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> long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression Of course it does. What it benefits is the actual human beings in question (child, mothe

> long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression Of course it does. What it benefits is the actual human beings in question (child, mother, father). Most humans think that significantly increasing the well-being of your family, and in particular your infant, is a whole fucking lot more important than wages and career progression. Like all things in life it's a trade off, but an unobjectionally good one. Analogy: if a woman (or man) spent 8 hours every day of every vacation secretly working, they would definitely get better wages and career progression. Would you recommend everyone starts doing that?

spennant 9y ago
> if a woman (or man) spent 8 hours every day of every vacation secretly working, they would definitely get better wages and career progression In a meritocracy, sure...
- urbanj 9y ago
  sucks that your mother didn't care enough about you to make you into a decent human being.
davrosthedalek 9y ago
RE your analogy, I don't think this is true in general. There are many jobs/people where the downtime is needed to perform better. That's certainly the case for me and in my field. To your main point: You are absolutely right. Germany, for example, tries to symmetries the problem by allowing fathers to take part of the maternity leave. But of course, especially in high paying jobs where companies have to invest a considerable amount into a worker to train them, a maternity leave, or any other reduction of total working time at the company, will affect the salary. The question is now: Do we, as a society, treat the privilege to raise a child as adequate replacement of the lost salary/promotions etc? If not, who makes up for the difference?
- wiz21c 9y ago
  As a (happy) dad, I'm very surprised by this : >>> Do we, as a society, treat the privilege to raise a child as adequate replacement of the lost salary/promotions etc? I'm very surprised of the opposition you make here. I'd prefer : Do we, as a society, treat the choice to raise a child as one that doesn't imply the loss of salary/promotions etc? (but in my case, my employer has never spent tons of money on me; "considerable training" means to me : a year of full time training such as : mastering a foreign tongue, mastering a technical field besides IT, etc. It's certainly not "we'll leave you learn by yourself at night and pay for your lack of efficiency during the first 6 months of work"))
  - davrosthedalek 9y ago
    My point is this: There is a business cost associated with people who choose to be parents: They may be absent for an extended period of time (which in some fields is a big problem), they are often less flexible with hours/week, which hours on a given day, when they want holidays. They choose a more healthy work-life balance, which for the employer means "more life, less work". It's also opportunity cost for you: While you care for your kid, you can not go for an extended trip to a different country, or jump head first into a technology to learn at night because your kid will wake you up at 6, and on weekends, you are out and play with him. Clearly this will reduces your chance for a promotion compared to the workaholic who knows all the new buzzword technologies. One could say, yes, ok, I took that trade-off, but now I got to be a dad, and that's worth more to me. Or, as a society, we can say: You should not need to make that trade-off. Or at least: You should not lose that much. It's hard to correct the disadvantage in terms of promotion, but other things are possible. Some examples, some are horrible: - Force the companies to maintain open positions for (m/p)aternity leaves. Either pay for that with taxes, or make the companies eat the cost. - Give people with kids tax breaks / money. - Force people to take a sabbatical every n years if they don't take maternity leave. (But of course some people will use that time to work on their skills anyway...) - Provide good child care so that people can more easily work and have kids. - Shun people who don't have kids... What society can not do is make this difference magically go away. I think you might underestimate the amount your employer has invested in you. Maybe a better benchmark is: How much would it cost him to replace you if you quit your job in three month.
Bartweiss 9y ago
I think that's not the issue under discussion. It's not about whether taking a year off work hurts career progression, it's about whether offering paid maternity leave creates pressure not to hire and promote women, regardless of whether they have kids. If the result was strictly "taking a year off work delays your career", that would be a fairly obvious outcome. Instead, what we see is "knowing some job candidates can take a year off work with pay discourages hiring and promoting those candidates". It is, among other things, an indirect argument for paternity leave - if leave is symmetric, you can't preferentially hire/promote the people without access to it.

spennant 9y ago

> if a woman (or man) spent 8 hours every day of every vacation secretly working, they would definitely get better wages and career progression In a meritocracy, sure...

urbanj 9y ago
sucks that your mother didn't care enough about you to make you into a decent human being.

davrosthedalek 9y ago

RE your analogy, I don't think this is true in general. There are many jobs/people where the downtime is needed to perform better. That's certainly the case for me and in my field. To your main point: You are absolutely right. Germany, for example, tries to symmetries the problem by allowing fathers to take part of the maternity leave. But of course, especially in high paying jobs where companies have to invest a considerable amount into a worker to train them, a maternity leave, or any other reduction of total working time at the company, will affect the salary. The question is now: Do we, as a society, treat the privilege to raise a child as adequate replacement of the lost salary/promotions etc? If not, who makes up for the difference?

wiz21c 9y ago
As a (happy) dad, I'm very surprised by this : >>> Do we, as a society, treat the privilege to raise a child as adequate replacement of the lost salary/promotions etc? I'm very surprised of the opposition you make here. I'd prefer : Do we, as a society, treat the choice to raise a child as one that doesn't imply the loss of salary/promotions etc? (but in my case, my employer has never spent tons of money on me; "considerable training" means to me : a year of full time training such as : mastering a foreign tongue, mastering a technical field besides IT, etc. It's certainly not "we'll leave you learn by yourself at night and pay for your lack of efficiency during the first 6 months of work"))
- davrosthedalek 9y ago
  My point is this: There is a business cost associated with people who choose to be parents: They may be absent for an extended period of time (which in some fields is a big problem), they are often less flexible with hours/week, which hours on a given day, when they want holidays. They choose a more healthy work-life balance, which for the employer means "more life, less work". It's also opportunity cost for you: While you care for your kid, you can not go for an extended trip to a different country, or jump head first into a technology to learn at night because your kid will wake you up at 6, and on weekends, you are out and play with him. Clearly this will reduces your chance for a promotion compared to the workaholic who knows all the new buzzword technologies. One could say, yes, ok, I took that trade-off, but now I got to be a dad, and that's worth more to me. Or, as a society, we can say: You should not need to make that trade-off. Or at least: You should not lose that much. It's hard to correct the disadvantage in terms of promotion, but other things are possible. Some examples, some are horrible: - Force the companies to maintain open positions for (m/p)aternity leaves. Either pay for that with taxes, or make the companies eat the cost. - Give people with kids tax breaks / money. - Force people to take a sabbatical every n years if they don't take maternity leave. (But of course some people will use that time to work on their skills anyway...) - Provide good child care so that people can more easily work and have kids. - Shun people who don't have kids... What society can not do is make this difference magically go away. I think you might underestimate the amount your employer has invested in you. Maybe a better benchmark is: How much would it cost him to replace you if you quit your job in three month.

Bartweiss 9y ago

I think that's not the issue under discussion. It's not about whether taking a year off work hurts career progression, it's about whether offering paid maternity leave creates pressure not to hire and promote women, regardless of whether they have kids. If the result was strictly "taking a year off work delays your career", that would be a fairly obvious outcome. Instead, what we see is "knowing some job candidates can take a year off work with pay discourages hiring and promoting those candidates". It is, among other things, an indirect argument for paternity leave - if leave is symmetric, you can't preferentially hire/promote the people without access to it.