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Comment by _bixt | Hacker News Reader

You are asking for an incredibly high amount of welfare, essentially "everyone else in society should pay me for 5 years because I chose to have a kid". I'm choosing to have a kid too, but I'm taking the personal responsibility path of saving and paying for it on my own. Perhaps there is some middleground, but 5 years is absolutely absurd.

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I see what you're saying there, but perhaps look at it this way:

our comfortable retirement is dependent on a good crop of reasonably successful children being born now, or in the previous 5 years.

It benefits us that those children are brought up to be balanced, rational pragmatic people. Perhaps extended child care might be the thing that does it?

I suspect that five years is indeed too much.

However perhaps the answer is one year "off" plus cheap, good quality child care from 1 year plus?

Uhh, it's 3 years where I live (though the welfare money for the last one and half year is very low and lots of mother go back to work before that)

I would say 3 year is pretty good as kids starts to gain a lot from socializing after that age.

Why would this be absurd? It's perfectly normal. Looking after a toddler is hard 7/24 work with little time to spare. Of course you can go to work and instead pay for a house cleaner and a baby sitter to look after your house and your kid because.. work is more important? Or what is your argument here?

I believe in taking time away from work to raise kids. In fact, I am taking several years away from work now for that purpose. What I disagree with is who should pay for it. I'm paying for my living expenses and raising my child from my savings that I earned at my generous paying job. I think the government should pay for up to perhaps 3 months for raising kids (and it shouldn't be based on your salary, but tied to some universally agreed upon basic living wage), but any more than that should be self-financed. There is a set amount of handouts society can give out before it implodes, and there are far better uses for that money than giving you the privilege of a plush lifestyle while you choose to stay at home with your toddler.

Yeah this makes perfect sense. Paid parental leave is just a welfare system like any other, and has the same drawbacks as always. People act as if it's some invention to create free time out of thin air.

I see your point but it smells like kids should be a privilege of the generously paid and financially intelligent.

In Europe the baby boomer generation reached retirement and in the meantime the number of kids per household decreased. There is not enough people to pay the pension of the old and many governments are motivated to increase the number of kids by any means - like making it a financially acceptable or even desired to have 3+ children.

I mean it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. If we decoupled health insurance from FTE, then maybe there would be more part-time options that would allow for some flexibility. Hire a biweekly housekeeper and a nanny for 4 hours a day 4 days a week, still get to spend lots of time with your kid AND have some meaningful engagement with other adults and contribute to society according to your skill level.

That's basically my plan, but running a business/contracting/freelancing is not for everyone. Sooo thankful I have my own insurance though.

This actually highlights a major misunderstanding in parental leave discussions: Most government-sponsored paid parental leave programs in other countries aren't paying 100% salary during the leave.

Sweden has one of the more generous programs that pays up to $41K/year (USD equivalent) or 80% of your income, whichever is lower. That amount is actually quite good if you're living modestly, but it may not be what people earning $100-150K have in mind when they see "paid parental leave".

Definitely better than nothing, though!

I think parent asked for subsidy, not total compensation of expenses.

I have two kids, 2.5 years apart, and there was one year in NYC where a small family daycare was running us ~$5k per month in childcare. We'd been aiming for the kids to be a bit further apart, partly for financial reasons, but shrug, it didn't happen that way (first kid took a lot longer of trying than the second). We're fortunate in that we can afford that, but it did impact our long-term savings and eventual home ownership.

I honestly don't know what the working poor do. I guess you're not aloud to move away from extended family.

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