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It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach. One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may

It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach. One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers, further decreasing the birth rate which is already quite low in many advanced economies. Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact, further disadvantaging couples from having children. Overall, it's an interesting idea, and definitely worth discussing.

was_boring 8y ago
Arguably, decreasing human kind's birthrate is a net positive. Even in the absence of that, being a dad, and knowing many dads, we've already made the choice to "disadvantage" ourselves -- and wish we could do it more. What stops us is the fact that we would lose our jobs which disadvantages our kids. So I say bring on mandatory leave! The vast majority will be much happier.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  One important tangent. There's a very significant nuance to birthrates you're not considering when it comes to reducing birthrates. Most of everybody knows birth rates in the developed world are decreasing, compared to the developing world. But what many do not know is that this sort of pattern holds true even within developed nations themselves. For instance in the US people who earn < $10,000 per year have 50% more children than those who earn $200k per year. [1] The slope of the inverse relationship between income and fertility is surprisingly and disconcertingly smooth. Think about what this means. The things that correlate strongly with fertility are: low income, low education, high religiosity. If you look at the pool of all children being born they're going to end up ever more disproportionately in low income, low education, highly religious households over higher income secular households in developed nations. I used to feel similarly to you, but in considering this the very people 'responsibly' choosing not to have children are the exact people that should be reproducing to no end if we want a better tomorrow for everybody. And this is without even considering genetic factors. Responsible fertility is, paradoxically, anything but responsible for those who would have the wherewithal to consider such things in the first place. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I don’t see how increasing the birth rate of people making over $200k per year leads to a better tomorrow (not that such an idealistic notion even exists). You’d be increasing the number of mega consumers, international flights, mc mansions... What you really seem to be saying is you’d like people who aren’t like you to stop reproducing and people who are like you to reproduce more.
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      Watching the beginning of Idiocracy might make the problem clear. https://youtu.be/YwZ0ZUy7P3E https://youtu.be/YwZ0ZUy7P3E
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        That’s a fictional movie.
        fromthestart 8y ago
        That doesn't mean it can't be a legitimate commentary on a non fictional problem.
  - dmoy 8y ago
    It's not really surprising at all (at least anymore). See for example Hans Rosling's research. The richer you are, the higher chance of success of your offspring, so you don't need to roll the dice as much.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      This hypothesis made a lot of sense in the past. It was logical and mapped to the data reasonably well. But I'm not sure it does anymore. Part of the reason that I mentioned the developed world is that people earning < $10k are not pumping out children in some sort of attempt to create a family that can provide sustenance and a strong lineage. Far from it - in today's urban societies, children are often more of an indefinite burden than a future tool for wealth creation. Maybe even more clear is considering the sharp decline in the middle class fertility over the past decades. Again it's not like those born in e.g. the 70s were that much less likely to survive to coming of age driving their parents to have that many more children. And again, the urbanization problem was also present then as well in any case.
SrslyJosh 8y ago
> It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach _for men_. Fixed it for you.
jonathankoren 8y ago
This is paid leave. Comparing Sweden, which has mandatory paternity leave, to other countries with parental leave, the the amount of money you get paid during leave is the major factor in whether someone takes it or not. https://qz.com/587763/how-swedens-daddy-quota-parental-leave-helps-with-equal-parenting/ https://qz.com/587763/how-swedens-daddy-quota-parental-leave...
gumby 8y ago
> One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers... > Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact... As the article states: how are these factors different for men than for women?
- smallnamespace 8y ago
  But it disproportionately affects those who choose to have children. This doesn't eliminate an imbalance, it would simply shift some of the burden around.
  - karmajunkie 8y ago
    And that's a bad thing because...? The he whole point is to eliminate one of the primary causes of gender inequality in the workplace. Spreading the burden of parenting is exactly the right thing to do.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- brighteyes 8y ago
  I don't think either of those arguments assumes they are different. In fact the second mentions it may be the same.
- thucydidesofusa 8y ago
  AFAIK, no American authority demands mothers take maternity leave, it's something that American mothers ask for (and tend to complain that it's not generous enough).
- RickS 8y ago
  > how are these factors different for men than for women? For the sake of this argument, they aren't. It's not about which gender they impact. It's about what percentage of relationship participants they impact. Right now ~50% of relationship partners face credible career setbacks as a result of post-childbirth leave. Changing that percentage to 100% is probably going to have some ripples. That's not to say it might not be worthwhile, just that it's unlikely to be as simple as "flip a switch, everybody acts the same".
Kiro 8y ago
Lowering the birth rates is the number one thing we can do to save the planet so I see that as a positive thing.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  The planet will be here long after humanity. Cue George Carlin: https://amp.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/33jmhl/george_carlin_on_our_planet/ https://amp.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/33jmhl/george_carli...
- rimliu 8y ago
  Misanthropy should be looked down even more than misogyny because it’s hating twice as many people.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Fear of overpopulation is not misanthropy. Personal attacks are veboten here. Please stop.
  - 08-15 8y ago
    But misanthropy is unbiased, while misogyny is sexist.
zimablue 8y ago
The downside is that it forces people who don't want children to pay for other people's children, at a time when we should be trying to reduce the population and not increase it. Having children is not a public service, it's closer to pollution and I object so much to subsidising it.
- rayiner 8y ago
  I’m okay with not subsidizing having kids if kids in the future don’t have to pay social security, dividends, etc., for people who didn’t have kids.
  - zimablue 8y ago
    This is a choice we made in how we structure our governments though that doesn't make much sense on it's own. We could easily have a system where each generation pays for its OWN social security, you just let the government screw you by spending the current account on wars. Population is a much bigger question than a specific, stupid government fiscal policy.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Unless you "save for retirement" by putting canned food in a basement, all you're doing is arranging for some sort of entitlement to a share of the production of a future generation of workers. That's true whether you're talking about social security paid with tax dollars, dividends paid on stock holdings, etc. Those are all abstractions over an arrangement in which a working generation gives up some of the surplus of its labor to the retired generation.
      - zimablue 8y ago
        That's a good point and fairly true I think but there are some caveats that limit it's application to this argument as in (do we want more american kids). 1. It's not only the production, we also work for tangibleassets, mostly housing like you said storable food, machinery etc. That's relevant because if population decreased all of these would become cheaper. To take to the extreme - 1000,000 humans in the near future could probably sustain an incredible standard of living assisted by robots. Pragmatically, if I owned a house my outgoings would be tiny. 2. You're paying for the work of ANY future generation, it absolutely doesn't have to be American. Most of the most expensive things (electronics, cars) are already produced abroad. Food, haircuts and social care are a fraction and only decreasing. So social security doesn't have to be that shape and an equally large young American population isn't necessary to sustain the current older population. Deeper than this thread but I guess relevant, a lot of hours go into producing products for the 1%, or jobs which don't make sense which our system protects because it's built around having 100% employment so we force you into a min. wage job in order to pay the rest of your income in benefits from taxes on the top percent. If our system didn't optimize to 100% employment and had more extensive welfare you'd see much higher unemployment and the trains would still run.
chris_mc 8y ago
Everyone is talking about needing to control population, but according to current figures, the population will level our around 11b people around 2100. Check out www.gapminder.org for more info, but a lot of what people think about the world is wrong.
- brighteyes 8y ago
  True that many people are misled about this, but 1. 11 billion may be too much. 2. This isn't uniform across the globe. Japan's population is shrinking due to a very low birth rate, and that may be a bad thing (loss of cultural and genetic diversity, for example). And this is the more relevant aspect given the context.
- zimablue 8y ago
  And you think 11 billion is a good number? We couldn't support the 6 billion at western standards of living.
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    Why? All evidence so far suggests we can, standard of living globally has only increased with population growth.
- wdwhwq9484 8y ago
  > 11b people around 2100 Color me skeptical. If previous prognostications are and indicator, humanity in general cannot predict the future more than 5-10 years out with reasonable accuracy. Another way of saying this is that the confidence interval on global population estimates 80 years into the future is most likely large enough to render the estimate meaningless.
tedunangst 8y ago
Make it mandatory leave. No kids? Oh, well, still have to stay home and play video games for six months.
- solatic 8y ago
  An excellent way to destroy a country's productivity. Listen, if you want the government to incentivize having children, then establish tax consequences. Same way as the government can force you to pay a tax penalty, the government could force people older than a certain age who are still childless to pay a "societal development" tax. The proceeds of the tax go towards paying for free childcare. /not sure if I'm serious about the above or not
- smsm42 8y ago
  With regular police visits to ensure you're not secretly using this time to work, or get education, or self-improve, because that would be unfair. In fact, it would be more efficient to just put such people in a low-security prison. With video games and well-stocked mini-bar of course, after all they are not criminals!

was_boring 8y ago

Arguably, decreasing human kind's birthrate is a net positive. Even in the absence of that, being a dad, and knowing many dads, we've already made the choice to "disadvantage" ourselves -- and wish we could do it more. What stops us is the fact that we would lose our jobs which disadvantages our kids. So I say bring on mandatory leave! The vast majority will be much happier.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
One important tangent. There's a very significant nuance to birthrates you're not considering when it comes to reducing birthrates. Most of everybody knows birth rates in the developed world are decreasing, compared to the developing world. But what many do not know is that this sort of pattern holds true even within developed nations themselves. For instance in the US people who earn < $10,000 per year have 50% more children than those who earn $200k per year. [1] The slope of the inverse relationship between income and fertility is surprisingly and disconcertingly smooth. Think about what this means. The things that correlate strongly with fertility are: low income, low education, high religiosity. If you look at the pool of all children being born they're going to end up ever more disproportionately in low income, low education, highly religious households over higher income secular households in developed nations. I used to feel similarly to you, but in considering this the very people 'responsibly' choosing not to have children are the exact people that should be reproducing to no end if we want a better tomorrow for everybody. And this is without even considering genetic factors. Responsible fertility is, paradoxically, anything but responsible for those who would have the wherewithal to consider such things in the first place. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I don’t see how increasing the birth rate of people making over $200k per year leads to a better tomorrow (not that such an idealistic notion even exists). You’d be increasing the number of mega consumers, international flights, mc mansions... What you really seem to be saying is you’d like people who aren’t like you to stop reproducing and people who are like you to reproduce more.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    Watching the beginning of Idiocracy might make the problem clear. https://youtu.be/YwZ0ZUy7P3E https://youtu.be/YwZ0ZUy7P3E
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      That’s a fictional movie.
      - fromthestart 8y ago
        That doesn't mean it can't be a legitimate commentary on a non fictional problem.
- dmoy 8y ago
  It's not really surprising at all (at least anymore). See for example Hans Rosling's research. The richer you are, the higher chance of success of your offspring, so you don't need to roll the dice as much.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    This hypothesis made a lot of sense in the past. It was logical and mapped to the data reasonably well. But I'm not sure it does anymore. Part of the reason that I mentioned the developed world is that people earning < $10k are not pumping out children in some sort of attempt to create a family that can provide sustenance and a strong lineage. Far from it - in today's urban societies, children are often more of an indefinite burden than a future tool for wealth creation. Maybe even more clear is considering the sharp decline in the middle class fertility over the past decades. Again it's not like those born in e.g. the 70s were that much less likely to survive to coming of age driving their parents to have that many more children. And again, the urbanization problem was also present then as well in any case.

SrslyJosh 8y ago

> It would have been a more interesting article had it also went into the downsides of this approach _for men_. Fixed it for you.

jonathankoren 8y ago

This is paid leave. Comparing Sweden, which has mandatory paternity leave, to other countries with parental leave, the the amount of money you get paid during leave is the major factor in whether someone takes it or not. https://qz.com/587763/how-swedens-daddy-quota-parental-leave-helps-with-equal-parenting/ https://qz.com/587763/how-swedens-daddy-quota-parental-leave...

gumby 8y ago

> One specific concern is that mandatory paternity leave may discourage men from becoming fathers... > Another is that if taking paternity leave impacts men's careers, then in many cases both parents will suffer such an impact... As the article states: how are these factors different for men than for women?

smallnamespace 8y ago
But it disproportionately affects those who choose to have children. This doesn't eliminate an imbalance, it would simply shift some of the burden around.
- karmajunkie 8y ago
  And that's a bad thing because...? The he whole point is to eliminate one of the primary causes of gender inequality in the workplace. Spreading the burden of parenting is exactly the right thing to do.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
brighteyes 8y ago
I don't think either of those arguments assumes they are different. In fact the second mentions it may be the same.
thucydidesofusa 8y ago
AFAIK, no American authority demands mothers take maternity leave, it's something that American mothers ask for (and tend to complain that it's not generous enough).
RickS 8y ago
> how are these factors different for men than for women? For the sake of this argument, they aren't. It's not about which gender they impact. It's about what percentage of relationship participants they impact. Right now ~50% of relationship partners face credible career setbacks as a result of post-childbirth leave. Changing that percentage to 100% is probably going to have some ripples. That's not to say it might not be worthwhile, just that it's unlikely to be as simple as "flip a switch, everybody acts the same".

Kiro 8y ago

Lowering the birth rates is the number one thing we can do to save the planet so I see that as a positive thing.

malvosenior 8y ago
The planet will be here long after humanity. Cue George Carlin: https://amp.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/33jmhl/george_carlin_on_our_planet/ https://amp.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/33jmhl/george_carli...
rimliu 8y ago
Misanthropy should be looked down even more than misogyny because it’s hating twice as many people.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Fear of overpopulation is not misanthropy. Personal attacks are veboten here. Please stop.
- 08-15 8y ago
  But misanthropy is unbiased, while misogyny is sexist.

zimablue 8y ago

The downside is that it forces people who don't want children to pay for other people's children, at a time when we should be trying to reduce the population and not increase it. Having children is not a public service, it's closer to pollution and I object so much to subsidising it.

rayiner 8y ago
I’m okay with not subsidizing having kids if kids in the future don’t have to pay social security, dividends, etc., for people who didn’t have kids.
- zimablue 8y ago
  This is a choice we made in how we structure our governments though that doesn't make much sense on it's own. We could easily have a system where each generation pays for its OWN social security, you just let the government screw you by spending the current account on wars. Population is a much bigger question than a specific, stupid government fiscal policy.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Unless you "save for retirement" by putting canned food in a basement, all you're doing is arranging for some sort of entitlement to a share of the production of a future generation of workers. That's true whether you're talking about social security paid with tax dollars, dividends paid on stock holdings, etc. Those are all abstractions over an arrangement in which a working generation gives up some of the surplus of its labor to the retired generation.
    - zimablue 8y ago
      That's a good point and fairly true I think but there are some caveats that limit it's application to this argument as in (do we want more american kids). 1. It's not only the production, we also work for tangibleassets, mostly housing like you said storable food, machinery etc. That's relevant because if population decreased all of these would become cheaper. To take to the extreme - 1000,000 humans in the near future could probably sustain an incredible standard of living assisted by robots. Pragmatically, if I owned a house my outgoings would be tiny. 2. You're paying for the work of ANY future generation, it absolutely doesn't have to be American. Most of the most expensive things (electronics, cars) are already produced abroad. Food, haircuts and social care are a fraction and only decreasing. So social security doesn't have to be that shape and an equally large young American population isn't necessary to sustain the current older population. Deeper than this thread but I guess relevant, a lot of hours go into producing products for the 1%, or jobs which don't make sense which our system protects because it's built around having 100% employment so we force you into a min. wage job in order to pay the rest of your income in benefits from taxes on the top percent. If our system didn't optimize to 100% employment and had more extensive welfare you'd see much higher unemployment and the trains would still run.

chris_mc 8y ago

Everyone is talking about needing to control population, but according to current figures, the population will level our around 11b people around 2100. Check out www.gapminder.org for more info, but a lot of what people think about the world is wrong.

brighteyes 8y ago
True that many people are misled about this, but 1. 11 billion may be too much. 2. This isn't uniform across the globe. Japan's population is shrinking due to a very low birth rate, and that may be a bad thing (loss of cultural and genetic diversity, for example). And this is the more relevant aspect given the context.
zimablue 8y ago
And you think 11 billion is a good number? We couldn't support the 6 billion at western standards of living.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Why? All evidence so far suggests we can, standard of living globally has only increased with population growth.
wdwhwq9484 8y ago
> 11b people around 2100 Color me skeptical. If previous prognostications are and indicator, humanity in general cannot predict the future more than 5-10 years out with reasonable accuracy. Another way of saying this is that the confidence interval on global population estimates 80 years into the future is most likely large enough to render the estimate meaningless.

tedunangst 8y ago

Make it mandatory leave. No kids? Oh, well, still have to stay home and play video games for six months.

solatic 8y ago
An excellent way to destroy a country's productivity. Listen, if you want the government to incentivize having children, then establish tax consequences. Same way as the government can force you to pay a tax penalty, the government could force people older than a certain age who are still childless to pay a "societal development" tax. The proceeds of the tax go towards paying for free childcare. /not sure if I'm serious about the above or not
smsm42 8y ago
With regular police visits to ensure you're not secretly using this time to work, or get education, or self-improve, because that would be unfair. In fact, it would be more efficient to just put such people in a low-security prison. With video games and well-stocked mini-bar of course, after all they are not criminals!