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I really cant understand the logic of forcing women back into work after 2-4 weeks. Its just not beneficial for anyone. The mum is utterly frazzled. The empl

I really cant understand the logic of forcing women back into work after 2-4 weeks. Its just not beneficial for anyone. The mum is utterly frazzled. The employer gets half an employee back Society is conditioned to think that the only practical way to raise a baby is to give up on work/get live in care. now, to look at it from a "my mum managed, I don't want to undermine the american nuclear family" point of view: Yes, mums working is an anathema, but given that exceedingly difficult to own a good house, have good health insurance and have an economically inactive partner at home, I suspect the problem here isn't the mum. I suspect its the salami slicing of wages to the average joe/joelle. Even if it undermines the american nuclear family, having such a big obstacle to the "correct"[1] type of family having babies is going to undermine the "correct" family having babies. Which means one's chosen view of family dies out with inflation. Given that _every_ other "civilised" country has some sort of rudimentary care for new parents, which doesn't acutally cost that much, I can't see any reasonable objection to not having it. [1]I'm not going to define what correct is, its divisive and allows people to project what they think is wrong with "the other side" who ever they might be, rather than engage with the specifics at hand.

bko 5y ago
> Given that _every_ other "civilised" country has some sort of rudimentary care for new parents, which doesn't acutally cost that much, I can't see any reasonable objection to not having it. Giving a special benefit that will for the most part only be exercised by women discourages hiring women. You can still think its worth it, but don't pretend like you're baffled by anyone who would object or question how this impacts women.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  This graph shows the gender pay gap trending down in the UK since they implemented parental leave: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... This graph shows women's employment rate trending up in the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/lf25/lms https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
  - bko 5y ago
    Policy changes don't exist in a vacuum. I'm not interested in studies that show something. I'm interested in a mental model that results in employers being indifferent to hiring men or women when statistically women are much more likely to take a considerable amount of paid time off with restrictions set on replacing them. The model could be that employers are altruistic. Or that employers are dumb and don't realize this. Or they're sufficiently compelled by the law and the penalties and enforcement are strict enough. And your model also has to account for the system not being a closed system. For instance, its not enough that all employers are altruistic, but any prospective employers that could enter the market would similarly be altruistic. Again, it could be worth it, but don't pretend that there's no disincentive by this policy.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      >I'm not interested in studies that show something. An interesting way to think, to say the least.
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      This isn't a model. its not a study, its a metric collected from the UK for the last 20 years. The arguments for "not hiring women because they'll just go and get pregnant" have largely been settled in the UK. shared parental leave is a thing, its just what happens. Employers that don't facilitate it are punished, either by employment tribunal, or people leaving to join somewhere that does.
      - bko 5y ago
        > This isn't a model. its not a study, its a metric collected from the UK for the last 20 years. And absolutely nothing else changed in the UK in the last 20 years that may affect this number? Logic would tell you the disincentive exists. Looking at aggregate country data over 20 years doesn't tell you anything about a single policy. > Employers that don't facilitate it are punished, either by employment tribunal, or people leaving to join somewhere that does. That's a lot of employers to keep track of. In terms of people leaving for jobs that do offer paid parental leave only works for those wishing to take parental leave. If someone does not wish to have children, she would be willing to take a higher salary in lieu of a company that provides generous parental leave.
- TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
  Agreed, this sounds like a very good reason to ensure parental leave is available for both men and women.
  - fileeditview 5y ago
    It's like that here in Germany. It's a little more complicated but in the end mom and dad can split up to 14 months of paid parental leave time where no one can take more than 12 months. Now the pay does not replace a full salary of course. It is a percentage of your pay up to a maximum of 1800€. I know many dads (myself included) that have used this program.
    - MandieD 5y ago
      It’s one of my favorite things about Germany. Here in (relatively) socially conservative greater Nuremberg, the split tends to be 12 months Mom, two months Dad, with Dad taking a month right after birth, and another when Mom goes back to work, but that “max 12 months of 14” pushes a lot of dads to take those two months. Since the pay is capped at 1800, I know a few fathers who didn’t take even their two months because they were living at the edge of their paychecks (yes, it’s possible to live a little too large anywhere, and Germans aren’t immune), and one mother who went back to work at the end of the eight weeks post-birth that we’re absolutely forbidden to work (but are paid quite close to our pre-maternal net pay) because she was the primary earner. It’s also rougher on single mothers than partnered ones, of course, but at least isn’t as harsh for them here as it is back in the US, and for low earners, 2/3 of your previous net + 200 child benefit is not much less than net + child care (subsidized for big earners, highly subsidized for lower earners) + general costs of working. “But you could have saved even more than that over the past few years if you didn’t have to pay really high German income taxes!” Yes, we certainly could have, and would have, given our behavior even with taxes the way they are. However… Most people wouldn’t/couldn’t, and because the benefit is so widespread, employers expect you’ll take it and have policies in place to accommodate it. The fact that a maternity year is normal makes it less of a career risk, and the same with several months away for fathers.
  - kgwgk 5y ago
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  Give the benefits to dads too. 4 weeks for the first kid is challenging. It could be different for 2+ kids, but remember that every child has a few complications when they are born, that. Fade away after a while.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    It is in the UK, or rather it's given to both, and up to them how they split it.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Yeah, sure. Only the american libertarian knows how things really work. All those other countries are stupid, and because of their stupidity, look at them, all the women are out of the labor market.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  So UK maternity leave is shared. Its a year with 6 months "pay" How its taken is up to the parents. The people that I know who've taken it have split it fairly evenly. (I know I know sample size.) I did not take any, as I was not eligible at the time. As someone who does a lot of recruiting, I don't think "hmm I'm going to have to pay this woman for mat leave" because frankly that's bollocks, who knows who's going to be here for six months, 1 year or 8? From a purely business point of view, the women that have come back from maternity are normally bargains. They don't ask for more pay, they are flexible and are loyal, assuming we have made the correct allowances for being parents. also being a parent in tech allows people to deal much better with the toddler tantrums/playground fights that seem to be common in this industry.
  - er4hn 5y ago
    > also being a parent in tech allows people to deal much better with the toddler tantrums/playground fights that seem to be common in this industry. An insight that comes from a place of being forced to be more mature yourself. Well said!
  - MandieD 5y ago
    Solid parenting advice, or a consulting technique: the “wish list” from “How to talk so kids will listen, how to listen so kids will talk”, or putting something that seems ridiculous into the backlog to keep the meeting moving. Wonderful comment that brought this book and idea to my attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468582
- timssopomo 5y ago
  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?view=... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OECD_gender_wage_gap.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OEC... Seems like countries with paid leave have comparable or higher rates of labor participation and (on average) lower gender pay gap.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  Maternity/parental leave is typically paid by the state, not by the employers. If both parents can take a leave, then it does not discourage hiring women.
endisneigh 5y ago
Who is forcing women back to work?
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Reality. Way too many people only can make ends meet by both partners being full-time employed - and in some cases (such as shown by a recent Last Week Tonight episode) even that is not enough to prevent being homeless. Rents are too high, and wages are too low.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    People don’t have to have children. And people can and do stay at home with their children at all income levels.
    - jseban 5y ago
      Yeah and also, most (upper) middle class families in the US are making a lot more money so can actually afford much more time home with their children, compared to the paid leave that Europe has. So that's actually better from one point of view, the only "downside" then is traditional gender roles. Who cares about 1 year maternal leave, when you can already afford 10 years maternal leave? Would be very interesting to see actual time spent not working, and caring for children at home, in relation to amount of paid leave. And across income brackets. Would not be surprised if it comes out to more time with children in many cases even though paid leave is less..
    - comeonseriously 5y ago
      > People don’t have to have children. Ah, here we go. This is a veiled "only people who have enough money should have children" argument. > And people can and do stay at home with their children at all income levels. I am sure that disproportionately favors certain income levels.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bradleyjg 5y ago
Maybe we should look at why three sectors of the economy have had insane cost growth for three plus decades (housing, healthcare, education) and fix that instead of trying to band aid the negative consequences?
- sofixa 5y ago
  Even if you fix those three, no parental leave is barbaric.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Is this kind of thing supposed to persuasive? You’ve presented no argument whatsoever. Is the idea that if use an emotionally laden term like “barbaric” you think it will browbeat people into falling into line with your opinion?
    - sofixa 5y ago
      It was meant to illustrate that we're talking about separate things. "Fixing" three things getting more expensive doesn't in any way negate the barbarism that is no parental leave. Even if you think that them getting cheaper will mean the return of a stay at home parent (assuming they actually want it), it's still barbaric not to give the other parent an opportunity to spend time and help with the infant.
    - dralley 5y ago
      This is one of those things that shouldn't need to be explained, even to 20-something tech bros who've never had a child themselves.
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        Of course not. Nothing needs to be explained or justified anymore. We have an entire generation so fully confident in the absolute correctness and obviousness of every single iota of their many strongly held moral opinions that even asking for an explanation offends them. And they can’t understand why they keep on failing to achieve their policy goals. PS: I don’t think there were too many <= 19 year olds signing up for hacker news in 2011.
refurb 5y ago
As a parent who got 6 months that barely fucking scratches the surface of the time it take to raise a human. Subsidize me until they are in public school and I’ll high five you.
- jbreiding 5y ago
  I would argue we just need to bring public school earlier. We don’t need this tied to an employer like health insurance as this is something that benefits us all.
  - jbreiding 5y ago
    My word choices might not have been the best here. But consider if everyone was able to take the first year at some percentage less of regular salary. Then public funded care available with learning included? My wife would have preferred this to having exhausted fmla just before giving birth because of early complications. Returning to work was not an option for her, 6 years later returning to work was one of the most emotionally draining experiences for her.
  - belorn 5y ago
    Plato suggested that the state should have communal rearing of children. We could have a society were children goes to public school as soon they can take formula.
- mattferderer 5y ago
  I would suggest a compromise of "until they have all of their primary teeth". There is no sleep until all those **** are in.
- echelon 5y ago
  > Subsidize me until they are in public school and I’ll high five you. I know this is an exaggeration, but it drew my interest. This expects that the rest of us have to work to subsidize you having children for five to six years. I'm wholly on board with helping parents raise children. Children are our future. But at some threshold of subsidization this equation tips and actively offloads the entire burden onto those without children. Both of my parents had jobs when I was growing up. Why are we suddenly expecting this to change? Childcare can be paid for at rates under minimum wage in aggregate. Look at our school system and daycare businesses. Just because you think your child deserves only the best does not make it economical, and lots of people make this work. Thousands of years of child rearing has happened in suboptimal conditions. Raising children has been an incredible chore more often than not throughout history. It's only been briefly punctuated by moments of ease, and even then, it wasn't evenly distributed. Children are not easy. I think modern parents are seeing their childfree peers and remarking on the delta in quality of life. I honestly don't mean this as an attack. I'm just interested in the varying perspectives on this.
the-dude 5y ago
Not all women are equal. I have seen women who gave birth just a couple of weeks before, thriving & bursting of energy in the workplace.
- kchl 5y ago
  I beseech anyone to take a comment on this subject from someone who chose “the dude” as his handle with a big, big grain of salt, and to note that this dude totally missed the point of this editorial.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Totally not cool ad hominem. Very undude. Also, I replied to a comment, not at the top level.
- nzmsv 5y ago
  Sucks to be the kid of these bursting energy balls though. Hope the kid has a nanny or a grandmother who isn't like that.
  - drewzero1 5y ago
    Or a father.
    - nzmsv 5y ago
      True. I think a child would benefit the most from an involved male and a female figure in their lives, but even one is better than none. In other words, ideally that should read "and a father" ;)
      - drewzero1 5y ago
        Even better! :)
- bell-cot 5y ago
  Old family wisdom: There is no "normal" for normal (meaning non-C-section) childbirth. A mother's physical and mental recovery timelines will vary (possibly widely) with each birth, and assumptions that it'll just keep getting easier tend to end badly. (C-sections are somewhat more predictable on the physical recovery side...but do not lack for issues of their own.)
sershe 5y ago
That doesn't start with the right premise. An employee might be frazzled after a night of partying but nobody advocates for "hangover leave"... I don't understand what the point is in society indulging and encouraging somebody's child-rearing hobby when it doesn't need population growth; moreover given the carbon impact of a first world child and potential supply of immigrants willing to move here, it might want to actively discourage it. EDIT2: for the meta, I don't care about points, I just find downvoting-as-disagreeing without a response to argument in extremely bad taste. And I am smug because I believe it indicates the disagree-er admits that I am right ;) EDIT: thanks for the downvotes! I assume these are insulted parents who feel like they are making a great contribution to society, but don't have a real argument to respond. Sorry, you are not. It's a hobby. Nobody else cares any more than they do for a cool ski run or an amateur documentary. Get over yourself.
- pc86 5y ago
  For the record, I only downvoted after I read the smug self-satisfied edit, and only then because discussing your fake internet points is exceedingly boring (not to mention violates the site guidelines).
  - sershe 5y ago
    I don't refer to downvotes because of the internet points at all, only as a method of disagreeing. [This is all for before-the-edit] According to (or at least in the spirit) of guidelines, downvoting is not for the comments that you disagree with, it's for comments that don't contribute or make a point in the discussion. So, reddit-style passive-aggressive downvoting (again, before the meta-edit) really ticks me off. If you have something of substance to say, respond. Otherwise, what are you trying to do? The reason is I'm smug is in fact, yes, I think less of someone silently downvoting-as-disagreeing, as a discussion participant, than I would of someone who would have insulted me in all caps. At least the latter person stands by their potentially-unjustified position in person ;)
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Please also don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes and certainly not by getting nasty about them. Your comment was correctly downvoted because it was a major step further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
tomp 5y ago
You're free to move to Europe, earn 3x less, and get 1-2 years parental leave (actually not just for mothers in some countries!)
- acdha 5y ago
  This isn't practical advice for most people and a significant fraction of the people affected are not looking at anything like a 3x pay cut, especially when you factor in the significantly greater amount we pay for healthcare, which parents will likely use more than they previously did.
- ahevia 5y ago
  An extremely impractical solution for majority of Americans who don’t want to uproot their life. Surely we can show some empathy and demand better benefits for all. You know youre included in that pool too! I’m sure most folks on their deathbed will be glad they spent more time with their children then at their desk.
- antoinealb 5y ago
  I think lumping together all European countries like that is not really helpful: not many european countries have a median income one third of the american one, and some are even higher than the US one. wrt duration of maternity leave, western europe is pretty much at 3-6 months, while some of the eastern countries go longer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave)
  - kazen44 5y ago
    Also, immigrating to european countries for americans is not so easy, especially if you are not in a high paying in demand field.
- pertymcpert 5y ago
  Are you actually proposing that as a solution? Are you against paid parental leave?
mbesto 5y ago
> Its just not beneficial for anyone. I'm personally a proponent of parental leave, but I'll answer this one point. "Forcing women" back into work after pregnancy is an attempt my mothers to minimize wage decreases. All of the evidence for wage discrepancies between male and female is due largely to women's role of motherhood. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/motherhood-and-the-gender-productivity-gap/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/motherhood...
- danShumway 5y ago
  I wonder how much this would change if parental leave was also granted to fathers at similar or equal rates. The article mentions postpartum issues -- this is stuff that isn't really mitigated by having one parent alone care for a kid. If you're struggling with depression by yourself in the house with a kid... it's nice to have more people around to help. Even if you're not struggling with depression, having people around to help with care can let you avoid the worst parts of the whole 3 hours of sleep a night thing. And from a "nuclear family" point of view, most cultural traditionalists I know would argue to me that it's good for kids to be in multiple-parent households. When people talk about stereotypical traditionalist nuclear families, these are very often families that have extended support structures of multiple people involved in child-rearing. Opponents to parental leave (even feminist opponents) are in some ways attempting to equalize the time-off risk between mothers[0] and fathers. And that can be done by reducing the mother's time off to zero to match the father, but it can also be done by letting fathers get involved in early child-rearing and giving them more time to help their partners. ---- [0] And nonbinary/transgender/adoptive/etc parents too of course, but I'm just using a shorthand here.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Yes exactly. The only way to close gender gaps is to force men to do less work outside the home, not women more. (Men doing more work inside the home and women less follows from that more easily than in the other direction.) Better childcare / pre-k can help too, but there musn't be a gap between when at least partial leave ends and childcare begins. Good thing we all work to much already, so reducing total "public sphere" labor hours is not a huge issue.
colechristensen 5y ago
I think the core of the problem has a few basic parts: * the average person/family is trying to live a little beyond their means * “work needed to do” is like a gas, it expands to fit the hours worked * rent seeking elements expand to keep #1 true The takeaway is that there is a lot of “work” being done in the economy that doesn’t need to be done because prices will always rise a little past what people can pay comfortably so… people work too much and think that they need to. If you cut the lifetime hours worked by half, the standard of living probably wouldn’t change much. The solution to this is radical modification of the markets which leech away extra income. One such method would be to control real estate prices by enacting huge taxes on rental property and profits simultaneously making it extremely difficult or impossible to acquire large loans for real estate (owned or rented out). Making owning s home that isn’t your primary residence a huge financial liability and removing the ability to sell it for high prices would crash the market and remove the rent paid to landlords or “rent” paid to banks for mortgages. Both betting industries that take far more value than they give back.
- mjevans 5y ago
  Regulations must be altered to encourage building sufficient housing where it's wanted. After the prerequisite step is taken, then the tax code should be changed to fix that rent seeking, in houses yes, but generally too. Seeking rent is not an overall economic good, but a wealth transfer mechanism from the poor to the rich.
- chinchilla2020 5y ago
  This was attempted in New York City and failed miserably. Property values rise in locations that are highly desirable regardless of government or market intervention. It has more do to with the surface area of the earth than any particular policy. A government system will result in similar issues - Look at the retirees and trust funder tenants living in mostly-empty 4 bedroom rent controlled apartments in NYC. You have to allocate the limited space somehow. You cannot fit more people into one square meter of land without building higher or denser, and building higher is not always a simple option.
  - 5y ago
JohnWhigham 5y ago
I keep saying it: the ERA was a (successful) ruse by the elite class to further dilute and weaken the middle class dressed up with a feminist guise.
- mikestew 5y ago
  You might not have to "keep saying it" if you gave a little more context and detail as to what you're on about. That, and explain the acronym for those that are under, oh, about sixty years old.
- celtain 5y ago
  You know the ERA hasn't been ratified, right?
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Yes? You also know that something as momentous as a constitutional amendment doesn't happen in a vacuum either, right? It still had the effect of nearly doubling the size of the workforce, and now ~50 years later we're now seeing what it means to have a dual-earner family income. The middle class is rapidly shrinking and the dream of owning a house for many newlyweds is fast receding in the rear view mirror, but hey, equality! Right?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > It still had the effect of nearly doubling the size of the workforce No, it didn't. That ship had already sailed before ERA was proposed, and was a major driver for it.
    - adolph 5y ago
      It is interesting to think about the societal changes that drive or are driven by a constitutional amendment. If the ERA was a 1920s progressivist goal [1] then maybe one could say that it was part of a broader change to formalize work effort that existed in informal household economies. If the ERA reference is to the early 1970s effort [1] then it was a lagging indicator since the economic integration of women into the formal economy was well underway and would arrive at an equilibrium by the 1990s [0]. Exploring the counterfactual numbers: If the workforce gender share remained at the 4:6 F:M ratio of 1972, then a male workforce of 85m would mean a female workforce of 34m instead of the actual 75m. This would lead to a total workforce of 119m instead of 160m, a decrease of 41m or 25%. Would the USSR have won the cold war if the US had 25% less economic growth over the last 50 years? 0. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/civilianlfbysex https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/civilianlfbysex 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment
xibalba 5y ago
> forcing women back into work This is not what happens. No one is being "forced" to do anything. Rather, free individuals (speaking from a U.S. centric viewpoint) make a choice to become pregnant and birth a child. It seems reasonable to me that the result of this private choice should not be the burden of others. Note that FMLA (again, U.S.-centric) grants unpaid leave. In other words, you can't be fired for certain finite length absences resulting from certain medical occurrences. But you're not entitled to payment for non-work. So, when Mom gives birth, she absolutely has the right to say, "You know what, I can't/don't want to work." She just isn't entitled to force a company to pay her for the privilege of her non-work. I may be in the minority on this, but I find it really weird how people, more and more nowadays, believe the consequences private, personal choices should be borne by everyone else. The entitlement is really hard to stomach. This idea seems to be coalescing with a belief that "stuff just happens". But the reality is, the economy–any economy–is powered by labor. People need to work. If enough people don't, we go back to the default state of reality: poverty, starvation, etc etc. > The employer gets half an employee back This is a self defeating claim. Under your (implied) proposal, the employer would just not get any employee back for an even longer period of time. Or, worse, they have to hire a temporary employee to fill in, and are now paying two sets of wages, all as a result of decisions over which they have absolutely influence!
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>I may be in the minority on this, but I find it really weird how people, more and more nowadays, believe the consequences private, personal choices should be borne by everyone else Starting or not starting a company is a completely private decision, yet we as a society have recognized that having entrepreneurs and a functional business culture is very important and actually profitable. So most governments, even the American ones, give grants and support to new companies to prop them up. Even though again, they are the consequence of someone's personal choice - yet the taxpayer bears the burden. Sounds familiar? Bearing children is a benefit to the society as a whole - someone has to work, someone has to pay taxes, etc etc. So as a society we support mothers by allowing them to take maternal leave, even if having a child is very much a personal choice. Also I don't see anyone advocating that companies pay mothers through entirety of maternity pay - in most countries it's the public budget that does after some short initial time period. >>People need to work. If enough people don't, we go back to the default state of reality: poverty, starvation, etc etc. And within reason, people need to have children or the country you are part of won't have enough citizens to support it within few decades - that's the reality of life.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
There is nothing wrong with parental leave, but I don't see a compelling reason to have it be mandated by law. If company wants to offer it, good for them. It may help retaining senior employees who reached the phase in their life when they want to have children. I don't think we should incentivise families with two working parents and young kids. It increases the pool of workers keeping wages down, benefiting employers, and increases stress in the family, likely contributing to the epidemic of broken families we're looking at - which have negative effects on these generations' mental health and crime history. If you're middle class and you manage well your spending and are willing to relocate / look into alternative career paths, it's possible to maintain a family on one career and I firmly believe it's better for the children. If you're having kids you can either outsource your kids early years education to the government or do it yourself. There are some studies (albeit I find social studies to be murky and hard to rely on) finding correlations between UK government programs paying for nurseries and increase in teenage crime roughly 15 years later. Study or not, I think that kids before 2/3 should not go to nursery, the social trauma of being unattended with other bigger kids needs to wait a bit longer, once they're ready. In our family, we didn't send the kids to nursery before 2.5/3 years and my partner didn't work (for an employer, she kept working on her own personal projects, for "entertainment"). They integrated in nursery very well, we never had detachment problems and they're fairly well behaved. We're both developers, so maintaining the family on one salary is trivial, but I've met people from all walks of life who managed to do it. Sure, some people are simply not creating enough value for society to break even on one salary and that's suboptimal. I'd advise to sort their life out to earn enough to support a new family, before making babies. There are plenty of studies that link stable family structures to success and unstable family structures to crime and mental health issues. The last time the government meddled with families, it didn't end up well for the black community: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/03/the_decline_of_the_africanamerican_family.html https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/03/the_decline... And nowadays the stats for broken families, across all ethnicities, is higher than ever.
- jseban 5y ago
  I don't think companies should be involved in people's personal lives at all, it's out of scope. The state is the only one that can subsidise a particular constellation of family life. You would open up to all kind of different excuses for why people should get special treatment in the work place because of their private life.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
"forcing women back into work" - I think it is simply a matter of money, not forcing. If you can afford it, you take the time off, if not, you go back to work.

bko 5y ago

> Given that _every_ other "civilised" country has some sort of rudimentary care for new parents, which doesn't acutally cost that much, I can't see any reasonable objection to not having it. Giving a special benefit that will for the most part only be exercised by women discourages hiring women. You can still think its worth it, but don't pretend like you're baffled by anyone who would object or question how this impacts women.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
This graph shows the gender pay gap trending down in the UK since they implemented parental leave: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... This graph shows women's employment rate trending up in the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/lf25/lms https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
- bko 5y ago
  Policy changes don't exist in a vacuum. I'm not interested in studies that show something. I'm interested in a mental model that results in employers being indifferent to hiring men or women when statistically women are much more likely to take a considerable amount of paid time off with restrictions set on replacing them. The model could be that employers are altruistic. Or that employers are dumb and don't realize this. Or they're sufficiently compelled by the law and the penalties and enforcement are strict enough. And your model also has to account for the system not being a closed system. For instance, its not enough that all employers are altruistic, but any prospective employers that could enter the market would similarly be altruistic. Again, it could be worth it, but don't pretend that there's no disincentive by this policy.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    >I'm not interested in studies that show something. An interesting way to think, to say the least.
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    This isn't a model. its not a study, its a metric collected from the UK for the last 20 years. The arguments for "not hiring women because they'll just go and get pregnant" have largely been settled in the UK. shared parental leave is a thing, its just what happens. Employers that don't facilitate it are punished, either by employment tribunal, or people leaving to join somewhere that does.
    - bko 5y ago
      > This isn't a model. its not a study, its a metric collected from the UK for the last 20 years. And absolutely nothing else changed in the UK in the last 20 years that may affect this number? Logic would tell you the disincentive exists. Looking at aggregate country data over 20 years doesn't tell you anything about a single policy. > Employers that don't facilitate it are punished, either by employment tribunal, or people leaving to join somewhere that does. That's a lot of employers to keep track of. In terms of people leaving for jobs that do offer paid parental leave only works for those wishing to take parental leave. If someone does not wish to have children, she would be willing to take a higher salary in lieu of a company that provides generous parental leave.
TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
Agreed, this sounds like a very good reason to ensure parental leave is available for both men and women.
- fileeditview 5y ago
  It's like that here in Germany. It's a little more complicated but in the end mom and dad can split up to 14 months of paid parental leave time where no one can take more than 12 months. Now the pay does not replace a full salary of course. It is a percentage of your pay up to a maximum of 1800€. I know many dads (myself included) that have used this program.
  - MandieD 5y ago
    It’s one of my favorite things about Germany. Here in (relatively) socially conservative greater Nuremberg, the split tends to be 12 months Mom, two months Dad, with Dad taking a month right after birth, and another when Mom goes back to work, but that “max 12 months of 14” pushes a lot of dads to take those two months. Since the pay is capped at 1800, I know a few fathers who didn’t take even their two months because they were living at the edge of their paychecks (yes, it’s possible to live a little too large anywhere, and Germans aren’t immune), and one mother who went back to work at the end of the eight weeks post-birth that we’re absolutely forbidden to work (but are paid quite close to our pre-maternal net pay) because she was the primary earner. It’s also rougher on single mothers than partnered ones, of course, but at least isn’t as harsh for them here as it is back in the US, and for low earners, 2/3 of your previous net + 200 child benefit is not much less than net + child care (subsidized for big earners, highly subsidized for lower earners) + general costs of working. “But you could have saved even more than that over the past few years if you didn’t have to pay really high German income taxes!” Yes, we certainly could have, and would have, given our behavior even with taxes the way they are. However… Most people wouldn’t/couldn’t, and because the benefit is so widespread, employers expect you’ll take it and have policies in place to accommodate it. The fact that a maternity year is normal makes it less of a career risk, and the same with several months away for fathers.
- kgwgk 5y ago
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
Give the benefits to dads too. 4 weeks for the first kid is challenging. It could be different for 2+ kids, but remember that every child has a few complications when they are born, that. Fade away after a while.
- OJFord 5y ago
  It is in the UK, or rather it's given to both, and up to them how they split it.
elzbardico 5y ago
Yeah, sure. Only the american libertarian knows how things really work. All those other countries are stupid, and because of their stupidity, look at them, all the women are out of the labor market.
KaiserPro 5y ago
So UK maternity leave is shared. Its a year with 6 months "pay" How its taken is up to the parents. The people that I know who've taken it have split it fairly evenly. (I know I know sample size.) I did not take any, as I was not eligible at the time. As someone who does a lot of recruiting, I don't think "hmm I'm going to have to pay this woman for mat leave" because frankly that's bollocks, who knows who's going to be here for six months, 1 year or 8? From a purely business point of view, the women that have come back from maternity are normally bargains. They don't ask for more pay, they are flexible and are loyal, assuming we have made the correct allowances for being parents. also being a parent in tech allows people to deal much better with the toddler tantrums/playground fights that seem to be common in this industry.
- er4hn 5y ago
  > also being a parent in tech allows people to deal much better with the toddler tantrums/playground fights that seem to be common in this industry. An insight that comes from a place of being forced to be more mature yourself. Well said!
- MandieD 5y ago
  Solid parenting advice, or a consulting technique: the “wish list” from “How to talk so kids will listen, how to listen so kids will talk”, or putting something that seems ridiculous into the backlog to keep the meeting moving. Wonderful comment that brought this book and idea to my attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468582
timssopomo 5y ago
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?view=... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OECD_gender_wage_gap.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OEC... Seems like countries with paid leave have comparable or higher rates of labor participation and (on average) lower gender pay gap.
Viliam1234 5y ago
Maternity/parental leave is typically paid by the state, not by the employers. If both parents can take a leave, then it does not discourage hiring women.

endisneigh 5y ago

Who is forcing women back to work?

mschuster91 5y ago
Reality. Way too many people only can make ends meet by both partners being full-time employed - and in some cases (such as shown by a recent Last Week Tonight episode) even that is not enough to prevent being homeless. Rents are too high, and wages are too low.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  People don’t have to have children. And people can and do stay at home with their children at all income levels.
  - jseban 5y ago
    Yeah and also, most (upper) middle class families in the US are making a lot more money so can actually afford much more time home with their children, compared to the paid leave that Europe has. So that's actually better from one point of view, the only "downside" then is traditional gender roles. Who cares about 1 year maternal leave, when you can already afford 10 years maternal leave? Would be very interesting to see actual time spent not working, and caring for children at home, in relation to amount of paid leave. And across income brackets. Would not be surprised if it comes out to more time with children in many cases even though paid leave is less..
  - comeonseriously 5y ago
    > People don’t have to have children. Ah, here we go. This is a veiled "only people who have enough money should have children" argument. > And people can and do stay at home with their children at all income levels. I am sure that disproportionately favors certain income levels.
    - endisneigh 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bradleyjg 5y ago

Maybe we should look at why three sectors of the economy have had insane cost growth for three plus decades (housing, healthcare, education) and fix that instead of trying to band aid the negative consequences?

sofixa 5y ago
Even if you fix those three, no parental leave is barbaric.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Is this kind of thing supposed to persuasive? You’ve presented no argument whatsoever. Is the idea that if use an emotionally laden term like “barbaric” you think it will browbeat people into falling into line with your opinion?
  - sofixa 5y ago
    It was meant to illustrate that we're talking about separate things. "Fixing" three things getting more expensive doesn't in any way negate the barbarism that is no parental leave. Even if you think that them getting cheaper will mean the return of a stay at home parent (assuming they actually want it), it's still barbaric not to give the other parent an opportunity to spend time and help with the infant.
  - dralley 5y ago
    This is one of those things that shouldn't need to be explained, even to 20-something tech bros who've never had a child themselves.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      Of course not. Nothing needs to be explained or justified anymore. We have an entire generation so fully confident in the absolute correctness and obviousness of every single iota of their many strongly held moral opinions that even asking for an explanation offends them. And they can’t understand why they keep on failing to achieve their policy goals. PS: I don’t think there were too many <= 19 year olds signing up for hacker news in 2011.

refurb 5y ago

As a parent who got 6 months that barely fucking scratches the surface of the time it take to raise a human. Subsidize me until they are in public school and I’ll high five you.

jbreiding 5y ago
I would argue we just need to bring public school earlier. We don’t need this tied to an employer like health insurance as this is something that benefits us all.
- jbreiding 5y ago
  My word choices might not have been the best here. But consider if everyone was able to take the first year at some percentage less of regular salary. Then public funded care available with learning included? My wife would have preferred this to having exhausted fmla just before giving birth because of early complications. Returning to work was not an option for her, 6 years later returning to work was one of the most emotionally draining experiences for her.
- belorn 5y ago
  Plato suggested that the state should have communal rearing of children. We could have a society were children goes to public school as soon they can take formula.
mattferderer 5y ago
I would suggest a compromise of "until they have all of their primary teeth". There is no sleep until all those **** are in.
echelon 5y ago
> Subsidize me until they are in public school and I’ll high five you. I know this is an exaggeration, but it drew my interest. This expects that the rest of us have to work to subsidize you having children for five to six years. I'm wholly on board with helping parents raise children. Children are our future. But at some threshold of subsidization this equation tips and actively offloads the entire burden onto those without children. Both of my parents had jobs when I was growing up. Why are we suddenly expecting this to change? Childcare can be paid for at rates under minimum wage in aggregate. Look at our school system and daycare businesses. Just because you think your child deserves only the best does not make it economical, and lots of people make this work. Thousands of years of child rearing has happened in suboptimal conditions. Raising children has been an incredible chore more often than not throughout history. It's only been briefly punctuated by moments of ease, and even then, it wasn't evenly distributed. Children are not easy. I think modern parents are seeing their childfree peers and remarking on the delta in quality of life. I honestly don't mean this as an attack. I'm just interested in the varying perspectives on this.

the-dude 5y ago

Not all women are equal. I have seen women who gave birth just a couple of weeks before, thriving & bursting of energy in the workplace.

kchl 5y ago
I beseech anyone to take a comment on this subject from someone who chose “the dude” as his handle with a big, big grain of salt, and to note that this dude totally missed the point of this editorial.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Totally not cool ad hominem. Very undude. Also, I replied to a comment, not at the top level.
nzmsv 5y ago
Sucks to be the kid of these bursting energy balls though. Hope the kid has a nanny or a grandmother who isn't like that.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  Or a father.
  - nzmsv 5y ago
    True. I think a child would benefit the most from an involved male and a female figure in their lives, but even one is better than none. In other words, ideally that should read "and a father" ;)
    - drewzero1 5y ago
      Even better! :)
bell-cot 5y ago
Old family wisdom: There is no "normal" for normal (meaning non-C-section) childbirth. A mother's physical and mental recovery timelines will vary (possibly widely) with each birth, and assumptions that it'll just keep getting easier tend to end badly. (C-sections are somewhat more predictable on the physical recovery side...but do not lack for issues of their own.)

sershe 5y ago

That doesn't start with the right premise. An employee might be frazzled after a night of partying but nobody advocates for "hangover leave"... I don't understand what the point is in society indulging and encouraging somebody's child-rearing hobby when it doesn't need population growth; moreover given the carbon impact of a first world child and potential supply of immigrants willing to move here, it might want to actively discourage it. EDIT2: for the meta, I don't care about points, I just find downvoting-as-disagreeing without a response to argument in extremely bad taste. And I am smug because I believe it indicates the disagree-er admits that I am right ;) EDIT: thanks for the downvotes! I assume these are insulted parents who feel like they are making a great contribution to society, but don't have a real argument to respond. Sorry, you are not. It's a hobby. Nobody else cares any more than they do for a cool ski run or an amateur documentary. Get over yourself.

pc86 5y ago
For the record, I only downvoted after I read the smug self-satisfied edit, and only then because discussing your fake internet points is exceedingly boring (not to mention violates the site guidelines).
- sershe 5y ago
  I don't refer to downvotes because of the internet points at all, only as a method of disagreeing. [This is all for before-the-edit] According to (or at least in the spirit) of guidelines, downvoting is not for the comments that you disagree with, it's for comments that don't contribute or make a point in the discussion. So, reddit-style passive-aggressive downvoting (again, before the meta-edit) really ticks me off. If you have something of substance to say, respond. Otherwise, what are you trying to do? The reason is I'm smug is in fact, yes, I think less of someone silently downvoting-as-disagreeing, as a discussion participant, than I would of someone who would have insulted me in all caps. At least the latter person stands by their potentially-unjustified position in person ;)
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Please also don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes and certainly not by getting nasty about them. Your comment was correctly downvoted because it was a major step further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomp 5y ago

You're free to move to Europe, earn 3x less, and get 1-2 years parental leave (actually not just for mothers in some countries!)

acdha 5y ago
This isn't practical advice for most people and a significant fraction of the people affected are not looking at anything like a 3x pay cut, especially when you factor in the significantly greater amount we pay for healthcare, which parents will likely use more than they previously did.
ahevia 5y ago
An extremely impractical solution for majority of Americans who don’t want to uproot their life. Surely we can show some empathy and demand better benefits for all. You know youre included in that pool too! I’m sure most folks on their deathbed will be glad they spent more time with their children then at their desk.
antoinealb 5y ago
I think lumping together all European countries like that is not really helpful: not many european countries have a median income one third of the american one, and some are even higher than the US one. wrt duration of maternity leave, western europe is pretty much at 3-6 months, while some of the eastern countries go longer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave)
- kazen44 5y ago
  Also, immigrating to european countries for americans is not so easy, especially if you are not in a high paying in demand field.
pertymcpert 5y ago
Are you actually proposing that as a solution? Are you against paid parental leave?

mbesto 5y ago

> Its just not beneficial for anyone. I'm personally a proponent of parental leave, but I'll answer this one point. "Forcing women" back into work after pregnancy is an attempt my mothers to minimize wage decreases. All of the evidence for wage discrepancies between male and female is due largely to women's role of motherhood. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/motherhood-and-the-gender-productivity-gap/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/motherhood...

danShumway 5y ago
I wonder how much this would change if parental leave was also granted to fathers at similar or equal rates. The article mentions postpartum issues -- this is stuff that isn't really mitigated by having one parent alone care for a kid. If you're struggling with depression by yourself in the house with a kid... it's nice to have more people around to help. Even if you're not struggling with depression, having people around to help with care can let you avoid the worst parts of the whole 3 hours of sleep a night thing. And from a "nuclear family" point of view, most cultural traditionalists I know would argue to me that it's good for kids to be in multiple-parent households. When people talk about stereotypical traditionalist nuclear families, these are very often families that have extended support structures of multiple people involved in child-rearing. Opponents to parental leave (even feminist opponents) are in some ways attempting to equalize the time-off risk between mothers[0] and fathers. And that can be done by reducing the mother's time off to zero to match the father, but it can also be done by letting fathers get involved in early child-rearing and giving them more time to help their partners. ---- [0] And nonbinary/transgender/adoptive/etc parents too of course, but I'm just using a shorthand here.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Yes exactly. The only way to close gender gaps is to force men to do less work outside the home, not women more. (Men doing more work inside the home and women less follows from that more easily than in the other direction.) Better childcare / pre-k can help too, but there musn't be a gap between when at least partial leave ends and childcare begins. Good thing we all work to much already, so reducing total "public sphere" labor hours is not a huge issue.

colechristensen 5y ago

I think the core of the problem has a few basic parts: * the average person/family is trying to live a little beyond their means * “work needed to do” is like a gas, it expands to fit the hours worked * rent seeking elements expand to keep #1 true The takeaway is that there is a lot of “work” being done in the economy that doesn’t need to be done because prices will always rise a little past what people can pay comfortably so… people work too much and think that they need to. If you cut the lifetime hours worked by half, the standard of living probably wouldn’t change much. The solution to this is radical modification of the markets which leech away extra income. One such method would be to control real estate prices by enacting huge taxes on rental property and profits simultaneously making it extremely difficult or impossible to acquire large loans for real estate (owned or rented out). Making owning s home that isn’t your primary residence a huge financial liability and removing the ability to sell it for high prices would crash the market and remove the rent paid to landlords or “rent” paid to banks for mortgages. Both betting industries that take far more value than they give back.

mjevans 5y ago
Regulations must be altered to encourage building sufficient housing where it's wanted. After the prerequisite step is taken, then the tax code should be changed to fix that rent seeking, in houses yes, but generally too. Seeking rent is not an overall economic good, but a wealth transfer mechanism from the poor to the rich.
chinchilla2020 5y ago
This was attempted in New York City and failed miserably. Property values rise in locations that are highly desirable regardless of government or market intervention. It has more do to with the surface area of the earth than any particular policy. A government system will result in similar issues - Look at the retirees and trust funder tenants living in mostly-empty 4 bedroom rent controlled apartments in NYC. You have to allocate the limited space somehow. You cannot fit more people into one square meter of land without building higher or denser, and building higher is not always a simple option.
- 5y ago

JohnWhigham 5y ago

I keep saying it: the ERA was a (successful) ruse by the elite class to further dilute and weaken the middle class dressed up with a feminist guise.

mikestew 5y ago
You might not have to "keep saying it" if you gave a little more context and detail as to what you're on about. That, and explain the acronym for those that are under, oh, about sixty years old.
celtain 5y ago
You know the ERA hasn't been ratified, right?
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Yes? You also know that something as momentous as a constitutional amendment doesn't happen in a vacuum either, right? It still had the effect of nearly doubling the size of the workforce, and now ~50 years later we're now seeing what it means to have a dual-earner family income. The middle class is rapidly shrinking and the dream of owning a house for many newlyweds is fast receding in the rear view mirror, but hey, equality! Right?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It still had the effect of nearly doubling the size of the workforce No, it didn't. That ship had already sailed before ERA was proposed, and was a major driver for it.
  - adolph 5y ago
    It is interesting to think about the societal changes that drive or are driven by a constitutional amendment. If the ERA was a 1920s progressivist goal [1] then maybe one could say that it was part of a broader change to formalize work effort that existed in informal household economies. If the ERA reference is to the early 1970s effort [1] then it was a lagging indicator since the economic integration of women into the formal economy was well underway and would arrive at an equilibrium by the 1990s [0]. Exploring the counterfactual numbers: If the workforce gender share remained at the 4:6 F:M ratio of 1972, then a male workforce of 85m would mean a female workforce of 34m instead of the actual 75m. This would lead to a total workforce of 119m instead of 160m, a decrease of 41m or 25%. Would the USSR have won the cold war if the US had 25% less economic growth over the last 50 years? 0. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/civilianlfbysex https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/civilianlfbysex 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment

xibalba 5y ago

> forcing women back into work This is not what happens. No one is being "forced" to do anything. Rather, free individuals (speaking from a U.S. centric viewpoint) make a choice to become pregnant and birth a child. It seems reasonable to me that the result of this private choice should not be the burden of others. Note that FMLA (again, U.S.-centric) grants unpaid leave. In other words, you can't be fired for certain finite length absences resulting from certain medical occurrences. But you're not entitled to payment for non-work. So, when Mom gives birth, she absolutely has the right to say, "You know what, I can't/don't want to work." She just isn't entitled to force a company to pay her for the privilege of her non-work. I may be in the minority on this, but I find it really weird how people, more and more nowadays, believe the consequences private, personal choices should be borne by everyone else. The entitlement is really hard to stomach. This idea seems to be coalescing with a belief that "stuff just happens". But the reality is, the economy–any economy–is powered by labor. People need to work. If enough people don't, we go back to the default state of reality: poverty, starvation, etc etc. > The employer gets half an employee back This is a self defeating claim. Under your (implied) proposal, the employer would just not get any employee back for an even longer period of time. Or, worse, they have to hire a temporary employee to fill in, and are now paying two sets of wages, all as a result of decisions over which they have absolutely influence!

gambiting 5y ago
>>I may be in the minority on this, but I find it really weird how people, more and more nowadays, believe the consequences private, personal choices should be borne by everyone else Starting or not starting a company is a completely private decision, yet we as a society have recognized that having entrepreneurs and a functional business culture is very important and actually profitable. So most governments, even the American ones, give grants and support to new companies to prop them up. Even though again, they are the consequence of someone's personal choice - yet the taxpayer bears the burden. Sounds familiar? Bearing children is a benefit to the society as a whole - someone has to work, someone has to pay taxes, etc etc. So as a society we support mothers by allowing them to take maternal leave, even if having a child is very much a personal choice. Also I don't see anyone advocating that companies pay mothers through entirety of maternity pay - in most countries it's the public budget that does after some short initial time period. >>People need to work. If enough people don't, we go back to the default state of reality: poverty, starvation, etc etc. And within reason, people need to have children or the country you are part of won't have enough citizens to support it within few decades - that's the reality of life.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

There is nothing wrong with parental leave, but I don't see a compelling reason to have it be mandated by law. If company wants to offer it, good for them. It may help retaining senior employees who reached the phase in their life when they want to have children. I don't think we should incentivise families with two working parents and young kids. It increases the pool of workers keeping wages down, benefiting employers, and increases stress in the family, likely contributing to the epidemic of broken families we're looking at - which have negative effects on these generations' mental health and crime history. If you're middle class and you manage well your spending and are willing to relocate / look into alternative career paths, it's possible to maintain a family on one career and I firmly believe it's better for the children. If you're having kids you can either outsource your kids early years education to the government or do it yourself. There are some studies (albeit I find social studies to be murky and hard to rely on) finding correlations between UK government programs paying for nurseries and increase in teenage crime roughly 15 years later. Study or not, I think that kids before 2/3 should not go to nursery, the social trauma of being unattended with other bigger kids needs to wait a bit longer, once they're ready. In our family, we didn't send the kids to nursery before 2.5/3 years and my partner didn't work (for an employer, she kept working on her own personal projects, for "entertainment"). They integrated in nursery very well, we never had detachment problems and they're fairly well behaved. We're both developers, so maintaining the family on one salary is trivial, but I've met people from all walks of life who managed to do it. Sure, some people are simply not creating enough value for society to break even on one salary and that's suboptimal. I'd advise to sort their life out to earn enough to support a new family, before making babies. There are plenty of studies that link stable family structures to success and unstable family structures to crime and mental health issues. The last time the government meddled with families, it didn't end up well for the black community: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/03/the_decline_of_the_africanamerican_family.html https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/03/the_decline... And nowadays the stats for broken families, across all ethnicities, is higher than ever.

jseban 5y ago
I don't think companies should be involved in people's personal lives at all, it's out of scope. The state is the only one that can subsidise a particular constellation of family life. You would open up to all kind of different excuses for why people should get special treatment in the work place because of their private life.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

"forcing women back into work" - I think it is simply a matter of money, not forcing. If you can afford it, you take the time off, if not, you go back to work.