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Comment by teraku | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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