I want this

[Guest Raidne]

Willingly? It's taken under threat of force.

Oh I didn't realize libertarians didn't think their minimal government should have any employees. At any rate, my benefits are pretty crappy (6 weeks) as far as things go, so it's kind of irrelevant anyway.

[Ocean of Notions]

I get the biology point, but "current societal norms and expectations" is a copout. Women have the "freedom to choose", right? You don't have to bear a child at all if you don't want to. And if women lack the spine to make the decision they want to make within their marriage because of "societal norms and expectations", they're simply validating all the stereotypes about women being weak that they've been trying to combat for decades. Don't blame "societal norms and expectations" for the critical life choices you make.

So if women really wanted equality, they should just choose to not have children?

I can't find the article at the moment, but interestingly enough, that's becoming an issue in Japan. Because of their very conservative society with strict gender roles, a lot of career oriented women are choosing to not marry and have children. Japan's population "growth" is actually at a deficit. There won't be enough people in future generations to fill jobs after the previous generation retires or dies off. One of their recent prime ministers actually made a speech about encouraging women to have more children for the sake of society.

[MinDonner]

So if women really wanted equality, they should just choose to not have children?

Heh. Let's also remember that "career or children?" is not a choice that men have to make. Which is kind of the point of these discussions.

I can't find the article at the moment, but interestingly enough, that's becoming an issue in Japan. Because of their very conservative society with strict gender roles, a lot of career oriented women are choosing to not marry and have children. Japan's population "growth" is actually at a deficit. There won't be enough people in future generations to fill jobs after the previous generation retires or dies off. One of their recent prime ministers actually made a speech about encouraging women to have more children for the sake of society.

Japan is appalling for this; certainly when I was there, it was expected that women would quit their jobs as soon as they got married, much less pregnant, and companies would even base their hiring policies on bringing in some pretty young ladies that can marry (and so look after) their valuable male staff. I'm not at all surprised that this system is collapsing.

[Lyanna Stark]

Not to mention postpartum depression.

Luckily, we don't believe in that here in America, so none of our women suffer from it.

Post partum depression is just LACK OF SPINE. You know it's true. :P

So if women really wanted equality, they should just choose to not have children?

This is what I am getting too. Plus that only people rich enough to be able to have the mother stay home indefinitely ought to have kids, as children is a "lifestyle choice" on the same level as a flat screen TV or a bigger car.

[Guest Raidne]

Well, so much for that thread. I was really more interested in hearing about people's personal experiences and thoughts on Sweden's shared leave program.

And really, stop for a minute: is there anything at all that FLOW is saying that is not addressed by distinguishing approximately 6 weeks of pregnancy medical leave from parental leave? Anything? No, there's not. So why are you wasting your time?

[Lyanna Stark]

And really, stop for a minute: is there anything at all that FLOW is saying that is not addressed by distinguishing approximately 6 weeks of pregnancy medical leave from parental leave? Anything? No, there's not. So why are you wasting your time?

As far as I know, it's not differentiated here. If you start your maternity leave early due to medical difficulties, you start your maternity early. You don't get anything extra for having a difficult pregnancy, unless you want to take it as sick leave (and not all employers will agree to that. They can instead make you start your maternity leave early).

Hence I think why we're discussing it. Rules are different here.

[MinDonner]

Well, so much for that thread. I was really more interested in hearing about people's personal experiences and thoughts on Sweden's shared leave program.

And really, stop for a minute: is there anything at all that FLOW is saying that is not addressed by distinguishing approximately 6 weeks of pregnancy medical leave from parental leave? Anything? No, there's not. So why are you wasting your time?

Where the hell did that come from? As thread-drifts go, it's a pretty minor one. And some of us are finding it interesting.

[Chaldanya]

As far as I know, it's not differentiated here. If you start your maternity leave early due to medical difficulties, you start your maternity early. You don't get anything extra for having a difficult pregnancy, unless you want to take it as sick leave (and not all employers will agree to that. They can instead make you start your maternity leave early).

Hence I think why we're discussing it. Rules are different here.

It's actually written into the maternity leave policy here. If you have complications due to pregnancy which results in you needing to be off then you start your materinity leave there and then whether you are 4 months gone or 7.5 months gone. It's all the same.

N

[Guest Raidne]

Where the hell did that come from? As thread-drifts go, it's a pretty minor one. And some of us are finding it interesting.

That came from the continuance of converation wherein women have no spine and are at risk for conforming to stereotypes of weakness.

It's not thread drift anymore than a discussion on affirmative action that derails into essential inequality between the races is thread drift. It's relevant. It's foundational. And I accept that some people do not think that it's prejudiced.

But every once in awhile I would love, just once, to get to a topic past the Intro to Not Being a Prejudiced Asshole level.

You feel differently, that's fine. But I feel that it's reducing this thread to a Fox News level of discussion, and I'm allowed to have my opinion also.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Of course. To expect anything else would be totally idiotic. Do you really think tradition budge this easily? Give it another 30-40 years and you'll probably see around 50% - 50%.

So you think the only (or at least major) reason women want to spend time with their babies is "tradition"?

Ah, so that "freedom of choice" to NOT have babies should clearly be "if you work, but can't afford to take a couple of years off without pay, while being supported by your spouse, your freedom of choice is to not have kid".

Exactly! Freedom is about being permitted to do something, not about being enabled to do it.

And what decision are you refering to here, may I ask, where women as a group lack the spine to stand up to societal norms and expectations?

The free choice to negotiate with their spouse or partner to decide who will stay home with the child, or whether that burden will be shared equally.

The free choice not have a kid due to having to work for a living? In that case I would disagree with you since I don't think it is a free choice.

Okay, we disagree.

Bascially, what you are looking at from a greater perspective, is people who can afford to let the mother stay home, and those at the bottom of society who can't afford anything but don't care either way will be the ones who have kids.

How was it done before government mandated benefits? I mean, for the last 30,000 years or so? Did only rich people have kids?

All the Average Janes in the middle, meaning people like me and my friends, will have the freedom of choice to not have kids. Showing LOADS of how much spine we have.

Oh, exactly. Middle-class people just aren't having kids anymore. Everyone knows that.

I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with people considering their personal financial situation in determining when to have children, and how many to have. It might mean not having an ipod, and driving used cars instead of new, fewer vacations, etc. But I don't think the race will go extinct just because the government doesn't pay daddy (or mommy) to stay home.

What is clear is that a solution like that doesn't work in Europe. The population growth isn't what it ought to be and frankly middle class and lower middle class people are tired of being trod on simply because we are employees who have to work for a living

.

Europe provides more benefits and has fewer children. Not sure I see the correlation.

We don't want to have the freedom of choice you describe above to not have kids because we will never be able to afford it. I'm sure you'll disagree and say "It's not the Government's job to care for your personal choice", but the thing is, it ISN'T a choice without parental leave. It's a non choice, a choice that doesn't exist. You presenting it as a "lifestyle choice" is not only disingenuous, it is also patently false.

You know, maybe if Europe didn't have such generous social welfare programs overall, and didn't take those nice long European vacations, people might actually earn enough additional after-tax income to afford having one parent stay home without pay for awhile. Kind of like we do in the states. Seems to result in higher birth rates than what is happening in Europe.

Can you explain how Americans who had much lower standards of living then modern Americans, minus all the sweet new electronic toys, newer cars, cable tv, high-speed internet, etc., managed to afford having kids? I mean, I personally have friends with families all over the economic spectrum. So yes, I do think it's a choice.

[Lyanna Stark]

You know, maybe if Europe didn't have such generous social welfare programs overall, and didn't take those nice long European vacations, people might actually earn enough additional after-tax income to afford having one parent stay home without pay for awhile. Kind of like we do in the states. Seems to result in higher birth rates than what is happening in Europe.

:lol:

You really have NO idea, do you? How much social welfare do you think the average income family has in Europe? I think my SO an I just above the national median salary, and we get.....?? Well, I suppose in your eyes we are mollycoddled since we have the brilliant NHS, but apart from that we have nothing you don't have. Plus the NHJS is cheaper for the state than the US health care system anyway, so it's actually a win for us on being cheaper, not the other way around.

And we can't even deduct money from our tax because of mortgages, which I believe you can on the other side of the pond (and that is a substantial amount of money, too).

So, please tell me ALL about my MASSIVE social benefits. I am all ears.

Can you explain how Americans who had much lower standards of living then modern Americans, minus all the sweet new electronic toys, newer cars, cable tv, high-speed internet, etc., managed to afford having kids? I mean, I personally have friends with families all over the economic spectrum. So yes, I do think it's a choice.

Ah, yes. This is important. Check the cost of living for say, 30 years ago vs the cost of living now. Housing costs/rents especially and check the percentage of people's salaries that go to pay for housing.

I believe Coco beat me to it (welcome back mofo :P ).

I think you are also implying that I ought to have to sacrifice myself on the Altar of Society since I am a woman and hence should stop working if I have a kid. Don't you think it's a total waste to spend money educating women who may then decide to become mothers? I mean, we're basically a waste for the state from what you're saying. Our "lifestyle choice" means the State has paid a massive amount to have us educated and trained, yet here we are, staying at home without paying any taxes and without adding anything to the levels of consumption to make the system go round.

Explain to me then, why we allow women who might want to have kids into higher education? With your reasoning, it would only be logical to sterilise women who go into higher education. Now THAT would be to really save on social benefits like education etc. But I am sure you aren't a fan of something like my suggestion, despite it being a completely logical conclusion from your argument.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Could you parse that out for me? There's not a lot of legally relevant information there and I can't tell what grounds the case were brought on. That the state action requiring reasonable pregnancy leave violated equal protection, or what?

An administrative agency exceeding it's rule-making authority. Essentially, the state civil rights commission implemented a regulation requiring all employers (and in my state, employers with as few as 4 employees are subject to the commission's rules) to provide a "reasonable" amount of pregnancy leave. "Reasonable" wasn't defined, and you can imagine how difficult it was trying to give employers advice on their legal obligations.

Anyway, the rule was promulgated under a state law banning pregnancy discrimination that mirrored the federal PDA. And as you know, it's pretty generally accepted that the federal PDA is not an "affirmative action" statute", and doesn't require "preferential" treatment. It simply says you can't exclude pregnancy from the list of conditions for which an employee may be eligible for leave under the employer's policy.

So, we argued that if the federal PDA didn't contain an affirmative obligation to provide pregnancy leave, that the state law which mirrored the federal law, both in text and expressly in its legislative history didn't provide that affirmative right either. And that the administrative regulation exceeded the scope of the agency's authority because it created a new right rather than simply implementing rights created by legislation.

Legally, it was a pretty clear-cut argument, and we won 6-1. The dissenting judge didn't cite a single piece of case law in his dissent, which tells you something about the legal basis for the dissent.

Our policy argument was that the legislature may well want to create such a right, but that the regulation created a very unfair burden on very small businesses. To the extent such a burden could be justified, that was a question properly left to the legislature rather than appointed bureaucrats.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

:lol:

You really have NO idea, do you? How much social welfare do you think the average income family has in Europe? I think my SO an I just above the national median salary, and we get.....?? Well, I suppose in your eyes we are mollycoddled since we have the brilliant NHS, but apart from that we have nothing you don't have. Plus the NHJS is cheaper for the state than the US health care system anyway, so it's actually a win for us on being cheaper, not the other way around.

And we can't even deduct money from our tax because of mortgages, which I believe you can on the other side of the pond (and that is a substantial amount of money, too).

So, please tell me ALL about my MASSIVE social benefits. I am all ears.

Well, you do get your health care. Is there unemployment eligibility? What is your retirement age?

Oh, and how much vacation do you get? Now maybe it's the fault of our media, but we get told all the time how we're so much less progressive than Europe, which has better balanced home/lifestyle/work than Americans, who are perceived as workaholics.

If that isn't true, great. But then, I guess that means we don't have to hear about that better balance and existence of more progressive policies anymore. You guys apparently are just like us.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Wow. What states? It's well established that Americans funnel more of their net income into housing now than they did decades ago. Is that because there's a coaxial and a Cat5e cable running into the house? Hell no. Wages have stagnated over the past 35 years, and nobody can rent or buy without having two jobs.

Do you know what the median income for a household in the US is today?

Is this a $200 question, double jeopardy, or what?

[Lyanna Stark]

Well, you do get your health care. Is there unemployment eligibility? What is your retirement age?

Oh, and how much vacation do you get? Now maybe it's the fault of our media, but we get told all the time how we're so much less progressive than Europe, which has better balanced home/lifestyle/work than Americans, who are perceived as workaholics.

If that isn't true, great. But then, I guess that means we don't have to hear about that better balance and existence of more progressive policies anymore. You guys apparently are just like us.

We do get health care, for which I am extremely 100% grateful and it is absolutely excellent. And pretty cheap. Retirement age is currently 65, but is likely to be raised within the next 5-10 years. Definitely in the UK and likely in Sweden, too (as I am "of two countries", I am sort of inbetween).

Normal working hours here are 40 hours/week. Last country I lived it was the same. Most people work unpaid overtime a lot. You sometimes get paid overtime but don't count on it. Flexi time sometimes exist, far more so in the Scandinavian countries than in the UK. Holiday is dependant on how long you have worked for the company, but around 25 days yearly when you work full time and have been employed for more than a year or two is what we get. The employer can require you to take this holiday at certain times and you may often be restriced on when you can take it out.

We get no tax deduction for mortgages or anything like that. You get child benefit and maybe still tax credits for kids (that is in the process of being abolished, I believe) but it's not a huge amount of money. For us it was small enough to not bother with the paperwork.

The recession is squeezing people here same as it is in the US, and working conditions are overall getting worse instead of better due to it.

That said, I am sure it's more pleasant to be unemployed in Sweden or the UK than it is in the US, simply because you wouldn't have to worry about getting ill and getting chucked out in the street.***

*** note for Tormund: oblique reference to all the people who go bankrupt in the US due to medical expenses, hence "chucked out in the street" = lose your home.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

That said, I am sure it's more pleasant to be unemployed in Sweden or the UK than it is in the US, simply because you wouldn't have to worry about getting ill and getting chucked out in the street.

Ahh the ASOIAF godwin. Reading this board one would think that we could hardly drive our massive SUV's around, what with all the people dying in the streets around here.

[Blaine]

I really wish I'd gotten to do this. I'm as involved a parent as I can be and I used to take my daughter to daycare, but shit, I wish I'd gotten to spend months with her instead of a week of my vacation time.

Also, because it would have been nice to take an actual vacation in the last 3 years.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I really wish I'd gotten to do this. I'm as involved a parent as I can be and I used to take my daughter to daycare, but shit, I wish I'd gotten to spend months with her instead of a week of my vacation time.

Also, because it would have been nice to take an actual vacation in the last 3 years.

For most of the time when my children were small, I worked and my wife stayed home -- her choice. We didn't have as big a house as a lot of folks we knew, we drove older cars, etc. I made the most out of every bit of time I could with my kids. When I got divorced and was a single dad, it took more work but I still spent a ton of time with them. Some folks here may remember Pretty Pretty Princess. Anyway....

The idea that I should have been able to stay home for some period of time with pay, at the expense of my coworkers (because that's who it really is at bottom) strikes me as completely unfair. If you are a father, you can make lots of time for your kids even if you work full-time. I gave all the baths, I put them to bed, I read to them, and did everything I could with them on the weekends. So I couldn't go out drinking with the guys, or go to sporting events, or just go out as much as I wanted. There were other guys I knew who looked at it the same way, and some who didn't. But that's the kind of "sacrifice" parents have been making for a very long time.

You don't need the government handing you money to be a good parent or to bond with your kids.

[Swordfish]

The benefits extended should not exceed the value that the employee adds to the company.

Wouldn't the benefits always exceed the value of a customer service person though?

And who's to say it's always the best and brightest who decide to have kids?

You can't just extend the benefit to your best and brightest.

You'd have to also extend it to the least best and least brightest.

[Guest Raidne]

An administrative agency exceeding it's rule-making authority....

Well, that's a wonderful example of precisely the kind of thing that gets misreported in the popular news.

I have no problem with that result. The agency did appear to exceed it's rule-making authority.

I think people are whining about how they just can't do something without government assistance that people have been doing since before government assistance ever existed.

For one, nobody's whining. Although it is very personal.

Here's the story - I'm happy to use myself as an example. This is going to be a long, long post. Please bear with me. I will either have kids soon over the next 2-5 years or not at all. My major conflict is over how this will interact with my career, and how the responsibilities will be allocated.

I can take 6 weeks paid (for which they do not reduce my production requirements, by the way) plus all the sick leave I have (same) plus unpaid FMLA leave, which is what most people do because this does suspend our productivity requirements.

(Basically, with paid leave, they do not reduce my billable hour requirements. FTR, my husband exceeds his billable hour requirements to a degree where he could take the rest of the year off right now and still meet his goals.)

So, I'll probably take 6 weeks paid leave and some unpaid leave. What would be great is if my husband could also take some unpaid leave. Certainly, we could save for that.

But, while a workplace may not be happy with me, they're probably not really going to hold it against me (my friend's law firm said "just don't make a habit out of it"). Whereas, if my husband took, say, 3 months of unpaid leave, they would think he was totally crazy. He'd always be "that guy who took FMLA leave."

And I want my husband to be able to take leave. Because we are both going to work afterwards, and I value my career also. And because he can afford to at work and still meet his goals more easily than I can. So it would be advantageous for a hundred reasons if he also had the opportunity, for a sustained period of time, to be the person doing full-time child care.

I know this, because I was essentially the sole person doing any housework, bill paying, or other domestic chores for over a year while I worked part-time, took the bar, and looked for full time employment. My husband is not a jerk. He's a nice guy. And he's not a slob. And it still took over a year to sort out our household chore arrangement so that it resembled something equitable.

We actually had to sit down with a spreadsheet, take his commuting time into account, and do the math. I was spending 50% more time than him doing all these things and before we laid it all out he swore, swore that it was equal.

Because that's what happens when it's primarily one person's responsibility and then the other person decides to help or share. They are helping or sharing what is still, and will always be, your responsibility. When we get behind on bills and household tasks, I swear he still looks at me like it's my fault before he catches himself and realizes what he's doing. Also, he still can't safely ask me seemingly innocent questions like "what time will dinner be ready" without it raising my blood pressure.

So it is of absolute necessity that he spend some time home doing sole child care if we decide to have children. I do not want to have to do this all over again. Now, if there was some incentive for both parties to take leave, his workplace would understand. Everyone would do it.

More FMLA wouldn't work, because nobody can afford to take the full 6 months unpaid FMLA leave now. So you'd probably have to have paid leave to make the Swedish equality incentive work.

Nobody in America will ever vote for 6 months paid government leave. So lets take the 6 weeks we burden private businesses with, pay it out of taxes, and extend it to 12 weeks if both parents take time off to do full-time child care.