Yahoo Expands Maternity, Paternity Leave | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo Expands Maternity, Paternity Leave

nbcbayarea.com

41 pointscwb7156 comments

To be honest, this is exactly why I do not plan on starting a family in the Bay Area, and instead, will return back to Toronto.

http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/pregnancy.... http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/maternity_parent...

Basically, in Ontario, mothers are eligible for 17 weeks of pregnancy leave. After giving birth, both parents are eligible for up to 37 weeks of parental leave.

This time is unpaid, but has no impact on your benefits, length of employment, seniority, etc. Many companies do pay for this time off, especially since the government employment insurance program will help if your weekly income drops below 40%.

The money helps significantly, but for me, it's more about the time. These are important and formative weeks during your child and family's development. A couple of my friends just had a baby, and I can see how much they cherish every moment they spend with him.

I won't be worrying about these kinds of benefits for a few more years, but it's still something that I view as important.

>> These are important and formative weeks during your child and family's development. A couple of my friends just had a baby, and I can see how much they cherish every moment they spend with him.

This cannot be overstated. The first few moments/hours/days/weeks/months of your child's life (especially your first) are insanely awesome/frightening/joyous/exciting/sleep-depriving/stressful/fun/inspiring/just-freaking-cool.

It's not an experience I would want to miss for any reason. I'll probably never understand people who go back to work after a week or two.

I was 'lucky' enough to find myself unemployed when my daughter was born and ended up putting off getting a new job for the first three month. It was amazing. If I get another kid I'm definitely staying home for at least the first 8 weeks, and one way or the other my employer and I will have to come to some sort of agreement.

Heh ... be careful my friend! Moving to Canada when you are ready to start a family is non-trivial if your spouse isn't Canadian :(

We are both Canadian. I'm in Toronto right now, moving to SF later this month for a while.

Here in Sweden you get 16 months to split between the parents. It amazes me how crappy the benefits are in even the most "progressive" Bay Area companies, like Facebook trying to recruit with "25 vacation days", makes me laugh.

We can crap on the Bay Area all day long, but then the question becomes: why isn't Silicon Valley in Sweden?

Why is Silicon Valley in California and not some other state, and why isn't there at least one other place in the United States that is comparable?

USA has 33 times the population of Sweden so if it was solely a product of a political system I would expect at least one other "Silicon Valley".

Considering that the distance between the East Coast and the West Coast is the same as the distance between Sweden and Egypt, I assume a second "Silicon Valley" would be viable.

Man, I can list so many reasons, starting with a very risk averse society, then continuing with very bad economic policies during the period after WWII up until our big finical crisis in the 1990. Please note that I have some libertarian tendencies so my views are perhaps coloured by that.

But that was not my point. My point was how low the barrier for "great benefits" where even for "spoiled" software engineers in Silicon Valley. Why not try to move the goal post a bit further?

I agree, US companies should have better policies, but that would rely on the government enforcing an even playing field (not very libertarian). Otherwise there is no way any single company can stray too far from the pack without seriously damaging their competitiveness.

Maybe something like the government covering 70% of the your away pay (capped, obviously), and giving the company 15% to go toward to whatever they chose (covering you more, hiring a temp, the bottom line, etc.) The size of the company could also be a factor on how large that payment is (the smaller the company, the larger the percentage).

Move to Norway :)

With 100% (ish) pay you get 47 weeks total, with 80% you get 57 weeks. 9 weeks are reserved for the mother and 14 weeks (or it might be 12) are reserved for the father.

My wife and I had a baby last year (she's 5 months now), and I can't imagine being away from work for 37 weeks. My wife is an involuntary housewife for almost a year (she graduated early and her work doesn't start till the fall), and while she appreciates the opportunity to spend time with the baby, I'm pretty sure she'd say you can have too much of a good thing. I love my daughter to bits, but let's be realistic--she's not 18 hours a day worth of "magical"...

That said, good parental leave benefits are great for a different reason: very young children are a pain in the ass to take care of, which means that daycare providers charge a lot more until they're older.

That seems... exploitative if you don't pay taxes in Canada.

Born and raised in Canada. Plan to move to SF for a few years, then come back.

> A couple of my friends just had a baby, and I can see how much they cherish every moment they spend with him.

No way. "Just" had baby, parents are barely surviving, often depressed. Cherish comes months later.

They are too tired and overwhelmed to even really be that depressed.

I think my wife only vaguely remembers the first three months.

Kudos to Yahoo!! It is shocking how little maternity leave is provided by the average company. I have a friend who got 8 weeks, took 8 more without pay ... she was so pissed off that she used part of the leave time to find another job. The company lost a top notch worker for being so stingy with maternity leave!

Let’s not forget that 16 weeks is still way below what employers in other countries are obligated to offer, on average. Have a look at this graph, linked to by the article: http://childrenschances.org/global-maps/parents-and-children...

Paid leave from work for mothers of infants: Canada 50 weeks, Mexico 12 weeks, USA zero.

Paid leave from work for fathers of infants: Canada 35 weeks, Cuba 40 weeks, USA zero.

In Eastern European countries like Belarus, Ukraine, and Slovakia, mothers get 3 years paid leave – that’s 10 times more than what Yahoo is offering.

What was the new employer's policy?

Is anyone aware of how the courts have interpreted things like this (if at all)?

> "Under the new policy, mothers can take 16 weeks of paid leave with benefits, and fathers can take up to eight weeks"

Would that not be considered discriminatory?

They should be different forms of leave. It would only be discriminatory, IMO, if this also applied for adoptions.

How it works is that the leave is the same, but the person who gives birth can get 8 weeks of disability (I think).

I wouldn't think so, as there's more than likely enough medical/biological basis for women to require more time. For example, 99.9999% of men are unable to breastfeed a baby, even if they do stay home.

Breastfeeding doesn't interfere with work. Mothers can pump and store. Or they can choose to not work for a while, just as anyone else can.

The problem is that different paternity/maternity times makes employers view women as more hazardous. This also reinforces the sexist notion that fathers aren't as integral to early childhood development. I'm sure a new mother would love the extra help for another 8 weeks!

Also, lets say that you're a child adopted by a homosexual married couple and you only get 8 weeks. How is that fair to the adopted child versus 16 weeks for a birthed child?

Equality means treating people equally--including men and children.

If there was a separate allowance for recovering from childbirth, that would make sense.

For example, 16 weeks for a woman who adopts vs. 8 for a man who does exactly the same thing is just discriminatory.

It would be. That probably explains why yahoo has a policy that both parents get 8 weeks after adoption. Its in the article.

>Equality means treating people equally--including men and children

All things aren't equal in this case. Child birth can be incredibly taxing on a woman's body. Some women would need more time to recover.

Wouldn't that woman want her husband around to help her recover then?

Not always. Similarly, you could conceivably need to take a sick day without needing your partner to stay home to take care of you.

The difference being that there's also a newborn in this case.

That's medical disability.

The point at which your politics leads you to claim that sex (in this case we rather aren't talking gender, but actual sex) experiences in childbirth should be treated precisely equally is the point at which you need to sit down with your politics and have a long, heartfelt discussion vis a vis your politics' connection to reality.

Some recognition of the differences in experience and particularly in consequences are called for, I think. Because they exist.

bluthru's more important point is that by offering different amounts of time off for men and women you're disincentivizing managers from hiring women.

The simplest way of removing this "hidden tax" on hiring women is to make the tax the same for men.

A proper policy would give equal maternal/paternal time off for both parents for either birth or adoption, and also have some sort of paid medical leave program in place for complicated pregnancies (and of course, all other medical problems).

> have some sort of paid medical leave program in place for complicated pregnancies

Anecdotally, lots of women in Italy have "difficult pregnancies" because the incentives are there for it. They're happy to have extra time off, and doctors, when in doubt, are not going to choose the riskier option.

In the US, similar: it is standard for doctors to prescribe 6 weeks of rest, for use with employers and insurance companies that are moved by such a thing.

In Sweden, both parents get 16 months paid to split between them as they see fit. And even here in the most gender-equal nation, the actual distribution of parental leave between women and men is 76/24.

Since a few years back there's a bonus for parents who split the leave equally, but it's going to take generations until everyone does it. (All of my peers do it, but they're university educated upper middle class that can afford it)

Let me reiterate my point: If those differences exist to companies (different amounts of time off), then companies have a reason to prefer one sex over the other.

Childbirth is not an injury. Childbirth is literally essential for society. Whatever extra profit that can be squeezed out of a new dad is meaningless next to the importance of equality and assistance to the new mother. Somehow I think our GDP will be ok.

If you gave birth, 16 weeks. If you didn't, 8.

Now there is an equal metric regardless of the sex. Happy?

Having a pregnant wife, and having been subjected to videos of the "joy of childbirth".. I'm more than happy with half the time off in exchange for that not happening to my body.

No, because what the policy is essentially doing is saying "anyone with a new kid gets 8 weeks off. If you happened to have actually given birth to the kid, we'll give you an extra 8 weeks."

As others have stated, it would only be discriminatory if it was based on gender, but it's not - it's based on whether or not you had the physical toll of childbirth, as evident in the adoption v. birth difference for women.

It would be interesting to hear what the leave would be for a lesbian couple with one of the women giving birth. I would think 16/8 like a heterosexual couple, but that could get dicey depending on how the rule is worded.

Without trying to get involved, I just want to point out that it is (currently) physically impossible for males to give birth.

So it would appear that such a claim is implicitly identifying a gender by excluding all of the other gender.

That would be true if the policy gave women 16 weeks and men 8 weeks, regardless of whether or not the woman gave birth. But, as reported, if you did not give birth, for example if you adopted a child, you only get 8 weeks: even if you are a woman.

A larger point could be made that it's somewhat pointless to speculate about whether a policy is sexist when we're hearing a brief summary from a secondary source. A large aspect of this is how the policy is actually worded and carried out in practice.

This is "disparate impact" and is fiercely debated where it appears.

Men are not a protected group. Do you know of any government program aimed at compensating for male underperformance or that is biased in favor of males?

What does this have to do with government programs? Gender is a protected category, and many policies (not sure about laws specifically) prohibit discrimination according to gender just as they do about race, age, etc.

Do you know of any cases where protected category rules were used to favor males, whites, straight people, or the abled?

Men could probably sue for employment discrimination in some jobs such as child care providers. But would anyone care?

I can't think of a bias in favor of males. But there are laws requiring certain equality. I do know of a case where a guy protested the dress code at his work (he wasn't allowed to wear shorts) by wearing a short skirt. The company's dress code allowed employees to wear short skirts, and they were not allowed to enforce the dress code differently for men.

Pay and benefits are enforced to be the same. In some states, car insurance companies are not even allowed to give different rates for men vs. women even though statistically women are less risky to insure.

If it was anything like when my child was born, my wife's company gives a base 8 weeks of parental leave to both men and women.

The extra 8 was paid for by the company's short term disability insurance policy, for a total of 16 weeks. Childbirth was deemed sufficient to trigger short term disability.

I imagine that's what happened here.

It's really hard for me to see this as something other than reactionary to all the criticism after the WFH policy fiasco. I think it's great for those who are expecting, but this feels like trying to save face.

After one year, I expected more in terms of results from Yahoo under Mayer's tenure. I'm not as close to it, but I just didn't see benefit and work policies as the difference between success and failure in the marketplace for Yahoo.

Sweet.

Now can we see some news about tech innovations by yahoo?

This is a pretty fair deal. As the sole income for a family of 5 in the bay area, these kind of perks are good. Well, not that it matters for me anymore. No more kids for us!!!

8 weeks for fathers is very good.

One has nothing to do with the other.

They are more related than you think . When WFH was banned, one of the groups that got the most attention was mothers who complained that they were no longer able to work and take care of their kids at the same time, but Meyer built a nursery for her own kid on-site.

Why do you say that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com