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Comment by jknightco | Hacker News Reader

There are cultural differences here, specifically those that involve what the concept of "liberty" means in practice. Americans tend to focus on freedom "to", which is exactly what you're talking about here: employees should be free to choose whether or not they take maternity/paternity. Europeans tend to focus on freedom "from", i.e. employees should be from from worrying about whether the decision to take maternity/paternity will hold them back or not.

You can frame it the way you have if you want to, but to some cultures, having the government tell people what they can and can't do is the only way to ensure true liberty for all.

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I'm an European and I strongly believe in the freedom from getting told when to quit my job.

...that is just to examplify that the freedom from/to distinction requires a very specific worldview to function as a robust differentiator.

I'm British and pretty left wing, don't assume that it's all tribal. Granted my post sounded quite American. The government forcing you to take time off is absolutely mental to me. Think of the edge cases => what if I'm not planning to bring up the kid? What if I want lots and lots of children? What if it's an absolutely vital time for me at work, partnerships are coming up or something. What if I'm self-employed? Then think about how possible choices for these edge cases lead to messed up situations. I can imagine people pretending not to be bringing up their children so that the government doesn't mess with their lives.

I see how you can frame it as "freedom not to have reproduction affect your career". But for one thing that still won't work. Time off is time off and income correlates with total hours worked in your life. For another, I don't think all of society agrees that we should pay for your freedom to have children without incurring any costs. We don't need more children, the world population is still increasing. There's this strange train of logic now that because aging populations become poor (because we massively overpromised on pensions) we need native children. 1. We can use immigration. 2. If your system cannot support the decreasing population necessary for the world to get through the next centuries, you need to fix the system not encourage breeding.

Also what about incels, gay people, people who just don't want children? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class peoples ability not to have their kids interfere with their law career.

That doesn't sound especially left on this issue. Welfare and safety nets are normally accepted as a good thing in the centre and on the left, in varying degree.

In practice if you're young, junior or working for a jerk (or a high hours constant death march startup) the choice becomes work through and let partner do it alone, or get fired. For the rest it is a case of how confident you are in your tenure, seniority and perhaps number of years in the workplace how you will react to your employer hinting strongly to just take a couple of days.

What's needed is strong enough legislation such that anyone who wants to support their partner can, and the few who have to work can do also. I'd much prefer for it become an accepted norm, and for those who don't to be the unusual case. It has benefits for both the parents and the child.

Your last point immediately begs the question what about all the rest? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class kid's education, healthcare, child allowance etc. Why on earth are they paying for pensions of those no longer working? That way lies the abolition of all social safety nets and ultimately pay yourself or sink. I don't want to live there thank you. :)

Your last point is incoherent. Every single person benefits from education. The person benefiting from time off for maternity/paternity is the parent much more than the child.

If you're poor/young bad boss/start up and have kids it's tough yes. It's also tough if you don't have kids, and they're a choice.

It's kind of pointless to argue left/right, dismiss me with a label if you want. This only exists in a few very left wing countries so I don't think opposing it puts me on a fringe somewhere.

The point is that maternity/paternity leave is the rest of society subsidising parents, who are not doing anything useful by adding to existing overpopulation. Not whether I'm left wing or right wing. If you want to make life easier then I'd go for basic income over selective welfare that disproportionately benefits the already privileged.

> The person benefiting from time off for maternity/paternity is the parent much more than the child.

That's a very surprising claim. All the psychological consensus that I've seen says that the continuous presence of people of reference (preferably the parents) is a positive influence on the early development of children.

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