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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave.

Obviously there's the associated job of changing perceptions around taking the leave, which will vary from country to country, but by making the risks associated by hiring a man no different from those associated by hiring a woman you move towards eliminating this gender imbalance.

As an additional benefit, both parents are more likely to have time to bond with their newborn or newly adopted child and share the burden of early parenting.

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> The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave.

In Germany, there's the "parental leave" (not maternal or paternal leave) [0]. The time period is 12 months with parental allowance : 2/3rds of your income - 300 to 1800 €. If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months. Of course, there are other benefits like child care etc. [1] after the child has grown up.

[0] http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/el...

[1] http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuu...

> If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months.

However, "sharing" in this case does not necessarily mean equal parts. The rule is "max. 14 months in total, but max. 12 months per parent". So a lot of couples end up doing 12 months maternal leave and 2 months paternal leave (not all though).

This is also my experience. However, recently I have picked up more and more cases, where both take 7 months (more or less). Maybe just a coincidence.

I have a male friend that took 4 months of from memory. I'm not sure it's uncommon.

Note it should be MANDATORY for both father and mother to take it.

I feel like that is "crabs in the bucket"-style thinking. Don't force men to take work off and impact their careers just because women have to.

So you're against equality?

I'm against regressive equality. Instead of forcing men to struggle alongside women, we should work to remove women's struggle - that's progressive equality. Decrease costs of daycare and create programs to re-introduce child-bearing women to the workforce.

Then we're back at problem one. As a company, I'd rather hire a man and save myself the trouble.

I doubt most companies are that one-dimensional in their hiring. In any case, your proposed solution of forcing paternity leave means that, as a company, I'd rather hire single people.

Yet... single people can have kids, too.

Best to just mandatory-castrate your employees.

> Yet... single people can have kids, too.

> Best to just mandatory-castrate your employees.

Ok, it's clear you aren't interested in solutions, you're just morality-trolling.

>Ok, it's clear you aren't interested in solutions, you're just morality-trolling.

No, I'm not. I'm just pointing out your "solution" isn't. Why do you think it is OK to just insult me?

You're back at the start: I'll just hire a male since they won't take maternity breaks. Or I'll hire a woman and build that risk into her salary by paying her less.

I believe the only way we can get past that is to make the leave mandatory for both parents, but I'm open to (reasonable) alternatives. You're yet to provide any.

> You're yet to provide any.

> Decrease costs of daycare and create programs to re-introduce child-bearing women

Are those not solutions? With lower daycare costs, you don't need to take a long maternity leave, just enough for recovery. And the re-introduction programs don't have to come from the employing company, it can be driven by the government so companies don't feel they are impacted by pregnancies. Maybe a tax write-off for post-pregnancy job training?

>Are those not solutions?

No, they're not. Details below.

>With lower daycare costs, you don't need to take a long maternity leave

Sure, you can make it shorter by taking away the freedom of the parents to take care of their own child instead of leaving that to daycare. I believe that above you were strongly against taking away parents' freedom.

>just enough for recovery.

And while it's shorter, it's still there, so there's inequality, unless (again) both parents are forced to take the exact same leave.

>And the re-introduction programs don't have to come from the employing company, it can be driven by the government so companies don't feel they are impacted by pregnancies. Maybe a tax write-off for post-pregnancy job training?

This would never average out to equality, it'd just add an annoying layer of complexity. A company will just hire a male just to not have to deal with any of this.

Why do you think that women have to take time off and impact their careers but men don't?

They don't, we should be free to choose. I just don't want to be forced to take time off.

So why not take the time off sometime else?

One possible solution is to make the maternity/paternity leave mandatory "within a year" rather than immediately.

Also, keep in mind you're not, in any event, being forced. It's your choice whether to have kids or not.

Right! The decision to have a child is between my partner and I, and as such, the decision to care for it should be between us as well. What if my partner wants to be a stay at home parent? If that were the case, forcing the working parent to take time off would be a complete waste.

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