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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

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?

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I've seen this a lot in the US, and at least in the North East, it seems like a lot of companies are moving away from this model. It's a really difficult policy to even enforce without being discriminatory against men.

At this point in my career I take it as a red flag against the company. Women obviously still face many more hurdles than men when it comes to workplaces and an expanding family, and both genders deserve more paid time off in the US when the family grows, but policies like this end up specifically targeting men more often than not.

By default it defines men to be a less important care-giver than women.

I generally agree. I'm not especially interested in litigating which gender is worse-affected since you can spin it either way (e.g., "By default it defines women to be less important employees"). Suffice it to say it's more restrictive to men than to women (i.e., men don't have the option to take longer leave if they wanted to); however, there may be second order effects that are harmful to women (a firm that discriminates like this may be less likely to hire women because they would de facto be more likely to take off longer). In any case, it's all wild speculation.

> I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary.

My company leaves that decision to the couple. The couple chooses who is primary and secondary. My wife got 12 weeks as the primary caregiver. Our situation is a bit weird because we work for the same company.

Yeah, in that case it makes sense, but if your wife worked for a different company, what's stopping you from claiming to be the primary caregiver even if your wife does the majority of the child care work? Or vice versa? This policy seems unenforceable in this circumstance which is surely more common than both spouses working for the same company.

You make a good point.

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