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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

Many comments laud this as a step towards gender equality, which is a noble goal. However, I do wonder about the unforeseen consequences. All mammals (afaik) are raised by mothers. Humans are mammals. Humans do a good job of making changes to our nature, and for the most part those changes have resulted in better lives. However we still have things like nuclear families. Children aren't taken away from parents and raised by communities instead. So we don't throw everything out from nature, because some of it works well and reliably. Is there any science to suggest that there are no adverse effects on an infant from having an absent mother?

To move back up: I'm saying there might be a good reason mothers should be given maternal leave and that there might not be as good of a reason for men to be given paternal leave. Gender equality doesn't mean both genders are the same.

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Other animals don't commute to an office hours away every day. There is practically nothing in human society which is very normal, relative to the natural state.

In fact I would argue this in many ways makes things MORE normal not less. Fathers in hunter and gatherer societies would have spend far more time with their children than a modern father.

A hunter and gatherer spend around 8 hours per week hunting. The rest of the time the family was quite close together.

> I'm saying there might be a good reason mothers should be given maternal leave and that there might not be as good of a reason for men to be given paternal leave. Gender equality doesn't mean both genders are the same.

Of course genders are not the same. But there is no reason to encourage difference just for the sake of it. The fact is that giving fathers and mothers leave works great for families.

I have lived through this myself. Your kids are much better off for it, and so are the parents.

Statistics speak for themselves. Nordic countries score well on family friendliness, child development and happiness.

Humans are herd animals. From what I know there is consensus among developmental psychologists for attachment theory. A theory that roughly states that the caregiver or caregivers a child has from 6 months of age to two years old is very important and forms how the child will form relationships with other humans during the rest of their life. It does not need to be a single caregiver nor that the caregiver is the mother.

Edit: Historically it has not been uncommon for the mother to die while giving birth. So it has always been important for us to accept other caregivers than our birth mothers.

All of your assertions are false. Male wolves and foxes help with child rearing.

Aka Pygmy Men breastfeed (some men can lactate a little) Most Women outside these tribes don't look for it in a man. Whereas there's do.

Social Services does take children away from there parents and raise them instead.

It's only culture that says just the bad children.

Colonialism commonly took natives away to be raised by society instead.

The kibbutz movement used collective child rearing. They thought it was the only way for equality.

Nuclear families are mostly a western thing. Plus we see more and more young people living together in shared housing.some in a family atmosphere. Why not shared child rearing?

Of course if there are good reasons then someone can provide them righ

> Is there any science to suggest that there are no adverse effects on an infant from having an absent mother?

This is a straw man argument. It's not possible to conduct such a study scientifically because it would be unethical and that's not what this policy is promoting.

Mammals are polygamous by nature and humans are no exception. We have only changed this in the last several thousand years and the benefits have been substantial enough that it's now the model in most of the world. I expect gender equality in the workplace to move in that direction.

What? Why would giving men paternity leave suddenly mean that women would become absent mothers?

As a species that grew out of bands of hunter gatherers, tribes and communities have played a huge role in raising children. Our modern circumstances are the exception — two parents, often shouldering the burden largely on their own.

What kind of good reason would you be looking for? I mean for most just spending time with their small children and forming good relationships with them is 'good enough'

And yes, gender equality has not been tried fully in a society yet so it's hard to know.

Under Finland's system mother are still given maternal leave, but the fathers now get mandatory leave too. That's how I understood it, no country would forbid the mother maternal leave, except maybe the US.

So then why would men be entitled to paternal leave? Because another sex is given leave?

If would be say the first 6 months the mother takes leave while the next 6 months the father takes leave, for a total of 12 months.

It just means they share the burden and benefits. What exactly is wrong with that?

I cannot say I understand your "entitled" question. Is anyone in principle entitled to anything? Does it matter? Why not simply do what works great? Does doing something need to have any other reason than that it works great and everybody is happy about the result?

We used to live in caves and evolving past that touched off a chain of events that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. But we don't lament our evolution. Living indoors, while messy with unintended side effects if you choose to look at it that way, is something we value.

Ever seen or known someone who grew up with an absent father? It makes a big difference in their lives despite what you might intuitively assume about mother/child relationships.

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