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China’s two-child policy is having unintended consequences

60 points by dsr12 8y ago

moomin 8y ago
Obviously I’m a women’s rights maximalist, but I’d like to point out something else fundamentally wrong with the thrust of these policies: they’re aimed at producing more unwanted children. It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens if they’re successful at scale.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  One way of handling this is making paternity and maternity leave nearly equal, and mandatory. Making maternity a bit longer could make sense given that there's a lot of physical recuperation involved, but mainly employers shouldn't see one or the other as a liability.
  - consp 8y ago
    Say what you like, but even if you get back all the cost from the government for paying the maternaty leave, you are still missing a valued worker which is not easily replaced. You have some lead time to find a replacement but that is not easy in all professions and even harder for smaller companies.
    - mcny 8y ago
      I think they are saying give the same rights to take vacation to the father. It doesn’t matter who pays for it. I somewhat agree. If we want to level the playing field, we can’t have extra rights and priveleges for women because clearly they become a liability. I think it is necessary but not sufficient though. I read here about github and the unlimited vacation policy which in practice is a no vacation policy. Just because men can take off doesn’t mean they will at least in the short term. We must keep this policy stable for decades to effect change.
      - kgwgk 8y ago
        When something is mandatory it's no longer a "right".
        gambiting 8y ago
        In the EU it's mandatory for my employer to provide at least 25 days of paid time off per year. It's my right to take it, but I don't have to if I don't want to. The "mandatory" part is on the employer - they have to provide everyone with 25 days of paid holidays, unlimited paid sick leave, maternity/paternity leave - but it's not mandatory to take any of those for the employee - that's where the "right" part comes in.
        kgwgk 8y ago
        I think that when CalRobert says > One way of handling this is making paternity and maternity leave nearly equal, and mandatory. "mandatory" means making paternity leave compulsory for employees. I could be wrong, though.
        CalRobert 8y ago
        I meant mostly making it such that if you don't use it, you lose it. This works pretty well with vacation times in places that don't have utterly poisonous work cultures. For those places that do, I don't know what the answer is.
        eftychis 8y ago
        Not really. Something can be a right and an obligation at the same time. For instance there is the right to vote. Historically, in certain periods and countries vote was/is mandatory. (e.g. Greece) Sometimes, a right or measure has to become mandatory to ensure people enjoy it.
        fwn 8y ago
        I always wondered whether mandatory voting isn't just a plain duty, like paying taxes. If you get penalized for not voting all the modern democratic idealism which portraits voting as a right is pretty stale. I completely get why the classic Greeks came up with it, though. They were obviously far more tribal in their culture.
    - moomin 8y ago
      I think Cal's proposal deserves consideration. (It's probably still game-able.) The problem isn't that maternity leave disrupts companies individual companies. So does sleep, and they're both part of normal human life. The problem is that the system in effect has the effect of a) discriminating against woman and b) suppressing the birth rate. If you are planning at a national level, suppressing the birth rate for a tiny economic boost right now is a high road to nowhere.
      - badestrand 8y ago
        > suppressing the birth rate And the birth rate will go up if men are forbidden to work for half a year when having a child? That seems highly doubtful, it might as well go further down because some people actually like their work.
  - zimablue 8y ago
    Mandatory paternity leave! Can we do a straw poll of how many people think that if you have a child the government gets to tell you how long to quit your job for!?
    - jknightco 8y ago
      There are cultural differences here, specifically those that involve what the concept of "liberty" means in practice. Americans tend to focus on freedom "to", which is exactly what you're talking about here: employees should be free to choose whether or not they take maternity/paternity. Europeans tend to focus on freedom "from", i.e. employees should be from from worrying about whether the decision to take maternity/paternity will hold them back or not. You can frame it the way you have if you want to, but to some cultures, having the government tell people what they can and can't do is the only way to ensure true liberty for all.
      - fwn 8y ago
        I'm an European and I strongly believe in the freedom from getting told when to quit my job. ...that is just to examplify that the freedom from/to distinction requires a very specific worldview to function as a robust differentiator.
      - zimablue 8y ago
        I'm British and pretty left wing, don't assume that it's all tribal. Granted my post sounded quite American. The government forcing you to take time off is absolutely mental to me. Think of the edge cases => what if I'm not planning to bring up the kid? What if I want lots and lots of children? What if it's an absolutely vital time for me at work, partnerships are coming up or something. What if I'm self-employed? Then think about how possible choices for these edge cases lead to messed up situations. I can imagine people pretending not to be bringing up their children so that the government doesn't mess with their lives. I see how you can frame it as "freedom not to have reproduction affect your career". But for one thing that still won't work. Time off is time off and income correlates with total hours worked in your life. For another, I don't think all of society agrees that we should pay for your freedom to have children without incurring any costs. We don't need more children, the world population is still increasing. There's this strange train of logic now that because aging populations become poor (because we massively overpromised on pensions) we need native children. 1. We can use immigration. 2. If your system cannot support the decreasing population necessary for the world to get through the next centuries, you need to fix the system not encourage breeding. Also what about incels, gay people, people who just don't want children? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class peoples ability not to have their kids interfere with their law career.
  - hucker 8y ago
    That is basically the case in Norway. Both the mother and the father gets 15 weeks mandatory each, and the rest (of a full year) is divided between them as they themselves see fit, iirc.
  - Gustomaximus 8y ago
    This is what happens in Norway to some extent. You are given 12 months parental leave to share between the couple. The mother has to take 6 months. The father 3. The remaining 3 are decided by the couple. That's oversimplified as there more options and scenarios but the fairly common situation. Like you say it takes away women being seen as such a liability from becoming mothers from what I saw in my little bubble while living there for a few years. Also as fathers have all this time off it encourages the mother back to the workforce. And for me it really helped in my day to day baby duties involvement. I've brought this up many times to people pushing for better women's rights in the workforce as something they should fight for if they do want a more equal workplace vs more an egocentric position of leave/benefits for themself.
    - hucker 8y ago
      This was changed to a 15/15 week split this summer I believe (with the remainder still split as the couple sees fit).
      - Gustomaximus 8y ago
        Ah thanks for updating, I left Norway almost 6 years ago so out of date.
- mcny 8y ago
  Personally, I think we should reject this “freedom” to have more children or to have children at all. Of course, the individual should make the choice to not have children but the fact that community doesn’t want to pay people to have and raise children makes me think all children are unwanted children. People laugh at the idea of it takes a village to raise a child. I thought the idea was so painfully obvious that it doesn’t need to be said. Clearly not. I say this to everyone: in order to effect change, we must strike. Don’t have children. Speaking of obvious things: my child is no more precious than anyone else’s child. I think the compromise will be some kind of a one child policy here as well. I think this is more humane alternative to what we have now. My proposed new one child policy is to incentivize people to have a child or to adopt one child with additional taxpayer money. The compromise is to limit it only to the first child. You’re on your own if you want more. I think it is worth considering.
  - derefr 8y ago
    > the fact that community doesn’t want to pay people to have and raise children makes me think all children are unwanted children In a globalized world with the ability to move for work, children might still be an economic net-positive for the parents (once you account for how much they’d be willing to pay to replicate their genes into the next generation) but they’re probably a net-negative for the community they’re raised in. What benefits does introducing a new human being, as a baby, into a community provide said community, these days?
    - ericd 8y ago
      It provides the continuation of that community and its values.
      - derefr 8y ago
        No, that’s what you get when a young, productive adult joins a community and enculturates to it. It’s why universities are happy to “adopt” new human beings into their communities: they can charge you for your net-negative production years at the university (undergrad), turning them into net-zero years; and then they will begin getting net-positive returns from you (either through TAing during graduate studies; or researching for your Ph.D and then having your IP confiscated and profited off of; or just going into industry and then making large alumni donations.) Your community will only get net-negative returns when a human is raised through their teenage years in your community, and then leaves, gets enculturated by some other community, and never comes back. This usually breeds resentment—think lower-class urban youth who go on to university and enculturate to the upper-middle-class culture there. If they come back to visit their old family and friends, they will see them as “acting as if they’re too good for us.” The resentment is usually for a good reason: once you’ve enculturated away from your home culture, you don’t tend to care much about it any more! So, unlike people who retain their home culture in another community, you won’t do things like sending money home to family, or coming back to help build or lead the community, once you have acquired the resources to do so.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  I don't wish to be obtuse, but why would it be obvious that you're a women's-rights maximalist?
  - moomin 8y ago
    Past posting on social issues. (You're not required to read it all, don't worry.:) ) I just wanted to make the point that, although I do support women's rights, what I was saying was valid even if you didn't.
- Leary 8y ago
  The obvious thrust of these policies aims at scaling down the rights of women's genius. Successful as these children may be, they will be unwanted.
ganfortran 8y ago
Unintended? Hardly. The current administration has pushed hard for some time now, to encourage women to "go back to family". http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/24/c_1118142363.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/24/c_1118142363.ht...
- doombolt 8y ago
  I was thinking that examples of Italy and Germany (versus e.g. France or Sweden) were showing that this mindset simply doesn't work. Women end up spending even more effort on infiltrating the workspace and have fewer children later. When you demand mother to be perfect (e.g. by being stay at home), you get less children, and nobody becomes happier. As opposed to laid back approach with society safety net.
raverbashing 8y ago
Well, the one child policy had unintended consequences as well (rejection of daughters to the point of infanticide) so, it seems the issues are deeper
- ido 8y ago
  We have seen a neighbouring country (India) suffering from the results of rapid population growth, so doing nothing isn't free of consequences either. China has basically just taken a shortcut to the "natural" reduction in family size that happens to every country as it develops and become richer.
- Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
  Female infanticide is common in India too.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Leary 8y ago
Every public policy has its negative consequences. Ending the one child policy is a non-brainer.
alkonaut 8y ago
Even where parental leave is publicly funded (rather than paid by employers), women of a certain age are rejected because it’s expensive to hire someone who may be gone 2 years of the next 5. You need to find and train replacements etc.
- zimablue 8y ago
  Where does that happen? I've always thought that was much more logical, the current system in the UK just doesn't make sense at it's core => if you're an employer you can get saddled with an employee who you have to pay whilst they don't work for a period, who can then quit, but you're not allowed/expected to try to avoid this by not hiring women. Or taking it into account in promotions/salary. If you really believe both of: 1: women should be paid to have children at their current salary. 2: women should not be discriminated against in any way. Then the only way to reconcile it is to have the government pay. And no, equal male leave wouldn't solve the problem because they don't take it. And no, mandatory male leave isn't a good solution. For a start it's unbelievably authoritarian to force someone to leave their work because they had a child. For a second you still have exactly the same discrimination problem it's just directed at potential parents instead of women. That would remove it as a feminist issue so it wouldn't get press but it would still be a problem.
  - psergeant 8y ago
    > Then the only way to reconcile it is to have the government pay. Sure, and ideally through an additional corporate tax based on overall wage cost for a business. Seems like a daft expense not to mutualise against at a national level, rather than what is today essentially a corporate lottery.
  - kilburn 8y ago
    > Where does that happen? In Spain. Also, it is still an objectively worse proposition for companies to hire women who are expected to have children soon than to hire other people. For several reasons (in Spain's current situation): 1) Even if you don't pay the employee's salary while on maternity leave, you still have to find a replacement and train them. 2) Paternity leave is shorter than maternity leave. And it can be transferred, something many couples do (usually in the paternity -> maternity direction). This translates to longer absence periods, and "rustier" comebacks after that. 3) In our society, mothers still carry a larger fraction of the burden of having children. That is, even after maternity leave is over, schools call the mother first if their child is ill, or gets injured, or whatever. Women are more prone to ask for flexible or reduced hours, etc. These are all inconveniences for the employer (w.r.t. employees in other situations). I'm not saying I like it this way and I don't claim to have a workable solution, just describing reality...
safgasCVS 8y ago
Don't all policies have unintended consequences? Not to make this political but this is partly why I think many people lean right intellectually without knowing it because at some basic level we know what's good for us. Good intentions often set policies but constantly backfire because we collectively lack the humility to say we don't really know how the world works. People's intentions are so tricky that it's the 2nd and nth order effects that catch you out
- donw 8y ago
  It is a shame that we can't seem to take a more iterative approach to public policy. E.g., try a program somewhere, and if it achieves the desired results, scale it up. If not, iterate until the end of a pre-agreed timebox, and if things still fail to deliver, that's how learning happens. Sadly, I doubt that the public at large would be okay with this approach. :/
  - safgasCVS 8y ago
    I like the interative approach - especially if its the local community that has decided to adopt it. But this arrangement undercuts the power of a central authority (especially if its effective)
    - AstralStorm 8y ago
      And central authority needs this power because they're actually rebranded aristocracy, right? Generally central action ought to be taken to harmonize local development and fit to super national level norms, not just because - and only when necessary. Anything else is dangerously authoritarian.
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    The key question is "What happens to the people who don't benefit from the iteration?" People are not software.
- jstanley 8y ago
  I would say left and right both equally want to enact policies, just different policies. If you want fewer policies, that is more of a libertarian vs authoritarian distinction.
freddie_mercury 8y ago
Here in Vietnam the maternity leave law is also quite generous. I forget the exact details? Six months of pay? Anyway, the result is that most companies require women to sign a contract saying they won't get pregnant in the first year or two after signing a labor contract. If they do get pregnant then they are fired without benefits.
- ezoe 8y ago
  If such a contract is valid, I have no trust on Vietnam's law.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    On the sliding scale of law regimes that try to regulate human labor, going from a universal declaration of labor rights all the way down to chattel slavery, this is rather progressive for that part of the world. Naturally no one in European or Anglophone countries would countenance such a thing, but in Asia this can provide women with a means of self-determination that they didn't have before. I remember reading a book about Britain's service class from the Edwardian era until the end of that culture after WW2. Service class culture replaced something far far worse. And the ugly labor regimes that replaced those were better than the service class. If you had an issue with the way one particular factory treated you, well, there was another one right down the road. If you had an issue with the way your masters treated you, your options for finding better employment were far more restricted. This dynamic caused women to leave the service industry in droves to go work in factories. The classist society in Britain had been fighting a rearguard action to maintain the service legal regime for decades, until WW2 thoroughly annihilated any chance of it ever coming back. Nowadays any time I hear about some crazy contract law, I immediately think about what human agency is being liberated here. Amazon link for the interested: https://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History-Britain-Nineteenth/dp/0393241092 https://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History-Britain-N...
fredley 8y ago
The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave. Obviously there's the associated job of changing perceptions around taking the leave, which will vary from country to country, but by making the risks associated by hiring a man no different from those associated by hiring a woman you move towards eliminating this gender imbalance. As an additional benefit, both parents are more likely to have time to bond with their newborn or newly adopted child and share the burden of early parenting.
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  > The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave. In Germany, there's the "parental leave" (not maternal or paternal leave) [0]. The time period is 12 months with parental allowance : 2/3rds of your income - 300 to 1800 €. If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months. Of course, there are other benefits like child care etc. [1] after the child has grown up. [0] http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/elterngeld-node.html http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/el... [1] http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuung/kinderbetreuung-node.html http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuu...
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months. However, "sharing" in this case does not necessarily mean equal parts. The rule is "max. 14 months in total, but max. 12 months per parent". So a lot of couples end up doing 12 months maternal leave and 2 months paternal leave (not all though).
    - baxtr 8y ago
      This is also my experience. However, recently I have picked up more and more cases, where both take 7 months (more or less). Maybe just a coincidence.
avar 8y ago
Why have countries that have generous paternity and maternity leave implemented it by obliging companies to pay the salary for the duration, as opposed to the government paying for it? Are there any counterexamples of countries where the state picks up the bill? That seems to me to be a much better policy, you avoid obvious perverse incentives like a small company not wanting to hire a woman in her late 20s because she might get pregnant, and that's going to be a huge expense. I think it makes sense as a social policy to have generous leave after people have children, but it seems ridiculous to implement it like this. If the state paid for it you'd get other perverse incentives, since they'd be obligated to pay a salary determined by some private company, but fraud there should be easy to control for, e.g. you get paid the mean salary you earned for the last N years, not what you happened to be earning the day you had a child.
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  > Are there any counterexamples of countries where the state picks up the bill? The state foots the bill in : France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elterngeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elterngeld
  - avar 8y ago
    Thanks. That's interesting, but according to the article some of these countries are just paying out extra money from the state on top of employer-mandated leave, or they have a hybrid system where the employer covers some significant percentage, which still leaves these incentives in place.
    - denzil_correa 8y ago
      > according to the article some of these countries are just paying out extra money from the state on top of employer-mandated leave What do you mean by "extra money"? Also, are you against employer-mandated leave too? > they have a hybrid system where the employer covers some significant percentage In Germany, the employer doesn't cover any significant percentage - the money comes from the state.
dalbasal 8y ago
There are lots of versions of the "works in practice, but does it work in theory?" anecdote. Most times I've heard it, the "does it work in theory" guy is either french or american and the topic of conversation is some element of the post-WWII Marshal Plan. Anyway... This is a policy area that (in my estimation) just doesn't lend well to philosophical theorizing. This (more contentiously, but also IMO) which means we need to watch out for the French and the Americans. They will want to solve the theory part of the problem in a theoretically ound way, without inelegant hacks or "this seems to work" solutions. Just to state the obvious, the problem is: "How do we improve maternity benefits and (maybe) increase fertility, without undermining women in the workplace." Theoretically) the problem is almost impossible to solve. In practice, there are all sorts of things that help or hurt, some of them surprising. For example, it seems to be the case that "shift work" (anywhere from fast food to paediatrics) is way better for mothers. In a shift job, if you aren't in your seat, someone else is. Work doesn't pile into your backlog, waiting for you to come back. This means jobs are better defined, and can therefore be more easily parceled out. Ironically, shift work turns out to be more flexible in ways that matter to working mothers. It doesn't lend to flextime and work from home, but it does lend to job sharing, flexible loading and such. The trend is in the opposite direction though. A lot more modern jobs (especially good ones at technology companies) tend to be built around individuals. You might have 3 "sr developers" on a single team, but they generally can't step into eachothers' shoes flexibly. Each one plays a unique role. It's almost impossible to reconcile such tidbits of specific, practical knowleedge with a wider abstract theory of labour, contracts, freedom and such. But, it is possible to make more maternity (and paternity) friendly policies by understanding them.

60 points by dsr12 8y ago

Obviously I’m a women’s rights maximalist, but I’d like to point out something else fundamentally wrong with the thrust of these policies: they’re aimed at producing more unwanted children. It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens if they’re successful at scale.

CalRobert 8y ago
One way of handling this is making paternity and maternity leave nearly equal, and mandatory. Making maternity a bit longer could make sense given that there's a lot of physical recuperation involved, but mainly employers shouldn't see one or the other as a liability.
- consp 8y ago
  Say what you like, but even if you get back all the cost from the government for paying the maternaty leave, you are still missing a valued worker which is not easily replaced. You have some lead time to find a replacement but that is not easy in all professions and even harder for smaller companies.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I think they are saying give the same rights to take vacation to the father. It doesn’t matter who pays for it. I somewhat agree. If we want to level the playing field, we can’t have extra rights and priveleges for women because clearly they become a liability. I think it is necessary but not sufficient though. I read here about github and the unlimited vacation policy which in practice is a no vacation policy. Just because men can take off doesn’t mean they will at least in the short term. We must keep this policy stable for decades to effect change.
    - kgwgk 8y ago
      When something is mandatory it's no longer a "right".
      - gambiting 8y ago
        In the EU it's mandatory for my employer to provide at least 25 days of paid time off per year. It's my right to take it, but I don't have to if I don't want to. The "mandatory" part is on the employer - they have to provide everyone with 25 days of paid holidays, unlimited paid sick leave, maternity/paternity leave - but it's not mandatory to take any of those for the employee - that's where the "right" part comes in.
        kgwgk 8y ago
        I think that when CalRobert says > One way of handling this is making paternity and maternity leave nearly equal, and mandatory. "mandatory" means making paternity leave compulsory for employees. I could be wrong, though.
        CalRobert 8y ago
        I meant mostly making it such that if you don't use it, you lose it. This works pretty well with vacation times in places that don't have utterly poisonous work cultures. For those places that do, I don't know what the answer is.
      - eftychis 8y ago
        Not really. Something can be a right and an obligation at the same time. For instance there is the right to vote. Historically, in certain periods and countries vote was/is mandatory. (e.g. Greece) Sometimes, a right or measure has to become mandatory to ensure people enjoy it.
        fwn 8y ago
        I always wondered whether mandatory voting isn't just a plain duty, like paying taxes. If you get penalized for not voting all the modern democratic idealism which portraits voting as a right is pretty stale. I completely get why the classic Greeks came up with it, though. They were obviously far more tribal in their culture.
  - moomin 8y ago
    I think Cal's proposal deserves consideration. (It's probably still game-able.) The problem isn't that maternity leave disrupts companies individual companies. So does sleep, and they're both part of normal human life. The problem is that the system in effect has the effect of a) discriminating against woman and b) suppressing the birth rate. If you are planning at a national level, suppressing the birth rate for a tiny economic boost right now is a high road to nowhere.
    - badestrand 8y ago
      > suppressing the birth rate And the birth rate will go up if men are forbidden to work for half a year when having a child? That seems highly doubtful, it might as well go further down because some people actually like their work.
- zimablue 8y ago
  Mandatory paternity leave! Can we do a straw poll of how many people think that if you have a child the government gets to tell you how long to quit your job for!?
  - jknightco 8y ago
    There are cultural differences here, specifically those that involve what the concept of "liberty" means in practice. Americans tend to focus on freedom "to", which is exactly what you're talking about here: employees should be free to choose whether or not they take maternity/paternity. Europeans tend to focus on freedom "from", i.e. employees should be from from worrying about whether the decision to take maternity/paternity will hold them back or not. You can frame it the way you have if you want to, but to some cultures, having the government tell people what they can and can't do is the only way to ensure true liberty for all.
    - fwn 8y ago
      I'm an European and I strongly believe in the freedom from getting told when to quit my job. ...that is just to examplify that the freedom from/to distinction requires a very specific worldview to function as a robust differentiator.
    - zimablue 8y ago
      I'm British and pretty left wing, don't assume that it's all tribal. Granted my post sounded quite American. The government forcing you to take time off is absolutely mental to me. Think of the edge cases => what if I'm not planning to bring up the kid? What if I want lots and lots of children? What if it's an absolutely vital time for me at work, partnerships are coming up or something. What if I'm self-employed? Then think about how possible choices for these edge cases lead to messed up situations. I can imagine people pretending not to be bringing up their children so that the government doesn't mess with their lives. I see how you can frame it as "freedom not to have reproduction affect your career". But for one thing that still won't work. Time off is time off and income correlates with total hours worked in your life. For another, I don't think all of society agrees that we should pay for your freedom to have children without incurring any costs. We don't need more children, the world population is still increasing. There's this strange train of logic now that because aging populations become poor (because we massively overpromised on pensions) we need native children. 1. We can use immigration. 2. If your system cannot support the decreasing population necessary for the world to get through the next centuries, you need to fix the system not encourage breeding. Also what about incels, gay people, people who just don't want children? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class peoples ability not to have their kids interfere with their law career.
- hucker 8y ago
  That is basically the case in Norway. Both the mother and the father gets 15 weeks mandatory each, and the rest (of a full year) is divided between them as they themselves see fit, iirc.
- Gustomaximus 8y ago
  This is what happens in Norway to some extent. You are given 12 months parental leave to share between the couple. The mother has to take 6 months. The father 3. The remaining 3 are decided by the couple. That's oversimplified as there more options and scenarios but the fairly common situation. Like you say it takes away women being seen as such a liability from becoming mothers from what I saw in my little bubble while living there for a few years. Also as fathers have all this time off it encourages the mother back to the workforce. And for me it really helped in my day to day baby duties involvement. I've brought this up many times to people pushing for better women's rights in the workforce as something they should fight for if they do want a more equal workplace vs more an egocentric position of leave/benefits for themself.
  - hucker 8y ago
    This was changed to a 15/15 week split this summer I believe (with the remainder still split as the couple sees fit).
    - Gustomaximus 8y ago
      Ah thanks for updating, I left Norway almost 6 years ago so out of date.
mcny 8y ago
Personally, I think we should reject this “freedom” to have more children or to have children at all. Of course, the individual should make the choice to not have children but the fact that community doesn’t want to pay people to have and raise children makes me think all children are unwanted children. People laugh at the idea of it takes a village to raise a child. I thought the idea was so painfully obvious that it doesn’t need to be said. Clearly not. I say this to everyone: in order to effect change, we must strike. Don’t have children. Speaking of obvious things: my child is no more precious than anyone else’s child. I think the compromise will be some kind of a one child policy here as well. I think this is more humane alternative to what we have now. My proposed new one child policy is to incentivize people to have a child or to adopt one child with additional taxpayer money. The compromise is to limit it only to the first child. You’re on your own if you want more. I think it is worth considering.
- derefr 8y ago
  > the fact that community doesn’t want to pay people to have and raise children makes me think all children are unwanted children In a globalized world with the ability to move for work, children might still be an economic net-positive for the parents (once you account for how much they’d be willing to pay to replicate their genes into the next generation) but they’re probably a net-negative for the community they’re raised in. What benefits does introducing a new human being, as a baby, into a community provide said community, these days?
  - ericd 8y ago
    It provides the continuation of that community and its values.
    - derefr 8y ago
      No, that’s what you get when a young, productive adult joins a community and enculturates to it. It’s why universities are happy to “adopt” new human beings into their communities: they can charge you for your net-negative production years at the university (undergrad), turning them into net-zero years; and then they will begin getting net-positive returns from you (either through TAing during graduate studies; or researching for your Ph.D and then having your IP confiscated and profited off of; or just going into industry and then making large alumni donations.) Your community will only get net-negative returns when a human is raised through their teenage years in your community, and then leaves, gets enculturated by some other community, and never comes back. This usually breeds resentment—think lower-class urban youth who go on to university and enculturate to the upper-middle-class culture there. If they come back to visit their old family and friends, they will see them as “acting as if they’re too good for us.” The resentment is usually for a good reason: once you’ve enculturated away from your home culture, you don’t tend to care much about it any more! So, unlike people who retain their home culture in another community, you won’t do things like sending money home to family, or coming back to help build or lead the community, once you have acquired the resources to do so.
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
I don't wish to be obtuse, but why would it be obvious that you're a women's-rights maximalist?
- moomin 8y ago
  Past posting on social issues. (You're not required to read it all, don't worry.:) ) I just wanted to make the point that, although I do support women's rights, what I was saying was valid even if you didn't.
Leary 8y ago
The obvious thrust of these policies aims at scaling down the rights of women's genius. Successful as these children may be, they will be unwanted.

ganfortran 8y ago

Unintended? Hardly. The current administration has pushed hard for some time now, to encourage women to "go back to family". http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/24/c_1118142363.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/24/c_1118142363.ht...

doombolt 8y ago
I was thinking that examples of Italy and Germany (versus e.g. France or Sweden) were showing that this mindset simply doesn't work. Women end up spending even more effort on infiltrating the workspace and have fewer children later. When you demand mother to be perfect (e.g. by being stay at home), you get less children, and nobody becomes happier. As opposed to laid back approach with society safety net.

raverbashing 8y ago

Well, the one child policy had unintended consequences as well (rejection of daughters to the point of infanticide) so, it seems the issues are deeper

ido 8y ago
We have seen a neighbouring country (India) suffering from the results of rapid population growth, so doing nothing isn't free of consequences either. China has basically just taken a shortcut to the "natural" reduction in family size that happens to every country as it develops and become richer.
Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
Female infanticide is common in India too.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Leary 8y ago

Every public policy has its negative consequences. Ending the one child policy is a non-brainer.

alkonaut 8y ago

Even where parental leave is publicly funded (rather than paid by employers), women of a certain age are rejected because it’s expensive to hire someone who may be gone 2 years of the next 5. You need to find and train replacements etc.

zimablue 8y ago
Where does that happen? I've always thought that was much more logical, the current system in the UK just doesn't make sense at it's core => if you're an employer you can get saddled with an employee who you have to pay whilst they don't work for a period, who can then quit, but you're not allowed/expected to try to avoid this by not hiring women. Or taking it into account in promotions/salary. If you really believe both of: 1: women should be paid to have children at their current salary. 2: women should not be discriminated against in any way. Then the only way to reconcile it is to have the government pay. And no, equal male leave wouldn't solve the problem because they don't take it. And no, mandatory male leave isn't a good solution. For a start it's unbelievably authoritarian to force someone to leave their work because they had a child. For a second you still have exactly the same discrimination problem it's just directed at potential parents instead of women. That would remove it as a feminist issue so it wouldn't get press but it would still be a problem.
- psergeant 8y ago
  > Then the only way to reconcile it is to have the government pay. Sure, and ideally through an additional corporate tax based on overall wage cost for a business. Seems like a daft expense not to mutualise against at a national level, rather than what is today essentially a corporate lottery.
- kilburn 8y ago
  > Where does that happen? In Spain. Also, it is still an objectively worse proposition for companies to hire women who are expected to have children soon than to hire other people. For several reasons (in Spain's current situation): 1) Even if you don't pay the employee's salary while on maternity leave, you still have to find a replacement and train them. 2) Paternity leave is shorter than maternity leave. And it can be transferred, something many couples do (usually in the paternity -> maternity direction). This translates to longer absence periods, and "rustier" comebacks after that. 3) In our society, mothers still carry a larger fraction of the burden of having children. That is, even after maternity leave is over, schools call the mother first if their child is ill, or gets injured, or whatever. Women are more prone to ask for flexible or reduced hours, etc. These are all inconveniences for the employer (w.r.t. employees in other situations). I'm not saying I like it this way and I don't claim to have a workable solution, just describing reality...

safgasCVS 8y ago

Don't all policies have unintended consequences? Not to make this political but this is partly why I think many people lean right intellectually without knowing it because at some basic level we know what's good for us. Good intentions often set policies but constantly backfire because we collectively lack the humility to say we don't really know how the world works. People's intentions are so tricky that it's the 2nd and nth order effects that catch you out

donw 8y ago
It is a shame that we can't seem to take a more iterative approach to public policy. E.g., try a program somewhere, and if it achieves the desired results, scale it up. If not, iterate until the end of a pre-agreed timebox, and if things still fail to deliver, that's how learning happens. Sadly, I doubt that the public at large would be okay with this approach. :/
- safgasCVS 8y ago
  I like the interative approach - especially if its the local community that has decided to adopt it. But this arrangement undercuts the power of a central authority (especially if its effective)
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    And central authority needs this power because they're actually rebranded aristocracy, right? Generally central action ought to be taken to harmonize local development and fit to super national level norms, not just because - and only when necessary. Anything else is dangerously authoritarian.
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  The key question is "What happens to the people who don't benefit from the iteration?" People are not software.
jstanley 8y ago
I would say left and right both equally want to enact policies, just different policies. If you want fewer policies, that is more of a libertarian vs authoritarian distinction.

freddie_mercury 8y ago

Here in Vietnam the maternity leave law is also quite generous. I forget the exact details? Six months of pay? Anyway, the result is that most companies require women to sign a contract saying they won't get pregnant in the first year or two after signing a labor contract. If they do get pregnant then they are fired without benefits.

ezoe 8y ago
If such a contract is valid, I have no trust on Vietnam's law.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  On the sliding scale of law regimes that try to regulate human labor, going from a universal declaration of labor rights all the way down to chattel slavery, this is rather progressive for that part of the world. Naturally no one in European or Anglophone countries would countenance such a thing, but in Asia this can provide women with a means of self-determination that they didn't have before. I remember reading a book about Britain's service class from the Edwardian era until the end of that culture after WW2. Service class culture replaced something far far worse. And the ugly labor regimes that replaced those were better than the service class. If you had an issue with the way one particular factory treated you, well, there was another one right down the road. If you had an issue with the way your masters treated you, your options for finding better employment were far more restricted. This dynamic caused women to leave the service industry in droves to go work in factories. The classist society in Britain had been fighting a rearguard action to maintain the service legal regime for decades, until WW2 thoroughly annihilated any chance of it ever coming back. Nowadays any time I hear about some crazy contract law, I immediately think about what human agency is being liberated here. Amazon link for the interested: https://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History-Britain-Nineteenth/dp/0393241092 https://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History-Britain-N...

fredley 8y ago

The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave. Obviously there's the associated job of changing perceptions around taking the leave, which will vary from country to country, but by making the risks associated by hiring a man no different from those associated by hiring a woman you move towards eliminating this gender imbalance. As an additional benefit, both parents are more likely to have time to bond with their newborn or newly adopted child and share the burden of early parenting.

denzil_correa 8y ago
> The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave. In Germany, there's the "parental leave" (not maternal or paternal leave) [0]. The time period is 12 months with parental allowance : 2/3rds of your income - 300 to 1800 €. If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months. Of course, there are other benefits like child care etc. [1] after the child has grown up. [0] http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/elterngeld-node.html http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/el... [1] http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuung/kinderbetreuung-node.html http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuu...
- majewsky 8y ago
  > If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months. However, "sharing" in this case does not necessarily mean equal parts. The rule is "max. 14 months in total, but max. 12 months per parent". So a lot of couples end up doing 12 months maternal leave and 2 months paternal leave (not all though).
  - baxtr 8y ago
    This is also my experience. However, recently I have picked up more and more cases, where both take 7 months (more or less). Maybe just a coincidence.

avar 8y ago

Why have countries that have generous paternity and maternity leave implemented it by obliging companies to pay the salary for the duration, as opposed to the government paying for it? Are there any counterexamples of countries where the state picks up the bill? That seems to me to be a much better policy, you avoid obvious perverse incentives like a small company not wanting to hire a woman in her late 20s because she might get pregnant, and that's going to be a huge expense. I think it makes sense as a social policy to have generous leave after people have children, but it seems ridiculous to implement it like this. If the state paid for it you'd get other perverse incentives, since they'd be obligated to pay a salary determined by some private company, but fraud there should be easy to control for, e.g. you get paid the mean salary you earned for the last N years, not what you happened to be earning the day you had a child.

denzil_correa 8y ago
> Are there any counterexamples of countries where the state picks up the bill? The state foots the bill in : France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elterngeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elterngeld
- avar 8y ago
  Thanks. That's interesting, but according to the article some of these countries are just paying out extra money from the state on top of employer-mandated leave, or they have a hybrid system where the employer covers some significant percentage, which still leaves these incentives in place.
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    > according to the article some of these countries are just paying out extra money from the state on top of employer-mandated leave What do you mean by "extra money"? Also, are you against employer-mandated leave too? > they have a hybrid system where the employer covers some significant percentage In Germany, the employer doesn't cover any significant percentage - the money comes from the state.

dalbasal 8y ago

There are lots of versions of the "works in practice, but does it work in theory?" anecdote. Most times I've heard it, the "does it work in theory" guy is either french or american and the topic of conversation is some element of the post-WWII Marshal Plan. Anyway... This is a policy area that (in my estimation) just doesn't lend well to philosophical theorizing. This (more contentiously, but also IMO) which means we need to watch out for the French and the Americans. They will want to solve the theory part of the problem in a theoretically ound way, without inelegant hacks or "this seems to work" solutions. Just to state the obvious, the problem is: "How do we improve maternity benefits and (maybe) increase fertility, without undermining women in the workplace." Theoretically) the problem is almost impossible to solve. In practice, there are all sorts of things that help or hurt, some of them surprising. For example, it seems to be the case that "shift work" (anywhere from fast food to paediatrics) is way better for mothers. In a shift job, if you aren't in your seat, someone else is. Work doesn't pile into your backlog, waiting for you to come back. This means jobs are better defined, and can therefore be more easily parceled out. Ironically, shift work turns out to be more flexible in ways that matter to working mothers. It doesn't lend to flextime and work from home, but it does lend to job sharing, flexible loading and such. The trend is in the opposite direction though. A lot more modern jobs (especially good ones at technology companies) tend to be built around individuals. You might have 3 "sr developers" on a single team, but they generally can't step into eachothers' shoes flexibly. Each one plays a unique role. It's almost impossible to reconcile such tidbits of specific, practical knowleedge with a wider abstract theory of labour, contracts, freedom and such. But, it is possible to make more maternity (and paternity) friendly policies by understanding them.