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Comment by oconnore | Hacker News Reader

My point basically boils down to this: making parental leave about something other than enabling parents to recover and take care of their kids is really kludgey, and probably would have made our experience of raising our son more difficult unless it was really, really long (like one year long).

The wage gap is a problem, but there is nothing that says we have to solve it (or that it can be solved) using this particular knob.

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I am trying to decide if I like the updated title the submitter gave to this article.

As submitted and on article: Want Equality? Make New Dads Stay Home

Updated: Mandatory paternity leave would help close the wage gap

I see your meaning clearly now - but your point then is obviously tangential.

To your argument I also personally don't know there is any reliable way to equalize this problem. Men and women are created differently, and nature is unfair - just ask the fly and the spider. The social contract means we so far mostly anyway agree it is better treat equally than to force equality (shades of Bergeron is poignant - and yes this inches us closer).

Any intervention like this won't be perfect for some people. Just like the status quo isn't perfect. The question is not, "Would change X be equally great for all people?" but "Is change X net less bad?"

If you think that there's a change X' that would be better yet, you should definitely propose it. But if you're just saying, "I don't care about fixing a problem that benefits me if the solution isn't perfect for me," you can see how that's not the most compelling of arguments.

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