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French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

326 points by karimford 6y ago

mensetmanusman 6y ago
Spain found that parental leave resulted in fewer children. Ha. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272718302299 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
- straw11 6y ago
  This a good Thing, the Planet cant afford more people.
  - dnate 6y ago
    you may want to watch this video and check your fear of overpopulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >First, fathers' increasing involvement in childcare led to higher labor force attachment among mothers. This may have raised the opportunity cost of an additional child. We also find that men reported lower desired fertility after the reform, possibly due to their increased awareness of the costs of childrearing, or to a shift in preferences from child quantity to quality. These honestly sound like good things to me. Fathers raising children increased the chance for women to participate in the labour force, men become more aware of what it takes to raise a child, and the quality of child rearing increases. Don't think more children was necessarily the point of the policy.
  - toxik 6y ago
    Having children is more important to society than having workers. It is a grim fact that the calculus of life in almost any Western country is that you can have maybe one child, but better none, if you want to have a decent life. We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
    - ido 6y ago
      almost any Western country That's a ridiculous overstatement. We live in Germany & have a lot of relatives in Austria. We have 2 kids & know lots of people in both countries with kids, it is very possible to have a decent life while having more than 1 child & earning median German/Austrian income (last I checked our household income is almost exactly at the 50th percentile for German households with 2 adults and 2 children). I suspect the same is true to a lot of other western countries. (this doesn't mean I'm otherwise of a different opinion than you regarding whose welfare to optimize - a state is for its people not its corporations)
      - toxik 6y ago
        Curiously your anecdata does not change the fact that reproductive numbers are below replacement in basically every democratic market economy.
        ido 6y ago
        The reason is not only - or even mainly - because people can't afford to have kids. In fact the poorer the country the more kids people tend to have. Surely people in poor countries can afford to have kids even less than people in rich countries?
      - afthonos 6y ago
        Two kids is still below replacement, which hovers, IIRC, around 2.1. Does the math still hold for 3 kids?
        ido 6y ago
        If we really wanted to we could afford to have 4 as well. The reason we don't isn't money. Nevertheless OP made their claim about more than 0-1 kids, not >2.
    - skrause 6y ago
      > We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction Yes, of course, humanity's biggest problem is currently that we're basically going extinct because we're not reproducing enough.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Spain found that parental leave resulted in fewer children. That's long been known to be true of social support and safety nets generally, so it's not a surprise that it would be true of parental leave, which is a subset of that.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    IIRC free childcare results in higher fertility though.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dleslie 6y ago
It really irked me that here in Canada the options were generally skewed towards mothers remaining home. You can split 40 weeks of parental leave, but many employers won't provide parental benefits and those that do often only provide parental benefits to mothers. For instance, my employer at the time provided wage top-up for women on leave but nothing for men. Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in society at large that ultimately contribute to the wage gap. Of course I stayed at work, and of course my wife now has enormous gaps in her work history, and so of course my yearly gains in income have outpaced hers.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  Well we can’t do anything about employers, that’s why relying on employers as a social net is ridiculous (what’s the % of people that have parental benefits from their employers? Surely a minority) This needs to be managed through the government. Quebec has done a good job at it. And yes, it can be used by either the father or the mother without any problem.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Well we can’t do anything about employers You can, indeed, mandate equal practices by employers and enforce that requirement.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The problem is smaller employers, which simply can't afford to shoulder the burden of paid maternity leave for 1 of their 10 employees. You can set up a graduated system like the UK has, where all employers have to pay and can reclaim a variable amount. But one way or another, any benefit the government won't foot the bill for is a benefit many parents won't get.
      - 6y ago
pacamara619 6y ago
Meanwhile the Swiss people voted to have two weeks of paternity leave instead of one day. The icing on the cake is that the actual initiative asked for four weeks but the parliament made a counter-proposal of two weeks after which the intiative committee withdrew their proposal of four. 60% of the voters were in favor. Two weeks in one of the highest gdp per capita countries of the world. Two. Measly. Weeks. It was just one single day up until now. Let that sink in.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  It’s zero in all but ~10 US states if your employer has fewer than 50 employees. And even then, the leave is unpaid.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > the leave is unpaid All employer-paid employee benefits ultimately come with a reduction in salary. The reason is simple - companies do not look at your salary when deciding if it is worth hiring you. They look at total compensation (salary + benefits). The larger the benefits, the lower the salary. Me, I prefer minimal benefits and maximal salary.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Some states (and other countries) offer paid family leave (not only applicable to births) via payroll taxes, i.e. wealth redistribution. Me, I prefer a society where children have a higher probability of being attended to by their parents even if it costs me some money.
      - google234123 6y ago
        payroll taxes on employers = less salary
        mcv 6y ago
        A bit less money but a healthier society is still an improvement in the way of life. If you only measure everything in money, you're going to miss out on a lot.
straw11 6y ago
Meanwhile in Germany people get 14months paid leave. Where neither parent can take more than 12.
- fileeditview 6y ago
  It's important to note here that paid means 67% of you net salary but only up to 1800€. While this is nice, this is not enough to just live off for most people (that don't have a lot of savings).
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > this is not enough to just live off for most people I don't think many people can pull the "the state doesn't provide enough to have kids" card in Germany to be honest. At some point people have to understand that yes, having a kid means you will have less money at the end of the month and will most likely result in personal sacrifices.
    - fileeditview 6y ago
      I never said that.. I was just stating the facts because the parent comment made it sound like you get 12 months for free.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  Before people think that this policy is all roses, a close friend of mine is the CEO of a multi billion dollar international business. They don’t hire anyone from France because the French government makes it so difficult to fire a bad hire. Maybe you could argue that the French are better off without them, but people love working for them and they have great pay and benefits. I’m sure there are a number of companies that France and Germany miss out on due to policies like these. Companies simply can’t always pay people to not work for 6 months to a year, so they’ll go somewhere where they don’t have to.
  - sveme 6y ago
car 6y ago
Compare this to 480 days of shared and paid parental leave in Sweden at 80% salary. The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-paternity-leave-policies-latte-dads-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...
- souprock 6y ago
  That is enough time to have another kid. I have 12 so far. If I lived in Sweden, I wouldn't have to work. I could keep it going for decades. It's odd that Swedes aren't taking full advantage of the situation.
  - klipt 6y ago
    Probably not many houses in Sweden can fit 12 kids?
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      I’d say it’s probably more like there aren’t many Swedes who could deal with a house with 12 kids. The after school logistics alone must be a nightmare. Either that, or there’s something plugging the loophole the GP mentions.
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        Would "taking full advantage of a situation" being frowned upon suffice in swedish society?
        pmiller2 6y ago
        I would say so. Social pressures are very powerful forces that act on humans. Last I checked, Swedes were human, too. :-)
        6y ago
gnicholas 6y ago
Paternity leave can be a great thing for father/child bonding, and for equalizing opportunity for women (who face greater social/practical pressure to take their leave), who can fall behind male colleagues by taking their leave. Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave, and in the US a lot of men don't because it is frowned upon socially in many companies. One possible way to incentivize men to take paternity leave is to do so indirectly, by rewarding companies where a large percentage of eligible fathers take the full leave. This would reverse the current dynamic, which is: if you take the full leave, you're putting your family above the company, and not being a team player. Instead, taking the leave would make you a team player and help the company fulfill the goal.
- jariel 6y ago
  "Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave" There's no reason to force anyone to do this. The statement is dystopian. If you offer it to people, and they legit don't want to take it, anything beyond that you're the problem, not the solution.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    I have worked in law and tech. I have seen many men who took hardly any time off in law firms because it was heavily frowned upon. In tech, it is much less frowned upon, as evidenced by the fact that many big tech companies offer the same leave to fathers as mothers. I believe the reason for the different behavior is not that lawyer dads don't care about their kids/wives as much as techie dads. Rather, I believe it is because in the cultural context, they feel pressure not to take much leave. So by putting pressure on companies to make the option a real one for fathers, I think we could make fathers happier (and kids/mothers also) by allowing them to choose the option that they would want if they could do so without repercussions. Also, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field for mothers. So while I will agree that we don't want to force people to do anything (and my suggestion actually does not force anyone to do anything), there can still be valid reasons that a society would want to incentivize people in certain ways for the good of the society as a whole.
rapsey 6y ago
> Studies have shown that paternity leave can set the tone for fathers’ long-term relationships with their children and families. Children whose fathers took at least two weeks of paternity leave reported feeling closer to their dads even nine years later, according to a joint study of sociology professors at Ball State University and Ohio State University, which also found that paternity leave is linked to lower divorce rates. Causation/correlation. Coming from a country where the father can take 30 days. Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers and two weeks is enough. Of the fathers I know who took the full 30 days, they did so for home improvement projects not because they were actually needed that much.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- adamsea 6y ago
  This is ... based on your own observation and experience?
  - rapsey 6y ago
    Two happy kids with a likely third. My experience and observations and discussions with other parents.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      Don’t have kids myself but I’ll point out that due to the natural social filtering of those around us whom we spend time with being more similar to ourselves than not, your perspective may be more valuable as a data-point .... though I suppose to settle this we’d need to look at how rigorous the study was, etc. Thank you for your thoughtful response to my question :).
- gnicholas 6y ago
  > Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers. So are you saying the father doesn't need to be there for the child after two weeks? Or are you saying he only needs to be there to help the mother after two weeks? I've heard of some maternity leave policies that differ based on type of birth (longer time off for caesarean), and it would actually make sense to give fathers the same so that they can help the mother. Of course, you are absolutely right that some fathers take leave but don't spend it caring for wife/child. I'm not sure how to get around this problem, but it seems that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, to use a terribl(y appropriate) turn of phrase. We just have to understand that some people will abuse the policy, but that overall there is a net benefit (to fathers, children, and mothers) to offering it.
taxationisth3ft 6y ago
There should be no paternity leave at all, because paternity leave means that the other single guy with no family have to work more for free to compensate your "vacation". Democracy is tyranny of the majority where the largest part of population make laws in a way to benefit themselves and make the others tax-slaves.
rayiner 6y ago
I support long paid family leaves, but I find this framing odd: > The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company. But the law leaves many parents at the mercy of the state in which they live (only three, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, grant paid leave) or their employers’ individual plans. Why shouldn’t different states have different leave policies. It’s no weirder for different states to have different leave policies than for Germany to have a different leave policy than France.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  For sure. In CA, for example, I think parental leave is (at least partly) categorized as "temporary disability". Employees pay are forced to pay into temporary disability insurance, so it makes sense that when they are then eligible, they get to draw from that fund. It does get weird when a company offers certain benefits to employees in one state versus another though. I'm sure many companies top-up the benefits available in low-benefit states in order to avoid bad feelings/confusion among employees.
rosege 6y ago
I love my dog probably more than some parents love their kids. Its too bad you can't get doggy leave if you don't have children.
- mcntsh 6y ago
  I think you're missing the point of parental leave. Parent's raising a newborn often don't even have the time to take care of themselves because it's so much work to care for the baby.
- chromanoid 6y ago
  Your dog won't pay taxes in the future. And there is also some "light" difference between reproduction and having a pet. For welcoming a dog or stuff like that there is minimum paid annual leave in developed countries.
  - shakopeeant 6y ago
    The child probably won't pay taxes either. More than likely they will leech off the system.
  - rosege 6y ago
    My dog also won't have the carbon footprint of another human on the planet.
    - chromanoid 6y ago
      Of course not, but pets like dogs are (to some extent) a luxury that do have a footprint that is not to be ignored (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/08/02/whats-your-dogs-carbon-pawprint/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/08/02/whats-yo...). You are probably the only person who really benefits from your dog. So it's somewhat selfish to get one in this regard. Human beings on the other hand will care for us when we are old and senile. They will contribute to society. They will build the future. And if we don't give them a good loving start, the future they build will probably more selfish. Reproduction happens anyway so paid parental leave just increases the well-being not only of the parents but also of their children. Beside that without human beings the future is irrelevant, because there is no human being who cares for it. If we all stop having children at some point in the future, how many people will care about carbon footprints anymore? I mean the animal world will find its way anyway, regardless of what we leave behind.
pi-rat 6y ago
28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant. All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)
- marakv2 6y ago
  While I agree your situation sounds better, I had zero days (and due to work being shitty, barely saw my son for the first 3 months), so I'd call it a successful start.
  - sdfqasdghj 6y ago
    The OP won't have seen much of their child's first 3 months either. Their time with their child probably started when the child was 8 months old and lasted until the child was about 12 months old...
    - ido 6y ago
      why do you assume that? With my second child I took 4 months of parental leave (2 of which simultaneously with my wife) & divided between ages 0-2 & 10-12 months old.
      - sdfqasdghj 6y ago
        Because that's what most fathers do... Also they just finished their pappaperm which they said was 133 days over the summer and that means their child likely started in nursery in August or September as is the child's legal entitlement if they were born before August last year or in September last year... I get that you did something different but the OP's case really does sound like they did what most Norwegian fathers do... (I'm not knocking it because that time was truly special for me.)
vortico 6y ago
I'm dumb and don't know anything about maternity/paternity leave. What prevents someone from being hired by a company, taking leave due to a child in X days, taking the salary the government forces the company to give you, and quitting Y days after you return? What if X and Y are a month or even one day? Could companies could be scammed for a year of salary while getting only a few days of value out of their employee?
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Specifically in France: Paternity leave is not paid by employers but by social security. The person still needs to have worked (and thus paid into the system through salary contributions) above a certain threshold in order to qualify. Employers can top up this payment but can then impose conditions (e.g. only after a year in the company or whatever)
  - propter_hoc 6y ago
    This is the case in Canada as well. If one of my employees went on leave, I'd have to find a way to cover their work, but it wouldn't cost me extra.
  - vortico 6y ago
    Oh, I see how it works then. It's funded through income tax from the employee's past work history. Thanks!
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      There's an additional tax in addition to income tax, but let's not get into French taxes... ;)
      - vortico 6y ago
        Why not get into the topic of taxes in a discussion of social security? :) They're the two sides of the same coin. There seems to be little discussion in here on the tax cost of this paternity leave law.
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
Meantime mothers in the USA get 12 weeks, below the minimum recommended by the WHO (16 weeks).
TheFlash 6y ago
There seems to be some confusion between paternity leave and parental leave. Figure 1 (page 6) in document [1] gives a good comparison between among EU countries., where paternity leave is represented by a black bar. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=16676&langId=en https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=16676&langId=e...
mcv 6y ago
Good. I consider 14 days of paternity leave the absolute minimum; less than that is just irresponsible, because you really shouldn't leave the mother alone during that time. Official maternal care is rarely full-time. Also, those maternal care people can teach you a lot of useful things about how to take care of your baby that are also important to learn for a father. More time is better because of extra bonding with the new family, and it can be stressful for the newborn to go to fulltime childcare before they're 6 months old (after that, I think at least some childcare is good for socialisation). I love the generous paternal leave Scandinavians get. When I had my kids, Dutch paternity leave was only 2 days: one for the birth itself, and one for registering your baby's birth. Only in 2019 did they expand that to a whole whoppingly insufficient week. For both kids, I took 3 months off. For the first, it initially was two weeks; not sure if I took it as days off or sick care or something; I hadn't planned to take time off originally, until I suddenly realised I simply couldn't go to work, so I called in and said I couldn't work. After those two weeks, I went back to work, and after my wife's maternity leave had ran out and she was eager to get back to work, I took 3 months parental leave (might have been unpaid; not sure). For the second it was unpaid, because I'm a freelancer, but I don't care. This stuff is more important.
zingar 6y ago
Our former CTO was asked what paternity leave he thought tech employees should have (in a country with no legal requirement for it) and he said, "4 months", which then made it into everyone's contracts. Only he thought he was being asked about Maternity leave and now the company is honouring that deal even a 18 months after his departure. It makes me want to have a child real soon before they rewrite that clause.
fnord123 6y ago
Misleading headline. It's not French fathers. It's fathers in France.
- throwaway744678 6y ago
  The two groups largely overlap! But yes, technically, you're right.
bluesquared 6y ago
Here in "flyover country, USA" I was looked down upon for asking to use two weeks of my own PTO after my company's new 'generous' two week paid parental leave. That request was constantly pushed off until the week of my wife's induction, when it was formally declined. I was told the request was 'excessive' and that generally the woman needs more time to recover but the father doesn't need much time. I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line. I'm grateful that we have a healthy 4-month old baby, but this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable. Better parental rights, better funding for education and health - better take care of your workers and your future (children) and they will be able to take better care of you.
- codegeek 6y ago
  It is absolute Capitalism. Apparently, Americans have gotten used to it because supposedly the only other option to us is "Socialism". There is no middle ground. God forbid we ask for Capitalism with a little bit of social safety net.
  - chromanoid 6y ago
    “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
    - mikestew 6y ago
      I wish that victim-blaming quote would once and for all fade into it's rightful place of crap writing. It's as if that Canadian never spoke with an actual impoverished American.
      - chromanoid 6y ago
        Ah, thanks for the heads-up. I tried to understand what you mean and found this: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/americans-class-politics-piston https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/americans-class-politics-pist... Seems somewhat reasonable to me. But at the same time this statement: > When people can’t easily identify who will be the ultimate beneficiary of a particular state program or policy — that is, whether the rich or the poor will come out on top — then support for that program plummets. makes me wonder how this should change in times of industrial grade trolling and disinformation campaigns. And if the compass is so fragile, why is that?
agumonkey 6y ago
Some countries have a nice symetric splittable system between mothers and fathers.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Australia does this pretty much. There's 40 weeks leave for the primary carer, but you can swap which parent that is pretty much as you need.
ajuc 6y ago
In Poland there's 1 year of combined maternity&paternity leave, which can be split between the parents (within some constraints).
Proven 6y ago
The French state forces employees to subsidize colleagues with kids Employeesdo this by getting slightly lower pay which from employer's perspective makes up for paying wages to fathers who don't work.
tmilard 6y ago
I am french. With two childreen. This is a wonderfull news, as this 28 days of paternity leave will affect the child during ALL his life. So many old father say before they die this : - "The only regret I have is not to have not been more around my child(reen) young". You never eat someone say : - "I regret not having worked more when I was young "
75dvtwin 6y ago
that's great, of course. But do fathers get same treatment in courts, during custody disputes? Property separation disputes, statistically ?
chadlavi 6y ago
That's insanely short, especially for a European country.
daneel_w 6y ago
In Sweden each parent can get up to 240 days (8 months). It's still being debated if the duration is too long, causing more problems than the benefit it brings the child and the family.
baud147258 6y ago
I think my brother who had his first child two months ago is going to be a little disappointed that it wasn't passed a few months ago. (though he used a bunch of PTO to stay with his wife and their child)
purple_ferret 6y ago
>only three, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, grant paid leave) This is false. New York has paid family leave which can be used by both parents for new borns. In 2021, you can get 12 weeks at 67% pay. [0] It's interesting how uninformed people are about basic laws like this in the US. The author apparently lives in New York too. [0]https://www.ny.gov/sites/ny.gov/files/atoms/files/PaidFamilyLeave_EmployeeFactSheet.pdf https://www.ny.gov/sites/ny.gov/files/atoms/files/PaidFamily...
moron4hire 6y ago
> The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company. Sure, you'll still have your job. And your employer might even have its own leave program to pay you for time off. But you could just never receive assignments again, so if you're working for a consulting company your billable rate will tank and then you'll get PIP'd for "lack of productivity" and then "laid off" because you can't do anything about your boss gatekeeping work away from you. No, I can't prove this is what happened to me...
throwaway62948 6y ago
I work at one of the large U.S. tech companies and am currently on parental leave. Fathers get four months of leave at 100% pay, and my health insurance covered every penny of the $500k birth (there were a lot of complications). My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have this perk at this company, and I don’t take it for granted at all. It’s mind-blowing to me that U.S. companies are not required to offer any leave to the fathers. My previous company did not offer leave, so a lot of my male coworkers just used a few vacation days and then were back at work. My wife and I are very busy taking care of the baby essentially all day, so I have no clue how this work is so often done by one parent, much less having both parents working full time. The U.S. needs to get its act together in the 21st century. A lack of mandated PTO and a lack of leave cannot be good for the long term mental health of the country. I would gladly pay more taxes to ensure everyone had this perk.
- stephenitis 6y ago
  500k for a lot of complications seems a tad excessive. Do you mind elaborating?
  - throwaway62948 6y ago
    Sure. The delivery was at Lucile Packard and my wife had preeclampsia, so they had to induce. Labor was 24 hours and delivery was 4 hours, and our daughter came out not breathing. She had the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly around her neck and had also inhaled a lot of meconium. They immediately took her to the NICU and performed various procedures to get the meconium out. She wasn’t able to breath on her own for a over a week, but eventually she recovered and we were able to take her home. Delivery was $112k and the remainder was the NICU.
dgellow 6y ago
In Switzerland we just voted Sunday for 2 weeks of paternity leave! Of course that's lower than the 28 days for French fathers, but it's going in the good direction (at our slow swiss pace) :)
doh 6y ago
Earlier this year we established 16 week parental leave (all types of parents). For a small company like ours, this is not an easy decision, but I believe it will eventually pay off in the long run. I'm originally from Europe and moved to states as an adult. My home country Slovakia, has very generous parental leave (up to 3 years[0]). I always struggled with the "ruthlessness" of US policies around healthcare, parental leave, education, etc. I was very happy that the company finally matured enough that we could offer a parental leave without suffering the loss of a productive employee for an extended period. We also adopted other European practices, like guaranteed severance after 3 months of "test" period with guaranteed healthcare (COBRA) for 2 months. I honestly wish that these were a standard in this country, that this wouldn't be a differentiating factor for us, but I think we have quite long way to go. [0] https://www.globalization-partners.com/globalpedia/slovak-rep/ https://www.globalization-partners.com/globalpedia/slovak-re...
throwaway7281 6y ago
I took over half a year off of work, but I did smaller jobs in that time, while my partner was taking off and getting money from state.

326 points by karimford 6y ago

Spain found that parental leave resulted in fewer children. Ha. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272718302299 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

straw11 6y ago
This a good Thing, the Planet cant afford more people.
- dnate 6y ago
  you may want to watch this video and check your fear of overpopulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
Barrin92 6y ago
>First, fathers' increasing involvement in childcare led to higher labor force attachment among mothers. This may have raised the opportunity cost of an additional child. We also find that men reported lower desired fertility after the reform, possibly due to their increased awareness of the costs of childrearing, or to a shift in preferences from child quantity to quality. These honestly sound like good things to me. Fathers raising children increased the chance for women to participate in the labour force, men become more aware of what it takes to raise a child, and the quality of child rearing increases. Don't think more children was necessarily the point of the policy.
- toxik 6y ago
  Having children is more important to society than having workers. It is a grim fact that the calculus of life in almost any Western country is that you can have maybe one child, but better none, if you want to have a decent life. We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
  - ido 6y ago
    almost any Western country That's a ridiculous overstatement. We live in Germany & have a lot of relatives in Austria. We have 2 kids & know lots of people in both countries with kids, it is very possible to have a decent life while having more than 1 child & earning median German/Austrian income (last I checked our household income is almost exactly at the 50th percentile for German households with 2 adults and 2 children). I suspect the same is true to a lot of other western countries. (this doesn't mean I'm otherwise of a different opinion than you regarding whose welfare to optimize - a state is for its people not its corporations)
    - toxik 6y ago
      Curiously your anecdata does not change the fact that reproductive numbers are below replacement in basically every democratic market economy.
      - ido 6y ago
        The reason is not only - or even mainly - because people can't afford to have kids. In fact the poorer the country the more kids people tend to have. Surely people in poor countries can afford to have kids even less than people in rich countries?
    - afthonos 6y ago
      Two kids is still below replacement, which hovers, IIRC, around 2.1. Does the math still hold for 3 kids?
      - ido 6y ago
        If we really wanted to we could afford to have 4 as well. The reason we don't isn't money. Nevertheless OP made their claim about more than 0-1 kids, not >2.
  - skrause 6y ago
    > We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction Yes, of course, humanity's biggest problem is currently that we're basically going extinct because we're not reproducing enough.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Spain found that parental leave resulted in fewer children. That's long been known to be true of social support and safety nets generally, so it's not a surprise that it would be true of parental leave, which is a subset of that.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  IIRC free childcare results in higher fertility though.

deleted 6y ago

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dleslie 6y ago

It really irked me that here in Canada the options were generally skewed towards mothers remaining home. You can split 40 weeks of parental leave, but many employers won't provide parental benefits and those that do often only provide parental benefits to mothers. For instance, my employer at the time provided wage top-up for women on leave but nothing for men. Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in society at large that ultimately contribute to the wage gap. Of course I stayed at work, and of course my wife now has enormous gaps in her work history, and so of course my yearly gains in income have outpaced hers.

jeromegv 6y ago
Well we can’t do anything about employers, that’s why relying on employers as a social net is ridiculous (what’s the % of people that have parental benefits from their employers? Surely a minority) This needs to be managed through the government. Quebec has done a good job at it. And yes, it can be used by either the father or the mother without any problem.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Well we can’t do anything about employers You can, indeed, mandate equal practices by employers and enforce that requirement.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The problem is smaller employers, which simply can't afford to shoulder the burden of paid maternity leave for 1 of their 10 employees. You can set up a graduated system like the UK has, where all employers have to pay and can reclaim a variable amount. But one way or another, any benefit the government won't foot the bill for is a benefit many parents won't get.
    - 6y ago

pacamara619 6y ago

Meanwhile the Swiss people voted to have two weeks of paternity leave instead of one day. The icing on the cake is that the actual initiative asked for four weeks but the parliament made a counter-proposal of two weeks after which the intiative committee withdrew their proposal of four. 60% of the voters were in favor. Two weeks in one of the highest gdp per capita countries of the world. Two. Measly. Weeks. It was just one single day up until now. Let that sink in.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
It’s zero in all but ~10 US states if your employer has fewer than 50 employees. And even then, the leave is unpaid.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > the leave is unpaid All employer-paid employee benefits ultimately come with a reduction in salary. The reason is simple - companies do not look at your salary when deciding if it is worth hiring you. They look at total compensation (salary + benefits). The larger the benefits, the lower the salary. Me, I prefer minimal benefits and maximal salary.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Some states (and other countries) offer paid family leave (not only applicable to births) via payroll taxes, i.e. wealth redistribution. Me, I prefer a society where children have a higher probability of being attended to by their parents even if it costs me some money.
    - google234123 6y ago
      payroll taxes on employers = less salary
      - mcv 6y ago
        A bit less money but a healthier society is still an improvement in the way of life. If you only measure everything in money, you're going to miss out on a lot.

straw11 6y ago

Meanwhile in Germany people get 14months paid leave. Where neither parent can take more than 12.

fileeditview 6y ago
It's important to note here that paid means 67% of you net salary but only up to 1800€. While this is nice, this is not enough to just live off for most people (that don't have a lot of savings).
- lm28469 6y ago
  > this is not enough to just live off for most people I don't think many people can pull the "the state doesn't provide enough to have kids" card in Germany to be honest. At some point people have to understand that yes, having a kid means you will have less money at the end of the month and will most likely result in personal sacrifices.
  - fileeditview 6y ago
    I never said that.. I was just stating the facts because the parent comment made it sound like you get 12 months for free.
buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
Before people think that this policy is all roses, a close friend of mine is the CEO of a multi billion dollar international business. They don’t hire anyone from France because the French government makes it so difficult to fire a bad hire. Maybe you could argue that the French are better off without them, but people love working for them and they have great pay and benefits. I’m sure there are a number of companies that France and Germany miss out on due to policies like these. Companies simply can’t always pay people to not work for 6 months to a year, so they’ll go somewhere where they don’t have to.
- sveme 6y ago

car 6y ago

Compare this to 480 days of shared and paid parental leave in Sweden at 80% salary. The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-paternity-leave-policies-latte-dads-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...

souprock 6y ago
That is enough time to have another kid. I have 12 so far. If I lived in Sweden, I wouldn't have to work. I could keep it going for decades. It's odd that Swedes aren't taking full advantage of the situation.
- klipt 6y ago
  Probably not many houses in Sweden can fit 12 kids?
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    I’d say it’s probably more like there aren’t many Swedes who could deal with a house with 12 kids. The after school logistics alone must be a nightmare. Either that, or there’s something plugging the loophole the GP mentions.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      Would "taking full advantage of a situation" being frowned upon suffice in swedish society?
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        I would say so. Social pressures are very powerful forces that act on humans. Last I checked, Swedes were human, too. :-)
        6y ago

gnicholas 6y ago

Paternity leave can be a great thing for father/child bonding, and for equalizing opportunity for women (who face greater social/practical pressure to take their leave), who can fall behind male colleagues by taking their leave. Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave, and in the US a lot of men don't because it is frowned upon socially in many companies. One possible way to incentivize men to take paternity leave is to do so indirectly, by rewarding companies where a large percentage of eligible fathers take the full leave. This would reverse the current dynamic, which is: if you take the full leave, you're putting your family above the company, and not being a team player. Instead, taking the leave would make you a team player and help the company fulfill the goal.

jariel 6y ago
"Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave" There's no reason to force anyone to do this. The statement is dystopian. If you offer it to people, and they legit don't want to take it, anything beyond that you're the problem, not the solution.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I have worked in law and tech. I have seen many men who took hardly any time off in law firms because it was heavily frowned upon. In tech, it is much less frowned upon, as evidenced by the fact that many big tech companies offer the same leave to fathers as mothers. I believe the reason for the different behavior is not that lawyer dads don't care about their kids/wives as much as techie dads. Rather, I believe it is because in the cultural context, they feel pressure not to take much leave. So by putting pressure on companies to make the option a real one for fathers, I think we could make fathers happier (and kids/mothers also) by allowing them to choose the option that they would want if they could do so without repercussions. Also, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field for mothers. So while I will agree that we don't want to force people to do anything (and my suggestion actually does not force anyone to do anything), there can still be valid reasons that a society would want to incentivize people in certain ways for the good of the society as a whole.

rapsey 6y ago

> Studies have shown that paternity leave can set the tone for fathers’ long-term relationships with their children and families. Children whose fathers took at least two weeks of paternity leave reported feeling closer to their dads even nine years later, according to a joint study of sociology professors at Ball State University and Ohio State University, which also found that paternity leave is linked to lower divorce rates. Causation/correlation. Coming from a country where the father can take 30 days. Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers and two weeks is enough. Of the fathers I know who took the full 30 days, they did so for home improvement projects not because they were actually needed that much.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
adamsea 6y ago
This is ... based on your own observation and experience?
- rapsey 6y ago
  Two happy kids with a likely third. My experience and observations and discussions with other parents.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Don’t have kids myself but I’ll point out that due to the natural social filtering of those around us whom we spend time with being more similar to ourselves than not, your perspective may be more valuable as a data-point .... though I suppose to settle this we’d need to look at how rigorous the study was, etc. Thank you for your thoughtful response to my question :).
gnicholas 6y ago
> Honestly for the vast majority of births the father is unnecessary to be there after two weeks. The child spends the first month basically eating and sleeping. The father needs to be there to help the mother while she recovers. So are you saying the father doesn't need to be there for the child after two weeks? Or are you saying he only needs to be there to help the mother after two weeks? I've heard of some maternity leave policies that differ based on type of birth (longer time off for caesarean), and it would actually make sense to give fathers the same so that they can help the mother. Of course, you are absolutely right that some fathers take leave but don't spend it caring for wife/child. I'm not sure how to get around this problem, but it seems that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, to use a terribl(y appropriate) turn of phrase. We just have to understand that some people will abuse the policy, but that overall there is a net benefit (to fathers, children, and mothers) to offering it.

taxationisth3ft 6y ago

There should be no paternity leave at all, because paternity leave means that the other single guy with no family have to work more for free to compensate your "vacation". Democracy is tyranny of the majority where the largest part of population make laws in a way to benefit themselves and make the others tax-slaves.

rayiner 6y ago

I support long paid family leaves, but I find this framing odd: > The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company. But the law leaves many parents at the mercy of the state in which they live (only three, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, grant paid leave) or their employers’ individual plans. Why shouldn’t different states have different leave policies. It’s no weirder for different states to have different leave policies than for Germany to have a different leave policy than France.

gnicholas 6y ago
For sure. In CA, for example, I think parental leave is (at least partly) categorized as "temporary disability". Employees pay are forced to pay into temporary disability insurance, so it makes sense that when they are then eligible, they get to draw from that fund. It does get weird when a company offers certain benefits to employees in one state versus another though. I'm sure many companies top-up the benefits available in low-benefit states in order to avoid bad feelings/confusion among employees.

rosege 6y ago

I love my dog probably more than some parents love their kids. Its too bad you can't get doggy leave if you don't have children.

mcntsh 6y ago
I think you're missing the point of parental leave. Parent's raising a newborn often don't even have the time to take care of themselves because it's so much work to care for the baby.
chromanoid 6y ago
Your dog won't pay taxes in the future. And there is also some "light" difference between reproduction and having a pet. For welcoming a dog or stuff like that there is minimum paid annual leave in developed countries.
- shakopeeant 6y ago
  The child probably won't pay taxes either. More than likely they will leech off the system.
- rosege 6y ago
  My dog also won't have the carbon footprint of another human on the planet.
  - chromanoid 6y ago
    Of course not, but pets like dogs are (to some extent) a luxury that do have a footprint that is not to be ignored (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/08/02/whats-your-dogs-carbon-pawprint/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/08/02/whats-yo...). You are probably the only person who really benefits from your dog. So it's somewhat selfish to get one in this regard. Human beings on the other hand will care for us when we are old and senile. They will contribute to society. They will build the future. And if we don't give them a good loving start, the future they build will probably more selfish. Reproduction happens anyway so paid parental leave just increases the well-being not only of the parents but also of their children. Beside that without human beings the future is irrelevant, because there is no human being who cares for it. If we all stop having children at some point in the future, how many people will care about carbon footprints anymore? I mean the animal world will find its way anyway, regardless of what we leave behind.

pi-rat 6y ago

28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant. All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)

marakv2 6y ago
While I agree your situation sounds better, I had zero days (and due to work being shitty, barely saw my son for the first 3 months), so I'd call it a successful start.
- sdfqasdghj 6y ago
  The OP won't have seen much of their child's first 3 months either. Their time with their child probably started when the child was 8 months old and lasted until the child was about 12 months old...
  - ido 6y ago
    why do you assume that? With my second child I took 4 months of parental leave (2 of which simultaneously with my wife) & divided between ages 0-2 & 10-12 months old.
    - sdfqasdghj 6y ago
      Because that's what most fathers do... Also they just finished their pappaperm which they said was 133 days over the summer and that means their child likely started in nursery in August or September as is the child's legal entitlement if they were born before August last year or in September last year... I get that you did something different but the OP's case really does sound like they did what most Norwegian fathers do... (I'm not knocking it because that time was truly special for me.)

vortico 6y ago

I'm dumb and don't know anything about maternity/paternity leave. What prevents someone from being hired by a company, taking leave due to a child in X days, taking the salary the government forces the company to give you, and quitting Y days after you return? What if X and Y are a month or even one day? Could companies could be scammed for a year of salary while getting only a few days of value out of their employee?

mytailorisrich 6y ago
Specifically in France: Paternity leave is not paid by employers but by social security. The person still needs to have worked (and thus paid into the system through salary contributions) above a certain threshold in order to qualify. Employers can top up this payment but can then impose conditions (e.g. only after a year in the company or whatever)
- propter_hoc 6y ago
  This is the case in Canada as well. If one of my employees went on leave, I'd have to find a way to cover their work, but it wouldn't cost me extra.
- vortico 6y ago
  Oh, I see how it works then. It's funded through income tax from the employee's past work history. Thanks!
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    There's an additional tax in addition to income tax, but let's not get into French taxes... ;)
    - vortico 6y ago
      Why not get into the topic of taxes in a discussion of social security? :) They're the two sides of the same coin. There seems to be little discussion in here on the tax cost of this paternity leave law.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

Meantime mothers in the USA get 12 weeks, below the minimum recommended by the WHO (16 weeks).

TheFlash 6y ago

There seems to be some confusion between paternity leave and parental leave. Figure 1 (page 6) in document [1] gives a good comparison between among EU countries., where paternity leave is represented by a black bar. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=16676&langId=en https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=16676&langId=e...

mcv 6y ago

Good. I consider 14 days of paternity leave the absolute minimum; less than that is just irresponsible, because you really shouldn't leave the mother alone during that time. Official maternal care is rarely full-time. Also, those maternal care people can teach you a lot of useful things about how to take care of your baby that are also important to learn for a father. More time is better because of extra bonding with the new family, and it can be stressful for the newborn to go to fulltime childcare before they're 6 months old (after that, I think at least some childcare is good for socialisation). I love the generous paternal leave Scandinavians get. When I had my kids, Dutch paternity leave was only 2 days: one for the birth itself, and one for registering your baby's birth. Only in 2019 did they expand that to a whole whoppingly insufficient week. For both kids, I took 3 months off. For the first, it initially was two weeks; not sure if I took it as days off or sick care or something; I hadn't planned to take time off originally, until I suddenly realised I simply couldn't go to work, so I called in and said I couldn't work. After those two weeks, I went back to work, and after my wife's maternity leave had ran out and she was eager to get back to work, I took 3 months parental leave (might have been unpaid; not sure). For the second it was unpaid, because I'm a freelancer, but I don't care. This stuff is more important.

zingar 6y ago

Our former CTO was asked what paternity leave he thought tech employees should have (in a country with no legal requirement for it) and he said, "4 months", which then made it into everyone's contracts. Only he thought he was being asked about Maternity leave and now the company is honouring that deal even a 18 months after his departure. It makes me want to have a child real soon before they rewrite that clause.

fnord123 6y ago

Misleading headline. It's not French fathers. It's fathers in France.

throwaway744678 6y ago
The two groups largely overlap! But yes, technically, you're right.

bluesquared 6y ago

Here in "flyover country, USA" I was looked down upon for asking to use two weeks of my own PTO after my company's new 'generous' two week paid parental leave. That request was constantly pushed off until the week of my wife's induction, when it was formally declined. I was told the request was 'excessive' and that generally the woman needs more time to recover but the father doesn't need much time. I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line. I'm grateful that we have a healthy 4-month old baby, but this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable. Better parental rights, better funding for education and health - better take care of your workers and your future (children) and they will be able to take better care of you.

codegeek 6y ago
It is absolute Capitalism. Apparently, Americans have gotten used to it because supposedly the only other option to us is "Socialism". There is no middle ground. God forbid we ask for Capitalism with a little bit of social safety net.
- chromanoid 6y ago
  “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
  - mikestew 6y ago
    I wish that victim-blaming quote would once and for all fade into it's rightful place of crap writing. It's as if that Canadian never spoke with an actual impoverished American.
    - chromanoid 6y ago
      Ah, thanks for the heads-up. I tried to understand what you mean and found this: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/americans-class-politics-piston https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/americans-class-politics-pist... Seems somewhat reasonable to me. But at the same time this statement: > When people can’t easily identify who will be the ultimate beneficiary of a particular state program or policy — that is, whether the rich or the poor will come out on top — then support for that program plummets. makes me wonder how this should change in times of industrial grade trolling and disinformation campaigns. And if the compass is so fragile, why is that?

agumonkey 6y ago

Some countries have a nice symetric splittable system between mothers and fathers.

viraptor 6y ago
Australia does this pretty much. There's 40 weeks leave for the primary carer, but you can swap which parent that is pretty much as you need.

ajuc 6y ago

In Poland there's 1 year of combined maternity&paternity leave, which can be split between the parents (within some constraints).

Proven 6y ago

The French state forces employees to subsidize colleagues with kids Employeesdo this by getting slightly lower pay which from employer's perspective makes up for paying wages to fathers who don't work.

tmilard 6y ago

I am french. With two childreen. This is a wonderfull news, as this 28 days of paternity leave will affect the child during ALL his life. So many old father say before they die this : - "The only regret I have is not to have not been more around my child(reen) young". You never eat someone say : - "I regret not having worked more when I was young "

75dvtwin 6y ago

that's great, of course. But do fathers get same treatment in courts, during custody disputes? Property separation disputes, statistically ?

chadlavi 6y ago

That's insanely short, especially for a European country.

daneel_w 6y ago

In Sweden each parent can get up to 240 days (8 months). It's still being debated if the duration is too long, causing more problems than the benefit it brings the child and the family.

baud147258 6y ago

I think my brother who had his first child two months ago is going to be a little disappointed that it wasn't passed a few months ago. (though he used a bunch of PTO to stay with his wife and their child)

purple_ferret 6y ago

>only three, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, grant paid leave) This is false. New York has paid family leave which can be used by both parents for new borns. In 2021, you can get 12 weeks at 67% pay. [0] It's interesting how uninformed people are about basic laws like this in the US. The author apparently lives in New York too. [0]https://www.ny.gov/sites/ny.gov/files/atoms/files/PaidFamilyLeave_EmployeeFactSheet.pdf https://www.ny.gov/sites/ny.gov/files/atoms/files/PaidFamily...

moron4hire 6y ago

> The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants some mothers and fathers the ability to take 12 weeks unpaid leave and return to a protected job, depending on the size and type of the company. Sure, you'll still have your job. And your employer might even have its own leave program to pay you for time off. But you could just never receive assignments again, so if you're working for a consulting company your billable rate will tank and then you'll get PIP'd for "lack of productivity" and then "laid off" because you can't do anything about your boss gatekeeping work away from you. No, I can't prove this is what happened to me...

throwaway62948 6y ago

I work at one of the large U.S. tech companies and am currently on parental leave. Fathers get four months of leave at 100% pay, and my health insurance covered every penny of the $500k birth (there were a lot of complications). My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have this perk at this company, and I don’t take it for granted at all. It’s mind-blowing to me that U.S. companies are not required to offer any leave to the fathers. My previous company did not offer leave, so a lot of my male coworkers just used a few vacation days and then were back at work. My wife and I are very busy taking care of the baby essentially all day, so I have no clue how this work is so often done by one parent, much less having both parents working full time. The U.S. needs to get its act together in the 21st century. A lack of mandated PTO and a lack of leave cannot be good for the long term mental health of the country. I would gladly pay more taxes to ensure everyone had this perk.

stephenitis 6y ago
500k for a lot of complications seems a tad excessive. Do you mind elaborating?
- throwaway62948 6y ago
  Sure. The delivery was at Lucile Packard and my wife had preeclampsia, so they had to induce. Labor was 24 hours and delivery was 4 hours, and our daughter came out not breathing. She had the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly around her neck and had also inhaled a lot of meconium. They immediately took her to the NICU and performed various procedures to get the meconium out. She wasn’t able to breath on her own for a over a week, but eventually she recovered and we were able to take her home. Delivery was $112k and the remainder was the NICU.

dgellow 6y ago

In Switzerland we just voted Sunday for 2 weeks of paternity leave! Of course that's lower than the 28 days for French fathers, but it's going in the good direction (at our slow swiss pace) :)

doh 6y ago

Earlier this year we established 16 week parental leave (all types of parents). For a small company like ours, this is not an easy decision, but I believe it will eventually pay off in the long run. I'm originally from Europe and moved to states as an adult. My home country Slovakia, has very generous parental leave (up to 3 years[0]). I always struggled with the "ruthlessness" of US policies around healthcare, parental leave, education, etc. I was very happy that the company finally matured enough that we could offer a parental leave without suffering the loss of a productive employee for an extended period. We also adopted other European practices, like guaranteed severance after 3 months of "test" period with guaranteed healthcare (COBRA) for 2 months. I honestly wish that these were a standard in this country, that this wouldn't be a differentiating factor for us, but I think we have quite long way to go. [0] https://www.globalization-partners.com/globalpedia/slovak-rep/ https://www.globalization-partners.com/globalpedia/slovak-re...

throwaway7281 6y ago

I took over half a year off of work, but I did smaller jobs in that time, while my partner was taking off and getting money from state.