> Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization so t

> Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave" contract. Obviously. But doing this imposes costs on the organization. Those costs scale (possibly non-linearly) with length of leave. The question we have to ask is, what is the amount of time off that balances the interests of the company, the economy, and the parents optimally? The Gates foundation is saying 1 year does not strike a good balance for them, because the organizational costs are simply too high. That's what being said here.