13 ms·

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

• 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.)
        • pi-rat 6y ago
          Correct, we did use our (combined) 10 weeks of vacation to create overlap though.
        • ido 6y ago
          Fair enough I didn't know Norway disallowed parallel leave. The way we did it is normal in Germany at least among my social circle. But I also think that aside from not sleeping at night (which depending on if the mother breastfeeds the father may not be able to help much with anyway) the first few months before the kid starts crawling are actually easier than the subsequent few years. For us it was mostly about spending that special time together as a family.
      • rezic 6y ago
        I can't speak for other countries, but both parents cannot take parental leave at the same time in Norway. Some choose to use vacation days while the other parent has parental leave, but it's a fair assumption to make that one of the parents were working while the other was on parental leave.
        • yxhuvud 6y ago
          In Sweden, most of the paternity leave is one at a time, but both are taking care of the child during the first two weeks.
      • deleted 6y ago
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• sdfqasdghj 6y ago
  This is at the beginning equivalent to the two weeks omsorgspermisjon you should have got after the birth (but which legally doesn't have to be paid).
• black_knight 6y ago
  Indeed. In Norway fathers and mothers must each take 15 weeks. And then in total there are either 49 weeks (with 100% pay) or 59 weeks (with 80% pay), so you can divide the remaining weeks between the two. But there are some inequalities in the system still. For instance, the father can only take the shared weeks if the mother is in "activity" (working or studying). While in Sweden there is no such requirements. And I am not sure what happens with the father's share if the mother is out of work and ineligible for proper ompensation. In that case the mother gets a one-time, approx €10 000, compensation, but I think the father does not get anything except two weeks off in connection with birth.
  • sdfqasdghj 6y ago
    1. The two weeks at birth aren't legally full pay (most employers pay you anyway). 2. Yes if the mother doesn't qualify the father doesn't qualify. I think that there has been a court case that found that this is not legal. But the law has not yet been updated.
    • allan-a 6y ago
      I can confirm this. I'm an American living in Norway and I have had two children. My wife is also American, and we moved to Norway while she was pregnant with our first child. Because my wife had not been working we were not entitled to the normal benefits. Time has passed, and my wife got a job in her career field. We are now expecting a third, and because of covid-19 my wife has been unable to work the required minimum during her pregnancy. So we are looking at having a third child without the normal benefits! From the American perspective this is still great. We get "free" healthcare and a nice lump-sum grant, but I (the father) don't qualify for paternity leave and the lump sum grant is not huge in comparison. The grant is like 1/6th of the amount that most families get with their leave.
      • black_knight 6y ago
        You probably did this already, but make sure to double check that your wife really did not work enough under any possible requirements. I know someone who had only substitute positions for shorter periods in the ten months before birth. But after several rounds of back and forth with NAV (even after birth), she got her benefits. She had to argue that staying at home would cause her to loose income (showed that she had to say no to some substitute work because of birth), and give them detailed lists of all hours she worked. Somehow it amounted to "enough".
• growlist 6y ago
  How lovely. Is this affordable anywhere other than a petrostate?
  • brtkdotse 6y ago
    Neighboring Sweden has an even better system without oil money
  • pi-rat 6y ago
    Apparently yes: https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-with-best-parental-leave-2016-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-with-best-parental...
  • sdfqasdghj 6y ago
    Yes. Sweden and Germany do it. Actually Norwegian parental leave is not that generous by the standards of similar countries. There is one year total of leave shared between mother and father (or other mother).
    • black_knight 6y ago
      On the other hand, in Norway you can get 100% up to a quite large maximum. As opposed to 80% capped at 1000SEK per day in Sweden. Edit: Living in Norway is more expensive though. So a family of low income might not have been able to sustain themselves if the compensation was lower.
    • dx034 6y ago
      Germany has a much more restrictive system though. 65% and a cap that pretty much anyone with a college degree will hit. So in reality you look at 30-50% for most people. Still nice, especially given the job guarantee, but very restrictive in who can take it if you have bills to pay.
      • parasight 6y ago
        In my experience the Elterngeld usually replaces one income in a double income family. Of course one will "loose" money if the cap hits, but hey its 1800 EUR per month for up to 14 months just for being a parent. I think it is awesome even if it is just 30% of your regular salary.
• boudin 6y ago
  You can have more, with the "congé parental", which has different conditions though: You need to have been in your current company at least a year The duration changes based on the number of children you have. up to 1 year for 1 children, 2 years for 2, 5 years for 3 or more. It can't be denied by the employer Your contract is suspended, but the employer has to take you back with an equivalent contract once your back The (big) downside is that you are paid a small allocation during this time. When you already have a really low salary it can be quite interesting, but when you have a higher salary it can be a big pay cut.
• kagaw 6y ago
  133 days? Wow... Here in Philippines, we just have 7 days. Normal or C-section delivery.
• AniseAbyss 6y ago
  Most fathers wouldn't want 6 months leave. You would literally have to make it mandatory.
  • alistairSH 6y ago
    Source? Anecdotally, my (US) employer started offering paternal leave a few years ago and most new fathers are using it. We allow it to be split, so many will do 2 weeks initially, then in 1-2 week chunks over the next several months.
• ptyyy 6y ago
  Around the start of August I finished up my 6 weeks here in the US and it was definitely not enough. 133+ days would have been nice, but here in Freedom-Land™ I was lucky to get the 6 weeks I was given. I know a few new dads who got no paternity leave from work, or 1-3 days. Absolutely ridiculous in this day and age.
  • austincheney 6y ago
    Bank of America provides 4 months of parental leave (paternity/maternity).
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  • throwaway894345 6y ago
    We have 12 weeks for "primary care giver" and 6 weeks for "secondary care giver". I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. From the bit of reading I've done on legal blogs, companies open themselves up to legal liability if they so much as permit a culture in which it's assumed that women are primary care givers and men are secondary much less pressure men to take the lesser amount. I wonder if there are a lot of companies who are still pressuring men to take the lesser amount and just rolling the dice on the legal liability. Otherwise why bother with the "primary vs secondary" distinction at all, since they presumably can't enforce it? Maybe they're hoping it will be honor-system? Or maybe they hope they can pressure everyone to make their other spouse (who most likely works outside of the firm) be the primary care givers?
    • ptyyy 6y ago
      > I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. My company leaves that decision to the couple. The couple chooses who is primary and secondary. My wife got 12 weeks as the primary caregiver. Our situation is a bit weird because we work for the same company.
• sushshshsh 6y ago
  >133 days of being paid to sit at home and take care of your kids, which most Americans do for free Do Norwegians work, ever? How do Norwegian businesses make money? You've heard that American businesses are failing left right and center. They can't even make a profit, and they don't pay their employees health insurance or vacation, let alone paternity/maternity.
  • sveme 6y ago
    Someone must be getting all the money that corporations save in the US in contrast to Norway...
    • sushshshsh 6y ago
      "save" as in, return to shareholders as value (ATAT) or invest for future (Amazon)? Keep in mind that the top 5 companies in the US are doing wildly better than the top 3000, who are in turn doing wildly better than the x hundreds of thousands of small businesses we have in the US. I can assure you that the average waiter or call center worker is not getting the same benefits as a Google employee, and I can further assure you that the average restaurant (pre covid ofc) doesn't have the same profit per capita as any publicly traded company.
  • dtech 6y ago
    They are paid by the government, not by the businesses. Most European governments manage. Norwegians have a massive unfair advantage due to that sweet sweet oil money.
• IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  Good for you, but that really doesn't add much to the discussion... Norway has > 800x the oil reserves per capita of France and has not gone through what you could call a political crisis over the past few years regarding aligning the spending level of its welfare state with the economic and budgetary realities, with years of protests and riots, some of which are still ongoing. In the face of this it's quite a bold move for France to go from zero to 28 days for the sake of benefiting gender norms and family relationships in the long-term. Norway, a rich country of just 5 million people, cannot be used as a comparison without noting all some of the budgetary context. Not just in this discussion, but more broadly on HN. If you're talking about something relatively budget-neutral like say 'same-sex marriage should be able to adopt children, just look at XYZ (e.g. Norway), it works just fine', that's alright. But if you're saying or implying something which has a lot of costs involved like 'fathers should get at least 4.5 months of paid parental leave as a rule, not an exception, just look at Norway' then you can't just leave out cost from the discussion, it makes no sense. Obviously all of us would prefer long-term paid parental leave, arguing it's nice to have adds nothing to the discussion because there is already universal agreement. Arguing it's worth having, is an entirely different and much more meaningful discussion, but it cannot be be had without weighing the pros against the cons, the biggest one is cost. And I say this coming from the Netherlands, an also quite rich country that I'd love to see as a model for many other countries. But such discussions should include budgetary context, among others.
  • matsemann 6y ago
    Then don't compare to Norway. Compare to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland or any of the others mentioned elsewhere here. I also find your argument a bit weird. Why not start an discussion about if the cost is worth it (which is what you want to discuss) instead of picking on the details of the country in question?
    • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      > Why not start an discussion about if the cost is worth it That’s exactly what GP did. He pointed out that whether the cost is worth it depends on how much you can afford. In Poland it’s two weeks, by the way.
• packet_nerd 6y ago
  Wow... Our first daughter was born a few weeks ago. I took off the first week, but it had to come out of my PTO (and I only have 2 weeks total per year). My wife had to quit her job so she could recuperate and spend time with the baby. She had a rough c-section and is still in bed in a lot of pain. I'm trying to work, take care of her, and take care of the baby. I wrote a long angry paragraph about US politics and culture here, but on second thought, for my mental sanity I need to drop it. SO and I have been seriously discussing moving somewhere else and plan to once the pandemic eases up enough for travel to be easier. We're still not 100% sure yet where to go though.
  • touisteur 6y ago
    Hope your wife gets through this soon and gets better.
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    For what it’s worth, I agree with everything you didn’t write. The good part about moving elsewhere from the US is that you can go anywhere sort-of-western and have things get a lot better.
• jredwards 6y ago
  It's more than most Americans get.