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Comment by aet | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. does have paid maternal leave. In fact, I had 6 weeks paternal leave at my old job. The benefit was available to all employees at the (Fortune 500) company.

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I get 4 weeks vacation time. That doesn't mean the US has 4 weeks vacation time.

Apparently however, I picked the wrong career and should have been a coach. And people wonder why the US is going in the shitter. Must be all that socialisms.

The high paying coaches are probably college coaches. They do get paid a lot of money.

Was that supposed to make it better?

They were trying to make a point of sports vs academics with a bit of north-south, but the hidden truth is all 50 of them were in the public-higher-education-industrial-complex.

"Fortune 100 firms overwhelmingly offer some paid time off to care for a new child and recover from childbirth. Among the companies in the Fortune 100 that responded to the JEC questionnaire, three-quarters (73.6 percent) offer mothers either paid family or disability leave. Firms are more likely to offer paid family leave to mothers than to fathers as only 32.1 percent report offering paid family leave to fathers. However, most (75.5 percent) firms allow employees to use accrued sick days, and among our sample, nine-out-of-ten (88.7 percent) report offering some kind of paid leave—family leave, pregnancy-related disability leave, or allowing the use of accrued paid sick days—for the birth of a child."

http://www.jec.senate.gov/archive/Documents/Reports/03.05.08...

Edit: It also notes that among Fortune 100 companies the median maternal leave is 6 weeks.

Just because some people get it does not mean everyone gets it.

Counterpoint: Just because its the law doesn't mean anyone gets it.

It means you can sue for it.

Then those who prioritize it will take jobs where it is available.

By mandating it, an employer has to consider the possibility whenever they hire someone, and so salaries will be lower as a result. If the employee doesn't get pregnant and use the leave, their salary has been kept lower with no benefit to them.

>> "By mandating it, an employer has to consider the possibility whenever they hire someone"

We have discrimination laws against that.

The expected benefit for those that don't use the leave themselves is a more stable and healthy society due to better child care and stronger social/family bonds. Overall lower (net) salaries is a trade-off that most societies in the world are willing to make. Mandating it is a means of mitigating the tragedy of the commons - people thinking that there is no benefit to them at all when they don't get the benefit directly.

I think the map isn't very helpful. I would be interested in seeing how many women have access to maternal leave in the U.S. I best the number is surprisingly high. Also, many small employers are willing to work with parents. A mandate doesn't give any flexibility. For example, perhaps a parent would prefer going part-time for several months instead of 6 weeks paid. Employers compete for hires, why not allow them the flexibility to design their own benefits?

I assume it means legally mandated.

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