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I don’t think anyone is incentivized to have a kid because they get a few weeks or months off. The only incentive i see is the opposite; if there is no parental
by atty 5y ago
I don’t think anyone is incentivized to have a kid because they get a few weeks or months off. The only incentive i see is the opposite; if there is no parental leave, they may decide not to have children they were otherwise considering.
And the few weeks/months after a child is born can be much harder work than your day job in many aspects. So it would be unfair to parents, especially mothers, who tend to spend more time on child care, to force them to use their sabbatical/vacation time as parental leave. You’d effectively be controlling people’s reproductive timelines with this sabbatical schedule.
In terms of women being disadvantaged, I agree. But I think the answer is to make sure it’s illegal to discriminate based on current or future parental obligations and enforce that strongly, and to strongly incentivize both mothers and fathers to take their full allocated leave, and make it the same length for both parents.
- techcode 5y agoThe disadvantage due to pregnancy leave is tricky stuff - even with best intentions. (Actually same for any other longer term leave). Especially if in the X months you are away, someone needs to step in as temp replacement because you're the only person of that role in your team/unit. Basically - where does that replacement come from? And where does replacement go afterwards? It's slightly less problematic if you're 1 of say 3 or more people in the same role in the team/unit. Though even when it works out (say if not temp backfill then you have another place/team/unit to join once you're back, or you weren't only person of that role). Various changes/pivots likely lead to you coming back to something completely different from what you left, if it's even determined what exactly will you work on once you come back.