Paid leave is nice, but I'm much more concerned about daycare. I think it's a travesty as well as a remnant of patriarchy that you can deduct a steakhouse lunch as the "cost of doing business" but not deduct daycare as a cost of being able to work. I'm in envy of countries with functioning public daycare systems.
If you wish to interpret the personal exemption that way, then it also (in aggregate) pays for day care.
You might point out that some individuals pay more than the average, but I don't see a reason to single out the woman who needs daycare over the salesman who needs a custom suit.
Deductions are taxpayer-specific. Google doesn't get to deduct some aggregated average amount for engineer salaries: they get to deduct their actual engineer salaries. Workers should, similarly, be able to deduct the expenses that have no consumptive value to them other than enabling them to work. This should include both the salesman's suit and a family's daycare.
As a practical matter, the personal exemption and standard deduction are high enough to cover the salesman's custom suit or commuting expenses, etc. Where it really falls down is with daycare and similar expenses.
I don't object to such a scheme, provided transaction costs are low enough (I suspect they might not be). But it's a little hyperbolic to describe an oversimplification of the tax code as "patriarchy".
I also don't think you realize how much a custom suit costs. It could easily be way out of the ballpark of the personal exemption.
It's $3k for each working parent -- far, far short of typical expenses. In the end, it means that women in a 2-earner family often take a break in their career, which then further separates income difference between men/women.
$400/week? Sounds a bit steep. Ten years ago I was paying $100/week in a "top 20 metropolitan area" and that was for a rather high end service in the 2nd wealthiest suburb in the region.
Much like college tuition increases, a government tax break merely means the suppliers will all increase prices to adsorb the new supply of money. Its basic supply and demand, you have a supply of more money, so we'll demand it. A govt tax break has no impact on the standard of living of the population, its a give away for the industry it applies to.
Also DCRA is a complicated tax mess where its incompatible with some other social engineering child tax credit scheme, causing all manner of annoyance and confusion. That's all I remember of that detail, at least 5 to 10 years ago at the fed level you could put pre-tax income into a DCRA OR not pay income tax on some small subset of childcare expenses but obviously you couldn't double dip and apply both credits to untax your untaxed income although the paperwork made it easy enough to accidentally try.
I think your numbers might be outdated, we're paying ~1200/mo in a fairly rural area outside of the baltimore area (not exactly known for wealth) for the cheapest "professional" daycare for about 4h a day, as the child is in kindergarden and only needs 3-4 hours a day of extra help. I'm told that the upper end daycare (across the street) is more like 4-5k/mo in the same semi-rural area.
There is a difference between a tax break and recognizing something as an expense. The difference is, roughly, the difference between trying to incentivize certain behavior and trying to properly define income (as distinguished from revenue).
E.g. if you're in a business, you get to deduct the cost of employee salaries. The portion of your revenue that goes to employee salaries isn't a benefit to you in any way except as a necessary part of your business. If you didn't have the business, you wouldn't have that expense. Allowing the deduction isn't a "tax break" but is rather necessary in order to properly define "net income" as distinct from "revenue."
Day care is similar. It's a necessary expense of going to work. The portion of your salary spent on daycare isn't a benefit to you in anyway except as a necessary condition of going to work. If you didn't go to work, you wouldn't have that expense.
$100/week. That's $2.50 an hour. An appropriate ratio of caregiver to babies is 3:1. So $7.50 an hour per caregiver. Assume overhead of 33%. That's being generous: I'm going to want to choose a location with a good sized yard so my kids can play outside a lot, and yards cost money. So by my math, that works out to $5 an hour for a caregiver. WTF?
Sure, the ratios can get quite a bit better as the babies get older, but you're still talking about rates that seem more appropriate for the 3rd world or the 19th century with a servant underclass than about rates that are appropriate for the professionals that many early childhood educators are.
Ten years ago, 4:1 for infants and "just before kindergarden" ages it was something like 10:1. The local schools are about 20:1 so that's not terribly out of line. Also it is true it was about twice as expensive for infants compared to almost grade school kids. So near $200 for infants but was only about $100 for the last checks I wrote for the kids.
Also if you think early childhood educators make more than minimum wage, well, you must not know any.
This[1] seems about right for the ECE people I know, none of whom are making minimum wage. Daycare workers without any certifications make minimum wage, certified workers make about 50% more and the heads make about double minimum wage.
There is dependent care FSAs however your employer must offer you one. FSAs are really just a load of bullshit anyways, they are too confusing for most people to use.
What about those who choose to have one parent stay home? If there's a deduction for child care, I think my wife forgoing a career should result in us taking her expected salary as a deduction.
A deduction is a tax accounting device intended to distinguish income from revenue. In your hypothetical, why is any deduction necessary to properly compute income?
The fact that couples choose to have two spouses work is irrelevant. Daycare has no consumptive value either way. A company can choose to hire a separate CTO instead of combining the role into another position. They are entitled to deduct his salary anyway, and companies that don't hire a separate CTO can't complain about not getting a deduction too.
That could be said about any do-it-yourself endeavor. Making my own food is subsidized (no sales tax) when eating out is better for the productivity of the economy, for example.
You're hitting on an important theoretical point with regards to income taxes, which is that do it yourself work is effectively subsidized because the fair market value isn't imputed for taxation purposes.
Imputing taxes is a can of worms, but it doesn't help your position. If such taxes existed, you'd be taxed on the fair market value of the child care duties performed by your wife.
Interesting. I think I understand a bit better now after thinking through the following hypothetical:
I decide to swap kids with a neighbor during the day. My wife watches their kids, they watch our kids. We pay each other 40k a year to do so. I would then be able to deduct the 40k as a child care expense, but I would also have 40k additional income. The net result on taxable income would be zero.
I think it's a travesty as well as a remnant of patriarchy that you can deduct a steakhouse lunch as the "cost of doing business" but not deduct daycare as a cost of being able to work.
You can't deduct the full amount of a steakhouse lunch as a "cost of doing business." You can deduct 50% of the amount. And if you have a significant number of these deductions, don't be surprised when they are challenged.
As for the suggestion that daycare be a deductible expense "as a cost of being able to work", I think you'd have more success arguing for structural tax reform than new deductions targeted to a specific group of people. After all, there are a whole host of other items that aren't currently deductible, such as regular commute expenses, that one might argue are "a cost of being able to work."
Which leaves: The United States†, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Liberia.
† It appears as though CA, NJ, WA (DC?) have some paid compensation for all workers. Still, it seems pretty paltry compared with nearly everywhere else in the world.
Among the list of things about the United States that are incomprehensible to me (a Canadian), the absence of paid maternal (let alone parental) leave ranks pretty close to the top.
I find it incomprehensible why paid maternal leave would be mandatory.
Why should companies (in particular the ones who hire women) be forced to pay for the life choices of their employees? And why maternity specifically, as opposed to all sorts of other life choices?
So women have the opportunity to give birth and raise children in a safe, welcoming society, so you have a healthy population and grandkids around to pay for elderly social services? Is 'paying it forward' anathema?
You are aware that it's not the company that pays the wage compensation during the maternity leave?
At least here in Germany, you get 60% of your salary (up to an upper limit) for 12 months (14 if both parents take part of the leave) _from the state_.
These schemes are usually designed in such a way that they are either cost-neutral or beneficial to companies that employ women.
You are aware that there are still costs for keeping non-producing employees around, right?
For example, either their work goes undone, or else you need to hire someone who might become superfluous if they return. In the meantime their skills might atrophy or they may become unnecessary (but getting rid of them in this case is legally risky).
(The latter is not hypothetical - I know of a specific case, namely a large but shrinking company that is firing everyone who is either below average or has been pregnant recently. )
There are costs for using humans to do your work. Sometimes they get sick, sometimes they get pregnant, sometimes they have a super-productive day and sometimes they don't.
I don't think companies should be obligated to give people the choice to vanish from the workforce and return a year later to an equal or better job.
I would also enjoy the option to take a year off and have a job when I return (for other life choices than having children), I just don't see why my employer should be obligated to hold my job open.
I'm not prescribing what the duration should be, surely there is some middle ground between zero and a year.
Where I am currently living (NL) it is a few months (three I believe), happily paid for by the taxpayers. Where I lived before (US-CA) it was a few weeks of partially paid leave, paid by the employer.
I'm also not completely convinced that the weeks surrounding a childbirth are the most productive working weeks.
Reproduction of the species is not a "life choice." Our stock is all worthless if there's no generations of 18-35 year olds to provide a consumer and worker base into the future. What's the market cap of Facebook in a world where all the 13+ year olds that ever will exist are already born?
To me, this a key differentiating point between conservatives and libertarians. Following the libertarian position here has caused conservatives to undermine a key core pro-family policy position.
Assuming increasing fertility is your justification for maternity leave, will you change your position if I show you data suggesting that maternity leave has little effect on fertility (among first world nations)?
I didn't say anything about increasing fertility. I was responding to your comment: "Why should companies (in particular the ones who hire women) be forced to pay for the life choices of their employees?"
Parenting isn't a "life choice." Reproduction of the species is a basic function of society. Our economic system is deeply dependent on the assumption of at least stable if not growing population. Companies benefit from people who perform that basic function, and therefore it isn't wrong to force them to pay for benefits like parental leave. Otherwise, companies have an incentive to free-ride.
I seem to be unable to apply the principle of charity to your views in a useful way, so I'm going to need some help here to understand what you are trying to say.
If an activity is, in aggregate, "a basic function of society", then at the individual level it ceases to be a choice? Your argument seems to be "Reproduction...is a basic function of society -> Parenting isn't a life choice", but I cannot figure out the intermediate steps.
Also, I still don't understand why you discuss reproduction of the species. Maternity leave does not encourage reproduction, and the evidence I've seen suggests negligable social benefits. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2348505 Free-riding suggests a situation where a good or service is underprovisioned if people can choose not to provide it. But as the evidence shows, reproduction will be provided at the same rate regardless of maternity benefits. So your use of the term "free-ride" must be referring to something besides the obvious. Can you explain?
People can and do choose to do, and others choose to not do it. How is it not a "life choice"?
Reproduction of the species is a basic function of society.
If it was purely a function "of society", then it would be a social choice, not a personal one, who would do it and how. So I think that it is pretty clear that -- in Western society at least -- while there may be social aspects to reproduction, it is not generally viewed first and foremost as a "function of society". I personally think that's a good thing, but YMMV.
Our economic system is deeply dependent on the assumption of at least stable if not growing population.
That's certainly an argument for why it ought to be a preferred and encouraged life choice.
About 1/6 of the working population is at employers with less than 20 employees, and so wouldn't be covered anyway. Another 1/6 is at employers with 20 to 99 employees, and many of them would also not be covered.
Why should the social safety net exclude 20% of the population?
The patriarchy says men can't take care of babies. Us feminists think men can take care of babies and should have the same leave / similar entitlement as women.
Really? Because it seems that feminists say men can't take care of children, particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody. Modern, vocal feminists have, by and large, become severely anti-men in many of their policies. From convincing the world that all men are rapists and manipulating definitions of rape to induce male perpetrators. To the lovely Tumble feministas /SJW who spread vile, hate-filled messages against men. To a court system and public that's been convinced by the feminist political machine that women need to be protected and there's no way they could possibly rape someone or lie about being raped.
There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture. Feminists like using that word as a scapegoat and explanation for everything they do and don't like.
Because it seems that feminists say men can't take care of children, particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody.
This is not true at all. In cases where fathers seek custody, they have a good chance of gaining custody or arriving at a shared custody arrangement.
Modern, vocal feminists have, by and large, become severely anti-men in many of their policies. From convincing the world that all men are rapists and manipulating definitions of rape to induce male perpetrators.
Are you serious? When someone points out that most rapes are committed by men they aren't saying all men are rapists. Also, there has been tremendous effort to expand definitions of rape, esp. from a legal standpoint, to be more inclusive of sexual assault as it happens, whether it be to men or women and whether committed by a man or woman.
To the lovely Tumble feministas /SJW who spread vile, hate-filled messages against men.
Please, tell me more about how someone venting about men oppresses you.
To a court system and public that's been convinced by the feminist political machine that women need to be protected and there's no way they could possibly rape someone or lie about being raped.
This is the exact opposite thing that feminist and activist communities are fighting against. The notion that women are fragile and need special protections is highly misogynistic and patriarchal. That consideration of woman has been generally used against women and to prevent their access to equality over the last 100 years+.
Further, nobody is arguing that women cannot commit rape. If somewhere were to argue that, they would be discounting the experiences of many sexual assault survivors. Also, yes women can lie about rape, but that is not the primary issue with sexual assault and catching those that commit sexual assaults as the majority of sexual assaults go without a conviction and sexual assault continues to be a large scale social problem.
There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture. Feminists like using that word as a scapegoat and explanation for everything they do and don't like.
You are so obsessed with straw feminists that this is ridiculous. Like anything, there are many different voices and opinions that use the label feminism, but you seem to rather want to ignore any social problems in favor of blaming women.
This is not true at all. In cases where fathers seek custody, they have a good chance of gaining custody or arriving at a shared custody arrangement.
~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances.
60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother.
On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive >85% of all child support paid every year.
Are you serious? When someone points out that most rapes are committed by men they aren't saying all men are rapists. Also, there has been tremendous effort to expand definitions of rape, esp. from a legal standpoint, to be more inclusive of sexual assault as it happens, whether it be to men or women and whether committed by a man or woman.
Then why are we pushing campaigns to teach men not to rape but not women? Why are colleges around the US putting students through rape awareness education only telling men not to rape? As for redefinitions, feminists pushed for the recent FBI expansion that makes forced fallatio rape but not forced cunnilingus. They also pushed for the definition to be forced penetration by the accused, excluding cases where a man is forced to penetrate by the women.
Please, tell me more about how someone venting about men oppresses you.
Please tell me more about derailing by insulting.
You are so obsessed with straw feminists that this is ridiculous. Like anything, there are many different voices and opinions that use the label feminism, but you seem to rather want to ignore any social problems in favor of blaming women.
As usual, those voices (despite being some prolific and vocal, really being the face of feminism today) are No True Scotsman'ed out of being feminists.
~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances.
This is correct, the overall rate is low. However, this doesn't take into account rates of fathers seeking custody. About 50% of fathers seeking primary custody in divorce cases are granted such custody. It should be noted that fathers generally do not see primary custody as frequently as women in these cases, which skews the overall rate.
60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother.
I don't dispute this. However, rates of payout are different from legal obligation to pay. Any person, man or woman, receiving child support are more likely to only receive some partial sum of child support, if any. Moreover, there is already income inequality for women in general in the US, this will have a bearing on whether or not fathers, who are statistically more likely to be better paid, have to pay child support.
On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive 85% of all child support paid every year.
As you yourself noted, women are much more likely to be performing primary custody and care for a child, we would then expect that women receive more child support then men in such an arrangement. As I mentioned before, this is a bit misleading as many people don't receive full amounts of child support or have some kind of informal support arrangement that is not court ordered.
Then why are we pushing campaigns to teach men not to rape but not women? Why are colleges around the US putting students through rape awareness education only telling men not to rape?
Rape and sexual assault is overwhelmingly committed by men. Prevention messages and campaigns are targeted this way for this reason. That is not to say that they deny that women can commit sexual assault, but rather that a primary problem is behaviors committed by people who are men. Campaigns that focus on women's behavior are not addressing this fact.
As for redefinitions, feminists pushed for the recent FBI expansion that makes forced fallatio rape but not forced cunnilingus.
This is not true. The new summary of the change for the FBI includes: "or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without
the consent of the victim".
They also pushed for the definition to be forced penetration by the accused, excluding cases where a man is forced to penetrate by the women.
The FBI definition still has problems, for sure. It focuses far too much on penetration as rape rather than non-consensual sexual contact. However, there were a wide variety of voices, feminist and not, that noted this when the FBI made its change and are continuing to call for more change. Like I said, there are many voices in feminism, some of which call for things that are shortsighted or don't make sense. To claim that this is wholly representative of feminism is what creates a strawman.
Please tell me more about derailing by insulting.
As a man you do not face systematic discrimination and power imbalance due to your gender, that is why I mentioned it. When someone complains about men online, you are not seriously impacted due to your gender.
As usual, those voices (despite being some prolific and vocal, really being the face of feminism today) are No True Scotsman'ed out of being feminists.
I made no such fallacy. Those voices exist and are associated with feminism. However, they are not the total representation of feminist voices and to make it seem as though they are is not talking about serious issues in good faith.
When someone complains about men online, you are not seriously impacted due to your gender.
That statement contradict itself. People commonly complain (like the above comments) when men complain about feminism. If its been a woman complain about feminism, it would be acceptable.
In this specific context (a person complain about feminism), men are seriously negative impacted due to their gender.
~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances.
>60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother.
On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive >85% of all child support paid every year.
Yes, that's the misogynist patriarchy for you. Women are no better at raising children than men. But in Old-Fashioned-Patriarchy-Land, people think women are "naturally" better and men are "naturally" worse. It's called "benevolent sexism".
And when feminists support that model of "benevolent sexism", they indirectly support a misogynistic society.
Or we could always redefine that no true feminist would ever say that a woman are more needed (or is better) at taking care of a young child than men. With public platforms like twitter and facebook, organization could easy purge members which such statements if they wanted.
"Israel is one of the last countries in the world where the Tender Years Doctrine is still in force, if not the last. While the clause reflects an old world order in which mothers were expected to be homemakers and fathers were breadwinners, many feminist politicians and women's groups refuse to have it amended, claiming that the time is not yet ripe for such a change and that men will take advantage of it to put pressure on women in divorce." - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174956#.Urn...
I also read with some horror this for a self-claimed feminist:
"Yet under no-fault divorce, a woman can find herself essentially a single mom, drained of family resources by court costs and lawyer fees, and suddenly required to work against her will and sacrifice time with her children."
- http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/05/10031/
Hopefully all the above is today a minority view, but it should not be glossed completely over. Feminists and fathers right groups should under all circumstances agree on gender equality, which mean equal time with children and equal requirement to work in an effort to support their own children.
I think I should make some writeup for responses to MRAs, because I think I understand the worldview and bought into it myself for a long time. Of course the response might not be perfect this time around, but I can perfect it incrementally.
The first thing that is crucial to understand is that feminism itself is not the enemy. In fact, intelligent feminists should care about the problems you list. I'm not saying they do, but they should, because feminism isn't anti-men, it's anti gender roles. This means that problems like men being pressured to bury their emotions, or men not getting proper mental health care, or men not getting fair custody, or men not being taken seriously when they are raped, are all things that feminism is supposed to be fighting against. The fact that our society often ignores these problems is not because of feminism, it's because of sexism. Feminists often do ignore problems like this with men, and those feminists are either ignorant or bigoted, because sexist oppression caused by society to men, and sexist oppression caused by society to women, have the same root and are part of the same problem that feminism is trying to fix. This is not a fringe view of feminism. This is the normal view.
The second thing that is crucial to understand is that the caricature of sexist tumblr-warrior "feminists" (that do indeed exist) are a distraction. The fact that people like this are taken seriously probably bothers me as much as it bothers you. However, these people are misrepresenting feminism. They do not say what feminism is supposed to represent. You can think of them as the crazy bigoted Christians or Muslims that are technically part of the same group, but do not represent the whole.
Finally, you have to realize that gender roles and sexism are oppressing men and women. I think the reason so many feminists react badly to men's rights advocates is because they marginalize women's problems while promoting men's. In truth I think this is just a reaction from seeing feminist groups do the reverse. Really, both are a problem. Just because one is a problem doesn't make another problem any more or less important. So instead of saying "This is ridiculous to be worrying about when much worse is happening to men and nobody cares," try saying, "This is an important problem," and separately, "These other things are happening to men and nobody cares."
M-W defines "patriarchy" as: "a family, group, or government controlled by a man or a group of men."
90% of Congressmen, 95% of Fortune 500 CEO's, and 90% of Forbes 400 are men. The government and the most important corporations that people work for, along with the richest people in the country, are overwhelmingly controlled by men. That's the literal definition of patriarchy.
There's a massive difference between high-status men and low-status men.
High-status men are almost certainly part of a patriarchy, but as you've probably noticed are loved and admired by millions of women.
Low-status men in contrast have very little power and wealth, but get almost all of the flak for the patriarchy and in contrast significantly less access to women.
This term patriarchy is rarely used by a woman against men that she respects or admires even if they are extremely privileged. Most of the time it's a rationalisation for why she hates the average man that is uninteresting to her sexually.
So, yes, there is a patriarchy, but it's an integral part of the sexual politics which forces men to aggressively shoot for the top or receive nothing; it's not something that you can get rid of without the macro desires of women changing considerably; we're all part of the same system - one which orders men and women around masculine elitism.
There's a massive difference between high-status men and low-status men.
This is called "intersectionality". Sometimes people have advantages from being one thing (e.g. male), but they also have disadvantages due to being other things (e.g. a low-status person). You could have a gay white low-status male. They're male, so they have some advantages there, they're low status, so they have some disadvantages, white, so they have some advantages, and gay, so they have some disadvantages. Not everyone who is male automatically is disadvantage free. It's the intersection of all these things that are important in different situtations.
You've discovered intersectionality, doesn't mean male priviliege and the patriarchy doesn't exist. It just means that for many people "It's complicated"
I read about that years ago and I don't take kindly to others trying to humiliate me with condescending statements like that.
> doesn't mean male priviliege and the patriarchy doesn't exist
That is why I said: "So, yes, there is a patriarchy."
But you miss the whole point as what I said has nothing to do with intersectionality. I'm trying to make the point that "men" even without some kind of obvious status disqualifiers are not always on the top of the status hierarchy. This is the case with almost all big groups. It's not so simple. I was also trying to point out that it's the lowest status men that get derided for being patriarchal as high status is attractive and untouchable.
Quite right. I was simply pointing out that the word "patriarchy" is often used to imply that all men are extremely privileged, and the reason why this word doesn't even begin to negatively effect the real male ruling class.
(What I was saying doesn't have much to do with the original article, but has a lot to do with the comment above yours saying "patriarchy doesn't exist.")
I give 0-shits about how M-W defines that word. Why? Because they until very recently defined rape as an act committed by a man against a women and now have added wiggle-words to their definition to make it seem like a less pejorative against men. Their "examples of rape" involves or intimates a male assessor.
It's absolutely hilarious for you to ascribe this definition to feminism, because it actually derives from the common law definition of rape, which is hundreds of years old and predates modern feminism by more than quite a bit. The common law definition is an anachronism in more ways than one--it excludes rape against men in the same breath as it excludes spousal rape against women.
The most deeply ironic thing about your post is that it was feminists who led the effort to reform rape laws in the 1970s-1990s, which included making them gender neutral in addition to applying within marriages and eliminating degrees that made rape by acquaintances less severe than rape by strangers.
Modern feminists also pushed for the FBI definition of rape which is forced penetration but construed in such a way that it really only covers insertion of a penis. They also pushed for useless laws like rape shields which prevents the accused from addressing their accuser in the press while allowing the accusers to speak freely. They also pushed the "Dear Colleague" letter that's lowered the standard to preponderance in disciplinary hearings that strongly favors female accusers.
The modern definition of rape is no longer the one espoused by second wave feminists, which I happen to agree with. Rape shouldn't be a gendered crime, but thirdwave and radical feminists don't seem to think so.
Rape perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. You do realise that, right? Because without at least an acknowledgement that that vast majority of rape is carried out by men there's no point engaging with you.
That seems to be a question better suited for empirical evidence than an ideological litmus test. I'll agree it's the conventional wisdom that more men than women commit rape, and it seems likely, but the whole point of feminism is to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to gender and to avoid excluding people's valid experiences based on their gender. The question isn't whether statistically more men than women commit rape, the question is whether men who are raped and abused by women are marginalized and systemically denied justice by a system that asserts that such acts are impossible. Judging from the experiences of male victims of abuse and rape, unfortunately it seems that they are not only denied justice but systemically oppressed.
Rape perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. You do realise that, right?
No, they really aren't. The majority of "rapes" are institutional (meaning they happen in prisons and other custodial environments) and are perpetrated by women against women (See the Canadian prison systems 2011 report). Further, rape statistics are skewed by how rape is defined -- almost singularly as something committed by a man . In many jurisdictions, a women forcibly having sexual contact with a man is sexual assault and not rape. The '1 in 6' (or '1 in 5' depending on who says it) number of women raped is bullshit.
Yes, all feminists are the same and it's impossible for one person/group which calls itself "feminist" to do something that other femininsts wouldn't agree to.
Always the exactly same unsubstantiated ridiculous MRA delusions. Please stop spreading lies. If you think you don't spread lies please examine your beliefs and why you have them.
particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody.
The "extraordinary circumstances" that it takes for a father to get custody is to ask -- in the vast majority of cases where the father contests custody, he wins. While I don't think "the patriarchy" is the best construct (for reasons I discuss later) for explaining the world, the truth is that men don't end up with custody in the vast majority of cases because they are socialized not to seek it, and that socialization isn't a product of opposition -- by feminists or anyone else -- to traditional gender roles as binding archetypes.
There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture.
While "the patriarchy" is a not-unreasonable name for how the system of established social structures (yes, now, as well, though even moreso at the dawn of feminism) appears
to someone who is both female and has a self-image that conflicts with its gender-based norms, its a problematic name in that it fails to recognize two key factors about the system: (1) that men are also bound by it, and (2) that, despite role differences, women also exercise power within it and are no less likely to be psychically invested in preserving it.
That being said, however much "the patriarchy" isn't a great name for what feminists use it to describe, what is described with that term is very real.
Trying to silence a feminist by shooting down things that they say that don't align with your out of whack view of feminism isn't going to do one single thing to help with the problems you're talking about.
Hum. If someone is saying that men can't take care of children. He or She is not a feminist. You know that not every women is a feminist right ?
Now... the problem is that the judicial system is macho and, yes, thinks that only a woman can take care of a child. That's utterly chauvinistic (in the American sense of chauvinistic).
Actually I'm not answering the rest of your post it's too much hate filled and trollistic to deserve a response. I'm sorry you feel like that.
If someone is saying that men can't take care of children. He or She is not a feminist.
I find it extremely difficult to talk about feminism because it means different things to different people. More than once I have heard statements about feminism from women who self-identify as feminist that contradict one another.
How can I answer the question "are you a feminist?" when the term may mean something very different to the questioner than to myself? Indeed, it may mean something to them that I find incorrect or immoral.
Even amoung hard-core feminists (we're talking people who's job is to work in university's as women's studies professors and write books on this stuff), there can be a lot of disagreement.
Biggest example is trans people. Some old-skool femininsts are very trans-phobic.
I'd like to see you go on to the streets and ask 10 random women with children if they would like the fathers of their children to have the same amount of parental leave as them (or more!). Outside of exceptional circumstances the answer would be a strong, resounding yes.
If you think modern feminists have "won" and "control" the (US) justice system, you're wrong. Feminists are often complaining about the misogynist court sentences and proceedings.
Why is it considered a good thing when the government foists responsibility for the social safety net off on people's employers? Especially when it only applies to sufficiently large employers?
The existence of a skilled work force is the greatest resource that any country has. Companies exist to exploit this resource; are you saying that they should be able exploit this resource without being responsible for maintaining it?
The existence of a skilled work force is the greatest resource that any country has.
Yes.
Companies exist to exploit this resource;
No. Companies exist to alleviate transaction costs. Companies also exist to exploit economies of scale. Your use of "exploit" is perjorative; companies don't exist to hold an advantage over the workforce, they exist to provide increased opportunities for the workforce.
are you saying that they should be able exploit this resource without being responsible for maintaining it?
Mandatory paid leave (for any reason) is not maintaining the workforce. The workforce does not need to be maintained. It is insulting and offensive to claim that the workforce is incapable of maintaining itself.
Maintaining the skilled workforce would be helping people keep their skills up. That is, sending them to educational seminars, providing tuition assistance, providing time to experiment with interesting new things. This is nice to have, but not necessary. All that is necessary is that people have sufficient non-work hours to have time to learn on their own. People are naturally curious, and most remain at least somewhat curious even after being sent thru formal schooling.
Employees do not (or should not) belong to specific employers. Employers are not (should not be) responsible for maintaining the education and well-being of their (current) employees. They are (should be) only responsible for not hindering said employees from looking after their own education and well-being. Any further responsibility (the "social safety net"; ensuring that personal disasters or sustained bad luck don't get people stuck at the bottom of the pile) belongs to society as a whole (either government or voluntary charities).
they exist to provide increased opportunities for the workforce.
That's purely a side effect. Obviously companies hire as few employees as necessary.
Companies exist to generate profits for their owners. They do this by utilizing resources, the primary of which is a skilled workforce.
The existence of a skilled workforce is a typical common good, and the standard "tragedy of the commons" parable applies. Their are two standard responses to the tragedy of the commons: privatization or government action.
So unless you can agree that employers can "own" their employees, government action and regulation is necessary to prevent tragedy of the commons type outcomes.
Why is it considered a good thing when the government foists responsibility for the social safety net off on people's employers?
Countries that mandate paid maternity leave often don't; the pay often comes from public funds, the mandate on the employer is, in that case, not to provide the social safety net but to not punish the employee for using it.
Putting who pays for the leave aside, employees will always be punished to some degree when they take a leave of absence. Employers are disadvantaged (again, to some degree) by the missing employee. For example, they have to invest in training a temporary replacement only to let the go when the leave ends. That disadvantage will, intentionally or not, affect the employee.
Its a fair trade. The cost to society of a large dilbertian corporation is very high in terms of lowered quality of life. Yes some rich people get richer, but that doesn't mean quality of life isn't, on average for the society, reduced. So it seems perfectly fair that a tax or charge or bill be presented.
The USA situation relates to only about 60% of the population having a job, so 40% don't need "leave" anyway, and the percentage of people having a job is in permanent multi decade decline. So if there's not enough jobs right now to keep two parents fully employed at their appropriate level, there seems little point in encouraging both to work. If the powers that be do not permit your social group to have a career then there seems little point in complaining about a minor detail standing in the way of a career, which you can't have anyway regardless of popping out kids or not.
The USA situation for paternal leave is also screwed up for multicultural reasons and history of racism reasons. We have ethnic groups where the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers is way over majority, and uncle sam is the sugar "daddy". So allowing married fathers to take paid time off is going to make a huge mess where certain minorities are going to complain about their unmarried men not getting time off, but the white guys do get time off. I suppose you could demand a copy of the birth cert, so at least one baby couldn't result in ten guys claiming vacation time as father for each kid? Regardless of details and stats, there would be racial / socioeconomic friction in the USA about the whole topic that doesn't exist in a monocultural nation like, say, Japan.
Some cultures are built around the idea of supporting that culture, whereas the USA is built around the idea of convincing everyone that its an optimum strategy for every subculture to screw over every subculture; of course that means everyone gets screwed over in the end, but as long as you can convince the idiots its scalable, it'll be a profitable scam to run. Divide and conqueor, baby!
Large corporations reduce quality of life? Bullshit. How do you figure that? At worst, maybe they don't improve quality of life as much as you think they should but if they actively reduced quality of life people wouldn't voluntarily choose to work for them or buy from them.
Merger of large .com and .gov ruining .gov for everyone, environmental damage for everyone not just stockholders, lack of economic agility / flexibility ruining economic conditions for everyone else, the previously mentioned Dilbertian damage to culture and lifestyle impacting to some extent everyone, obvious lifestyle problems like traffic jams and parking lots and general commuter lifestyle negatively impacting everyone... (also edited to add the larger one player is, the less of a free market exists for everyone else, so lack of competition ruins the marketplace for everyone)
Simply calculate the ratio of people claiming in public that they wanna work at a smaller company vs wanting to work at a larger company. HN is not representative in general, but in this specific example no one really wants to work at Innitech from the Office Space movie.
Or the total aggregate of whining about working conditions about dilbertian megacorp inc vs smaller more flexible companies.
So, you wanna run a zoo.. Well OK. Nothing wrong with keeping both giant Elephants and tiny little Meerkats, in fact some diversity is an excellent idea. They're each cool in their own way. But its ignoring reality to not accept that the giant elephant exhibit is going to produce somewhat more smelly biological solid waste than the tiny little Meerkat exhibit.
If large companies were actually making things worse, then just getting rid of them would be sufficient to make things better. That's the definition of making something worse. So tell me: would getting rid of large companies make things better or not?
It would make things better for the general public due to increased competition, better working conditions, and faster more agile innovation.
It would make things worse for the stockholders and politicians relying on political contributions from those individuals.
There is a natural lack of scalability of the number of competing firms because most line of business have an inherent minimal size; if it takes 20 people to run a 1000 foot long printing press, shrinking the firm below 20 or so suddenly starts making things worse not better. Another good example would be a mine.
It doesn't seem terribly controversial that there exists a maxima in total human happiness where average business size is a vaguely tribal number depending on individual line of business. The other extreme of infinity sized firms or 100% of the population is just re-imagined communism or feudalism and its not overly controversial to claim that historically those systems really sucked.
The correct title for the map is “Countries where employers are fined or threatened with jail time for not providing maternity leave”.
Despite what our ‘enlightened’ friends the world over think about the dark, backwards, USA, it is not, in fact, illegal to provide paid maternity leave in the US.
This map, and the comments in this thread, support mandatory, government-backed maternity leave in the amount and style which the government believes is appropriate. Honest differences in preferences or opinions are subject to government punishment.
In the USA, we are skeptical of the benefits of the government making it a law to do mothering the way the government wants you to. We ask “Why is it noble to force people to forgo higher wages and other benefits for an in-kind contribution to a particular type of maternal care?”
The argument against government-mandated benefits has been made elsewhere in great detail. Facts, evidence, history, and common sense indicate that forcing people to consume their wages the way the government wants, in the the style the government wants, decreases the success of the overall community. That’s why every people who has ever had the chance to overthrow communism, has. And that’s why the children of all these states in Europe find that jobs are very difficult to get, and many of them, particularly the entrepreneurial ones, come to America.
Fewer rules imposed on people lead to greater growth, which leads to greater health, happiness, wealth, and longevity.
Further, there is something immoral about threatening to throw people in jail, or fine them, if they don’t do exactly what the government says on something as basic as raising your children.
To those who say that we should go ahead and follow “The Man” and be happy for these gifts, you have to realize that we are paying for the benefits, not the government, so forcing us to do it the way “they” want it, in a one-size-fits-all manner is not really a benefit to anybody.
You may say that it is only fair, or right, or just, that there be 3 months, or 12 months, or 24 months of paid maternity leave. 24/7/365 child care is bliss for many mothers — perhaps most. But for others, they may prefer to spend those dollars on better daycare, or weeklong breaks interspersed with work, or a 4-day week, or they may be just fine with working a full week and spending a more focused, quality time with their child on their days off.
Demanding that one size fits all, that the government has figured out the correct style of maternal care once and for all time, (when, it should be noted, every government legislature in the world is still majority male), and that those who disagree should be fined or thrown in jail, is not, in fact, a kind or compassionate policy, but a kind of abuse.
Incorrectly titled maps may be great for click bait, but they shouldn’t pass for deep analysis here on HackerNews.
Your wrong on how maternity leaves work, at least in Canada. Employers do not pay for the maternity, they just can't fire you (& you don't have to take the leave, lol like they force you to do that...)
It's the society (government) that pays for leaves. In canada it looks like this:
the parental benefit is 7 weeks at 70%, followed by 25 weeks at 55% from salary on a maximum of 50-60k salary
For me what you say is backwards, but I guess you are right, there is clearly no gain in life for a mother to take the time she need to adapt & connect with her children for a year.
Then again it is the poors that suffer that cannot in anyway take some time off from work. Or maybe it is the argument that you should not pay for others.
Like most decisions that society makes as a group, the cost is spread over most of the group, over time, so that more people can benefit from the policy. It's the very nature of how government works. Yes, because it costs everyone, such policies should be given close scrutiny. But merely being paid by everyone through taxes is not reason enough to condemn a policy; the logical conclusion to that is no government at all, which comes with its own costs and benefits.
Demanding that one size fits all, that the government has figured out the correct style of maternal care once and for all time
The countries mandated by legislation do not force parents to take leave. As you say, many parents prefer to work part time or scatter time across a period of months/years. Legislation affords worker rights, as much as legislating fair working conditions in general is a benefit to workers. Can you give me an example of a country with a free market where workers and employers get along without legislation?
I'm not a parent. But goddamn if I don't want parents to give their children the best possible early childhood that is available. If that costs me 30% of my salary, so that our society is healthy, educated, safe, well-balanced I'll pay it. Anyone who can't see that without an excellent early childhood plan in place our society is doomed is living with their head in the sand. I don't understand the vitriol on this website for parents and that legislating so that they have a chance is somehow socialist evil.
That leave is paid back several times over. A skilled work force is the greatest asset any country has. The first few years of life are the most important; spending money on a child for the first few years of it's life should result in significantly increased benefit to society throughout their later working life.
"In the USA, we are skeptical of the benefits of the government making it a law to do mothering the way the government wants you to."
What an ignorant statement. Maternity and paternity leave are about requiring employers to allow you early bonding time with your children, not about the nanny state judging how you parent.
True conservative think wants to keep the government out of things and let companies decide things, as companies can switch policies at a much faster pace than the government.
What is thought as "good parenting" keep switching. If you look at child birth and newborn care in the US over the last 100 years, you will find a lot of different things that have been done.
The current trends are pushing for moms and dads to get as much bonding as possible right from the start. I think this is a great idea and really should be a standard.
Also, the US does require employers to give employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave (without threat of firing) for large family events (from the FMLA law). It's not perfect, but at least it's something.
Fewer rules imposed on people lead to greater growth, which leads to greater health, happiness, wealth, and longevity.
This is easy to discredit. We have rules that prevent us from clubbing each other on the head and taking what we can from the corpse. By your reasoning, getting rid of this rule would increase growth and lead to greater prosperity. But most people would disagree.
This sort of reasoning is always code for "my favored set of rules is better."
Youth unemployment is currently a serious problems in a few European states (e. g. Spain) but (a) not in most and (b) it is certainly not related to maternity leave or universal health insurance.
Comments
Paid leave is nice, but I'm much more concerned about daycare. I think it's a travesty as well as a remnant of patriarchy that you can deduct a steakhouse lunch as the "cost of doing business" but not deduct daycare as a cost of being able to work. I'm in envy of countries with functioning public daycare systems.
You also can't deduct the cost of pants as the "cost of doing business", even if showing up in your underwear would get you fired.
The personal exemption exists to offset those sorts of costs and is mostly adequate for doing so.
If you wish to interpret the personal exemption that way, then it also (in aggregate) pays for day care.
You might point out that some individuals pay more than the average, but I don't see a reason to single out the woman who needs daycare over the salesman who needs a custom suit.
Deductions are taxpayer-specific. Google doesn't get to deduct some aggregated average amount for engineer salaries: they get to deduct their actual engineer salaries. Workers should, similarly, be able to deduct the expenses that have no consumptive value to them other than enabling them to work. This should include both the salesman's suit and a family's daycare.
As a practical matter, the personal exemption and standard deduction are high enough to cover the salesman's custom suit or commuting expenses, etc. Where it really falls down is with daycare and similar expenses.
I don't object to such a scheme, provided transaction costs are low enough (I suspect they might not be). But it's a little hyperbolic to describe an oversimplification of the tax code as "patriarchy".
I also don't think you realize how much a custom suit costs. It could easily be way out of the ballpark of the personal exemption.
In the USA there is a child care tax credit; to be eligible, the child care expenses must have enabled the taxpayer to work or to look for work.
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc602.html
It's $3k for each working parent -- far, far short of typical expenses. In the end, it means that women in a 2-earner family often take a break in their career, which then further separates income difference between men/women.
I believe it's $3k per child, up to $6k max.
The child care tax credit covers about 2 months of daycare in a major metro area.
$400/week? Sounds a bit steep. Ten years ago I was paying $100/week in a "top 20 metropolitan area" and that was for a rather high end service in the 2nd wealthiest suburb in the region.
Much like college tuition increases, a government tax break merely means the suppliers will all increase prices to adsorb the new supply of money. Its basic supply and demand, you have a supply of more money, so we'll demand it. A govt tax break has no impact on the standard of living of the population, its a give away for the industry it applies to.
Also DCRA is a complicated tax mess where its incompatible with some other social engineering child tax credit scheme, causing all manner of annoyance and confusion. That's all I remember of that detail, at least 5 to 10 years ago at the fed level you could put pre-tax income into a DCRA OR not pay income tax on some small subset of childcare expenses but obviously you couldn't double dip and apply both credits to untax your untaxed income although the paperwork made it easy enough to accidentally try.
I think your numbers might be outdated, we're paying ~1200/mo in a fairly rural area outside of the baltimore area (not exactly known for wealth) for the cheapest "professional" daycare for about 4h a day, as the child is in kindergarden and only needs 3-4 hours a day of extra help. I'm told that the upper end daycare (across the street) is more like 4-5k/mo in the same semi-rural area.
There is a difference between a tax break and recognizing something as an expense. The difference is, roughly, the difference between trying to incentivize certain behavior and trying to properly define income (as distinguished from revenue).
E.g. if you're in a business, you get to deduct the cost of employee salaries. The portion of your revenue that goes to employee salaries isn't a benefit to you in any way except as a necessary part of your business. If you didn't have the business, you wouldn't have that expense. Allowing the deduction isn't a "tax break" but is rather necessary in order to properly define "net income" as distinct from "revenue."
Day care is similar. It's a necessary expense of going to work. The portion of your salary spent on daycare isn't a benefit to you in anyway except as a necessary condition of going to work. If you didn't go to work, you wouldn't have that expense.
$100/week. That's $2.50 an hour. An appropriate ratio of caregiver to babies is 3:1. So $7.50 an hour per caregiver. Assume overhead of 33%. That's being generous: I'm going to want to choose a location with a good sized yard so my kids can play outside a lot, and yards cost money. So by my math, that works out to $5 an hour for a caregiver. WTF?
Sure, the ratios can get quite a bit better as the babies get older, but you're still talking about rates that seem more appropriate for the 3rd world or the 19th century with a servant underclass than about rates that are appropriate for the professionals that many early childhood educators are.
Ten years ago, 4:1 for infants and "just before kindergarden" ages it was something like 10:1. The local schools are about 20:1 so that's not terribly out of line. Also it is true it was about twice as expensive for infants compared to almost grade school kids. So near $200 for infants but was only about $100 for the last checks I wrote for the kids.
Also if you think early childhood educators make more than minimum wage, well, you must not know any.
This[1] seems about right for the ECE people I know, none of whom are making minimum wage. Daycare workers without any certifications make minimum wage, certified workers make about 50% more and the heads make about double minimum wage.
1: http://www.livingin-canada.com/salaries-for-early-childhood-...
The minimum wage in Canada is about $10, +/- 50 cents depending on jurisdiction.
I have no idea where he's paying $100/week. We're paying $1,300 per month in Wilmington, DE, which is not exactly a high cost of living place.
There is dependent care FSAs however your employer must offer you one. FSAs are really just a load of bullshit anyways, they are too confusing for most people to use.
What about those who choose to have one parent stay home? If there's a deduction for child care, I think my wife forgoing a career should result in us taking her expected salary as a deduction.
A deduction is a tax accounting device intended to distinguish income from revenue. In your hypothetical, why is any deduction necessary to properly compute income?
The fact that couples choose to have two spouses work is irrelevant. Daycare has no consumptive value either way. A company can choose to hire a separate CTO instead of combining the role into another position. They are entitled to deduct his salary anyway, and companies that don't hire a separate CTO can't complain about not getting a deduction too.
Your wife forgoing her career hurts the overall productivity of the economy. Why should this be subsidized?
That could be said about any do-it-yourself endeavor. Making my own food is subsidized (no sales tax) when eating out is better for the productivity of the economy, for example.
You're hitting on an important theoretical point with regards to income taxes, which is that do it yourself work is effectively subsidized because the fair market value isn't imputed for taxation purposes.
Imputing taxes is a can of worms, but it doesn't help your position. If such taxes existed, you'd be taxed on the fair market value of the child care duties performed by your wife.
Interesting. I think I understand a bit better now after thinking through the following hypothetical:
I decide to swap kids with a neighbor during the day. My wife watches their kids, they watch our kids. We pay each other 40k a year to do so. I would then be able to deduct the 40k as a child care expense, but I would also have 40k additional income. The net result on taxable income would be zero.
In a lot of ways, that makes perfect sense.
You can't deduct the full amount of a steakhouse lunch as a "cost of doing business." You can deduct 50% of the amount. And if you have a significant number of these deductions, don't be surprised when they are challenged.
As for the suggestion that daycare be a deductible expense "as a cost of being able to work", I think you'd have more success arguing for structural tax reform than new deductions targeted to a specific group of people. After all, there are a whole host of other items that aren't currently deductible, such as regular commute expenses, that one might argue are "a cost of being able to work."
There are very limited scenarios when you can deduct a steakhouse lunch.
Out of date for Australia. Australia has had 18 weeks paid parental leave since 2011:
http://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink...
Which leaves: The United States†, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Liberia.
† It appears as though CA, NJ, WA (DC?) have some paid compensation for all workers. Still, it seems pretty paltry compared with nearly everywhere else in the world.
Among the list of things about the United States that are incomprehensible to me (a Canadian), the absence of paid maternal (let alone parental) leave ranks pretty close to the top.
I find it incomprehensible why paid maternal leave would be mandatory.
Why should companies (in particular the ones who hire women) be forced to pay for the life choices of their employees? And why maternity specifically, as opposed to all sorts of other life choices?
So women have the opportunity to give birth and raise children in a safe, welcoming society, so you have a healthy population and grandkids around to pay for elderly social services? Is 'paying it forward' anathema?
Why should companies who hire a larger number of women bear a disproportionate portion of these costs?
You are aware that it's not the company that pays the wage compensation during the maternity leave?
At least here in Germany, you get 60% of your salary (up to an upper limit) for 12 months (14 if both parents take part of the leave) _from the state_.
These schemes are usually designed in such a way that they are either cost-neutral or beneficial to companies that employ women.
You are aware that there are still costs for keeping non-producing employees around, right?
For example, either their work goes undone, or else you need to hire someone who might become superfluous if they return. In the meantime their skills might atrophy or they may become unnecessary (but getting rid of them in this case is legally risky).
(The latter is not hypothetical - I know of a specific case, namely a large but shrinking company that is firing everyone who is either below average or has been pregnant recently. )
So you support firing someone who is pregnant?
There are costs for using humans to do your work. Sometimes they get sick, sometimes they get pregnant, sometimes they have a super-productive day and sometimes they don't.
I don't think companies should be obligated to give people the choice to vanish from the workforce and return a year later to an equal or better job.
I would also enjoy the option to take a year off and have a job when I return (for other life choices than having children), I just don't see why my employer should be obligated to hold my job open.
I'm not prescribing what the duration should be, surely there is some middle ground between zero and a year.
Where I am currently living (NL) it is a few months (three I believe), happily paid for by the taxpayers. Where I lived before (US-CA) it was a few weeks of partially paid leave, paid by the employer.
I'm also not completely convinced that the weeks surrounding a childbirth are the most productive working weeks.
Reproduction of the species is not a "life choice." Our stock is all worthless if there's no generations of 18-35 year olds to provide a consumer and worker base into the future. What's the market cap of Facebook in a world where all the 13+ year olds that ever will exist are already born?
To me, this a key differentiating point between conservatives and libertarians. Following the libertarian position here has caused conservatives to undermine a key core pro-family policy position.
Assuming increasing fertility is your justification for maternity leave, will you change your position if I show you data suggesting that maternity leave has little effect on fertility (among first world nations)?
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
I didn't say anything about increasing fertility. I was responding to your comment: "Why should companies (in particular the ones who hire women) be forced to pay for the life choices of their employees?"
Parenting isn't a "life choice." Reproduction of the species is a basic function of society. Our economic system is deeply dependent on the assumption of at least stable if not growing population. Companies benefit from people who perform that basic function, and therefore it isn't wrong to force them to pay for benefits like parental leave. Otherwise, companies have an incentive to free-ride.
I seem to be unable to apply the principle of charity to your views in a useful way, so I'm going to need some help here to understand what you are trying to say.
If an activity is, in aggregate, "a basic function of society", then at the individual level it ceases to be a choice? Your argument seems to be "Reproduction...is a basic function of society -> Parenting isn't a life choice", but I cannot figure out the intermediate steps.
Also, I still don't understand why you discuss reproduction of the species. Maternity leave does not encourage reproduction, and the evidence I've seen suggests negligable social benefits. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2348505 Free-riding suggests a situation where a good or service is underprovisioned if people can choose not to provide it. But as the evidence shows, reproduction will be provided at the same rate regardless of maternity benefits. So your use of the term "free-ride" must be referring to something besides the obvious. Can you explain?
People can and do choose to do, and others choose to not do it. How is it not a "life choice"?
If it was purely a function "of society", then it would be a social choice, not a personal one, who would do it and how. So I think that it is pretty clear that -- in Western society at least -- while there may be social aspects to reproduction, it is not generally viewed first and foremost as a "function of society". I personally think that's a good thing, but YMMV.
That's certainly an argument for why it ought to be a preferred and encouraged life choice.
I am not sure about Canada, but in most of Europe not the company but the state (= tax payer) pays for the cost of the maternity leave.
Most worker protections in the US apply to companies with more than some fixed number (I think it's 50) of employees.
http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html
About 1/6 of the working population is at employers with less than 20 employees, and so wouldn't be covered anyway. Another 1/6 is at employers with 20 to 99 employees, and many of them would also not be covered.
Why should the social safety net exclude 20% of the population?
You seem woefully misinformed. Paid parental leave exists in the US, it's just not legally mandated.
Yay pedantry. You're right; I meant paid parental leave that employers must make available to their employees.
The patriarchy says men can't take care of babies. Us feminists think men can take care of babies and should have the same leave / similar entitlement as women.
Really? Because it seems that feminists say men can't take care of children, particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody. Modern, vocal feminists have, by and large, become severely anti-men in many of their policies. From convincing the world that all men are rapists and manipulating definitions of rape to induce male perpetrators. To the lovely Tumble feministas /SJW who spread vile, hate-filled messages against men. To a court system and public that's been convinced by the feminist political machine that women need to be protected and there's no way they could possibly rape someone or lie about being raped.
There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture. Feminists like using that word as a scapegoat and explanation for everything they do and don't like.
This is not true at all. In cases where fathers seek custody, they have a good chance of gaining custody or arriving at a shared custody arrangement.
Are you serious? When someone points out that most rapes are committed by men they aren't saying all men are rapists. Also, there has been tremendous effort to expand definitions of rape, esp. from a legal standpoint, to be more inclusive of sexual assault as it happens, whether it be to men or women and whether committed by a man or woman.
Please, tell me more about how someone venting about men oppresses you.
This is the exact opposite thing that feminist and activist communities are fighting against. The notion that women are fragile and need special protections is highly misogynistic and patriarchal. That consideration of woman has been generally used against women and to prevent their access to equality over the last 100 years+.
Further, nobody is arguing that women cannot commit rape. If somewhere were to argue that, they would be discounting the experiences of many sexual assault survivors. Also, yes women can lie about rape, but that is not the primary issue with sexual assault and catching those that commit sexual assaults as the majority of sexual assaults go without a conviction and sexual assault continues to be a large scale social problem.
You are so obsessed with straw feminists that this is ridiculous. Like anything, there are many different voices and opinions that use the label feminism, but you seem to rather want to ignore any social problems in favor of blaming women.
~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances.
On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive >85% of all child support paid every year.
Then why are we pushing campaigns to teach men not to rape but not women? Why are colleges around the US putting students through rape awareness education only telling men not to rape? As for redefinitions, feminists pushed for the recent FBI expansion that makes forced fallatio rape but not forced cunnilingus. They also pushed for the definition to be forced penetration by the accused, excluding cases where a man is forced to penetrate by the women.
Please tell me more about derailing by insulting.
As usual, those voices (despite being some prolific and vocal, really being the face of feminism today) are No True Scotsman'ed out of being feminists.
This is correct, the overall rate is low. However, this doesn't take into account rates of fathers seeking custody. About 50% of fathers seeking primary custody in divorce cases are granted such custody. It should be noted that fathers generally do not see primary custody as frequently as women in these cases, which skews the overall rate.
I don't dispute this. However, rates of payout are different from legal obligation to pay. Any person, man or woman, receiving child support are more likely to only receive some partial sum of child support, if any. Moreover, there is already income inequality for women in general in the US, this will have a bearing on whether or not fathers, who are statistically more likely to be better paid, have to pay child support.
As you yourself noted, women are much more likely to be performing primary custody and care for a child, we would then expect that women receive more child support then men in such an arrangement. As I mentioned before, this is a bit misleading as many people don't receive full amounts of child support or have some kind of informal support arrangement that is not court ordered.
Rape and sexual assault is overwhelmingly committed by men. Prevention messages and campaigns are targeted this way for this reason. That is not to say that they deny that women can commit sexual assault, but rather that a primary problem is behaviors committed by people who are men. Campaigns that focus on women's behavior are not addressing this fact.
This is not true. The new summary of the change for the FBI includes: "or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim".
The FBI definition still has problems, for sure. It focuses far too much on penetration as rape rather than non-consensual sexual contact. However, there were a wide variety of voices, feminist and not, that noted this when the FBI made its change and are continuing to call for more change. Like I said, there are many voices in feminism, some of which call for things that are shortsighted or don't make sense. To claim that this is wholly representative of feminism is what creates a strawman.
As a man you do not face systematic discrimination and power imbalance due to your gender, that is why I mentioned it. When someone complains about men online, you are not seriously impacted due to your gender.
I made no such fallacy. Those voices exist and are associated with feminism. However, they are not the total representation of feminist voices and to make it seem as though they are is not talking about serious issues in good faith.
That statement contradict itself. People commonly complain (like the above comments) when men complain about feminism. If its been a woman complain about feminism, it would be acceptable.
In this specific context (a person complain about feminism), men are seriously negative impacted due to their gender.
~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances. >60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother. On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive >85% of all child support paid every year.
Yes, that's the misogynist patriarchy for you. Women are no better at raising children than men. But in Old-Fashioned-Patriarchy-Land, people think women are "naturally" better and men are "naturally" worse. It's called "benevolent sexism".
And when feminists support that model of "benevolent sexism", they indirectly support a misogynistic society.
Or we could always redefine that no true feminist would ever say that a woman are more needed (or is better) at taking care of a young child than men. With public platforms like twitter and facebook, organization could easy purge members which such statements if they wanted.
"no true feminist would ever say that a woman are more needed (or is better) at taking care of a young child than men"
while I am not a scholar of women's studies, I would hazard that most modern feminists would agree with this statement.
What makes you think feminists support that model? They don't.
"Israel is one of the last countries in the world where the Tender Years Doctrine is still in force, if not the last. While the clause reflects an old world order in which mothers were expected to be homemakers and fathers were breadwinners, many feminist politicians and women's groups refuse to have it amended, claiming that the time is not yet ripe for such a change and that men will take advantage of it to put pressure on women in divorce." - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174956#.Urn...
I also read with some horror this for a self-claimed feminist:
"Yet under no-fault divorce, a woman can find herself essentially a single mom, drained of family resources by court costs and lawyer fees, and suddenly required to work against her will and sacrifice time with her children." - http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/05/10031/
Hopefully all the above is today a minority view, but it should not be glossed completely over. Feminists and fathers right groups should under all circumstances agree on gender equality, which mean equal time with children and equal requirement to work in an effort to support their own children.
I think I should make some writeup for responses to MRAs, because I think I understand the worldview and bought into it myself for a long time. Of course the response might not be perfect this time around, but I can perfect it incrementally.
The first thing that is crucial to understand is that feminism itself is not the enemy. In fact, intelligent feminists should care about the problems you list. I'm not saying they do, but they should, because feminism isn't anti-men, it's anti gender roles. This means that problems like men being pressured to bury their emotions, or men not getting proper mental health care, or men not getting fair custody, or men not being taken seriously when they are raped, are all things that feminism is supposed to be fighting against. The fact that our society often ignores these problems is not because of feminism, it's because of sexism. Feminists often do ignore problems like this with men, and those feminists are either ignorant or bigoted, because sexist oppression caused by society to men, and sexist oppression caused by society to women, have the same root and are part of the same problem that feminism is trying to fix. This is not a fringe view of feminism. This is the normal view.
The second thing that is crucial to understand is that the caricature of sexist tumblr-warrior "feminists" (that do indeed exist) are a distraction. The fact that people like this are taken seriously probably bothers me as much as it bothers you. However, these people are misrepresenting feminism. They do not say what feminism is supposed to represent. You can think of them as the crazy bigoted Christians or Muslims that are technically part of the same group, but do not represent the whole.
Finally, you have to realize that gender roles and sexism are oppressing men and women. I think the reason so many feminists react badly to men's rights advocates is because they marginalize women's problems while promoting men's. In truth I think this is just a reaction from seeing feminist groups do the reverse. Really, both are a problem. Just because one is a problem doesn't make another problem any more or less important. So instead of saying "This is ridiculous to be worrying about when much worse is happening to men and nobody cares," try saying, "This is an important problem," and separately, "These other things are happening to men and nobody cares."
This sentiment is often attributed to humanism, rather than feminism. Is there any distinct difference?
M-W defines "patriarchy" as: "a family, group, or government controlled by a man or a group of men."
90% of Congressmen, 95% of Fortune 500 CEO's, and 90% of Forbes 400 are men. The government and the most important corporations that people work for, along with the richest people in the country, are overwhelmingly controlled by men. That's the literal definition of patriarchy.
There's a massive difference between high-status men and low-status men.
High-status men are almost certainly part of a patriarchy, but as you've probably noticed are loved and admired by millions of women.
Low-status men in contrast have very little power and wealth, but get almost all of the flak for the patriarchy and in contrast significantly less access to women.
This term patriarchy is rarely used by a woman against men that she respects or admires even if they are extremely privileged. Most of the time it's a rationalisation for why she hates the average man that is uninteresting to her sexually.
So, yes, there is a patriarchy, but it's an integral part of the sexual politics which forces men to aggressively shoot for the top or receive nothing; it's not something that you can get rid of without the macro desires of women changing considerably; we're all part of the same system - one which orders men and women around masculine elitism.
There's a massive difference between high-status men and low-status men.
This is called "intersectionality". Sometimes people have advantages from being one thing (e.g. male), but they also have disadvantages due to being other things (e.g. a low-status person). You could have a gay white low-status male. They're male, so they have some advantages there, they're low status, so they have some disadvantages, white, so they have some advantages, and gay, so they have some disadvantages. Not everyone who is male automatically is disadvantage free. It's the intersection of all these things that are important in different situtations.
You've discovered intersectionality, doesn't mean male priviliege and the patriarchy doesn't exist. It just means that for many people "It's complicated"
I read about that years ago and I don't take kindly to others trying to humiliate me with condescending statements like that.
That is why I said: "So, yes, there is a patriarchy."
But you miss the whole point as what I said has nothing to do with intersectionality. I'm trying to make the point that "men" even without some kind of obvious status disqualifiers are not always on the top of the status hierarchy. This is the case with almost all big groups. It's not so simple. I was also trying to point out that it's the lowest status men that get derided for being patriarchal as high status is attractive and untouchable.
It's not low-status men making the decisions about parental leave policies.
Quite right. I was simply pointing out that the word "patriarchy" is often used to imply that all men are extremely privileged, and the reason why this word doesn't even begin to negatively effect the real male ruling class.
(What I was saying doesn't have much to do with the original article, but has a lot to do with the comment above yours saying "patriarchy doesn't exist.")
I give 0-shits about how M-W defines that word. Why? Because they until very recently defined rape as an act committed by a man against a women and now have added wiggle-words to their definition to make it seem like a less pejorative against men. Their "examples of rape" involves or intimates a male assessor.
It's absolutely hilarious for you to ascribe this definition to feminism, because it actually derives from the common law definition of rape, which is hundreds of years old and predates modern feminism by more than quite a bit. The common law definition is an anachronism in more ways than one--it excludes rape against men in the same breath as it excludes spousal rape against women.
The most deeply ironic thing about your post is that it was feminists who led the effort to reform rape laws in the 1970s-1990s, which included making them gender neutral in addition to applying within marriages and eliminating degrees that made rape by acquaintances less severe than rape by strangers.
Modern feminists also pushed for the FBI definition of rape which is forced penetration but construed in such a way that it really only covers insertion of a penis. They also pushed for useless laws like rape shields which prevents the accused from addressing their accuser in the press while allowing the accusers to speak freely. They also pushed the "Dear Colleague" letter that's lowered the standard to preponderance in disciplinary hearings that strongly favors female accusers.
The modern definition of rape is no longer the one espoused by second wave feminists, which I happen to agree with. Rape shouldn't be a gendered crime, but thirdwave and radical feminists don't seem to think so.
Rape perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. You do realise that, right? Because without at least an acknowledgement that that vast majority of rape is carried out by men there's no point engaging with you.
That seems to be a question better suited for empirical evidence than an ideological litmus test. I'll agree it's the conventional wisdom that more men than women commit rape, and it seems likely, but the whole point of feminism is to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to gender and to avoid excluding people's valid experiences based on their gender. The question isn't whether statistically more men than women commit rape, the question is whether men who are raped and abused by women are marginalized and systemically denied justice by a system that asserts that such acts are impossible. Judging from the experiences of male victims of abuse and rape, unfortunately it seems that they are not only denied justice but systemically oppressed.
You make interesting points, around which a useful discussion can be had.
The MRA aroch is not interested in any of that, as can be seen by their weird use of cherry picked data to make outlandish claims.
I just wanted to check, and they've provided confirmation.
No, they really aren't. The majority of "rapes" are institutional (meaning they happen in prisons and other custodial environments) and are perpetrated by women against women (See the Canadian prison systems 2011 report). Further, rape statistics are skewed by how rape is defined -- almost singularly as something committed by a man . In many jurisdictions, a women forcibly having sexual contact with a man is sexual assault and not rape. The '1 in 6' (or '1 in 5' depending on who says it) number of women raped is bullshit.
Yes, all feminists are the same and it's impossible for one person/group which calls itself "feminist" to do something that other femininsts wouldn't agree to.
All of that straw!
Always the exactly same unsubstantiated ridiculous MRA delusions. Please stop spreading lies. If you think you don't spread lies please examine your beliefs and why you have them.
Show me the strawman?
The "extraordinary circumstances" that it takes for a father to get custody is to ask -- in the vast majority of cases where the father contests custody, he wins. While I don't think "the patriarchy" is the best construct (for reasons I discuss later) for explaining the world, the truth is that men don't end up with custody in the vast majority of cases because they are socialized not to seek it, and that socialization isn't a product of opposition -- by feminists or anyone else -- to traditional gender roles as binding archetypes.
While "the patriarchy" is a not-unreasonable name for how the system of established social structures (yes, now, as well, though even moreso at the dawn of feminism) appears to someone who is both female and has a self-image that conflicts with its gender-based norms, its a problematic name in that it fails to recognize two key factors about the system: (1) that men are also bound by it, and (2) that, despite role differences, women also exercise power within it and are no less likely to be psychically invested in preserving it.
That being said, however much "the patriarchy" isn't a great name for what feminists use it to describe, what is described with that term is very real.
Can you show a citation for this?
Ha, not even close. Census data shows that of men who wished to have custody, only ~18% gained it.
Trying to silence a feminist by shooting down things that they say that don't align with your out of whack view of feminism isn't going to do one single thing to help with the problems you're talking about.
Hum. If someone is saying that men can't take care of children. He or She is not a feminist. You know that not every women is a feminist right ? Now... the problem is that the judicial system is macho and, yes, thinks that only a woman can take care of a child. That's utterly chauvinistic (in the American sense of chauvinistic).
Actually I'm not answering the rest of your post it's too much hate filled and trollistic to deserve a response. I'm sorry you feel like that.
I find it extremely difficult to talk about feminism because it means different things to different people. More than once I have heard statements about feminism from women who self-identify as feminist that contradict one another.
How can I answer the question "are you a feminist?" when the term may mean something very different to the questioner than to myself? Indeed, it may mean something to them that I find incorrect or immoral.
Even amoung hard-core feminists (we're talking people who's job is to work in university's as women's studies professors and write books on this stuff), there can be a lot of disagreement.
Biggest example is trans people. Some old-skool femininsts are very trans-phobic.
I'd like to see you go on to the streets and ask 10 random women with children if they would like the fathers of their children to have the same amount of parental leave as them (or more!). Outside of exceptional circumstances the answer would be a strong, resounding yes.
If you think modern feminists have "won" and "control" the (US) justice system, you're wrong. Feminists are often complaining about the misogynist court sentences and proceedings.
except in separations.
BS. Divorced fathers and feminists understand each other well.
Why is it considered a good thing when the government foists responsibility for the social safety net off on people's employers? Especially when it only applies to sufficiently large employers?
The existence of a skilled work force is the greatest resource that any country has. Companies exist to exploit this resource; are you saying that they should be able exploit this resource without being responsible for maintaining it?
The existence of a skilled work force is the greatest resource that any country has.
Yes.
Companies exist to exploit this resource;
No. Companies exist to alleviate transaction costs. Companies also exist to exploit economies of scale. Your use of "exploit" is perjorative; companies don't exist to hold an advantage over the workforce, they exist to provide increased opportunities for the workforce.
are you saying that they should be able exploit this resource without being responsible for maintaining it?
Mandatory paid leave (for any reason) is not maintaining the workforce. The workforce does not need to be maintained. It is insulting and offensive to claim that the workforce is incapable of maintaining itself.
Maintaining the skilled workforce would be helping people keep their skills up. That is, sending them to educational seminars, providing tuition assistance, providing time to experiment with interesting new things. This is nice to have, but not necessary. All that is necessary is that people have sufficient non-work hours to have time to learn on their own. People are naturally curious, and most remain at least somewhat curious even after being sent thru formal schooling.
Employees do not (or should not) belong to specific employers. Employers are not (should not be) responsible for maintaining the education and well-being of their (current) employees. They are (should be) only responsible for not hindering said employees from looking after their own education and well-being. Any further responsibility (the "social safety net"; ensuring that personal disasters or sustained bad luck don't get people stuck at the bottom of the pile) belongs to society as a whole (either government or voluntary charities).
they exist to provide increased opportunities for the workforce.
That's purely a side effect. Obviously companies hire as few employees as necessary.
Companies exist to generate profits for their owners. They do this by utilizing resources, the primary of which is a skilled workforce.
The existence of a skilled workforce is a typical common good, and the standard "tragedy of the commons" parable applies. Their are two standard responses to the tragedy of the commons: privatization or government action.
So unless you can agree that employers can "own" their employees, government action and regulation is necessary to prevent tragedy of the commons type outcomes.
Countries that mandate paid maternity leave often don't; the pay often comes from public funds, the mandate on the employer is, in that case, not to provide the social safety net but to not punish the employee for using it.
Putting who pays for the leave aside, employees will always be punished to some degree when they take a leave of absence. Employers are disadvantaged (again, to some degree) by the missing employee. For example, they have to invest in training a temporary replacement only to let the go when the leave ends. That disadvantage will, intentionally or not, affect the employee.
That's good. It's nice to be reminded sometimes that the real world is almost never as screwed up as the Internet makes it sound. :)
Its a fair trade. The cost to society of a large dilbertian corporation is very high in terms of lowered quality of life. Yes some rich people get richer, but that doesn't mean quality of life isn't, on average for the society, reduced. So it seems perfectly fair that a tax or charge or bill be presented.
The USA situation relates to only about 60% of the population having a job, so 40% don't need "leave" anyway, and the percentage of people having a job is in permanent multi decade decline. So if there's not enough jobs right now to keep two parents fully employed at their appropriate level, there seems little point in encouraging both to work. If the powers that be do not permit your social group to have a career then there seems little point in complaining about a minor detail standing in the way of a career, which you can't have anyway regardless of popping out kids or not.
The USA situation for paternal leave is also screwed up for multicultural reasons and history of racism reasons. We have ethnic groups where the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers is way over majority, and uncle sam is the sugar "daddy". So allowing married fathers to take paid time off is going to make a huge mess where certain minorities are going to complain about their unmarried men not getting time off, but the white guys do get time off. I suppose you could demand a copy of the birth cert, so at least one baby couldn't result in ten guys claiming vacation time as father for each kid? Regardless of details and stats, there would be racial / socioeconomic friction in the USA about the whole topic that doesn't exist in a monocultural nation like, say, Japan.
Some cultures are built around the idea of supporting that culture, whereas the USA is built around the idea of convincing everyone that its an optimum strategy for every subculture to screw over every subculture; of course that means everyone gets screwed over in the end, but as long as you can convince the idiots its scalable, it'll be a profitable scam to run. Divide and conqueor, baby!
Large corporations reduce quality of life? Bullshit. How do you figure that? At worst, maybe they don't improve quality of life as much as you think they should but if they actively reduced quality of life people wouldn't voluntarily choose to work for them or buy from them.
Merger of large .com and .gov ruining .gov for everyone, environmental damage for everyone not just stockholders, lack of economic agility / flexibility ruining economic conditions for everyone else, the previously mentioned Dilbertian damage to culture and lifestyle impacting to some extent everyone, obvious lifestyle problems like traffic jams and parking lots and general commuter lifestyle negatively impacting everyone... (also edited to add the larger one player is, the less of a free market exists for everyone else, so lack of competition ruins the marketplace for everyone)
Simply calculate the ratio of people claiming in public that they wanna work at a smaller company vs wanting to work at a larger company. HN is not representative in general, but in this specific example no one really wants to work at Innitech from the Office Space movie.
Or the total aggregate of whining about working conditions about dilbertian megacorp inc vs smaller more flexible companies.
So, you wanna run a zoo.. Well OK. Nothing wrong with keeping both giant Elephants and tiny little Meerkats, in fact some diversity is an excellent idea. They're each cool in their own way. But its ignoring reality to not accept that the giant elephant exhibit is going to produce somewhat more smelly biological solid waste than the tiny little Meerkat exhibit.
If large companies were actually making things worse, then just getting rid of them would be sufficient to make things better. That's the definition of making something worse. So tell me: would getting rid of large companies make things better or not?
It would make things better for the general public due to increased competition, better working conditions, and faster more agile innovation.
It would make things worse for the stockholders and politicians relying on political contributions from those individuals.
There is a natural lack of scalability of the number of competing firms because most line of business have an inherent minimal size; if it takes 20 people to run a 1000 foot long printing press, shrinking the firm below 20 or so suddenly starts making things worse not better. Another good example would be a mine.
It doesn't seem terribly controversial that there exists a maxima in total human happiness where average business size is a vaguely tribal number depending on individual line of business. The other extreme of infinity sized firms or 100% of the population is just re-imagined communism or feudalism and its not overly controversial to claim that historically those systems really sucked.
The correct title for the map is “Countries where employers are fined or threatened with jail time for not providing maternity leave”.
Despite what our ‘enlightened’ friends the world over think about the dark, backwards, USA, it is not, in fact, illegal to provide paid maternity leave in the US.
This map, and the comments in this thread, support mandatory, government-backed maternity leave in the amount and style which the government believes is appropriate. Honest differences in preferences or opinions are subject to government punishment.
In the USA, we are skeptical of the benefits of the government making it a law to do mothering the way the government wants you to. We ask “Why is it noble to force people to forgo higher wages and other benefits for an in-kind contribution to a particular type of maternal care?”
The argument against government-mandated benefits has been made elsewhere in great detail. Facts, evidence, history, and common sense indicate that forcing people to consume their wages the way the government wants, in the the style the government wants, decreases the success of the overall community. That’s why every people who has ever had the chance to overthrow communism, has. And that’s why the children of all these states in Europe find that jobs are very difficult to get, and many of them, particularly the entrepreneurial ones, come to America.
Fewer rules imposed on people lead to greater growth, which leads to greater health, happiness, wealth, and longevity.
Further, there is something immoral about threatening to throw people in jail, or fine them, if they don’t do exactly what the government says on something as basic as raising your children.
To those who say that we should go ahead and follow “The Man” and be happy for these gifts, you have to realize that we are paying for the benefits, not the government, so forcing us to do it the way “they” want it, in a one-size-fits-all manner is not really a benefit to anybody.
You may say that it is only fair, or right, or just, that there be 3 months, or 12 months, or 24 months of paid maternity leave. 24/7/365 child care is bliss for many mothers — perhaps most. But for others, they may prefer to spend those dollars on better daycare, or weeklong breaks interspersed with work, or a 4-day week, or they may be just fine with working a full week and spending a more focused, quality time with their child on their days off.
Demanding that one size fits all, that the government has figured out the correct style of maternal care once and for all time, (when, it should be noted, every government legislature in the world is still majority male), and that those who disagree should be fined or thrown in jail, is not, in fact, a kind or compassionate policy, but a kind of abuse.
Incorrectly titled maps may be great for click bait, but they shouldn’t pass for deep analysis here on HackerNews.
Your wrong on how maternity leaves work, at least in Canada. Employers do not pay for the maternity, they just can't fire you (& you don't have to take the leave, lol like they force you to do that...)
It's the society (government) that pays for leaves. In canada it looks like this: the parental benefit is 7 weeks at 70%, followed by 25 weeks at 55% from salary on a maximum of 50-60k salary
For me what you say is backwards, but I guess you are right, there is clearly no gain in life for a mother to take the time she need to adapt & connect with her children for a year.
Then again it is the poors that suffer that cannot in anyway take some time off from work. Or maybe it is the argument that you should not pay for others.
I guess you can keep being skeptical
So the companies in Canada don't pay taxes? Sign me up!
Like most decisions that society makes as a group, the cost is spread over most of the group, over time, so that more people can benefit from the policy. It's the very nature of how government works. Yes, because it costs everyone, such policies should be given close scrutiny. But merely being paid by everyone through taxes is not reason enough to condemn a policy; the logical conclusion to that is no government at all, which comes with its own costs and benefits.
The countries mandated by legislation do not force parents to take leave. As you say, many parents prefer to work part time or scatter time across a period of months/years. Legislation affords worker rights, as much as legislating fair working conditions in general is a benefit to workers. Can you give me an example of a country with a free market where workers and employers get along without legislation?
The countries mandated by legislation do not force parents to take leave
They force parents (as well as people who choose not to become parents) to pay for that leave whether they take it or not.
I'm not a parent. But goddamn if I don't want parents to give their children the best possible early childhood that is available. If that costs me 30% of my salary, so that our society is healthy, educated, safe, well-balanced I'll pay it. Anyone who can't see that without an excellent early childhood plan in place our society is doomed is living with their head in the sand. I don't understand the vitriol on this website for parents and that legislating so that they have a chance is somehow socialist evil.
That leave is paid back several times over. A skilled work force is the greatest asset any country has. The first few years of life are the most important; spending money on a child for the first few years of it's life should result in significantly increased benefit to society throughout their later working life.
It's hardly clear that this is true. The most recent study I've seen suggests it is actually a waste of money.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2348505
Do you have any info suggesting otherwise?
"In the USA, we are skeptical of the benefits of the government making it a law to do mothering the way the government wants you to."
What an ignorant statement. Maternity and paternity leave are about requiring employers to allow you early bonding time with your children, not about the nanny state judging how you parent.
True conservative think wants to keep the government out of things and let companies decide things, as companies can switch policies at a much faster pace than the government.
What is thought as "good parenting" keep switching. If you look at child birth and newborn care in the US over the last 100 years, you will find a lot of different things that have been done.
The current trends are pushing for moms and dads to get as much bonding as possible right from the start. I think this is a great idea and really should be a standard.
Also, the US does require employers to give employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave (without threat of firing) for large family events (from the FMLA law). It's not perfect, but at least it's something.
This is easy to discredit. We have rules that prevent us from clubbing each other on the head and taking what we can from the corpse. By your reasoning, getting rid of this rule would increase growth and lead to greater prosperity. But most people would disagree.
This sort of reasoning is always code for "my favored set of rules is better."
It should be said that this poster does not speak for all Americans, and not even a majority of them.
Youth unemployment is currently a serious problems in a few European states (e. g. Spain) but (a) not in most and (b) it is certainly not related to maternity leave or universal health insurance.
I'm sure Somalia has a great time enforcing their maternity leave laws.