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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Important to note that these are government leave programs. A big problem in the USA is that it is expected that your employer handle this stuff.

Here in Canada, the employment insurance system - a payroll-tax-funded program that handles short-term unemployment benefits - also handles parental leave. They offer 4 months for birth mothers and a an additional 8 months for any parent. The money is tiny - something like half your salary capped to a poverty-level wage, but it's better than nothing and good employers will subsidize it somewhat.

My wife and I split the leave with our 3rd kid. 5 months for her, 7 for me. It's easily some of the happiest days of my life.

There is no reason that private companies should be expected to shoulder this burden. It's practically punishing them for hiring women who want a family. This is the exact kind of case that government exists for.

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I would correct what you said.

That policy punishes the company of hiring any fertile woman.

My dad used to hire for a large engineering department. One of the things he had to keep in mind is that if a woman is hired, they can leave pretty much at any time due to FMLA, and hiring someone else is not feasible (due to law). The simple result is if he were given a choice between a man and woman of equal capacity, he would pick the man every time. Women have too much legal baggage.

My answer is that you extend the same rights to the man, and that calculus would equalize itself... but that is wishful thinking here in the US.

In Canada those rights are extended to the man. It's called paternity leave. The parent even mentions that he split the leave with his partner.

There are still cultural barriers resulting in many men not taking the leave, but at least it's an option.

I should note that I think tying the unemployment insurance to maternity/paternity leave is genius.

Even when you extend the rights to the man, there's still the traditional cultural expectations will end up with the leave on the mother. I mean, I'm a liberal stereotype and we didn't split the parental leave until our third kid - we went the traditional way for the first 2. So even in the optimal "extend rights to both" we still have the problem that the female employee took leave and the male one didn't.

We can remove the financial burden from the company by shifting it to the Employee Insurance system, but I don't know how to remove the HR problem of "you have an employee who has gone for a year of unpaid leave and you must give them back their job when they finish their leave". There's no easy answer for that one.

But, shouldn't that choice be within the family, rather than government applying uneven pressure for the female to "mother"?

It may be the case with my wife and I as well. We've discussed it, and whoever makes more per 2 weeks will be the one to continue work. But we'd both want that choice to be our own.

And also to be more specific, my dad was Wilbur Crawley. Worked at Faurecia, and was over 50+ engineers in an automotive setting. After being burnt by 2 engineers he brought on, whom were women, both within 2 years were pregnant. Cool, none of his concern, until they FMLA'd and were out for about a year each.

Both projects they were put in charge of were scrapped as the projects themselves had one less person (leaving 2 engineers). They were beaten to market on one of them and the other one fizzled as the engineers were reassigned.

And this also goes back to male vs. female salary issues too. Do women get paid as well as men, given the appropriate experience level? The main source I know of has bad controls. But, the more I think regarding this, what is the cost of FMLA with regard to women?

Is Salary_man == Salary_woman + FMLA_cost ? Ugly indeed.

How were they out on the FMLA for a year? The federal FMLA caps out at 12 weeks, and I'm not aware of any state that has a FMLA that would extend to a year's leave.

> they can leave pretty much at any time due to FMLA, and hiring someone else is not feasible (due to law).

Why? Around here you see plenty of job offers that go "must start on X and will be terminated on Y (1 year later) -- to replace an employee on maternity leave". I would imagine you would publish that offer plenty of months in advance to X, so you'll have a replacement person hired on time.

> "Punishing them for hiring women who want a family" is a curious way to put it.

The reason that private companies should be expected to perhaps shoulder SOME of this "burden" (I disagree with your choice of wording there) is that we all live together in a goddamn society and there should be a part of everyone's effort (private individuals, businesses and the government) that goes towards the overall betterment of that society as a whole, and that includes supporting those that choose to procreate and keep our society going.

But the burden is unequal based on the percentage of women at one company compared to another company. When hiring a woman, the company would have to understand that it would cost more to hire her (at equal pay) than it would to hire a man.

No because it concentrates the burden onto the employer and creates very real economic incentives to avoid hiring women from certain age ranges depending on the industry.

It's like telling corporations they can't buy insurance for a semi-common event since they should 'shoulder SOME of this "burden"' and just self insure. The entire point of their taxes/insurance should be distributing the cost of something like this. They shoulder the burden through their taxes, and it keeps it fair.

Right, but if private companies had to pay for parental leave directly rather than through taxes, they would have a huge incentive to avoid hiring people who wanted to start families.

Taxes are the right way to pay for this, just like most things that are for the overall betterment of society.

Congrats you just argued for a social welfare system. This is what modern societies do. Yet, for some reason in the US it's branded as socialism which is viewed as equal to communism which is evil and therefore never enters the debate.

In my opinion that's what taxes are supposed to be, not just for carrying the "burden" of children but ALL the "burdens" and "advantages" of being together in a society.

You just listed how the Canadian policy lets the husband take time also (more time, if they want, such as in your case). That suggests that companies would be equally "punished" by hiring men who want families. Why would that policy only harm women's employment options?

Because realistically I'm unusual for using it, and I used it for only one of my three kids.

In my progressive, bleeding-heart-liberal family? The man still represented only 7 months of leave time, while the woman represented 29. The "leave cost" whatever it may be was 4X higher for my wife.

From a policy perspective, it's roughly egalitarian... but you can't ignore the cultural difference that means 100% maternal leave is the default assumption.

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