying jobs and do so while having basic needs met.
You can probably see though how this solution is basically impossible in the current political climate.
> Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave
How about we don't force people into things.
I say this as a father who prioritised my kids over my career, with a wife who prioritised her career over our kids. I know quite a few stay-at-home-mums who would much rather the adult interaction you get from a day at the office. It's just my experience, but it leads me to think there's nothing "innate" about men or women wanting to rear children
That's all great in theory, but in practice you are always forced one way or another. If you are not forced to take paternal leave, then social pressure forces you to not take it.
So many old father say before they die this : - "The only regret I have is not to have not been more around my child(reen) young".
You never eat someone say : - "I regret not having worked more when I was young "
> The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company. But the law leaves many parents at the mercy of the state in which they live (only three, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, grant paid leave) or their employers’ individual plans.
Why shouldn’t different states have different leave policies. It’s no weirder for different states to have different leave policies than for Germany to have a different leave policy than France.
Two weeks in one of the highest gdp per capita countries of the world. Two. Measly. Weeks. It was just one single day up until now. Let that sink in.
All employer-paid employee benefits ultimately come with a reduction in salary. The reason is simple - companies do not look at your salary when deciding if it is worth hiring you. They look at total compensation (salary + benefits). The larger the benefits, the lower the salary.
Me, I prefer minimal benefits and maximal salary.
Me, I prefer a society where children have a higher probability of being attended to by their parents even if it costs me some money.
However, the calculation done by a company is:
a. what is the total compensation paid to the employee?
b. how much value will the employee produce?
If `b` is less than (`a` + opportunity cost), then "no hire". What percentage of `a` is salary is simply irrelevant to the business decision.
Your supposition is only correct if the business manager is winging it and has little idea what is going on financially in the business. The field of "cost accounting" is devoted to figuring these things out. Getting a good handle on it is key to running the business efficiently.
It costs the company $100 per employee to offer rarely used $10000 benefits to everyone.
[1] Did Einstein really say "if the world were going to end at midnight, then I'd want to be in Bern, because they'd get around to it sometime around 1:30"?
[2] This is said to be a characteristic of Quakers as well. Maybe all consensus-prioritising systems?
Hiring laws aren't, but firing laws are. When I worked as a corporate lawyer, we had lawyers who specialized in knowing the employment laws in various countries and advising companies on the process for exiting, the cost for doing so, etc.
I'd also disagree that people aren't paid by companies during parental leave. They are often topped-up by companies. This was the case at the law firm where I worked, and at the R1 university my wife works for. I'm sure it is also the case at FAANG, which have generous corporate leave policies.
Companies simply can’t always pay people to not work for 6 months to a year, so they’ll go somewhere where they don’t have to.
Why ‘simply can’t’ a ‘multi billion dollar international business’ offer paid parental leave, if so required by law? This does not make any sense, large international corporations will do business wherever they can profitably.
This particular multi-billion dollar company certainly doesn't want to pay it. And so they get their employees from other places. They still do business in France and have customers there. They are a SAAS company. They just don't hire from there.
Also, they do offer paid parental leave. Just not an entire year of it.
In countries where employers are on the hook for some or all of the cost, we just factored it in to the employee costs. Again, because software engineers were paid so much less in those countries it wasn’t a dealbreaker.
At least in the software field, the US salaries are so much higher that the overhead is not a big deal in European countries.
We had a lot of young people who wanted to relocate to US offices when they discovered the salary differences, though.
Somehow companies are getting by just fine paying all of that leave in Europe (in fact, government pitches in too). It's just the kind of world you want: more disparity and lots of poverty in exchange for a lottery ticket to wealth or a solid baseline and fewer economic tophits.
Many of the 'side effect' realities, for example as cited by the OP are very real, and go somewhat unmeasured or sidelined.
Europe is not doing very well, it's treading above water, fumbling from crisis to crisis without any obvious pathways out. After the US-driven 2008 crisis, there were years of serious problems with the Euro, to the point wherein Italian banks (and others) were teetering on failure, two national governments were overthrown by the EU (Greece, Italy) there was a major migration crisis ... and then COVID hit. All of this with very problematic demographics, a rising China and an antagonizing US - it does not bode well.
That France (and arguably Spain and Italy) did not undergo similar labour reforms similar to 'sick man of the 1990's Germany' has created ongoing damage.
It's not all a 'one sided story' but there need to be intelligent labour reforms.
The commenter echoes real sentiments across the business community with respect to hiring, even if it's not so perfectly accurate - 'firing' people in France is actually very difficult and a legit barrier to anyone wanting to expand there, among other things.
People don't need to take a year off when they have children. They can, at some reduce pay perhaps, that would be a nice option, but the community doesn't need to share most of that burden.
Europe is fine, don't confuse the absence of tophits for an absence of a strong middle class. I'm tempted to say Europe is in fact one of the most resilient economies at the moment for this reason, but that is not a very relevant debate here.
What people need should be for them to decide. Staying with your newborn until the age of 1 does not seem wildly out of the ordinary for us a species (we notably born prematurely anyway). And then requiring equality also does not seem unnecessary to me ( in order to give families the choice of whose career to sacrifice).
You couldnt demonstrate better why I will never leave Europe for work, I just don't share that Protestant work ethic to which so much seems to be sacrificed. There are other things in life. Perhaps not yours, but certainly in mine. I wish everybody to opportunity to have a life outside of work, even if they decline to make use of the right.
It's the opposite. French labour policy for example is a giant political boondoggle. It's one series of short-signed populist back-room deals after the next.
What 'serious reform' looks like is the 'Hartz concept' [1] - nothing like it exists really in the rest of the EU.
The results of French labour policy mean consistently almost 2x the unemployment rate of US/UK/Germany, for example. [2]
This is not an example of 'strong' it's an example of 'very weak' and it hurts quite a lot of people.
A perfect example of shortsighted, populist, untenable policy: Hollande's 'Supertax' on the rich [3]. This was an an act of self-destruction, not construction.
While Hartz is widely viewed as being a giant success, none of the French economic reforms made sense, and none of them have helped.
And FYI Europe doesn't have a middle class, and remember includes places like Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Greece, S. Italy which are actually quite poor.
European nations individually have 'decent' Gini coefficients, but if you do the 'EU-wide' coefficient it's quite bad. Average Slovak is nowhere near the average Swede.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartz_concept
[2] https://data.oecd.org/unemp/unemployment-rate.htm
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-7...
[0] http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?lang=en&data...
EU as an economic space has huge internal periphery with all the typical problems thereof (high unemployment, flight of young qualified workforce elsewhere). It is quite easy to visualize, actually.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
My wife is a huge fan of Spanish culture. We travel there often (pre-Covid, but hopefully also post-Covid). Andalucía is by far the worst region in Western Europe I have seen, as far as hopelessness and lack of future prospects goes.
Or perhaps being a post-Roman nation causes unemployment?
Even though I'm partly kidding, I'm partly not.
Some of these things are so consistent, I wonder if we gloss over them and should contemplate they are underlying issues whereas 'employment policy' may be less relevant than we think. Maybe in some cultures people like to work more than others.
If you can't decide within 6 months whether a hire is bad or not then that's on you. If you fail to fire them the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th year and so on then that's on you. How do another 4 weeks make your company worse? Maybe the french have an obviously worse system but I see Americans complain about practically any employment law that isn't theirs. They don't complain because it's bad, simply because it's different.
You don't seem to know about German employment law either because that's simply wrong. Basically in every company with more than 10 employees you can't fire anyone who has been with the company for more than 6 months, except for very few specific reasons which are listed here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCndigung_(deutsches_Arbe...
In most jobs nowadays, you have probation time, then time-limited contracts (maximum 2 x 1y) and then an unlimited contract. As a result, you can end contracts within the first 6 months, after a year and after two years w/o discussions or problems. That gives everyone enough time to sort out "bad hires" w/o any risk. Afterwards, a certain degree of protection starts, but money and reasonable rationale can end any contract.
It is just very different than the US "hire and fire" thing. In Germany and other places it is expected that as an employee I have a certain degree of stability in my life.
That's why you have a 6 months trial period, right ?
So I guess that you meant this generous multi billions $ company has no operations in France?
If so, then I don't understand why they wouldn't hire competent French staff if their operations are located in other countries where other local labour laws apply, regardless of your nationality.
I don't think many people can pull the "the state doesn't provide enough to have kids" card in Germany to be honest. At some point people have to understand that yes, having a kid means you will have less money at the end of the month and will most likely result in personal sacrifices.
This is false. New York has paid family leave which can be used by both parents for new borns. In 2021, you can get 12 weeks at 67% pay. [0]
It's interesting how uninformed people are about basic laws like this in the US. The author apparently lives in New York too.
[0]https://www.ny.gov/sites/ny.gov/files/atoms/files/PaidFamily...
I'm originally from Europe and moved to states as an adult. My home country Slovakia, has very generous parental leave (up to 3 years[0]). I always struggled with the "ruthlessness" of US policies around healthcare, parental leave, education, etc.
I was very happy that the company finally matured enough that we could offer a parental leave without suffering the loss of a productive employee for an extended period.
We also adopted other European practices, like guaranteed severance after 3 months of "test" period with guaranteed healthcare (COBRA) for 2 months.
I honestly wish that these were a standard in this country, that this wouldn't be a differentiating factor for us, but I think we have quite long way to go.
[0] https://www.globalization-partners.com/globalpedia/slovak-re...
More time is better because of extra bonding with the new family, and it can be stressful for the newborn to go to fulltime childcare before they're 6 months old (after that, I think at least some childcare is good for socialisation).
I love the generous paternal leave Scandinavians get. When I had my kids, Dutch paternity leave was only 2 days: one for the birth itself, and one for registering your baby's birth. Only in 2019 did they expand that to a whole whoppingly insufficient week.
For both kids, I took 3 months off. For the first, it initially was two weeks; not sure if I took it as days off or sick care or something; I hadn't planned to take time off originally, until I suddenly realised I simply couldn't go to work, so I called in and said I couldn't work. After those two weeks, I went back to work, and after my wife's maternity leave had ran out and she was eager to get back to work, I took 3 months parental leave (might have been unpaid; not sure). For the second it was unpaid, because I'm a freelancer, but I don't care. This stuff is more important.
Sure, you'll still have your job. And your employer might even have its own leave program to pay you for time off. But you could just never receive assignments again, so if you're working for a consulting company your billable rate will tank and then you'll get PIP'd for "lack of productivity" and then "laid off" because you can't do anything about your boss gatekeeping work away from you.
No, I can't prove this is what happened to me...
Only he thought he was being asked about Maternity leave and now the company is honouring that deal even a 18 months after his departure. It makes me want to have a child real soon before they rewrite that clause.
Of course that's lower than the 28 days for French fathers, but it's going in the good direction (at our slow swiss pace) :)
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=16676&langId=e...
But do fathers get same treatment in courts, during custody disputes? Property separation disputes, statistically ?
The person still needs to have worked (and thus paid into the system through salary contributions) above a certain threshold in order to qualify.
Employers can top up this payment but can then impose conditions (e.g. only after a year in the company or whatever)
Indeed. I keep hearing that line of argument from Americans in particular: "But but but if healthcare is free, what will stop people from living an unhealthy life and having society pay the cost??" – eh, the fact that having cancer and heart problems in order to scam society is just a really really unattractive and unscaleable idea?
However, it is a quite common employee benefit, that the employer pays full salary for part of or for the entire parental leave. The employer is then reimbursed from the government for the first 2k€ every month.
Nothing prevents you from quitting when you get back from parental leave. Except that you probably already have a lot on your mind with a little child - why add the extra pressure of switching jobs?
For welcoming a dog or stuff like that there is minimum paid annual leave in developed countries.
Human beings on the other hand will care for us when we are old and senile. They will contribute to society. They will build the future. And if we don't give them a good loving start, the future they build will probably more selfish. Reproduction happens anyway so paid parental leave just increases the well-being not only of the parents but also of their children.
Beside that without human beings the future is irrelevant, because there is no human being who cares for it. If we all stop having children at some point in the future, how many people will care about carbon footprints anymore? I mean the animal world will find its way anyway, regardless of what we leave behind.
The need for parental leave is not based on the amount of love someone shows.
Causation/correlation.
Coming from a country where the father can take 30 days. Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers and two weeks is enough.
Of the fathers I know who took the full 30 days, they did so for home improvement projects not because they were actually needed that much.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my question :).
So are you saying the father doesn't need to be there for the child after two weeks? Or are you saying he only needs to be there to help the mother after two weeks?
I've heard of some maternity leave policies that differ based on type of birth (longer time off for caesarean), and it would actually make sense to give fathers the same so that they can help the mother. Of course, you are absolutely right that some fathers take leave but don't spend it caring for wife/child. I'm not sure how to get around this problem, but it seems that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, to use a terribl(y appropriate) turn of phrase. We just have to understand that some people will abuse the policy, but that overall there is a net benefit (to fathers, children, and mothers) to offering it.
For the parents I know who did that, they were 100% helicoptering over them.
Glad to hear there are some folks whose kids don't require as much care, but I'd say most moms would say that they are sleep-deprived and not fully functional for months after the baby is born. It might not take another full-time adult, as you say, but it sure is helpful to have the father around to take care of things and give the mother some respite.
> shop for groceries, prepare food
Can be done at any time of the day (you know prepare and reheat later) and by any of the parents. Even if one of them is absent for 8 hours.
Your comments strike me as so out of touch that I wonder if you are simply trolling.
One parent is with the kids, the other goes shopping. Same for cooking. Both of these activities can be completed once the other parent comes back from work. Just because one person works does not mean they are completely unavailable to help in any way.
Also, after dad gets home, then it's time for dinner, bath, and bedtime. Mom could run off to the grocery at dinnertime, but most families try to have meals together so that's not a great option. And mom has to be home at bedtime, at least if she is nursing.
And what I meant was they have the freedom to go anytime. Obviously the most optimal time is when both parents are available and at home.
> Also, after dad gets home, then it's time for dinner, bath, and bedtime
If you have that little time after work, then that is an entirely different issue.
Little kids eat dinner super early because of bedtime. We eat dinner at 5:30 these days. I don't know anyone who gets home from work much before then.
> And what I meant was they have the freedom to go anytime.
Yeah, if you don't mind waking up your napping baby or toddler, sure you can go anytime.
I try to give comments the benefit of the doubt, but I'm done with these shape-shifting arguments. Have a good one!
But I could definitely see it being a big problem if you happen to have kids who tend to cry in & around a shopping cart. I think it's just the luck of the draw.
I'm also not a single parent, although we always do the shopping trips solo.
I took 3 months off for my first and 4 months for the second. My wife was pretty miserable through the first month. Breastfeeding is exhausting, as well as being woke up at various time of the night. I'm glad I was home so I could take care of the rest.
I agree that afterwards things got easier, and we were able to enjoy some vacations.
But still there is a huge difference between spending a few hours at the beach with the baby and going back to work whole day.
Beside that recovery from birth itself can take quite some time (tearing, C-section etc.).
Beside that I wonder if a post-partum depression might even be considered a normal complication when around 15 out of 100 women get one(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5941764/).
Your toddler won’t be quite as accommodating to the schedule of a newborn. Having two parents at home makes it much easier to manage a newborn, erratic sleep schedules, and other children.
Two or three days a week I'm alone with my daughter for most of the afternoon and evening. My wife works retail and isn't home until right around our daughters bedtime.
If I worked in retail, you could easily end in a situation where I'd be home during the first opening hours of the daycare, but not be home for 4 hours in the afternoon and evening where daycare isn't available.
For us that was barely enough, and based on our experience, fives weeks should be the absolute minimum period for the father to say home after birth.
So what if some father take the time to do projects around the house. At least they're still there to spend time with their child and the mother.
I'm the father of 4 kids, currently aged 2 months - 5 years, and I took 1-2 weeks off for each one. I think that one week about what is really needed for fathers in baseline cases, although special cases (premature births, post-partum depression, health problems with the mother or child, etc) definitely need more.
The problem is that you can't really "bond" with a baby as a father (in a two-way sense). They don't realize you exist, and they don't really start to get to know you until some time later, maybe after 6 months.
I think longer leave probably makes sense for the first baby, because that is a big life adjustment and it's easier to handle when you don't have to worry about work. But for baby numbers 2+, I just don't see that longer leave is necessary in baseline cases. So I'm not sure it's right for the state to require that employers offer longer paid leave.
That said, generous parental leave policies are still a nice bonus for parents and can be a competitive edge for companies in hiring. My firm has offered 6 months' paid parental leave.