[jdmoreira]

I'm a dad in Stockholm and currently in the first month of my parental leave which is expected to last at least more 6 months. My girlfriend just went back to work. Our daughter is 11 months old. I worked 75% from the time she was 6 months old until a month ago when I went for a 100% parental. My employer pays me a bonus on top of the state money as a perk.

As far as I am concerned I can’t even imagine it being any other way. I understand how fortunate I am to be in Sweden. It truly is an amazing system.

[vidarh]

I'm Norwegian, and the Norwegian system is similar to the Swedish. I live in the UK, though, and so I've seen how expensive and inflexible UK policy, which is much closer to US is Vs. for my brother in Norway.

I don't understand how people on more normal incomes do it in places like the UK and US.

[lotsofpulp]

> I don't understand how people on more normal incomes do it in places like the UK and US.

They simply have a worse quality of life. Hand the baby off to older family members or daycare and spend 50 hours or more per week at work or commuting to work, and spend maybe 3 to 4 hours a day if that with their infant, with which they still need to cook, clean, excercise, etc.

And looking around at many people, clearly they’re sacrificing many of those life enhancing activities in exchange for a little bit of financial security and the hope they or their kids can make it out of the bottom 90%, so that maybe they can spend some time with their babies.

[dillonmckay]

It is very difficult. I recently spoke with my best friend who has a 1.5 hour commute each day.

He sees his children for an hour in the morning.

He comes home around 9pm.

[mattlondon]

Not sure it is so bad in the UK now that we have shared parental leave: I am a father of a recent newborn and I get to share 12 months off (well, 50 weeks since my wife must take at least the first 2 weeks after birth herself) with my wife for our newborn son.

We're getting approx £600 a month (so I guess 800-900USD depending on exchange rates today) of free money during the first year from the government (maternity allowance), before any payments from employers. Not amazing amounts of free money, but helps pay for some essentials and considering we are both earning fairly huge salaries I was surprised we were entitled to anything at all.

My employer is actually pretty generous and I as a partner I am getting several months off at full pay - most partners will get only 2 weeks off unless they make use of the shared parental leave, but the "major" employers all have similar generous parental leave perks from what I know.

Both my wife and I are legally gauranteed our jobs back when we return as far as I understand it, and from what I know we can request 80% time etc, or some other flexible arrangement and it must be considered fairly and allowed if feasible.

I have been really impressed with the NHS. Obviously everything ante-natal and post-partum was 100% free (including parenting classes in addition to the clinical stuff). What has really impressed me has been the free home visits by the midwives and nurses in the days and weeks after birth - an amazing service to just have midwives turn up 2 days afterwards and check that mother baby (and father!!!!!) are doing ok, then to continue getting home visits in the following weeks. Really impressed. We paid to get some extra private scans done earlier in the pregnancy for peace of mind etc, but otherwise the NHS has been excellent for this (and I don't usually sing it any praise for normal services)

As for childcare I don't know yet - from what I gather childcare is a cluster-fuck in the UK with oversubscription and fairly high costs (e.g. £100/day in London for 8am-8pm) outside of the public nurseries. There are some things available for this I think (childcare vouchers for 30hours a week of free childcare?) but I don't know anything about it.

So tl;Dr: 365 Vs 480 days off, 800USD+100% salary Vs 3700USD, potentially oversubscribed public or expensive private daycare Vs cheap public daycare.

[vidarh]

What you describe (generous employer payments etc.) is far from the norm in the UK, though. Yes, it's possible to be in a decent situation in the UK too, but usually when you're already in a professional privileged position.