[tptacek]

My sister is a public interest lawyer in Chicago who will get a few short weeks of leave --- not 6 --- and then be expected back in court advocating for her clients. It is really difficult for me to connect with fathers who claim that 6 weeks of paternal leave is too onerous.

As a parent to two teenagers, both of whom were born in the early years of startups, I feel your pain --- having children is hard. But if we're going to lose our collective shit about this, can we start by getting mothers in blue-collar jobs 6 weeks of paid leave before we start worrying about six-figure fathers needing more than 6 weeks off?

[dejv]

I guess my wording was wrong, there was no worrying about fathers at all.

I just can't wrap my head about how all the people are doing it. You can't just leave that small kid somewhere, is there some way of taking unpaid leave or are people just quit the job? I don't know.

[tptacek]

My experience of parenting has been that every aspect of it is like that. I was amazed the first night that we'd kept the boy alive at all. He's going to UIUC in a few months. I can't believe that happened either. Everything is crazy hard, and we're playing on SUPER EXTREME EASY MODE.

[sotojuan]

In low income households, particularly immigrant ones, the grandma or aunt becomes a fulltime nanny when the grandchildren are born. I don't know what people who don't have this kind of help do.

[balls187]

> I just can't wrap my head about how all the people are doing it. You can't just leave that small kid somewhere, is there some way of taking unpaid leave or are people just quit the job? I don't know.

People figure out a way to struggle and survive. It's in inherent to us as a species.

Some people have family help. Others have older children. Others can support on a single income. Others have paid help. Others bring their kids to work with them. Others work from home.

You just figure it out as you go.

[cpach]

I’m guessing that women quitting their job in order to take care of their kids is probably quite common in the US. I also think that nannies are more common there.

[dragonwriter]

> But if we're going to lose our collective shit about this, can we start by getting mothers in blue-collar jobs 6 weeks of paid leave before we start worrying about six-figure fathers needing more than 6 weeks off?

Some of us don't live in barbarous backwaters like Illinois, but instead in places that, if not actually civilized like the rest of the developed world, are actually aware of and occasionally making efforts toward civilization (e.g., California) and already have gotten most working mothers up to four months of pregnancy disability (typically, without complications, 4 weeks prior and 6 weeks after delivery for vaginal delivery, 8 weeks after for C-section, but longer is permitted with medical necessity) plus 12 weeks of bonding time, all job protected, with potentially all of the former paid as for other disability and up to six weeks of paid family leave that can be used for the latter.

So, can we keep talking, now?

[tptacek]

Which states have those policies?

[dragonwriter]

I'm pretty sure identified the specific state that has the policies I described, though there are some other states with similar or better paid family leave provisions and/or longer allowances for job protected leave for either pregnancy disability specifically, or general disability that includes pregnancy.

[jorvi]

By that train of logic we should be fighting for at least equal paternity leave for the average dad before there can be any discussion about more maternity leave..

[tptacek]

There is no logic to that whatsoever. But since Basecamp doesn't make that distinction --- it has "primary" and "secondary" "caregiver" --- I don't think we need to argue this point.

[ezyjules]

It is illegal (discriminatory) to have any policy based on gender. As such, you cannot have a maternity or paternity policy. Thus primary - the parent of the two who will leave their role temporarily as the main caregiver whilst the other partner continues to work OR secondary - the other.

Note though that a health insurance policy in the US will cover maybe 60% of 8 weeks of salary for the birth mother under a disability benefit claim (no joke). If a father becomes the primary caregiver, then the company is paying 100% of that time off, without support. So offering equal carries a cost and guarantees that all your employees, male or female, if they are having a kid will take that time and incur that cost, rather than a % gender of your workforce. All things you need to factor in and cost into a business, especially a small one.

[dragonwriter]

> It is illegal (discriminatory) to have any policy based on gender.

No, it's not. Obviously, it's discriminatory to have a policy that differentiates on any axis, but not all policies (whether public or employer) that differentiate based on gender (or sex, which may be more to the point here, if we define "mother" as "parent giving birth" and not "parent of the feminine gender"; the two often go together but are not equivalent) are illegal.