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Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

In the United States, 12 weeks is basically standard (although I'm pretty sure WA state already has paid family leave, so not sure what the purpose of Boeing providing it is exactly). Women typically get six months (considered short-term disability, separate insurance) + 12 weeks though, for obvious reasons.

That being said 156 weeks is a bit ridiculous. No wonder the birth rates are so low.

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> Under the state PFML, eligible employees are entitled to up to 12 weeks of family or medical leave, or a combination of the two up to 16 weeks annually. While on leave, you are entitled to partial wage replacement. This will be a percentage of your average weekly wage. It is up to 90% of your weekly wage, with a maximum benefit of $1,000/week [1]

It seems that WA isn't at 100% of your salary. Afaik, this is common where the state provides a capped benefit and the company will pay the remainder. So if say the company did 24 weeks and the state only did 12 then the state+company pays you for 12 and then just the company pays for the next 12.

[1]: https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/audience/employees/pay-bene...

Wouldn't extremely generous parental leave be expected to increase the birth rate?

If it's 3 years long? No. If your oldest kid is too old people often don't want to go back to having a baby. In what I've seen, families with lots of kids tend to have them fairly close together (2 - 3 years max). The moment your youngest turns 5 and things become easier, people stop wanting to go back to the baby phase (can't blame them).

Anyway, if we're talking about spacing 2 - 3 years apart, that means you're not working at all. At some point people will want to go back to work, and that may mean not having another kid.

I think flexible policies are great, but the long leaves I don't think are super useful. Kids are not some abnormal condition; they need to be integrated into a full life.

This is just my pet theory. I think places with overly long leaves (especially overly long paternity leaves) actually discourage men from wanting more children (And of course it takes two to tango here).

3 years is not mandatory and people can do family planning any way they wish.

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