6 ms·

IMO this should be woman's (or man's if man is staying at home with the kids) choice, and their choice alone. And paid leave should be at least 2 years, even if

by m0zg 8y ago

IMO this should be woman's (or man's if man is staying at home with the kids) choice, and their choice alone. And paid leave should be at least 2 years, even if partially paid. The job market hasn't been this tight in 50 years, now would be a good time to introduce longer paid family leaves.

lazzlazzlazz 8y ago
Two years seems absolutely absurd on many levels.
- m0zg 8y ago
  I'm not saying it should be fully paid, although I'd welcome some sort of a UBI-like payment to stay at home parent (singular, mother _or_ father) in the first 2 years of their child's life. I'm saying that's what the needs of the child really are. To have to sacrifice that to "reenter the workforce" should really be socially unacceptable.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ed_balls 8y ago
  Does it? Most European countries offer 1 year paid maternity leave (quite often it's almost 14 months because PTO is still applies) then you can take another 1 year of unpaid leave. The employer cannot fire you.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    If I’m a small business making enough to employ myself and 2 other people, how very carefully would I think about taking on someone whom I might need to pay to not* work at my company for a year?
    - ed_balls 8y ago
      Where I live: Government pay for it if the company has fewer than 20 people.
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        That makes it way more feasible for small businesses. Of course that now just makes me think extremely hard before hiring my 20th person. That’s at least a much less serious limitation to job creation.
- mamurphy 8y ago
  >Two years seems absolutely absurd on many levels. Especially "at least" 2 years. As in, 2 years was the minimum and maybe 5 would be better?
  - m0zg 8y ago
    It likely would be, actually, but I think 2 years is more economically sustainable. Like it or not, for a society to work, we have to procreate and raise kids. To make raising kids properly (which is already hard work) impossible is idiotic and counterproductive.
- paganel 8y ago
  It is not absurd. We have (I think partially-)paid 2-year parental-leave here in Romania and people and companies manage just fine. Of course, not all of the involved people choose to stay for the whole two years at home, but I have lots of former colleagues and acquaintances that did just that and they were more than ok, even more than that, the companies hiring them managed to stay in business, even if they weren't owned by successful business people like Bill Gates. 6-month only parental-leave is a joke, no parental-leave is barbarous.
  - tzs 8y ago
    How does the work that would have been done by the person on leave get taken care of? Does it (1) go undone, (2) do those not on leave have to do it in addition to their normal work, (3) do companies set their staff sizes so that they have extra capacity to take up slack from those on leave, or (4) do they hire temp workers to fill in until the person on leave comes back?
  - germinalphrase 8y ago
    Six months? My wife and I receive exactly as many paid days as we have saved up PTO. So, about three weeks each. Any time after that is unpaid, but we’re protected from being fired for three months.
    - paganel 8y ago
      This sounds so wrong to me, and I don't even have kids yet. Until issues like this one aren't resolved then the inequality between men and women (in wages, management positions) will continue to remain the same, no matter the media rhetoric, for the simple fact that many women will choose not to go back to work (it's mostly women that make that sacrifice).
- sigfubar 8y ago
  Allowing one's children to be raised by strangers is lazy and selfish. And absurd.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    I dunno selfish, I could make the argument that raising your child yourself out of some misguided notion that you're the best person for that job is selfish.
    - cjCamel 8y ago
      Disagree, within the timeframe of this topic. 0-6 months is basically all about the bond between child and parents. Sometime after that, sure, a requirement to socialise comes into play.
      - m0zg 8y ago
        What do you mean "socialize"? Do you have kids? Most kids can't even walk until they're about a year old.
        cjCamel 8y ago
        That was my point? In that there’s no benefit to the child to be in someone else’s care with a bunch of other kids for the first 6 months at least, and probably quite a lot older than that.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        I'm afraid I must disagree. There's no evidence to suggest that the bond between a child and its biological parents is in any way important. Further, it is unlikely that its biological parents are experts on raising children and are thus likely to raise it suboptimally, leading to a poorer quality of life in its future. Therefore, it is more selfish to raise your child yourself than to have an expert to do it for you. I shouldn't have to disclaim this by argument by saying that I'm not making a serious recommendation to anyone, but because parents are so defensive and irrational when it comes to how they raise their children, I feel that I must. I don't have kids and don't plan on having kids, so this is merely an intellectual exercise for me.
partiallypro 8y ago
The market won't always be this tight...and frankly, people don't realize how expensive it is for companies to essentially subsidize child care through paid leave and stipends.
- jmspring 8y ago
  There used to be a time when there was an unwritten contract between employer and employee - growth options, learning, leave packages, etc - in return for long term tenure at the company. That has basically gone the way of the dodo in most companies.
  - ngngngng 8y ago
    Because long term tenure doesn't get companies enough of a return. If a company wants me to stay long term, I need regular raises above the rate of inflation, parental leave, everything you listed. It's so much cheaper to spend the $10k or so it costs to replace me every year or two and not worry about the other things.
- m0zg 8y ago
  The market is this tight in part because birth rate is dropping like a rock. It's dropping like a rock because having a child is either unaffordable or too much pain in the ass to deal with. The companies will have to see a bit beyond their next quarterly revenues to see reason in having a sane labor market in the future. I'd also like to see large tech companies (which constantly complain about the "shortage of talent") pitch in on the education/training side of things, without externalizing those costs to the taxpayer and worker.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    I don't disagree that governments should be incentivizing reproduction (at least that is my position) the problem is that in this particular instance, the Gates Foundation was not having their cost offset by government and they were just losing workers for a year at a time on their own tab. Yes, Gates is a very rich man, but in the end that really takes away from their charitable work for people that need things a lot more than an extra 6 months. For other companies it takes away even more, and in some cases can outright drive them out of business or cause companies to just hire less women.
jlawson 8y ago
If parental leave is equal between genders, this argument may stand. But beware any unequal treatment of men and women with generous leave. It creates big incentives not to hire women of a certain age and family status. It's a lot harder to oppose discrimination when the discrimination is obviously rational and arguably not even wrong.
- m0zg 8y ago
  I do wish it was socially acceptable for men to stay at home with kids too. In 90% of the cases currently people will think there's something wrong with the man.
  - purplethinking 8y ago
    The way it's done in Sweden is that 3 months are reserved for the father, otherwise they're forfeited. Works wonders because initially, fathers had a very legitimate reason to take the leave, anything else would be giving up free money. But once it became the norm, it changed the culture. Now it's creeping upwards slowly, at around 4.5 months on average I think. Not amazing, but it's enough that it's harder to discriminate against women in particular, rather than perhaps more broadly couples in their early 30s... What I see though is that since everyone's doing it, there is a much bigger understanding in company culture that people may be away for a while and just find ways of dealing with that.
    - kelnos 8y ago
      Unfortunately I think many men in the US would forfeit that time, free money or not, believing that taking leave as a father is "unmanly" or "shows a lack of loyalty to the company". It's incredibly dumb, but... social pressure usually is.
      - purplethinking 8y ago
        I don't think American culture is more fundamentally macho than Swedish culture. Maybe now it is on average, but not when this rule came into place. Monetary incentives really do work.
simonsarris 8y ago
Assuming 2 years paid leave only works if your workers are non-essential and additionally more-or-less interchangeable. What happens if a person is hired for an essential role, then leaves for 2 years expecting their job back? Imagine like, a CFO or specialist mechanic takes 2 years paid leave. What do you do? You hire a new CFO/mechanic. You can't function well without one, certainly not for 2 years. Then when the paid-leaver returns, what do you do? Fire the person you hired to fill the gap? Have 2 CFOs or redundant mechanics on staff?

by m0zg 8y ago

lazzlazzlazz 8y ago

Two years seems absolutely absurd on many levels.

m0zg 8y ago
I'm not saying it should be fully paid, although I'd welcome some sort of a UBI-like payment to stay at home parent (singular, mother _or_ father) in the first 2 years of their child's life. I'm saying that's what the needs of the child really are. To have to sacrifice that to "reenter the workforce" should really be socially unacceptable.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ed_balls 8y ago
Does it? Most European countries offer 1 year paid maternity leave (quite often it's almost 14 months because PTO is still applies) then you can take another 1 year of unpaid leave. The employer cannot fire you.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  If I’m a small business making enough to employ myself and 2 other people, how very carefully would I think about taking on someone whom I might need to pay to not* work at my company for a year?
  - ed_balls 8y ago
    Where I live: Government pay for it if the company has fewer than 20 people.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      That makes it way more feasible for small businesses. Of course that now just makes me think extremely hard before hiring my 20th person. That’s at least a much less serious limitation to job creation.
mamurphy 8y ago
>Two years seems absolutely absurd on many levels. Especially "at least" 2 years. As in, 2 years was the minimum and maybe 5 would be better?
- m0zg 8y ago
  It likely would be, actually, but I think 2 years is more economically sustainable. Like it or not, for a society to work, we have to procreate and raise kids. To make raising kids properly (which is already hard work) impossible is idiotic and counterproductive.
paganel 8y ago
It is not absurd. We have (I think partially-)paid 2-year parental-leave here in Romania and people and companies manage just fine. Of course, not all of the involved people choose to stay for the whole two years at home, but I have lots of former colleagues and acquaintances that did just that and they were more than ok, even more than that, the companies hiring them managed to stay in business, even if they weren't owned by successful business people like Bill Gates. 6-month only parental-leave is a joke, no parental-leave is barbarous.
- tzs 8y ago
  How does the work that would have been done by the person on leave get taken care of? Does it (1) go undone, (2) do those not on leave have to do it in addition to their normal work, (3) do companies set their staff sizes so that they have extra capacity to take up slack from those on leave, or (4) do they hire temp workers to fill in until the person on leave comes back?
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  Six months? My wife and I receive exactly as many paid days as we have saved up PTO. So, about three weeks each. Any time after that is unpaid, but we’re protected from being fired for three months.
  - paganel 8y ago
    This sounds so wrong to me, and I don't even have kids yet. Until issues like this one aren't resolved then the inequality between men and women (in wages, management positions) will continue to remain the same, no matter the media rhetoric, for the simple fact that many women will choose not to go back to work (it's mostly women that make that sacrifice).
sigfubar 8y ago
Allowing one's children to be raised by strangers is lazy and selfish. And absurd.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  I dunno selfish, I could make the argument that raising your child yourself out of some misguided notion that you're the best person for that job is selfish.
  - cjCamel 8y ago
    Disagree, within the timeframe of this topic. 0-6 months is basically all about the bond between child and parents. Sometime after that, sure, a requirement to socialise comes into play.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      What do you mean "socialize"? Do you have kids? Most kids can't even walk until they're about a year old.
      - cjCamel 8y ago
        That was my point? In that there’s no benefit to the child to be in someone else’s care with a bunch of other kids for the first 6 months at least, and probably quite a lot older than that.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      I'm afraid I must disagree. There's no evidence to suggest that the bond between a child and its biological parents is in any way important. Further, it is unlikely that its biological parents are experts on raising children and are thus likely to raise it suboptimally, leading to a poorer quality of life in its future. Therefore, it is more selfish to raise your child yourself than to have an expert to do it for you. I shouldn't have to disclaim this by argument by saying that I'm not making a serious recommendation to anyone, but because parents are so defensive and irrational when it comes to how they raise their children, I feel that I must. I don't have kids and don't plan on having kids, so this is merely an intellectual exercise for me.

partiallypro 8y ago

The market won't always be this tight...and frankly, people don't realize how expensive it is for companies to essentially subsidize child care through paid leave and stipends.

jmspring 8y ago
There used to be a time when there was an unwritten contract between employer and employee - growth options, learning, leave packages, etc - in return for long term tenure at the company. That has basically gone the way of the dodo in most companies.
- ngngngng 8y ago
  Because long term tenure doesn't get companies enough of a return. If a company wants me to stay long term, I need regular raises above the rate of inflation, parental leave, everything you listed. It's so much cheaper to spend the $10k or so it costs to replace me every year or two and not worry about the other things.
m0zg 8y ago
The market is this tight in part because birth rate is dropping like a rock. It's dropping like a rock because having a child is either unaffordable or too much pain in the ass to deal with. The companies will have to see a bit beyond their next quarterly revenues to see reason in having a sane labor market in the future. I'd also like to see large tech companies (which constantly complain about the "shortage of talent") pitch in on the education/training side of things, without externalizing those costs to the taxpayer and worker.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  I don't disagree that governments should be incentivizing reproduction (at least that is my position) the problem is that in this particular instance, the Gates Foundation was not having their cost offset by government and they were just losing workers for a year at a time on their own tab. Yes, Gates is a very rich man, but in the end that really takes away from their charitable work for people that need things a lot more than an extra 6 months. For other companies it takes away even more, and in some cases can outright drive them out of business or cause companies to just hire less women.

jlawson 8y ago

If parental leave is equal between genders, this argument may stand. But beware any unequal treatment of men and women with generous leave. It creates big incentives not to hire women of a certain age and family status. It's a lot harder to oppose discrimination when the discrimination is obviously rational and arguably not even wrong.

m0zg 8y ago
I do wish it was socially acceptable for men to stay at home with kids too. In 90% of the cases currently people will think there's something wrong with the man.
- purplethinking 8y ago
  The way it's done in Sweden is that 3 months are reserved for the father, otherwise they're forfeited. Works wonders because initially, fathers had a very legitimate reason to take the leave, anything else would be giving up free money. But once it became the norm, it changed the culture. Now it's creeping upwards slowly, at around 4.5 months on average I think. Not amazing, but it's enough that it's harder to discriminate against women in particular, rather than perhaps more broadly couples in their early 30s... What I see though is that since everyone's doing it, there is a much bigger understanding in company culture that people may be away for a while and just find ways of dealing with that.
  - kelnos 8y ago
    Unfortunately I think many men in the US would forfeit that time, free money or not, believing that taking leave as a father is "unmanly" or "shows a lack of loyalty to the company". It's incredibly dumb, but... social pressure usually is.
    - purplethinking 8y ago
      I don't think American culture is more fundamentally macho than Swedish culture. Maybe now it is on average, but not when this rule came into place. Monetary incentives really do work.

simonsarris 8y ago

Assuming 2 years paid leave only works if your workers are non-essential and additionally more-or-less interchangeable. What happens if a person is hired for an essential role, then leaves for 2 years expecting their job back? Imagine like, a CFO or specialist mechanic takes 2 years paid leave. What do you do? You hire a new CFO/mechanic. You can't function well without one, certainly not for 2 years. Then when the paid-leaver returns, what do you do? Fire the person you hired to fill the gap? Have 2 CFOs or redundant mechanics on staff?