9 ms·

When my wife and I took a birth class in Boston, the ice breaker was to go around and say who you were and how much time you had off once the baby came (ostensi

by eob 10y ago

When my wife and I took a birth class in Boston, the ice breaker was to go around and say who you were and how much time you had off once the baby came (ostensibly so the instructor could tailor her advice). After a long string of answers like "two weeks.. three weeks.. six weeks.. four weeks", the international parents in the group felt compelled to begin their introductions with an apology for numbers like six months, one year, two years... I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals (implementation details left as an exercise for technocrats).

overcast 10y ago
Because you'd have to advocate paying even more taxes, something Americans just do not want. Universal anything doesn't come out of thin air.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > Because you'd have to advocate paying even more taxes, something Americans just do not want That's not how parental leave works. The employer is obligated (by law) to continue paying salaries for the stipulated period while the parent is on leave. The government doesn't shoulder the cost.
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    That's not true. There is no state or federal government that mandates paid family leave that has to be covered by the employer. The family leave act only mandates up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
    - sangnoir 10y ago
      I was addressing incorrect assumption that longer parental leave would require the raising of taxes. I should have also been clearer that I wasn't talking about the US government(s) but for Europe and the rest of the world: Nowhere (that I know of) is the parental salary/income paid directly via taxes or by the government. Instead, the laws state that your employer should continue paying you a certain percentage of your salary while you are on maternal/paternal leave. This percentage is usually 100% , some countries have a time-based fall-off (amount decreases to X% after N weeks)
Analemma_ 10y ago
> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals. Sheesh, haven't you heard of the slippery slope?? Today it's six months of paternity leave, but from there it's a straight line to Stalinism. /s
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  And a little while after that you end up in a Gulag.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
Because a large enough portion of our society finds the technical details very unsavory and the system by which we run our society makes it difficult to do things without an overwhelming consensus (among people who care about the issue).
munificent 10y ago
> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals I'm pretty sure parental leave is not mentioned in the US Constitution nor in the founding documents of most countries. If we don't have it today, it's not because people advocated against it and removed it, it's because we simply haven't had enough push to advocate for it and add it. Large countries have a ton of inertia. Diverse, thinly populated countries even more so. When people are far apart, they care much more about local politics and their neighbors than they do centralized government. Making change happen at that scale is very very hard. People living in European countries enjoy criticizing the US on stuff like this, but they fail to realize how much bigger and more spread out we are than they are. The US is more than twice as large as the entire EU. Our density is less than a third of the EU's. Another comment here mentions Denmark. If Denmark was a US state, it would be 36th in size, smaller than more than half of all US states. In population, it has fewer than 20 other states. The metropolitan area of the city I live in (Seattle) alone has almost half the population of the entire country of Denmark. LA and surrounding environments contain more than two Denmarks worth of people. Consider if every US state were to independently enter the EU. In that case, of the top 40 largest members by area, only 9 would still be in Europe. The US is behind in many ways, but this is not because we are backwater full of regressive idiots. We are a very large country without the density and homogeneity to benefit from good economies of scale. It's a lot easier to reach consensus and move a government forward when you have fewer people and they can more easily relate to each other. If you are unable to understand why we might not have attained the same healthcare goals as your country, consider that your inability to understand people whose situation is different from yours is the exact psychological problem that slows us down.
- TheCapn 10y ago
  I'm not sure I gather the defense you're making for the US's position. You're arguing that since the US populous is so spread out they have a hard time getting on the same page to advocate for positive change in health policies? What part of population density or land mass size makes for this excuse where there's examples worldwide of both ends of either measure who've implemented paid leave by law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Variation_in_international_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Variation_in_in... Countries larger and smaller than the USA have better policy. Countries with greater and lesser population densities. Diversity of people might matter but I fail to see a demographic within the US that is outright against increased parental benefits of new parents that doesn't exist within every country that has overcome the problem.
jcbeard 10y ago
I never understood why maternity + paternity leave isn't longer. Current corporate policy in America is insane for working parents. Especially when the US DoD gives 12 weeks maternity leave (http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/645958/carter-announces-12-weeks-paid-military-maternity-leave-other-benefits http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/645958/carter-an...). As a dad who had to take care of his little one for the first 60 days of his life, I can say that paternity leave should be there as well for awhile. I found myself (as a DoD employee) in the precarious situation of working when my son was asleep, and early morning/late at night. Thankfully I was the boss so I could do that (and you know, anybody that worked for me got the same privilege). It's not easy. Moms are in no shape to go back after 1/2/3 weeks, heck not even 1 month. Moms need time to heal + time with the baby. Dads can help out with that process a lot! Unfortunately, most in the US view dads as not really essential to the parenting process. This is reflected in the DoD paternity leave policy which only grants 14 days. I think valuing the fathers input would likely enhance the stability of families (see Nordic countries quest for equal gender rights (https://www.nav.no/en/Home/Benefits+and+services/Relatert+informasjon/paternal-quota-paternity-leave-maternal-quota-and-shared-period https://www.nav.no/en/Home/Benefits+and+services/Relatert+in...). I wonder how Nvidia handles parents who don't fall into the "mother"/"father" categories. That's always a huge hole in some of these plans.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Compulsion is not the modus operandi in the US. The belief is that if the employment marketplace values parental leave, it will be offered without being compelled by government force. If parental leave is critical, find an employer willing to provide it (or better yet, make money independently; America makes this easy relative to Europe). "It's a free country" and all that. One's employer has no more obligation to continue to employ him/her than the employee has obligation to continue to work for the employer.
tzs 10y ago
How do companies in countries with six months or a year or two year of parental leave handle it? At most places I've worked, they would not have been able to let my work go undone for six months or a year or more, so would need to find some other way to get the work done. At the large companies, there might be enough redundancy to be able to spread my work among those already working there. At many, though, it seems they would have to hire somebody. For senior technical positions, especially if the company has proprietary systems or technology that is not publicly documented, it can take quite a while to get someone new up to speed.
- johanneskanybal 10y ago
  How do parents in countries with less than six month to one year parental leave handle it? Most kids I've brought up have been about a million times more intense than any tech career I've ever pursued. And for the companies they work at, how do they manage retaining any half decent people while actively ignorning one of the most basic human processes? Ask any parent what the most transformative event in their life was. How do these companies survive with a staff that's essentialy kids or dysfunctional/depressed parents?? edit: serious question albeit framed provocatively.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  They hire a replacement. How do American companies cover a few weeks of leave? That's too short to hire a replacement but often too long to just let things slide.
- oblio 10y ago
  Temporary hire or just avoiding the single point of failure. It's part of the cost of doing business and companies plan for it.
wyager 10y ago
> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals With respect to absurdly long paid parental leave in particular, I would oppose it on the grounds that it's immoral to force people to subsidize other people's children. Having children is a life choice that other people shouldn't be on the hook for.
- rndmio 10y ago
  That's an asinine argument, as a tax payer I'm "forced" to subsidise many things I don't personally benefit from. Ensuring that the next generation of society is well adjusted and participative seems as sensible an idea as public education and public healthcare.
  - wyager 10y ago
    > That's an asinine argument, as a tax payer I'm "forced" to subsidise many things I don't personally benefit from. "There are other bad things, so you can't object to this new bad thing!" > Ensuring that the next generation of society is well adjusted and participative How does forcing companies to subsidize people's decision to have children achieve this goal?
    - aseipp 10y ago
      > > That's an asinine argument, as a tax payer I'm "forced" to subsidise many things I don't personally benefit from. > "There are other bad things, so you can't object to this new bad thing!" The OP never said the things they did not benefit from were bad. Merely that as a tax payer, you pay for things that you personally do not always benefit from directly. You might think these are bad, but this is not the same as them being bad. I do not personally benefit from having, say, wheelchair accessible housing requirements. This does not mean it is bad to have those requirements -- I simply do not use a wheelchair. This is only the simplest case imaginable. So your reply comes off as a bit of a farce, I think. Your argument seems to hinge on premises like the fact there is a definitive moral/societal calculus by which we can determine if something is "good for us", so we should/should not do it (it's "immoral" to subsidize having children, but many would argue the same about providing birth control), that we should even treat it as a 'subsidy' vs 'investment' or 'just a good idea' (if we're "subsidizing" children, why even do it for 3 weeks? why not only give 3 days of parental leave?) or that there is a definitive, negative result to be the whole outcome, regardless of context (e.g. that extended parental leave is a definitive societal drain vs the value to be reaped in the same period). If it does not rely on these premises, I apologize, but that's what I read of it. Skipping the bits about morals (you will not do well to convince people on that one) - is there any evidence to suggest that extended parental leave, as offered by EU countries (your quoted bit from the OP) for example, results in sustained economic or societal "subsidization" that has observable, long-lasting negative effects?
paulddraper 10y ago
> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals By the same token, I've never understood how parents could advocate against having a one-income family. Oh wait, I know. Because everything has a cost, and everything is a trade-off. The reason to not have a year-long leave is the same reason not to have a stay-at-home parent: it's expensive. --- Of course, some people do wind up making that compromise. But Americans don't expect everyone else pay for their decision. Thank God.
- oblio 10y ago
  Ummm... there are some things which are just good for society. Having children is one of them. "Everyone else paying for it" is a reasonable thing, especially in this day and age when people don't want the hassle of having kids. You're presenting an extremely selfish point of view.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    You're the one wanting someone else to pay for your one/two income decision. That sounds selfish to me.
    - oblio 10y ago
      Ummm... the way the world moves forward is through having children. What's your alternative?
      - paulddraper 10y ago
        Disruption the birth market via cloning! Join my start up! jk --- More seriously though, I 100% like the decision to have children. 1. I'm a father of two. I work, and my wife stays home. 2. An alternative would be both of us working, except for my wife stops working for a while when our kids are born. 3. Another alternative would be both of us working, and paying for child care. Each of these have trade-offs. But whatever way we go, I'm not selfish enough to force everyone to pay for my decision.

by eob 10y ago

overcast 10y ago

Because you'd have to advocate paying even more taxes, something Americans just do not want. Universal anything doesn't come out of thin air.

sangnoir 10y ago
> Because you'd have to advocate paying even more taxes, something Americans just do not want That's not how parental leave works. The employer is obligated (by law) to continue paying salaries for the stipulated period while the parent is on leave. The government doesn't shoulder the cost.
- infinite8s 10y ago
  That's not true. There is no state or federal government that mandates paid family leave that has to be covered by the employer. The family leave act only mandates up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    I was addressing incorrect assumption that longer parental leave would require the raising of taxes. I should have also been clearer that I wasn't talking about the US government(s) but for Europe and the rest of the world: Nowhere (that I know of) is the parental salary/income paid directly via taxes or by the government. Instead, the laws state that your employer should continue paying you a certain percentage of your salary while you are on maternal/paternal leave. This percentage is usually 100% , some countries have a time-based fall-off (amount decreases to X% after N weeks)

Analemma_ 10y ago

> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals. Sheesh, haven't you heard of the slippery slope?? Today it's six months of paternity leave, but from there it's a straight line to Stalinism. /s

Cyph0n 10y ago
And a little while after that you end up in a Gulag.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

Because a large enough portion of our society finds the technical details very unsavory and the system by which we run our society makes it difficult to do things without an overwhelming consensus (among people who care about the issue).

munificent 10y ago

> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals I'm pretty sure parental leave is not mentioned in the US Constitution nor in the founding documents of most countries. If we don't have it today, it's not because people advocated against it and removed it, it's because we simply haven't had enough push to advocate for it and add it. Large countries have a ton of inertia. Diverse, thinly populated countries even more so. When people are far apart, they care much more about local politics and their neighbors than they do centralized government. Making change happen at that scale is very very hard. People living in European countries enjoy criticizing the US on stuff like this, but they fail to realize how much bigger and more spread out we are than they are. The US is more than twice as large as the entire EU. Our density is less than a third of the EU's. Another comment here mentions Denmark. If Denmark was a US state, it would be 36th in size, smaller than more than half of all US states. In population, it has fewer than 20 other states. The metropolitan area of the city I live in (Seattle) alone has almost half the population of the entire country of Denmark. LA and surrounding environments contain more than two Denmarks worth of people. Consider if every US state were to independently enter the EU. In that case, of the top 40 largest members by area, only 9 would still be in Europe. The US is behind in many ways, but this is not because we are backwater full of regressive idiots. We are a very large country without the density and homogeneity to benefit from good economies of scale. It's a lot easier to reach consensus and move a government forward when you have fewer people and they can more easily relate to each other. If you are unable to understand why we might not have attained the same healthcare goals as your country, consider that your inability to understand people whose situation is different from yours is the exact psychological problem that slows us down.

TheCapn 10y ago
I'm not sure I gather the defense you're making for the US's position. You're arguing that since the US populous is so spread out they have a hard time getting on the same page to advocate for positive change in health policies? What part of population density or land mass size makes for this excuse where there's examples worldwide of both ends of either measure who've implemented paid leave by law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Variation_in_international_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Variation_in_in... Countries larger and smaller than the USA have better policy. Countries with greater and lesser population densities. Diversity of people might matter but I fail to see a demographic within the US that is outright against increased parental benefits of new parents that doesn't exist within every country that has overcome the problem.

jcbeard 10y ago

I never understood why maternity + paternity leave isn't longer. Current corporate policy in America is insane for working parents. Especially when the US DoD gives 12 weeks maternity leave (http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/645958/carter-announces-12-weeks-paid-military-maternity-leave-other-benefits http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/645958/carter-an...). As a dad who had to take care of his little one for the first 60 days of his life, I can say that paternity leave should be there as well for awhile. I found myself (as a DoD employee) in the precarious situation of working when my son was asleep, and early morning/late at night. Thankfully I was the boss so I could do that (and you know, anybody that worked for me got the same privilege). It's not easy. Moms are in no shape to go back after 1/2/3 weeks, heck not even 1 month. Moms need time to heal + time with the baby. Dads can help out with that process a lot! Unfortunately, most in the US view dads as not really essential to the parenting process. This is reflected in the DoD paternity leave policy which only grants 14 days. I think valuing the fathers input would likely enhance the stability of families (see Nordic countries quest for equal gender rights (https://www.nav.no/en/Home/Benefits+and+services/Relatert+informasjon/paternal-quota-paternity-leave-maternal-quota-and-shared-period https://www.nav.no/en/Home/Benefits+and+services/Relatert+in...). I wonder how Nvidia handles parents who don't fall into the "mother"/"father" categories. That's always a huge hole in some of these plans.

cookiecaper 10y ago
Compulsion is not the modus operandi in the US. The belief is that if the employment marketplace values parental leave, it will be offered without being compelled by government force. If parental leave is critical, find an employer willing to provide it (or better yet, make money independently; America makes this easy relative to Europe). "It's a free country" and all that. One's employer has no more obligation to continue to employ him/her than the employee has obligation to continue to work for the employer.

tzs 10y ago

How do companies in countries with six months or a year or two year of parental leave handle it? At most places I've worked, they would not have been able to let my work go undone for six months or a year or more, so would need to find some other way to get the work done. At the large companies, there might be enough redundancy to be able to spread my work among those already working there. At many, though, it seems they would have to hire somebody. For senior technical positions, especially if the company has proprietary systems or technology that is not publicly documented, it can take quite a while to get someone new up to speed.

johanneskanybal 10y ago
How do parents in countries with less than six month to one year parental leave handle it? Most kids I've brought up have been about a million times more intense than any tech career I've ever pursued. And for the companies they work at, how do they manage retaining any half decent people while actively ignorning one of the most basic human processes? Ask any parent what the most transformative event in their life was. How do these companies survive with a staff that's essentialy kids or dysfunctional/depressed parents?? edit: serious question albeit framed provocatively.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
They hire a replacement. How do American companies cover a few weeks of leave? That's too short to hire a replacement but often too long to just let things slide.
oblio 10y ago
Temporary hire or just avoiding the single point of failure. It's part of the cost of doing business and companies plan for it.

wyager 10y ago

> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals With respect to absurdly long paid parental leave in particular, I would oppose it on the grounds that it's immoral to force people to subsidize other people's children. Having children is a life choice that other people shouldn't be on the hook for.

rndmio 10y ago
That's an asinine argument, as a tax payer I'm "forced" to subsidise many things I don't personally benefit from. Ensuring that the next generation of society is well adjusted and participative seems as sensible an idea as public education and public healthcare.
- wyager 10y ago
  > That's an asinine argument, as a tax payer I'm "forced" to subsidise many things I don't personally benefit from. "There are other bad things, so you can't object to this new bad thing!" > Ensuring that the next generation of society is well adjusted and participative How does forcing companies to subsidize people's decision to have children achieve this goal?
  - aseipp 10y ago
    > > That's an asinine argument, as a tax payer I'm "forced" to subsidise many things I don't personally benefit from. > "There are other bad things, so you can't object to this new bad thing!" The OP never said the things they did not benefit from were bad. Merely that as a tax payer, you pay for things that you personally do not always benefit from directly. You might think these are bad, but this is not the same as them being bad. I do not personally benefit from having, say, wheelchair accessible housing requirements. This does not mean it is bad to have those requirements -- I simply do not use a wheelchair. This is only the simplest case imaginable. So your reply comes off as a bit of a farce, I think. Your argument seems to hinge on premises like the fact there is a definitive moral/societal calculus by which we can determine if something is "good for us", so we should/should not do it (it's "immoral" to subsidize having children, but many would argue the same about providing birth control), that we should even treat it as a 'subsidy' vs 'investment' or 'just a good idea' (if we're "subsidizing" children, why even do it for 3 weeks? why not only give 3 days of parental leave?) or that there is a definitive, negative result to be the whole outcome, regardless of context (e.g. that extended parental leave is a definitive societal drain vs the value to be reaped in the same period). If it does not rely on these premises, I apologize, but that's what I read of it. Skipping the bits about morals (you will not do well to convince people on that one) - is there any evidence to suggest that extended parental leave, as offered by EU countries (your quoted bit from the OP) for example, results in sustained economic or societal "subsidization" that has observable, long-lasting negative effects?

paulddraper 10y ago

> I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals By the same token, I've never understood how parents could advocate against having a one-income family. Oh wait, I know. Because everything has a cost, and everything is a trade-off. The reason to not have a year-long leave is the same reason not to have a stay-at-home parent: it's expensive. --- Of course, some people do wind up making that compromise. But Americans don't expect everyone else pay for their decision. Thank God.

oblio 10y ago
Ummm... there are some things which are just good for society. Having children is one of them. "Everyone else paying for it" is a reasonable thing, especially in this day and age when people don't want the hassle of having kids. You're presenting an extremely selfish point of view.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  You're the one wanting someone else to pay for your one/two income decision. That sounds selfish to me.
  - oblio 10y ago
    Ummm... the way the world moves forward is through having children. What's your alternative?
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Disruption the birth market via cloning! Join my start up! jk --- More seriously though, I 100% like the decision to have children. 1. I'm a father of two. I work, and my wife stays home. 2. An alternative would be both of us working, except for my wife stops working for a while when our kids are born. 3. Another alternative would be both of us working, and paying for child care. Each of these have trade-offs. But whatever way we go, I'm not selfish enough to force everyone to pay for my decision.