4 ms·

The article doesn’t feel anything like the author has any direct experience of Sweden or the Swedish welfare and childcare system (which is awesome btw; great c

The article doesn’t feel anything like the author has any direct experience of Sweden or the Swedish welfare and childcare system (which is awesome btw; great country to be a parent as well as a child) In Sweden parents get 16 months of parental leave, to be taken before the child is 12. You get paid, but not your full salary. https://www.forsakringskassan.se/english/parents/when-the-child-is-born/parental-benefit https://www.forsakringskassan.se/english/parents/when-the-ch... A few years ago the “left” politics were trying to encourage dads to take parental leave, as mothers taking it all was making the women in the workforce less equal. And if money was the carrot then making some of the dads entitlement non-transferable was the stick. More recently the “right” is now in government and my gut reaction to hearing about this new change in policy is that it is probably trying to subtly reverse that? Seems likely.

aaron695 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
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- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  In the US at least, parental leave and other care obligations is what creates the gender wage gap [1] [2] [3]. Ergo, women being the gender to shoulder the care burden in Sweden, even with generous leave, still incurs an equality penalty. Interestingly, in Spain, when parental leave for men was made equal to women, men's desire for children declined [4]. The data also shows men desire children more than women in the US [5] and Finland [6]. Hot take thesis is that women still incur most of the cost of children, even in the most progressive socioeconomic systems. They know it, and it is a material contributing factor in the fertility rate decline. They obtain equality by opting out of reproduction, eliminating opportunity cost and other expensive penalties reproduction incurs. The cost of children is simply too damn high. Bonus comment from PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi: On Monday, PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival about her work-life balance. “The biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict,” she observed. Just as women are reaching middle management, kids need the most parenting and attention. Then when women move up the corporate ladder, they must turn their attention to aging parents. “We’re screwed. We cannot have it all.” [7] [1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-parental-leave-to-blame-for-the-gender-wage-gap https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-parental-leave-to-blame-for-th... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/20/the-link-between-parental-leave-and-the-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/20/the-link-... [3] https://www.vox.com/2018/2/19/17018380/gender-wage-gap-childcare-penalty https://www.vox.com/2018/2/19/17018380/gender-wage-gap-child... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity-leave-study-spain-men-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity... [5] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-you... [6] https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/24748-in-finland-men-across-age-groups-are-more-likely-to-want-children-than-women.html https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... [7] https://time.com/2954893/pepsico-ceo-women-cant-have-it-all/ https://time.com/2954893/pepsico-ceo-women-cant-have-it-all/
  - Panzer04 2y ago
    I mean, children are just really expensive with no financial benefit no matter how you cut it, regardless of who the parent is. It used to be that children would look after you in your old age, or would contribute to the family relatively young, etc etc, or in a single-income household with a stay at home parent incurred no material cost to the family beyond a mouth to feed. Nowadays, in a dual-income household, children cost an income to look after or daycare until they are old enough to look after themselves. Financially speaking, there's no benefit (not that children are a financial decision, but certainly the financial logic today is worse than many times in the past)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - tuatoru 2y ago
      > children are just really expensive with no financial benefit This is how screwed up our society is. It should be "work is so badly organised that it gets in the way of doing the important things in life".
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        To some, children are not important, and that is okay. Those who do want children should of course have a robust support system and accommodations made available, but those who don’t should be equally empowered to not have them. Unwanted children are an enormous source of suffering in the aggregate.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > Hot take thesis is that women still incur most of the cost of children, even in the most progressive socioeconomic systems. This shouldn't be even remotely controversial, considering the fact that men don't get pregnant. The cost to employers doesn't start with parental leaves - it starts with pregnancy, which involves medical checkups, and an early health leave, and at least in some countries[0], making the future mother effectively unfireable for the duration. In some countries (again, [0]) this can, and often is, chained to keep employment going for multiple years over multiple pregnancies, without the employee showing up even once[1]. I'm not criticizing the women or families here in any way, only pointing out that a strong incentive for gender discrimination in hiring and (perception of) wage gap comes from the employers accounting for the above. Women in child-rearing age are seen as higher-risk employees, and businesses naturally want to mitigate the risk. With that in mind, your statements that women "obtain equality by opting out of reproduction, eliminating opportunity cost and other expensive penalties reproduction incurs", and that "it is a material contributing factor in the fertility rate decline", pretty much follow directly. People aren't stupid. Companies want to mitigate risks. Couples planning to start a family consider whether they can afford it in the first place. Costs of living are rising in the west, which can't possibly not impact fertility rates. -- [0] - My home country, Poland, being one. [1] - The primary benefit isn't financial, but avoiding having a hole in your CV. Done properly, it looks indistinguishable from just working the entire time.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  If only women take parental leave, then employer attitudes will, consciously or not, consider parental leave an extra 'cost' attached to hiring women. Sweden found that this remained true even when the parental leave was explicitly made available for both parents to take. Among other reasons, making some parental leave only available for fathers is intended to further encourage fathers to take leave, until in theory people think of parental leave as a gender-neutral option. https://freepolicybriefs.org/2024/02/05/fathers-parental-leave-policy/#:~:text=Paternity%20Leave%20and%20Gender%20Gaps,et%20al.%2C%202013 https://freepolicybriefs.org/2024/02/05/fathers-parental-lea...).
  - Gibbon1 2y ago
    As much as I dislike nudges and trying to fix things via tax policy. We should let the IRS beat the snot out of companies where married men don't take enough parental leave.
    - throwaway3306a 2y ago
      Eh, no. The company has its nose up my life enough already.
    - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      IRS should beat companies where they don't take it or don't offer it?
TeMPOraL 2y ago
16 months over 12 years is not care time, it's something to use up on errands and occasional R&R. Right or left, subsidizing childcare sounds less about affecting sex balance in the workplace, and more about increasing the amount of two-income families. (Which is a ratchet and arguably a mistake, but that's another topic.) In Poland, there is proposed legislation (or did it pass already?) for the govt to pay for babysitters XOR babysitting grandparents. The idea is to allow parents to work. I imagine Sweden is going for the same thing.
- wood_spirit 2y ago
  (Sorry should add: childcare is organised and heavily subsidised in Sweden too, and all families can easily afford it if working. There are even “night care” facilities for the children of parents who work night shifts. The normal way to spend the 16 months is for the mother to take the first 6 months off after birth to care for the baby, and the father to take the next 6 months, and the child to go to a day playgroup after a year ish. And then the rest of the time is sometimes taken as one day a week for a while when the kid is older but before they start school. Lots of ways to vary it though)
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > (Which is a ratchet and arguably a mistake, but that's another topic.) What is the racket? No one is forcing two income families. That people like to be financially independent and they like quality of life with two incomes rather than one is simply people’s preferences. The only caveat to this is governments restricting the building of denser housing, but that has nothing to do with two income families.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > What is the racket? I wrote ratchet, not racket, though arguably both fit. > No one is forcing two income families. Except for all the other dual-income families. That's the ratchet. Or, the magic of supply and demand at play. In a society where single-income households are dominating, the households that choose to go dual-income suddenly have 2x the income (obviously), and effectively jump a rung higher on the socioeconomic ladder. As more and more households choose this way, there's a surplus of disposable income on the market, which reduces pressures holding prices of everything down, and additionally, creates new classes of products and services[0]. As the society transitions to predominantly dual-income households, the socioeconomic ladder readjusts - suddenly the single-income households can no longer afford to live the way they used to, as prices of everything went up (both nominally and through inflation), and there's more required spending. The ratchet has turned a step, and there is no going back. Or in a hot take form: the option for women to choose career over being a homemaker started as a choice. But, as enough women took the career option, it now became a requirement. Decades ago, a woman could find a job. Nowadays, she has to, otherwise she's going to be economically disadvantaged, whether single or with a partner. That's the ratchet. Or a bait-and-switch the market pulled on women. It's fine for couples who don't plan to start a family; sucks for those that do. -- [0] - In short: the market adjusts to keep average disposable income in a population at zero. More than zero means there's money left on the table, and someone will soon find a way to pick it up.
tuatoru 2y ago
The current fertility rate for Sweden in 2024 is 1.842 births per woman, a 0.05% decline from 2023. The fertility rate for Sweden in 2023 was 1.843 births per woman, a 0.05% decline from 2022. The fertility rate for Sweden in 2022 was 1.844 births per woman, a 0.11% decline from 2021. The fertility rate for Sweden in 2021 was 1.846 births per woman, a 0.05% decline from 2020. Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SWE/sweden/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SWE/swe... TFR of 1.8 is relatively healthy, but still sub-replacement, and the TFR of the native Swedish population is lower than that of the refugees. So not that great a country to be a parent, perhaps. Nowhere is.
- dalke 2y ago
  ???? Sweden is a great country to be a parent. Source: I'm an immigrant to Sweden with two Swedish-born kids. My mother was one of 8. That doesn't make rural Michigan in the 1950s a great place to be a parent. That means, as an aunt put it, that my grandparents didn't know about birth control.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

aaron695 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 2y ago
In the US at least, parental leave and other care obligations is what creates the gender wage gap [1] [2] [3]. Ergo, women being the gender to shoulder the care burden in Sweden, even with generous leave, still incurs an equality penalty. Interestingly, in Spain, when parental leave for men was made equal to women, men's desire for children declined [4]. The data also shows men desire children more than women in the US [5] and Finland [6]. Hot take thesis is that women still incur most of the cost of children, even in the most progressive socioeconomic systems. They know it, and it is a material contributing factor in the fertility rate decline. They obtain equality by opting out of reproduction, eliminating opportunity cost and other expensive penalties reproduction incurs. The cost of children is simply too damn high. Bonus comment from PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi: On Monday, PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival about her work-life balance. “The biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict,” she observed. Just as women are reaching middle management, kids need the most parenting and attention. Then when women move up the corporate ladder, they must turn their attention to aging parents. “We’re screwed. We cannot have it all.” [7] [1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-parental-leave-to-blame-for-the-gender-wage-gap https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-parental-leave-to-blame-for-th... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/20/the-link-between-parental-leave-and-the-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/20/the-link-... [3] https://www.vox.com/2018/2/19/17018380/gender-wage-gap-childcare-penalty https://www.vox.com/2018/2/19/17018380/gender-wage-gap-child... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity-leave-study-spain-men-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity... [5] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-you... [6] https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/24748-in-finland-men-across-age-groups-are-more-likely-to-want-children-than-women.html https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... [7] https://time.com/2954893/pepsico-ceo-women-cant-have-it-all/ https://time.com/2954893/pepsico-ceo-women-cant-have-it-all/
- Panzer04 2y ago
  I mean, children are just really expensive with no financial benefit no matter how you cut it, regardless of who the parent is. It used to be that children would look after you in your old age, or would contribute to the family relatively young, etc etc, or in a single-income household with a stay at home parent incurred no material cost to the family beyond a mouth to feed. Nowadays, in a dual-income household, children cost an income to look after or daycare until they are old enough to look after themselves. Financially speaking, there's no benefit (not that children are a financial decision, but certainly the financial logic today is worse than many times in the past)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tuatoru 2y ago
    > children are just really expensive with no financial benefit This is how screwed up our society is. It should be "work is so badly organised that it gets in the way of doing the important things in life".
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      To some, children are not important, and that is okay. Those who do want children should of course have a robust support system and accommodations made available, but those who don’t should be equally empowered to not have them. Unwanted children are an enormous source of suffering in the aggregate.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > Hot take thesis is that women still incur most of the cost of children, even in the most progressive socioeconomic systems. This shouldn't be even remotely controversial, considering the fact that men don't get pregnant. The cost to employers doesn't start with parental leaves - it starts with pregnancy, which involves medical checkups, and an early health leave, and at least in some countries[0], making the future mother effectively unfireable for the duration. In some countries (again, [0]) this can, and often is, chained to keep employment going for multiple years over multiple pregnancies, without the employee showing up even once[1]. I'm not criticizing the women or families here in any way, only pointing out that a strong incentive for gender discrimination in hiring and (perception of) wage gap comes from the employers accounting for the above. Women in child-rearing age are seen as higher-risk employees, and businesses naturally want to mitigate the risk. With that in mind, your statements that women "obtain equality by opting out of reproduction, eliminating opportunity cost and other expensive penalties reproduction incurs", and that "it is a material contributing factor in the fertility rate decline", pretty much follow directly. People aren't stupid. Companies want to mitigate risks. Couples planning to start a family consider whether they can afford it in the first place. Costs of living are rising in the west, which can't possibly not impact fertility rates. -- [0] - My home country, Poland, being one. [1] - The primary benefit isn't financial, but avoiding having a hole in your CV. Done properly, it looks indistinguishable from just working the entire time.
lazyasciiart 2y ago
If only women take parental leave, then employer attitudes will, consciously or not, consider parental leave an extra 'cost' attached to hiring women. Sweden found that this remained true even when the parental leave was explicitly made available for both parents to take. Among other reasons, making some parental leave only available for fathers is intended to further encourage fathers to take leave, until in theory people think of parental leave as a gender-neutral option. https://freepolicybriefs.org/2024/02/05/fathers-parental-leave-policy/#:~:text=Paternity%20Leave%20and%20Gender%20Gaps,et%20al.%2C%202013 https://freepolicybriefs.org/2024/02/05/fathers-parental-lea...).
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  As much as I dislike nudges and trying to fix things via tax policy. We should let the IRS beat the snot out of companies where married men don't take enough parental leave.
  - throwaway3306a 2y ago
    Eh, no. The company has its nose up my life enough already.
  - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
    IRS should beat companies where they don't take it or don't offer it?

TeMPOraL 2y ago

16 months over 12 years is not care time, it's something to use up on errands and occasional R&R. Right or left, subsidizing childcare sounds less about affecting sex balance in the workplace, and more about increasing the amount of two-income families. (Which is a ratchet and arguably a mistake, but that's another topic.) In Poland, there is proposed legislation (or did it pass already?) for the govt to pay for babysitters XOR babysitting grandparents. The idea is to allow parents to work. I imagine Sweden is going for the same thing.

wood_spirit 2y ago
(Sorry should add: childcare is organised and heavily subsidised in Sweden too, and all families can easily afford it if working. There are even “night care” facilities for the children of parents who work night shifts. The normal way to spend the 16 months is for the mother to take the first 6 months off after birth to care for the baby, and the father to take the next 6 months, and the child to go to a day playgroup after a year ish. And then the rest of the time is sometimes taken as one day a week for a while when the kid is older but before they start school. Lots of ways to vary it though)
lotsofpulp 2y ago
> (Which is a ratchet and arguably a mistake, but that's another topic.) What is the racket? No one is forcing two income families. That people like to be financially independent and they like quality of life with two incomes rather than one is simply people’s preferences. The only caveat to this is governments restricting the building of denser housing, but that has nothing to do with two income families.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > What is the racket? I wrote ratchet, not racket, though arguably both fit. > No one is forcing two income families. Except for all the other dual-income families. That's the ratchet. Or, the magic of supply and demand at play. In a society where single-income households are dominating, the households that choose to go dual-income suddenly have 2x the income (obviously), and effectively jump a rung higher on the socioeconomic ladder. As more and more households choose this way, there's a surplus of disposable income on the market, which reduces pressures holding prices of everything down, and additionally, creates new classes of products and services[0]. As the society transitions to predominantly dual-income households, the socioeconomic ladder readjusts - suddenly the single-income households can no longer afford to live the way they used to, as prices of everything went up (both nominally and through inflation), and there's more required spending. The ratchet has turned a step, and there is no going back. Or in a hot take form: the option for women to choose career over being a homemaker started as a choice. But, as enough women took the career option, it now became a requirement. Decades ago, a woman could find a job. Nowadays, she has to, otherwise she's going to be economically disadvantaged, whether single or with a partner. That's the ratchet. Or a bait-and-switch the market pulled on women. It's fine for couples who don't plan to start a family; sucks for those that do. -- [0] - In short: the market adjusts to keep average disposable income in a population at zero. More than zero means there's money left on the table, and someone will soon find a way to pick it up.

tuatoru 2y ago

The current fertility rate for Sweden in 2024 is 1.842 births per woman, a 0.05% decline from 2023. The fertility rate for Sweden in 2023 was 1.843 births per woman, a 0.05% decline from 2022. The fertility rate for Sweden in 2022 was 1.844 births per woman, a 0.11% decline from 2021. The fertility rate for Sweden in 2021 was 1.846 births per woman, a 0.05% decline from 2020. Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SWE/sweden/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SWE/swe... TFR of 1.8 is relatively healthy, but still sub-replacement, and the TFR of the native Swedish population is lower than that of the refugees. So not that great a country to be a parent, perhaps. Nowhere is.

dalke 2y ago
???? Sweden is a great country to be a parent. Source: I'm an immigrant to Sweden with two Swedish-born kids. My mother was one of 8. That doesn't make rural Michigan in the 1950s a great place to be a parent. That means, as an aunt put it, that my grandparents didn't know about birth control.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]