28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant.
All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)
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.
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?
> 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.
We didn't go from zero to 28 days of paternity leave. We doubled it, from 14 to 28.
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.
A company has to pay workers for 49 - 59 weeks without getting any work? I'm all for parental leave, but that's a full year.
Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company.
What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit?
I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much responsibility. If every company in the world had to do this and the governments and taxes supported it, I'd be all for it.
I'm not passing judgment, just really curious how this works. I certainly favor parents getting plenty of time to adjust and spend time with their newborns. But I wonder if this is too much for companies to bear when they have to compete with companies that don't do this.
The pay is capped at some amount. But if you're working a job where you earn above that, most employers will pay the difference as a perk anyway.
And yes, the "aktivitetskrav for mor" is stupid. There are some other subtleties as well. I helped make the original digital application in 2015, and there was a lot of edge cases. Like if you're a fisherman your pay should be documented a different way. Fun times.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
Romania, bang average country (GDP per capita almost equal to world average), not even classified as a high income economy and with a GDP per capita 1/6th of the US one is currently offering up to 18 months of maternity leave at 80% pay. There is a paternity leave, I forgot how long, I think it's at least a few weeks if not months.
If there's a will, there's a way.
Oh, our external debt is about 40% and our tax rates are largely comparable to Western ones. So far the only signs of collapse seem to be coming from Communist era buildings :-p
You only get born once. I think its right of the child, moreso than that of parents, to be looked after at birth. It does not happen that often that we should be talking about affordability.
On the other hand, can we afford mutinationals paying no taxes?
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).
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.
Here in "flyover country, USA" I was looked down upon for asking to use two weeks of my own PTO after my company's new 'generous' two week paid parental leave. That request was constantly pushed off until the week of my wife's induction, when it was formally declined. I was told the request was 'excessive' and that generally the woman needs more time to recover but the father doesn't need much time.
I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line. I'm grateful that we have a healthy 4-month old baby, but this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable. Better parental rights, better funding for education and health - better take care of your workers and your future (children) and they will be able to take better care of you.
I understand if you want anonymity here but please share this story with the name of the employer on glassdoor or an appropriate forum. If our government won't protect us from these practices then we must shame such employers, and avoid selling them our labor to the greatest possible extent.
> this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable.
Here's the problem: we're stuck in the mindset that profit is so important that we need it to be compatible with compassion or else we'll just sacrifice compassion.
Is it that, or is it that our economy is highly competitive and without government intervention with universal requirements those kinds of perks mean your product costs more relative to your competitor, meaning nobody buys your product?
As a counterpoint also in fly over country w/ a 4 month old, I was basically given as much time as I wanted. Granted I only took a few weeks because I was jonesing to get back, but I have peers that have taken months off.
This isn't to discount your general point about lack of compassion, just to discount what seemed to be the assumption that it is always the case and/or is related to the middle of the country.
I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line.
I honestly wonder what effect one person taking off this time would have on the bottom line. If you are that critical to your company, you could probably negotiate for a higher salary. Otherwise, this is just callousness, which I guess is expected from unchecked capitalism.
It is absolute Capitalism. Apparently, Americans have gotten used to it because supposedly the only other option to us is "Socialism". There is no middle ground. God forbid we ask for Capitalism with a little bit of social safety net.
> The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time.
This isn't just an apriori fact of the culture, but an intentional result of the structure of the leave.
90 days are reserved for each parent (there's an exception for single parents) i.e. if the father doesn't take those 3 months they are lost. Apparently before this policy came into effect, fathers would typically take very little leave. But once there was an incentive to take 3 months they began to take longer periods and split the overall time more evenly.
So even though it's part of the culture, it's not impossible to understand how it came to be, and therefore not impossible to replicate elsewhere.
Germany also has quite generous parental leave. 14 months to split between parents as they see fit. But no single parent can take more than 12 and it's only 65%.
12 of the 14 months can be doubled as well, up to 24 months, at half the regular salary replacement. A good option if a parent wants to work part-time.
Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
I can only speculate as to why.
1) Our cultural wiring runs deeper than just "sex is a social construct"
2) The German system is still quite complicated. As countless online calculators and private consultancies helping you filling out the forms prove. As well as the above statistic itself, since financially it would make more sense if the father took as much leave as possible (if he earns more, the family gets 65% of "more").
Not completely true though. Salary caps are in place that restrict the amount you can get. While for full time parental leave that's capped at 1800 Euro/months, for part time they restrict the eligible amount you're allowed to earn. For anyone working in tech that means if you work part time you're likely to get only 150 Euro per month, even if you only make half the money. Not really better than just reducing your hours outside of parental leave.
France has both paternity leave and parental leave, which are different things.
France has 1 year parental leaves, which may be extended up to a total of 3 years (and more in case of twins, etc). But they are unpaid though the employee may then qualify for various benefits.
There is also a 'birth leave' of 3 days. So when you have a baby you can have a 3 day leave at birth, then the now 28 day paternity leave within the next 4 months, and an unpaid 1-3 year parental leave.
Iirc, the first leave is on full pay by the employer, the second on capped pay by a special state benefit (but employers can top up), and the third is unpaid though, as mentioned, other benefits exist subject to conditions.
The idea being that one leave is for attending the actual birth (in France mothers are usually kept in hospital for a few days after birth in order to recover and to be taught how to look after a baby, fathers are welcome during the day), one leave is for bonding with the new born baby, and the third leave is, if needed, to look after the baby until (s)he reaches free nursery school age.
French admin is always as simple as can be, not ;)
In my case, at the time I worked for a company that offered a lot of annual leaves (I had about 8 weeks a year) so took normal annual leaves instead of the paternity leave after the initial 3 day "birth leave" in order not to lose money as the paternity leave cap was quite lower than most engineers earn.
This hits home hard: my newborn is now one month old, and I had to forgo the 11 days of leave.
Why? Because there’s a hard cap on the salary: I ran the numbers for me for the current 11 days in France it means over 1k€ of income just vanish, and it’s not like we can make loans, rent, and other fixed expenses disappear, right at the moment where we have to shell out money for the hospital and general baby equipment. If it were 28 days that would be over half of my salary going poof.
Union agreements say that for the employer to fill in the remainder it’s required I’d be in this company for at least two years, but I joined only a year and a half ago.
It so happened that I took barely any off days during this time so I took a month to bond, which sure took its toll on me (not the bonding of course, the lack of time off for over a year)
The Swedish paternity leave is caped at 1006 SEK per day (94€), while the French one is capped at 89€ per day.
That's not a very large difference, the main difference is that the Swedish one never goes over 80% of your salary while the French one goes up to 100%.
I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy -- unless your job is entirely useless, the business must replace your position during your absence in order to continue normal operation; even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found..
So then what exactly do you return to? It can't be your old position exactly -- you were replaced. So its more like a vague promise that the business will rehire you into some arbitrary position? Or even worse, make up a new position of equivalent power upon your return?
You can't know. It's supposed to be whatever I did before, or equivalent. Basically if they replace me I can make a fuss about wanting my position back or an equivalent position. In any case, you can't e.g. be at a worse pay grade even if you have a lower "position" than before.
I have never seen it be a problem.
> even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found..
We do 5 or 6 weeks holiday every year without problem, not sure why that would be such a big issue. Actually since I had kids I distribute out my remaining parental leave days to a couple of weeks per summer, so from ages 0-8 my summer holidays have been 7 or 8 weeks every year. No manager would even ask a question about this.
> So its more like a vague promise
Well it's the law...
But most importantly so long as people want to take paternal leave, I think even the promise of being rehired is good enough. The key to the system working is that everyone does it. I wouldn't want to work for a manager that hadn't.
The business just can function at a diminished capacity.
E.g. the team which had 5 developers now has 4.
If you're in a more singular position (manager etc.), then the entire's department workload can be rearranged so that your work falls onto one or multiple of your colleagues while you're gone. Since apparently most bigger orgs are in constant flux, it's not hard to do.
Also, since it's the norm that people disappear for long periods of time, businesses can hire with some slack (e.g. hire 110% of needed capacity) to easily absorb absences.
> I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy -- unless your job is entirely useless, the business must replace your position during your absence in order to continue normal operation
Just because you cannot get fired for going on parental leave does not mean that the company cannot hire a substitute for your absence. This is typically what happens.
I think it's quite healthy for the business TBH. In Scandinavia this is the norm, at a medium sized company there will probably always be someone on parental leave at any given time. You expect it, and therefor deal with it by reducing the bus factor up front.
First of all, if a company fires someone because they are on parental leave, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Now how a company handles employees depends. In some cases you hire a temp, in others your colleagues covers your responsibilities.
I work as a developer and in the places I've worked it has never been a problem. You leave and while you're gone your responsibilities are shared by other colleagues. When you're back you resume your old position. It's true that you might not get back to doing exactly the same work as before you left, but in my experience that's rarely a problem. In my case it's been quite the opposite and an opportunity to take on new things. I think this is quite common
It's true that the employer overall needs to keep more staff around since some percentage will be away on parental leave and your need to cover those fluctuations. For small companies this can be a problem but in general I think this system has great acceptance with the public.
Since it's normal, companies adapt and it isn't really an issue at all. I've never seen anyone in my jobs (IT) that have been "replaced" in any way shape or form.
What do you do when somebody goes on vacations or gets a broken leg? Stop the business :)?
Here people have 26 days of paid leave + 1 year of combined paternity+maternity leave per kid + paid health leave whenever a doctor decides it's needed.
Businesses work just fine - they simply hire more people to offset the fact that everybody is expected to be out of office X% of the time. Also there are temporary contracts and B2B contracts if needed (less protection but also less taxes so they are quite popular with IT people).
Companies just plan for redundancy in roles so they are ready when people need to take parental leave or sabbaticals. It isn't that difficult for a company to handle, but companies in countries where this isn't the norm just plan and hire for it.
DICE recently published three interviews with dads who are going on extended parental leave (one for 5 months and two for 7 months) [1,2,3]. They are all producers but I think their experiences are somewhat indicative of the work culture in many Swedish (tech) companies.
The following excerpt is from [3]:
There are parts of my surrounding family that expressed their concerns, “if you go away, your career is going to suffer”. I’ll be honest and say that I also had similar concerns the first time I went away. And when I returned, I came back to a slightly different role. That sent up a flag for me. The team had been restructured and I was now asked to support a leader as opposed to be a leader - like I was before I left. I was to support Lars Gustavsson, our Creative Director and the famous Mr. Battlefield. So while I was no longer THE lead, I was still in the leadership group plus I was now learning from a seasoned pro. So it worked out and ultimately I feel my career was not negatively impacted in any significant way.
For this parental leave I worked with my manager Adam Clark (Head of Production) to establish a departure plan which started in Summer 2019. We planned which areas I would work on, and we created a rough initial plan for the transition period. We spent the remainder of the year fulfilling that plan at quarterly intervals.
The result of this early planning is that my role will be covered in full while I am away. My lead position will be covered by another Producer who has worked with me for the past quarter, being onboarded regarding all crucial functions. This type of commitment to planning gives me confidence to go on leave, knowing I will come back to a similar well planned roadmap in 2021.
Additionally a number of my colleagues have been transparent on what they want me to do when I return. Both Ryan McArther (Sr Producer) and Andreas Morell (Sr Producer.) have had sit downs with me and detailed the role they want me to take upon my return. That again, gives me confidence to leave and enjoy my time away.
> I dont understand how this could be a viable strategy
That's one of those miracles that happen when people pay the right amount of taxes!
It's incredible what social democracy can do for you if you stop fighting it in the name of the war to socialism!
Isn't it?
Personally I don't understand how is it viable to have a society where the GDP is astronomical and people have to spend their own money to pay insurance companies that make billions in profits, while women have no right to a fully paid maternal leave.
Unless in those countries people are considered like cogs in the machine...
Sweden used to have this really nice system where you got extra money whenever both parents took more than 30% of the days. We got several unexpected transfers of 300€ because of this, which for us at the time was a huge boon.
When my daughter was young (in Sweden), this system was in effect, but was calculated per calendar year and not on the total number of days. We took around half the number of days each, but because we switched close to the new year, it looked like each year was like one week for one parent and the rest for the other, highly uneven both years. I don't know if that was a quirk of the system that they fixed or not, but we got 125 SEK or something as an equality bonus as a result.
But in all seriousness, Germany and Sweden (and the USA for that matter) all have sub-replacement fertility rates. I understand that you believe that people will reproduce like rabbits, especially if incentivized, but the data doesn't reflect that.
In every system there are those that game the system. The question is: does the benefit for the majority outweigh the cost of those abusing the benefit?
I am a Swede - there is no way that I want 12 kids. From both a personal point of view, and for the environmental reasons (though I get it if you are adopting).
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that people want to be sexually active and don't want children until they have an existential crisis and many existing people are unplanned happenstances.
Educated people don't have enough children to replace themselves, and its not because they are too busy.
Give people the choice and most choose to do things preventing children until they have existential crisis. Remove the choice and people are have children at twice the rate, pretty much coinciding with when they become sexually active.
This is very sensible to me as a way to stop discrimination. If you make it so economically the impact of a birth is similar for men and women, you reduce the incentive to discriminate.
80% salary, with a cap of 1006 SEK (110 USD) a day. While paid leave is great, it's not just 80% of your salary. There are a lot of maximums. This isn't to say this is bad or "I gotcha!" but rather to share a bit more information.
I work at one of the large U.S. tech companies and am currently on parental leave. Fathers get four months of leave at 100% pay, and my health insurance covered every penny of the $500k birth (there were a lot of complications). My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have this perk at this company, and I don’t take it for granted at all. It’s mind-blowing to me that U.S. companies are not required to offer any leave to the fathers. My previous company did not offer leave, so a lot of my male coworkers just used a few vacation days and then were back at work.
My wife and I are very busy taking care of the baby essentially all day, so I have no clue how this work is so often done by one parent, much less having both parents working full time.
The U.S. needs to get its act together in the 21st century. A lack of mandated PTO and a lack of leave cannot be good for the long term mental health of the country. I would gladly pay more taxes to ensure everyone had this perk.
Sure. The delivery was at Lucile Packard and my wife had preeclampsia, so they had to induce. Labor was 24 hours and delivery was 4 hours, and our daughter came out not breathing. She had the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly around her neck and had also inhaled a lot of meconium. They immediately took her to the NICU and performed various procedures to get the meconium out. She wasn’t able to breath on her own for a over a week, but eventually she recovered and we were able to take her home. Delivery was $112k and the remainder was the NICU.
It really irked me that here in Canada the options were generally skewed towards mothers remaining home. You can split 40 weeks of parental leave, but many employers won't provide parental benefits and those that do often only provide parental benefits to mothers. For instance, my employer at the time provided wage top-up for women on leave but nothing for men.
Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in society at large that ultimately contribute to the wage gap.
Of course I stayed at work, and of course my wife now has enormous gaps in her work history, and so of course my yearly gains in income have outpaced hers.
Well we can’t do anything about employers, that’s why relying on employers as a social net is ridiculous (what’s the % of people that have parental benefits from their employers? Surely a minority)
This needs to be managed through the government. Quebec has done a good job at it. And yes, it can be used by either the father or the mother without any problem.
As a Swede the replies you get to this reasonable comment is like being sent back to the ~1970. The only thing that's "biological" is that women usually take the first months of parental leave and the father the second (and sometimes they overlap).
There's nothing whatsoever that's reasonable, and certainly not biological, about limiting that second period for the father.
Biology tends to be structurally sexist as well. The only solution is to essentially force fathers to stop working as well during this time. This is equality of outcome.
There's nothing biological about working a job. Why are women forced to stop working when they have a baby? Stop pretending our social problems are science based.
And yes, there are options for them to carry on but society pretty much forces most women to stop working, due to aforementioned social pressures, structural sexist policies and expectations we put on women.
If all men and women were forced to take 6 months off, we would see far more women succeeding in the workplace over the long term, as they would not be disadvantaged by choosing to have a baby.
This means we as a society get more people working overall in more jobs, being more productive, solving more problems and building a better future for us all. Capitalism is not zero sum- men do not lose when women succeed, quite the opposite. Limiting our workforce to 50% of our population is bad policy, even if you're sexist and in favour of men over women, you must understand the economic benefits of increased paternity leave.
If a company gives you a negative score due to a gap that's explained by taking time out to look after a baby then you're probably better off not working there.
I’ve been involved in many recruitment processes. Companies are far more scared of you having done lots of short jobs than of having taken gaps, especially if the gaps are easily explained away as “time spent caring for family” or “self-directed study”
It's not so much the gaps that are the problem as it is the effect that the delay has on growing compensation.
For every gap there's missed yearly/quaterly reviews, there's missed opportunities for promotion, and there's a stall in your compensation growth overall. When you come back to work you typically come back at the wage you left.
Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery.
Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off.
There is nothing sexist about this. It is more efficient to extend one person's required time off than it is to give two separate people time off. An extended maternity leave generally means that one company needs to find one replacement or otherwise shuffle work. Maternity + paternity leave means you need to do that, 2x.
I fully support longer paternity leaves because I do think it is important for having equality in the workplace. But the idea that it's society that is sexist in this regard is ridiculous.
Honestly I don't think we will really have equality until babies are grown in test tubes, and that's not society's fault.
But you can't close the salary gap between men and women by only mostly having women taking childcare responsibilities.
So if you introduce mandatory and equal leave for both parents, not only do you get happier parents, but you also don't advantage men over women for their biology.
That's all there is to it really, pretty simple and already implemented in plenty of countries.
I didn't think I would need more than 1 week off, but my wife needs a break from watching a newborn all day (and all night). I'm glad in a way that with COVID, I can stay home a day or two a week and it's not a big deal, and I'm also forced to take off 1 day per pay period.
>First, fathers' increasing involvement in childcare led to higher labor force attachment among mothers. This may have raised the opportunity cost of an additional child. We also find that men reported lower desired fertility after the reform, possibly due to their increased awareness of the costs of childrearing, or to a shift in preferences from child quantity to quality.
These honestly sound like good things to me. Fathers raising children increased the chance for women to participate in the labour force, men become more aware of what it takes to raise a child, and the quality of child rearing increases.
Don't think more children was necessarily the point of the policy.
Having children is more important to society than having workers. It is a grim fact that the calculus of life in almost any Western country is that you can have maybe one child, but better none, if you want to have a decent life.
We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
> Spain found that parental leave resulted in fewer children.
That's long been known to be true of social support and safety nets generally, so it's not a surprise that it would be true of parental leave, which is a subset of that.
Paternity leave can be a great thing for father/child bonding, and for equalizing opportunity for women (who face greater social/practical pressure to take their leave), who can fall behind male colleagues by taking their leave. Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave, and in the US a lot of men don't because it is frowned upon socially in many companies.
One possible way to incentivize men to take paternity leave is to do so indirectly, by rewarding companies where a large percentage of eligible fathers take the full leave. This would reverse the current dynamic, which is: if you take the full leave, you're putting your family above the company, and not being a team player. Instead, taking the leave would make you a team player and help the company fulfill the goal.
It may not be politically correct. But the vast majority of women prefer prioritizing their children over their careers. The vast majority of men prefer being the provider for their families.
> Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave
if you're free to choose, you might be pressured to exercise the freedom not take the leave under threat of e.g. being made redundant. sometimes not being able to choose is all-in-all better for everyone, and that's disregarding the cost of making a decision.
That's all great in theory, but in practice you are always forced one way or another. If you are not forced to take paternal leave, then social pressure forces you to not take it.
It's possible women prefer that because society has systemically reinforced it by normalising that gender role as an ideal for girls to grow into, while boys are steered toward a different direction
I say this as a father who prioritised my kids over my career, with a wife who prioritised her career over our kids. I know quite a few stay-at-home-mums who would much rather the adult interaction you get from a day at the office. It's just my experience, but it leads me to think there's nothing "innate" about men or women wanting to rear children
"Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave"
There's no reason to force anyone to do this.
The statement is dystopian. If you offer it to people, and they legit don't want to take it, anything beyond that you're the problem, not the solution.
I have worked in law and tech. I have seen many men who took hardly any time off in law firms because it was heavily frowned upon. In tech, it is much less frowned upon, as evidenced by the fact that many big tech companies offer the same leave to fathers as mothers.
I believe the reason for the different behavior is not that lawyer dads don't care about their kids/wives as much as techie dads. Rather, I believe it is because in the cultural context, they feel pressure not to take much leave. So by putting pressure on companies to make the option a real one for fathers, I think we could make fathers happier (and kids/mothers also) by allowing them to choose the option that they would want if they could do so without repercussions.
Also, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field for mothers. So while I will agree that we don't want to force people to do anything (and my suggestion actually does not force anyone to do anything), there can still be valid reasons that a society would want to incentivize people in certain ways for the good of the society as a whole.
I think the issue isn't that someone may be forced to take the leave when they don't, rather there are hidden incentives for them to not do so when they do. There's a heck of a lot of room between the latter and the former.
On another note we are seeing fertility levels fall in many countries to the point where it's becoming an economic hazard. Parental leave thus becomes a social good. A smart market friendly solution, that would also be a win for families, would be to do more in terms of culture to encourage fathers to do this. In Japan, I've noticed high ranking male ministers almost uniformly taking parental leave to set an example to emulate. I'll add that such an initiative should still leave freedom for people to make their own choices for their own circumstances.
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All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mountains almost every day this summer/fall, it's been a great bonding experience with the now 1 year old :)
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.
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?
We didn't go from zero to 28 days of paternity leave. We doubled it, from 14 to 28.
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.
Does the government subsidize this? That expense could sink a small company.
What happens if the workers leave the company after getting the benefit?
I'm really curious how European firms compete with American ones when workers can take so much time off and saddle their companies with so much responsibility. If every company in the world had to do this and the governments and taxes supported it, I'd be all for it.
I'm not passing judgment, just really curious how this works. I certainly favor parents getting plenty of time to adjust and spend time with their newborns. But I wonder if this is too much for companies to bear when they have to compete with companies that don't do this.
And yes, the "aktivitetskrav for mor" is stupid. There are some other subtleties as well. I helped make the original digital application in 2015, and there was a lot of edge cases. Like if you're a fisherman your pay should be documented a different way. Fun times.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
If there's a will, there's a way.
Oh, our external debt is about 40% and our tax rates are largely comparable to Western ones. So far the only signs of collapse seem to be coming from Communist era buildings :-p
On the other hand, can we afford mutinationals paying no taxes?
Of course. Like so many other things, it's a matter of priorities.
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).
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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.
I guess our mental health during a global pandemic isn't really of any concern to the bottom line. I'm grateful that we have a healthy 4-month old baby, but this country has a long way to go to realizing that compassion can be profitable. Better parental rights, better funding for education and health - better take care of your workers and your future (children) and they will be able to take better care of you.
Here's the problem: we're stuck in the mindset that profit is so important that we need it to be compatible with compassion or else we'll just sacrifice compassion.
Honestly, would have just looked for a new job and dipped.
This isn't to discount your general point about lack of compassion, just to discount what seemed to be the assumption that it is always the case and/or is related to the middle of the country.
I honestly wonder what effect one person taking off this time would have on the bottom line. If you are that critical to your company, you could probably negotiate for a higher salary. Otherwise, this is just callousness, which I guess is expected from unchecked capitalism.
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The fathers are looked at negatively if the don’t take some of this time.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-pater...
This isn't just an apriori fact of the culture, but an intentional result of the structure of the leave.
90 days are reserved for each parent (there's an exception for single parents) i.e. if the father doesn't take those 3 months they are lost. Apparently before this policy came into effect, fathers would typically take very little leave. But once there was an incentive to take 3 months they began to take longer periods and split the overall time more evenly.
So even though it's part of the culture, it's not impossible to understand how it came to be, and therefore not impossible to replicate elsewhere.
12 of the 14 months can be doubled as well, up to 24 months, at half the regular salary replacement. A good option if a parent wants to work part-time.
One can go also up to 36 months of parental leave, but the rest of the time is unpaid.
Still only 2% of men take the leave, while 42% of women do [1].
I can only speculate as to why.
1) Our cultural wiring runs deeper than just "sex is a social construct"
2) The German system is still quite complicated. As countless online calculators and private consultancies helping you filling out the forms prove. As well as the above statistic itself, since financially it would make more sense if the father took as much leave as possible (if he earns more, the family gets 65% of "more").
[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Arbeit/Arbeitsmarkt/Qualit...
France has 1 year parental leaves, which may be extended up to a total of 3 years (and more in case of twins, etc). But they are unpaid though the employee may then qualify for various benefits.
There is also a 'birth leave' of 3 days. So when you have a baby you can have a 3 day leave at birth, then the now 28 day paternity leave within the next 4 months, and an unpaid 1-3 year parental leave.
Iirc, the first leave is on full pay by the employer, the second on capped pay by a special state benefit (but employers can top up), and the third is unpaid though, as mentioned, other benefits exist subject to conditions.
The idea being that one leave is for attending the actual birth (in France mothers are usually kept in hospital for a few days after birth in order to recover and to be taught how to look after a baby, fathers are welcome during the day), one leave is for bonding with the new born baby, and the third leave is, if needed, to look after the baby until (s)he reaches free nursery school age.
French admin is always as simple as can be, not ;)
In my case, at the time I worked for a company that offered a lot of annual leaves (I had about 8 weeks a year) so took normal annual leaves instead of the paternity leave after the initial 3 day "birth leave" in order not to lose money as the paternity leave cap was quite lower than most engineers earn.
This hits home hard: my newborn is now one month old, and I had to forgo the 11 days of leave.
Why? Because there’s a hard cap on the salary: I ran the numbers for me for the current 11 days in France it means over 1k€ of income just vanish, and it’s not like we can make loans, rent, and other fixed expenses disappear, right at the moment where we have to shell out money for the hospital and general baby equipment. If it were 28 days that would be over half of my salary going poof.
Union agreements say that for the employer to fill in the remainder it’s required I’d be in this company for at least two years, but I joined only a year and a half ago.
It so happened that I took barely any off days during this time so I took a month to bond, which sure took its toll on me (not the bonding of course, the lack of time off for over a year)
That's not a very large difference, the main difference is that the Swedish one never goes over 80% of your salary while the French one goes up to 100%.
So then what exactly do you return to? It can't be your old position exactly -- you were replaced. So its more like a vague promise that the business will rehire you into some arbitrary position? Or even worse, make up a new position of equivalent power upon your return?
You can't know. It's supposed to be whatever I did before, or equivalent. Basically if they replace me I can make a fuss about wanting my position back or an equivalent position. In any case, you can't e.g. be at a worse pay grade even if you have a lower "position" than before. I have never seen it be a problem.
> even thirty days absence should disrupt things, if an alternative isn't found..
We do 5 or 6 weeks holiday every year without problem, not sure why that would be such a big issue. Actually since I had kids I distribute out my remaining parental leave days to a couple of weeks per summer, so from ages 0-8 my summer holidays have been 7 or 8 weeks every year. No manager would even ask a question about this.
> So its more like a vague promise
Well it's the law...
But most importantly so long as people want to take paternal leave, I think even the promise of being rehired is good enough. The key to the system working is that everyone does it. I wouldn't want to work for a manager that hadn't.
- Someone leaves for 8 months of maternity leave
- Org hires a replacement with determined-end contract
- Org loves this new person
- New person also enjoyed their time in this position, made new contacts and learned new skills which they can leverage elsewhere
- Org also now knows who to contact immediately when there is another opening or new full-time position
A growing company or government office can absolutely benefit from the "overhead" of such extensive parental leave, it's just subtle.
Also, by your argument it is not viable to hire women of fertile age. Which, in Sweden at least, is really out of touch with reality.
If you're in a more singular position (manager etc.), then the entire's department workload can be rearranged so that your work falls onto one or multiple of your colleagues while you're gone. Since apparently most bigger orgs are in constant flux, it's not hard to do.
Also, since it's the norm that people disappear for long periods of time, businesses can hire with some slack (e.g. hire 110% of needed capacity) to easily absorb absences.
Just because you cannot get fired for going on parental leave does not mean that the company cannot hire a substitute for your absence. This is typically what happens.
I work as a developer and in the places I've worked it has never been a problem. You leave and while you're gone your responsibilities are shared by other colleagues. When you're back you resume your old position. It's true that you might not get back to doing exactly the same work as before you left, but in my experience that's rarely a problem. In my case it's been quite the opposite and an opportunity to take on new things. I think this is quite common
It's true that the employer overall needs to keep more staff around since some percentage will be away on parental leave and your need to cover those fluctuations. For small companies this can be a problem but in general I think this system has great acceptance with the public.
Here people have 26 days of paid leave + 1 year of combined paternity+maternity leave per kid + paid health leave whenever a doctor decides it's needed.
Businesses work just fine - they simply hire more people to offset the fact that everybody is expected to be out of office X% of the time. Also there are temporary contracts and B2B contracts if needed (less protection but also less taxes so they are quite popular with IT people).
The following excerpt is from [3]:
There are parts of my surrounding family that expressed their concerns, “if you go away, your career is going to suffer”. I’ll be honest and say that I also had similar concerns the first time I went away. And when I returned, I came back to a slightly different role. That sent up a flag for me. The team had been restructured and I was now asked to support a leader as opposed to be a leader - like I was before I left. I was to support Lars Gustavsson, our Creative Director and the famous Mr. Battlefield. So while I was no longer THE lead, I was still in the leadership group plus I was now learning from a seasoned pro. So it worked out and ultimately I feel my career was not negatively impacted in any significant way.
For this parental leave I worked with my manager Adam Clark (Head of Production) to establish a departure plan which started in Summer 2019. We planned which areas I would work on, and we created a rough initial plan for the transition period. We spent the remainder of the year fulfilling that plan at quarterly intervals.
The result of this early planning is that my role will be covered in full while I am away. My lead position will be covered by another Producer who has worked with me for the past quarter, being onboarded regarding all crucial functions. This type of commitment to planning gives me confidence to go on leave, knowing I will come back to a similar well planned roadmap in 2021.
Additionally a number of my colleagues have been transparent on what they want me to do when I return. Both Ryan McArther (Sr Producer) and Andreas Morell (Sr Producer.) have had sit downs with me and detailed the role they want me to take upon my return. That again, gives me confidence to leave and enjoy my time away.
[1] https://www.dice.se/news-articles/life-at-dice-why-3-dads-ar...
[2] https://www.dice.se/news-articles/life-at-dice-why-3-dads-ar...
[3] https://www.dice.se/news-articles/life-at-dice-why-3-dads-ar...
That's one of those miracles that happen when people pay the right amount of taxes!
It's incredible what social democracy can do for you if you stop fighting it in the name of the war to socialism!
Isn't it?
Personally I don't understand how is it viable to have a society where the GDP is astronomical and people have to spend their own money to pay insurance companies that make billions in profits, while women have no right to a fully paid maternal leave.
Unless in those countries people are considered like cogs in the machine...
> So its more like a vague promise
You can' t be fired. It's by law.
It's odd that Swedes aren't taking full advantage of the situation.
But in all seriousness, Germany and Sweden (and the USA for that matter) all have sub-replacement fertility rates. I understand that you believe that people will reproduce like rabbits, especially if incentivized, but the data doesn't reflect that.
In every system there are those that game the system. The question is: does the benefit for the majority outweigh the cost of those abusing the benefit?
Educated people don't have enough children to replace themselves, and its not because they are too busy.
Give people the choice and most choose to do things preventing children until they have existential crisis. Remove the choice and people are have children at twice the rate, pretty much coinciding with when they become sexually active.
It's not that hard to understand or perceive.
Why I would change 8 hours to it?
It is also unethical way of life in this planet.
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My wife and I are very busy taking care of the baby essentially all day, so I have no clue how this work is so often done by one parent, much less having both parents working full time.
The U.S. needs to get its act together in the 21st century. A lack of mandated PTO and a lack of leave cannot be good for the long term mental health of the country. I would gladly pay more taxes to ensure everyone had this perk.
Just one of _many_ structually sexist policies in society at large that ultimately contribute to the wage gap.
Of course I stayed at work, and of course my wife now has enormous gaps in her work history, and so of course my yearly gains in income have outpaced hers.
This needs to be managed through the government. Quebec has done a good job at it. And yes, it can be used by either the father or the mother without any problem.
You can, indeed, mandate equal practices by employers and enforce that requirement.
There's nothing whatsoever that's reasonable, and certainly not biological, about limiting that second period for the father.
That isn't the only solution, but it's one that could work and would make the world a better place.
And yes, there are options for them to carry on but society pretty much forces most women to stop working, due to aforementioned social pressures, structural sexist policies and expectations we put on women.
If all men and women were forced to take 6 months off, we would see far more women succeeding in the workplace over the long term, as they would not be disadvantaged by choosing to have a baby.
This means we as a society get more people working overall in more jobs, being more productive, solving more problems and building a better future for us all. Capitalism is not zero sum- men do not lose when women succeed, quite the opposite. Limiting our workforce to 50% of our population is bad policy, even if you're sexist and in favour of men over women, you must understand the economic benefits of increased paternity leave.
For every gap there's missed yearly/quaterly reviews, there's missed opportunities for promotion, and there's a stall in your compensation growth overall. When you come back to work you typically come back at the wage you left.
Practically no women ever will make it through the entirety of a pregnancy without needing (not choosing) to take some time off work if she works a full-time job. Even if this is just a single day of delivery.
Generally though, it's much more than a single day that needs to be taken off. In contrast, at no point in a woman's pregnancy does the father need to take time off.
There is nothing sexist about this. It is more efficient to extend one person's required time off than it is to give two separate people time off. An extended maternity leave generally means that one company needs to find one replacement or otherwise shuffle work. Maternity + paternity leave means you need to do that, 2x.
I fully support longer paternity leaves because I do think it is important for having equality in the workplace. But the idea that it's society that is sexist in this regard is ridiculous.
Honestly I don't think we will really have equality until babies are grown in test tubes, and that's not society's fault.
So if you introduce mandatory and equal leave for both parents, not only do you get happier parents, but you also don't advantage men over women for their biology.
That's all there is to it really, pretty simple and already implemented in plenty of countries.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
These honestly sound like good things to me. Fathers raising children increased the chance for women to participate in the labour force, men become more aware of what it takes to raise a child, and the quality of child rearing increases.
Don't think more children was necessarily the point of the policy.
We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
That's long been known to be true of social support and safety nets generally, so it's not a surprise that it would be true of parental leave, which is a subset of that.
One possible way to incentivize men to take paternity leave is to do so indirectly, by rewarding companies where a large percentage of eligible fathers take the full leave. This would reverse the current dynamic, which is: if you take the full leave, you're putting your family above the company, and not being a team player. Instead, taking the leave would make you a team player and help the company fulfill the goal.
> Unfortunately, it's hard to force men to take their leave
How about we don't force people into things.
That's all great in theory, but in practice you are always forced one way or another. If you are not forced to take paternal leave, then social pressure forces you to not take it.
I say this as a father who prioritised my kids over my career, with a wife who prioritised her career over our kids. I know quite a few stay-at-home-mums who would much rather the adult interaction you get from a day at the office. It's just my experience, but it leads me to think there's nothing "innate" about men or women wanting to rear children
There's no reason to force anyone to do this.
The statement is dystopian. If you offer it to people, and they legit don't want to take it, anything beyond that you're the problem, not the solution.
I believe the reason for the different behavior is not that lawyer dads don't care about their kids/wives as much as techie dads. Rather, I believe it is because in the cultural context, they feel pressure not to take much leave. So by putting pressure on companies to make the option a real one for fathers, I think we could make fathers happier (and kids/mothers also) by allowing them to choose the option that they would want if they could do so without repercussions.
Also, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field for mothers. So while I will agree that we don't want to force people to do anything (and my suggestion actually does not force anyone to do anything), there can still be valid reasons that a society would want to incentivize people in certain ways for the good of the society as a whole.
On another note we are seeing fertility levels fall in many countries to the point where it's becoming an economic hazard. Parental leave thus becomes a social good. A smart market friendly solution, that would also be a win for families, would be to do more in terms of culture to encourage fathers to do this. In Japan, I've noticed high ranking male ministers almost uniformly taking parental leave to set an example to emulate. I'll add that such an initiative should still leave freedom for people to make their own choices for their own circumstances.
So many old father say before they die this : - "The only regret I have is not to have not been more around my child(reen) young".
You never eat someone say : - "I regret not having worked more when I was young "