[lotsofpulp]

In order to make it work, I think you would have to force men to take the parental leave, otherwise the implicit value of a man would still be higher. If the goal is to mitigate the consequences of giving birth and taking care of an infant, and the consequence is that women have less time for work, then you have to force men to also have less time for work.

[iamsmooney]

Enabling should be enough. NY State has a paid family leave policy[0] that allows both parents to take advantage. The birth mother may be required from a health perspective to take more immediately but allowing the other parent the same opportunity for bonding and helping with child/family care is important. There's no forcing it at all, the parents can choose what is best for them which is the flexibility and independence that the rest of the USA should be enabling.

[0] https://paidfamilyleave.ny.gov/

[lotsofpulp]

Enabling isn't sufficient to counteract the fact that the men who choose not to take leave will be more valuable to an employer.

If society wants men and women to be on equal footing, and society wants women to be able to have children, and the consequence of having children is not being able to work, which then results in being less economically valuable to an employer, then to "fix" this, society must also make men just as less economically valuable. It all depends how "equal" you want to make the game.

[tomp]

Although I disagree with your assumption (that it's valuable that men and women are equal in every, or at least this particular, dimension), I want to point out that you're forgetting another option - to make women (mothers) more economically valuable (so they compare favourably with fathers / childless individuals). You can simply reward companies whose employees have children! This would also correctly incentivize hard-working smart people to procreate (if rewards are proportional to taxes/salaries).

[iamsmooney]

I'm not sure why the discussion is heading towards making companies value genders equally. Is "women get pregnant" a real concern from an employers perspective? Anecdotally I have not seen that be the case, and if it were a corporate truth I expect some discrimination lawsuits to emerge.

[rebuilder]

Yes, you probably need to push men into taking leave. Incentivizing may work better than trying to force them. For example, go a bit further than just having parental leave, and have some of that time be paternal leave that the mother can not take. You don't have to use it, but there's an incentive to.

Of course that's not going to fully even the books. Men don't get pregnant. They're not going to breastfeed or recover from giving birth. But that doesn't mean that you can't make things better.

Look at it from the perspective of the family: requiring women to bear the entire burden of childcare in terms of time off work puts a serious damper on their career prospects. By allowing and incentivizing the man in the family to also take time off for childcare, you improve the woman's chances at building a strong career. That should translate to higher income for the family.

[hopler]

How does trading one person's career for the other improve family income? If the woman has higher earning potential, the man can stay home thanks to her earnings. If they can't afford that, then they can't afford kids and economically the system is broken regardless

[tathougies]

> If the goal is to mitigate the consequences of giving birth and taking care of an infant, and the consequence is that women have less time for work, then you have to force men to also have less time for work.

What exactly is the point of this? All this does is penalize poor families. No amount of monetary hand out is going to ever devalue the wealth creation ability of work. You cannot pay out the social benefits of working. Women undertake a vital task in giving birth, and they of course need time to recover. However, in that situation, the best thing for their family is not for neither spouse to be uninvolved in the workplace. Forcing men to stay home (rather than choose what is best for their family) simply limits the family's overall ability to create wealth for themselves.

Yes, paternity leave is important and nice, but the truth of the matter is that some women are going to need many months to recover from birth, and men simply do not. Why disadvantage entire families in the name of 'equality'. There is no equality to be had. The woman's body suffered through birth, and the man's didn't. The baby needs the mother nearby to feed it, not the father. What's the big deal then if the man goes back to work earlier?

Can anyone articular why it is better (for families) for men to not return to work when they feel ready, which is almost invariably going to be sooner than their wives? This seems to me a good thing that ensures children have their financial well being looked after.

[rebuilder]

It's not about having men stay at home so their unrecovered wives can get back to work. The assumption is that people are sane and that parental leave is long enough that by and large physical recovery is done well before the leave is over.

It's about making hiring a woman less burdensome to employers compared to men by letting men take care of the child when the mother is well but the child still needs at-home care. Of course, how realistic that is hinges very much on what the period of parental leave provided is in the first place. If it's just long enough to let the majority of women hobble back into the workplace after dropping their infants in daycare... well, maybe that's a whole other issue.

[tathougies]

> It's about making hiring a woman less burdensome to employers compared to men by letting men take care of the child when the mother is well but the child still needs at-home care.

I understand that this is the purpose, but I'm questioning why that's a good thing. All this does is hobble the workforce artificially. This is like requiring a man who can lift 50 pounds for his job to take time off twice a week to make up for the guy who -- due to some bodily reality -- can only lift 25. Why is the man who can lift 50 pounds artificially limited in helping his family in the name of 'equality'.

A central point of the women's right movements was that women should work because husband's income was not always reliable. Plus, men could die, leaving a woman without any means of income. However, we have swung in the very opposite direction, where we are now limiting men providing for their families in the name of women working. If women in the workplace require men to take extra time off in order to be 'equal', then it's clear that the arguments used to keep women from the workplace were valid to begin with.

Now, I don't believe in any of this, but this is the underlying logic (whether admitted or not) of various schemes meant to hobble fathers returning to the workplace at whatever time they and their family decide is appropriate.

[thecopy]

I don't know why this is being downvoted. It is certainly true in Sweden that while we have parental leave, men take a lot less, and the left wing parties are trying to create a law forcing men to take time off.