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Comment by woodpanel | Hacker News Reader

I can echo that.

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...

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> Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].

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.

No, the statistics are pretty clear: The share of all parents who were on p/maternal leave during the 2018 microcensus. They don't claim anything else and are a pretty good approximation: How big a share of p/maternal leave offered do fathers and mothers take.

"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.

3) biology (i.e. sex is not a social construct)

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)

So there must be something about the cold making Swedish fathers take so much more parental leave?

It’s possible (and we did) to arrange for the father to feed using frozen breast milk. It’s not quite as convenient as evolution’s version, but it’s certainly possible.

Time is required to extract that milk.

I don't really get your point here about point 2. If the father earns considerably more, then it would certainly result in less money coming into the household overall if he then takes more leave at 65% as opposed to no leave at 100%. Why would he do that?

I think your link is slightly misrepresenting the situation as it surveyed parents with kids <3 and <6. In terms of early parental leave (ie. the time covered by Elterngeld), I would think the percentage of men taking time is much higher.

At least anecdotally, many of the fathers I've talked to take the 2 months at the very minimum.

It's simple: In the German system, it makes sense for the person earning less to stay at home, because that means the loss of income in the partnership will be minimized. Since men are still earning more in many relationships in Germany mostly women take the parental leave.

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.

Well the rules have been there forever and I feel like back in the day the CDU/sPD was quite good at math ;-)

I have a much simpler explanation. Most people can't afford it. The median income in Germany is ~44k/yr. If we assume the woman earns a bit less, we can already see why it's more common for the mother to take the paternal leave. It's less of a hit on the finances. If the dad takes it, or both, they might not be able to sustain themselves for long.

If I imagine the women earning a bit less, I imagine them getting 65% of less.

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.

> 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?

Your results are the same, your optimisation goals seem to differ.

Does it matter?

The results aren't the same though. If you want maximum total income and you'll take a percentage cut of one of two salaries, you'll take the cut for the lower salary. If you optimize for maximum income per hours worked, you'd take the cut on the higher salary.

Oh I re-read the comment again and realized they are suggesting part-time lower-income PLUS paternal leave higher-income. That's weird on multiple levels: You want, as you said, optimise for total income; and you want to spend as much uninterrupted time with your kid as possible.

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 is clearly cultural. If I hadn't taken my several months of leave when my kids were pre-daycare age, that would have been effectively me being an "absent father" in the eyes of people around me. It simply isn't a very acceptable thing to do.

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?".

Although I believe it’s best for the family to have the father take some time (as much as they can!), I think it’s sort of no ones business if he chooses to take time and how much time he takes. If you’re not getting 100% of your pay then there could be situations where that creates financial stress for example.

So maybe it doesn’t mean you don’t want to do it but simply can’t afford to do it.

> 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).

Everyone of my friends (fathers) took this without exception. But it might depend on the salary level (all of them >$80k) perhaps.

Regarding #2 - at least in Berlin a lady from Gesundheitsamt helped us fill the paperwork and it was one of the best experiences I had with any public servant.

  > Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
  > I can only speculate as to why.

This is actually pretty simple: Germany's culture is still deeply rooted into old gender roles - father provider and mother educator.

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.

>unmarried fathers don't get legal custody automatically,

Interesting. Do unmarried fathers have any financial responsibility for the child?

Yes. The German old perspective is detailed in the Zaunegger vs. Germany case in the European Court of Human Rights, because the German judge voted against recognizing legal custody (only one in six to do) as human right, and gave a justification with historical grounds.

Can the downvoter(s) clarify their position? I'm familiar with the subject, and this is informed opinion, not prejudice. If somebody disagrees, it's interesting to see their opinion and information.

"Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].

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).

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