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Tangent: I think that paid paternity/maternity leave is prejudicial against those who have chosen not to have kids. I get the sleepless nights in the first few

by flavor8 11y ago

Tangent: I think that paid paternity/maternity leave is prejudicial against those who have chosen not to have kids. I get the sleepless nights in the first few months, and wouldn't want to deny parents time to bond with their newborns. But looking at it objectively, why should a company offer benefits associated _only_ with parenting? It benefits society (not individual companies) to encourage breeding, and therefore parental incentives should, if they exist at all, come from the state rather than private enterprise. At the company level, flexible personal paid leave for employees who have earned it might be a fairer arrangement.

Jgrubb 11y ago
Are you American? I totally agree with you but that's just not how we do things over here.
rayiner 11y ago
Parental leave is available to everyone. It's not prejudicial just because you choose not to take advantage of it, just like it's not prejudicial to offer gym memberships to people who choose not to work out. Besides that, parent leave is better seen as an accommodation (like bathrooms or wheelchair ramps), not a benefit. It's a human function necessary to society--until the robots take over anyway. Because it's uniquely tied up with work schedules, it's reasonable for society to force employers to make the accommodation. It's entirely reasonable for private enterprise to sometimes be forced to foot the bill for activities that benefit society rather than the business itself.
- flavor8 11y ago
  > Parental leave is available to everyone. That's a parent-centric view. Some of us a really not wired to have offspring. Obviously the magnitude of the situation is different, but your statement is along the lines of saying that "marriage benefits are available to everybody" prior to gay marriage being legalized. > It's not prejudicial just because you choose not to take advantage of it, just like it's not prejudicial to offer gym memberships to people who choose not to work out. That's a question of magnitude also. Parental leave for software engineers is easily a $10-20k benefit. Gym membership is a $100/mo benefit.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > Some of us a really not wired to have offspring. Some of us are really not wired to go to the gym! > Parental leave for software engineers is easily a $10-20k benefit. Gym membership is a $100/mo benefit. But people use the gym benefit throughout their working life, while they will use the parental leave benefit typically just twice (on average). Averaged over a 30-year career, the net cost of the two benefits is about the same.
Goronmon 11y ago
But looking at it objectively, why should a company offer benefits associated _only_ with parenting? Because companies are cheap and want to keep paid leave to a bare minimum. But parenting is important so its harder for them to take a firm stance against time-off policies ion that specific situation.
speeder 11y ago
I am from Brazil, and I think one of the few things we actually do properly, is that here the law follows exactly what you just said (paternity and maternity leave aren't touched by the company at all, the state foots the entire bill) Still not enough sometimes (I know a person that worked at 3M, and refused to have kids, fearing the temporary replacement if she ever got pregnant and went on leave might become permant and displace her... after she got fired, near her 40s, and tried to have a kid and failed, she went to the doctor, that informed here that she missed the boat, she was fertile some years before, but now wasn't fertile anymore...)
- douche 11y ago
  It seems like the new reality is that most of us are going to be working through our 40s, 50s, and 60s, at the least. If there was some way that we could reconfigure the world so that it was possible for people to work on starting their families in their 20s, when they are the most fertile and the risk of birth defects and difficult pregnancies are lower, that seems to me like a better way for the world to work. The way the math works out, if you had children in your early 20s, by the time they were grown, and you were freed up to really devote yourself to a career, you'd still have 25 or 30 productive years to make something happen. I have no idea how we would get there, though. The current system leaves young people buried in a deep hole, with very limited resources - huge student loan debts, nonexistent savings, precarious, transient work and living conditions. You've got to work like a dog for a decade to achieve some level of stability. On the other end, ageism leaves people that hit 40 at a disadvantage, just when they are reaching the point that they become experienced enough to really be useful.
icegreentea 11y ago
Bumping you back up because I don't think you're trying to be inflammatory... You're asking why the American government doesn't implement more progressive/liberal labour laws and/or 'entitlements'? The massive wall of reasons why American (I assume you're talking about American) labour benefits/protections are relatively minimal is a pretty good reason for why companies are "forced" to do paid mat/pat leave to compete.
- flavor8 11y ago
  Yeah, obviously it's a touchy subject. And I understand the reality too; adding social benefits at the federal level would be a tough political fight that few of our politicians seem particularly keen or suited to take on.
pdpi 11y ago
Even if not everybody takes advantages of those benefits, you can safely bet that a fairly large percentage of employees past a certain age are going to. If you want to hire senior people with solid experience, they're likely to be of an age where they're planning on having kids, and, given a company that offers no paternity/maternity benefits and one that does, they're pretty damn likely to choose the company that does offer such benefits -- both for the benefits themselves, and for the message that goes with them, that it is OK/expected that you'll have kids (and the less extravagant availability that goes with that).

by flavor8 11y ago

Jgrubb 11y ago

Are you American? I totally agree with you but that's just not how we do things over here.

rayiner 11y ago

Parental leave is available to everyone. It's not prejudicial just because you choose not to take advantage of it, just like it's not prejudicial to offer gym memberships to people who choose not to work out. Besides that, parent leave is better seen as an accommodation (like bathrooms or wheelchair ramps), not a benefit. It's a human function necessary to society--until the robots take over anyway. Because it's uniquely tied up with work schedules, it's reasonable for society to force employers to make the accommodation. It's entirely reasonable for private enterprise to sometimes be forced to foot the bill for activities that benefit society rather than the business itself.

flavor8 11y ago
> Parental leave is available to everyone. That's a parent-centric view. Some of us a really not wired to have offspring. Obviously the magnitude of the situation is different, but your statement is along the lines of saying that "marriage benefits are available to everybody" prior to gay marriage being legalized. > It's not prejudicial just because you choose not to take advantage of it, just like it's not prejudicial to offer gym memberships to people who choose not to work out. That's a question of magnitude also. Parental leave for software engineers is easily a $10-20k benefit. Gym membership is a $100/mo benefit.
- rayiner 11y ago
  > Some of us a really not wired to have offspring. Some of us are really not wired to go to the gym! > Parental leave for software engineers is easily a $10-20k benefit. Gym membership is a $100/mo benefit. But people use the gym benefit throughout their working life, while they will use the parental leave benefit typically just twice (on average). Averaged over a 30-year career, the net cost of the two benefits is about the same.

Goronmon 11y ago

But looking at it objectively, why should a company offer benefits associated _only_ with parenting? Because companies are cheap and want to keep paid leave to a bare minimum. But parenting is important so its harder for them to take a firm stance against time-off policies ion that specific situation.

speeder 11y ago

I am from Brazil, and I think one of the few things we actually do properly, is that here the law follows exactly what you just said (paternity and maternity leave aren't touched by the company at all, the state foots the entire bill) Still not enough sometimes (I know a person that worked at 3M, and refused to have kids, fearing the temporary replacement if she ever got pregnant and went on leave might become permant and displace her... after she got fired, near her 40s, and tried to have a kid and failed, she went to the doctor, that informed here that she missed the boat, she was fertile some years before, but now wasn't fertile anymore...)

douche 11y ago
It seems like the new reality is that most of us are going to be working through our 40s, 50s, and 60s, at the least. If there was some way that we could reconfigure the world so that it was possible for people to work on starting their families in their 20s, when they are the most fertile and the risk of birth defects and difficult pregnancies are lower, that seems to me like a better way for the world to work. The way the math works out, if you had children in your early 20s, by the time they were grown, and you were freed up to really devote yourself to a career, you'd still have 25 or 30 productive years to make something happen. I have no idea how we would get there, though. The current system leaves young people buried in a deep hole, with very limited resources - huge student loan debts, nonexistent savings, precarious, transient work and living conditions. You've got to work like a dog for a decade to achieve some level of stability. On the other end, ageism leaves people that hit 40 at a disadvantage, just when they are reaching the point that they become experienced enough to really be useful.

icegreentea 11y ago

Bumping you back up because I don't think you're trying to be inflammatory... You're asking why the American government doesn't implement more progressive/liberal labour laws and/or 'entitlements'? The massive wall of reasons why American (I assume you're talking about American) labour benefits/protections are relatively minimal is a pretty good reason for why companies are "forced" to do paid mat/pat leave to compete.

flavor8 11y ago
Yeah, obviously it's a touchy subject. And I understand the reality too; adding social benefits at the federal level would be a tough political fight that few of our politicians seem particularly keen or suited to take on.

pdpi 11y ago

Even if not everybody takes advantages of those benefits, you can safely bet that a fairly large percentage of employees past a certain age are going to. If you want to hire senior people with solid experience, they're likely to be of an age where they're planning on having kids, and, given a company that offers no paternity/maternity benefits and one that does, they're pretty damn likely to choose the company that does offer such benefits -- both for the benefits themselves, and for the message that goes with them, that it is OK/expected that you'll have kids (and the less extravagant availability that goes with that).