xkcd

by **Zamfir** » Sun Jun 24, 2012 7:54 am UTC

The procedure here costs a out 3000 euros, requires some temporary messing around with hormones, and you're advised to get 3 to 6 procedures since single procedure yields not that many egg cells. That is quite a lot of money, especially if you do not really expect to use the cells.

Also, the doctors here treat it as mildly experimental. They are fairy confident that it works out well, but the experience base is still small. So they don't want to strongly encourage people yet to do it, but just offer it as option and build up the experhence to be more confident.

by **Angua** » Sun Jun 24, 2012 6:58 pm UTC

Egg freezing is a pretty expensive and time consuming process (you basically have to do the stages required for IVF).

by **lutzj** » Sun Jun 24, 2012 10:43 pm UTC

Of course, the cost could go down considerably if it felt less like insurance and more like standard family planning (and then more people would do it, and competition and economies of scale and all that good stuff would happen). Even now, women who are pursuing high-powered careers can probably make up the monetary difference in higher salaries/healthier children.

It would also make sense for governments to subsidize loans for this sort of thing, as is done for educational loans, because the economic benefits of more talented people staying in the workforce longer are so enormous, never mind the social benefits.

by **kiklion** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:36 pm UTC

And it would make sense for insurance to cover it, if the process is cheaper than covering the babies/mothers health issues.

by **Garm** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:26 pm UTC

I thought this was a good article in response Slaughter's:

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/21/can_modern_women_have_it_all/singleton/

I especially liked this paragraph. I bolded parts that pertain to me. My wife has a much longer commute to her job than I do so I've ended up being the primary caretaker of our son. No one has ever asked me about how I'm managing to balance career and child rearing. However, people have asked that of my wife.

We don’t lay the same booby traps for men. We don’t constantly quiz and evaluate and poke and prod and take their emotional temperature, asking if they feel fulfilled and happy, if they have everything they want, if their every youthful aspiration has been met sufficiently, if they feel that they’re measuring up at the office, in the kitchen, in bed. If we did, we might find out that they – especially younger ones, increasingly used to sharing workplaces and domestic and familial responsibilities with women – also feel stressed, guilty, anxiety-stricken, unfulfilled, questioning. But it’s not likely that we would then use their admissions of discontent to diagnose a larger male inability to balance effectively, or conclude that they are not realistically able to maintain the dominance they’ve enjoyed for millennia because having so much power is a) bad for them, b) unnatural or c) impossible. We’d probably just blame their dissatisfaction on feminism.

by **KestrelLowing** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:14 pm UTC

Yeah, along with the assumption that the female is the primary caretaker is the assumption that the male isn't. That's not cool either. Then you get men who are praised for doing the most basic parenting - or it's called 'babysitting' when the male is taking care of the kids. :evil:

I'm sure that bugs a lot of dads.

Still, I do think the solutions that were lined up in the article were ones that would benefit both fathers and mothers - and frankly, not just parents!

You do make a really good point though - while there is a certain level of support for women who have children and work, there's not much for men - even if they happen to be the primary caregiver.

by **Роберт** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:19 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:Yhen you get men who are praised for doing the most basic parenting - or it's called 'babysitting' when the male is taking care of the kids. I'm sure that bugs a lot of dads.

Yeah, that one's annoying. Not saying that it hurts men more than women or anything, but it's annoying. Down with sexism!

by **Garm** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:30 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:Yeah, along with the assumption that the female is the primary caretaker is the assumption that the male isn't. That's not cool either. Then you get men who are praised for doing the most basic parenting - or it's called 'babysitting' when the male is taking care of the kids. I'm sure that bugs a lot of dads.

Still, I do think the solutions that were lined up in the article were ones that would benefit both fathers and mothers - and frankly, not just parents!

You do make a really good point though - while there is a certain level of support for women who have children and work, there's not much for men - even if they happen to be the primary caregiver.

I'm not coming at this from a misandry point of view so I'm not whining about a lack of support. I just think it's interesting how fathers are treated. I do get a lot of "aww, isn't it sweet, a dad taking care of his kid" kind of comments from people who don't know that I spend more time with him than mom (a lot of it in the car, to and from daycare). The whole "babysitting" thing doesn't really bother me so much because for a lot of dudes, it's true. I really enjoy spending time with my son but I know other dads who don't. They're culturally conditioned or whatever (maybe they don't like their kids, or won't until they're older... I've heard that from fathers of older children: "oh, they were just little blobs until about 8 years old.") to think of the mom as the primary caretaker. I think it's interesting that people don't stop and think that fathers who do choose to help rear their tiny children can't "have it all" either. So really we're back to "What Choboman" said, just with more words.

by **johnny_7713** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:36 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:Still, I do think the solutions that were lined up in the article were ones that would benefit both fathers and mothers - and frankly, not just parents!

Indeed, many measures that would make it easier for a woman to combine work and having a family would make it easier for any person to combine work and their private life. It's only because women are under more pressure to combine both work and raising a family than men are (or than non-parents are to combine work and private life) that these measures are seen as mainly benefiting women.

by **Dauric** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 9:21 pm UTC

Garm wrote:
We don’t constantly quiz and evaluate and poke and prod and take their emotional temperature, asking if they feel fulfilled and happy, if they have everything they want, if their every youthful aspiration has been met sufficiently, if they feel that they’re measuring up at the office, in the kitchen, in bed. If we did, we might find out that they – especially younger ones, increasingly used to sharing workplaces and domestic and familial responsibilities with women – also feel stressed, guilty, anxiety-stricken, unfulfilled, questioning.

We don't lay the same traps for women, but men have our own cultural trappings to be wary of. Men are supposed to be stoic about shit like this. Men aren't supposed to be upset by interrupted aspirations, we're not supposed to show stress, being unfulfilled in a life of endless compromises is the default, and men are supposed to take this all in stride, or at the very least in a "life of quiet desperation."

At least right up until our early 40's when the kids are probably teenagers and mostly able to take care of themselves, then we get to snap like a sun-baked twig, buy an expensive car, get a mistress, suddenly take an interest in extreme sports, etc. etc. and that's all okay because it's just a "Mid-Life Crisis" and it's completely normal.

So,yeah, we don't ask men about questions like this in part because men are supposed to say "It's fine." "I can handle it." "No, it doesn't bother me." "I have everything i want." which makes a lousy barometer if you really want to know what is going on.

by **Роберт** » Tue Jun 26, 2012 3:46 pm UTC

A long ranty response by the women who authored "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough." Basically, what choboman said. Why There's No Such Thing as 'Having It All'—and There Never Will Be

Spoiler:

by **KestrelLowing** » Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:41 pm UTC

Роберт wrote:A long ranty response by the women who authored "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough." Basically, what choboman said. Why There's No Such Thing as 'Having It All'—and There Never Will Be
Spoiler:
"But I want to go to my gymnastics class and I want to go Rosie's birthday party and they're both on Saturday morning!" rails the 5-year-old journalist. "Why can't girls have it all? This is so unfair! "
[...]
This isn't because the child is a girl. This isn't a feminist issue.

I agree that it's not really a feminist issue - it's a cultural one. Americans work some of the longest hours in 'first world' nations. America also does not guarantee paternity leave and there is a minimal required maternity leave. American's also have more minimal vacation than other nations. That's why no one can have it all. We're built off a system where one parent stays home and one works. That system just isn't the case anymore and I wish that we could work towards making a better system.

by **Роберт** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 5:56 pm UTC

As employees, it be great if we could get together and demand at least an option for more leave time - paternity, maternity, and vacation. I'd like more vacation at the cost of less pay, honestly.

by **Enokh** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 6:38 pm UTC

You can -- just start organizing a National (or state-level) movement for it, or join an existing one if such a movement exists.

by **KestrelLowing** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 6:49 pm UTC

Роберт wrote:As employees, it be great if we could get together and demand at least an option for more leave time - paternity, maternity, and vacation. I'd like more vacation at the cost of less pay, honestly.

I would be right there with you. Perhaps this is because I expect a relatively high paycheck, but I'd also like more vacation to pay.

There actually are some companies where you can 'buy' vacation days up to a certain amount. Unfortunately, this usually means that the given vacation days are perhaps a bit less than the industry standard.

My BF's company does this and while he couldn't do this the first year he got hired, he's planning on taking as much vacation as possible next year. Now, this is feasible for him because he works as an engineer and has a fairly high paycheck to begin with.

I wish this was standard in a way, but I'm also worried this means you'd get no vacation at all unless you give up a significant portion of your paycheck. This wouldn't be in the best interests of employers as to be productive you do need breaks, but you never know...

by **johnny_7713** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 9:51 am UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:
Роберт wrote:As employees, it be great if we could get together and demand at least an option for more leave time - paternity, maternity, and vacation. I'd like more vacation at the cost of less pay, honestly.

I would be right there with you. Perhaps this is because I expect a relatively high paycheck, but I'd also like more vacation to pay.

There actually are some companies where you can 'buy' vacation days up to a certain amount. Unfortunately, this usually means that the given vacation days are perhaps a bit less than the industry standard.

My BF's company does this and while he couldn't do this the first year he got hired, he's planning on taking as much vacation as possible next year. Now, this is feasible for him because he works as an engineer and has a fairly high paycheck to begin with.

I wish this was standard in a way, but I'm also worried this means you'd get no vacation at all unless you give up a significant portion of your paycheck. This wouldn't be in the best interests of employers as to be productive you do need breaks, but you never know...

In the Netherlands it's pretty standard in some sectors to be able to convert money into leave days and vice versa, within certain limits (i.e. there's a max number of days you can buy and there's a max number of days you can sell). You will still get 20-odd days without having to hand in salary though*. At my employer (a university) on a full time contract you can choose to work 36, 38 or 40 hours. Your paycheck is always based on a 38 hour week and the number of leave hours (yes they track it in hours :p) is adjusted up or down if you choose to work for 40 or 36 hours.

*That is compared to the base salary offered, I've seen it argued that the high level of secondary benefits (vacation, pension age) enjoyed by Europeans (usually the French specifically in this argument) is paid for by lower salaries compared to Americans.

by **KestrelLowing** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:09 pm UTC

johnny_7713 wrote:In the Netherlands it's pretty standard in some sectors to be able to convert money into leave days and vice versa, within certain limits (i.e. there's a max number of days you can buy and there's a max number of days you can sell). You will still get 20-odd days without having to hand in salary though*. At my employer (a university) on a full time contract you can choose to work 36, 38 or 40 hours. Your paycheck is always based on a 38 hour week and the number of leave hours (yes they track it in hours :p) is adjusted up or down if you choose to work for 40 or 36 hours.

*That is compared to the base salary offered, I've seen it argued that the high level of secondary benefits (vacation, pension age) enjoyed by Europeans (usually the French specifically in this argument) is paid for by lower salaries compared to Americans.

Is 20ish days the standard for relatively new employees? The standard is 10 days when starting, and I believe there's typically ~10 paid holidays. At the current place I work, you won't get 20 vacation days until you've worked there for 10 years! You have to work there for 5 years before you get 15 days.

I wonder if places with more holidays and flexible time, etc. see as much of this difficulty with raising kids and working. It seems like it would be a bit easier, but I wonder if that actually is shown.

by **Chen** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:21 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:Is 20ish days the standard for relatively new employees? The standard is 10 days when starting, and I believe there's typically ~10 paid holidays. At the current place I work, you won't get 20 vacation days until you've worked there for 10 years! You have to work there for 5 years before you get 15 days.

I wonder if places with more holidays and flexible time, etc. see as much of this difficulty with raising kids and working. It seems like it would be a bit easier, but I wonder if that actually is shown.

Here in Quebec the law is a minimum of 10 days vacation (2 weeks) when starting and it increases to 3 weeks after 5 years. Plus all the provincial statutory holidays (about 10 I think). That said, the company I'm working for now generally gives an extra ~week (4-6 days) around Christmas depending on how it falls. Time here at work is also flexible with you being able to bank hours to use as time off in the future if you want. You have to be in the office for Core Hours (10 am to 3 pm I believe) but other than that as long as you do your 8 hours a day it doesn't matter when you do them (clearly with the appropriate permissions from your bosses).

Quebec also allows a TON of time for parental leave. Mothers get 18 weeks of parental leave and fathers get 5 weeks. These are paid at 70% of the salary you had for the last 52 weeks. There's another 7 weeks at 70% salary that can be split any way between the two parents. And then another 25 weeks that can be split at 55% salary. Now clearly this is done by making everyone pay into this Parental Insurance Plan (mandatory deduction from your salary) but overall it works fantastically. Of course a ton of Americans wouldn't accept this terrible communist system...

by **Ormurinn** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:40 pm UTC

For all those advocating greater parental leave, some things to bear in mind:

If you make parental leave discretionary, the majority of it will be taken by women, with a smaller amount taken by fathers. This would lead to women being paid less for equivalent work to men, on average, for doing the same work, as on average under this system a male employee has greater utility to his employer.

"Aha!" you say, "We'll make paying women less than men for equivalent work illegal!" That might work on the surface, but will result in less women than men being hired for certain jobs - most likely the most demanding, professional jobs - so the pay gap will persist in a different form. It might well be illegal to discriminate in employment on the basis of gender too, but realistically theres no way to police hiring practices thoroughly enough to prevent this effect, unless you can read the minds of employers.

You could enforce a 50:50 split in parental leave between the father and mother, but that comes with its own set of problems. For one, you deny those families the right to structure their own time, which is bad enough on its own, but you also impact the efficiency of the entire economy by forcing people out of the labour market for longer than they want to be. The scale of this distortion would be proportional to the degree of leave that is enforced.

Finally you could have strict hiring quotas in every industry - but forcing a great number of people into professions other than the ones they are best suited for is just foolish.

Why not just have parental leave non-compulsory, and have it a matter for contract? A business might have one tranche with lower pay, but a guarantee of paid maternity leave, another with higher pay, but no provision for leave. This way neither group of women misses out rather than having a compromise situation with no-one happy.

by **natraj** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:50 pm UTC

Ormurinn wrote:Why not just have parental leave non-compulsory, and have it a matter for contract? A business might have one tranche with lower pay, but a guarantee of paid maternity leave, another with higher pay, but no provision for leave. This way neither group of women misses out rather than having a compromise situation with no-one happy.

because if it is noncompulsory to have a decent amount of parental leave, the majority of companies are going to give trivial amounts of parental leave? i mean that is what happens already in america. it's not like the employee/employer power balance is equivalent and employees really have enough leverage to make employers want to treat them decently just because [it's the good thing to do|they won't find enough employees if they don't].

looking at the current situation in america with employee rights i think in your proposed situation, the most likely thing that would happen is the business will offer only one choice which is lower(/the same they'd have offered anyway) pay and no provision for leave, because screw you that's why. if you don't accept it they'll find someone a little more desperate who will.

by **Heisenberg** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:53 pm UTC

Chen wrote:Now clearly this is done by making everyone pay into this Parental Insurance Plan (mandatory deduction from your salary) but overall it works fantastically. Of course a ton of Americans wouldn't accept this terrible communist system...

I imagine the childless and infertile might object to paying their neighbors to stay home.

by **Chen** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:00 pm UTC

Ormurinn wrote:For all those advocating greater parental leave, some things to bear in mind:

If you make parental leave discretionary, the majority of it will be taken by women, with a smaller amount taken by fathers. This would lead to women being paid less for equivalent work to men, on average, for doing the same work, as on average under this system a male employee has greater utility to his employer.

Anyone who takes parental leave will be making less money than those who don't (since some will be working and others won't be). I don't see how this is a reason to NOT increase parental leave. Whether or not parental leave is given, males will already have this greater utility due to the fact that women will take at least SOME time off should they have a child. I don't see how having it as a choice is a problem. Like I posted above, here in Quebec, technically a father can take 37 weeks of parental leave and the mother could in theory take absolutely none (though they are entitled to a minimum of 18 weeks).

Making the choice to stay at home during this time with your newborn child is just that, a choice. There are consequences to that choice. Maybe you won't be chosen for that promotion because you weren't around for half a year. Maybe you won't get the exact same position when you get back because things were re-structured while you were gone. If you want to really climb the ladder to the top of a company, these type of things make a difference. If you're content in just doing your job and staying below the higher stress/higher responsibility levels, then it probably won't make much of a difference (of course depending on the company). The choice between family and career is one everyone will need to make at some point. Limiting the tools they have when making this choice (i.e., less parental leave) is hardly beneficial to anyone (well except the companies who don't want their employees to do anything but work and be productive).

Heisenberg wrote:I imagine the childless and infertile might object to paying their neighbors to stay home.

Sure. Just like I object to paying for our military going off and fighting wars I care nothing about. Its part of the cost of living in society.

by **Angua** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:02 pm UTC

Some countries do a short amount of time enforced for each parent (say 2 weeks) with a larger amount of time that can be split between the parents however they want. The good thing about enforcing paternity leave is the fact that some employers will, consciously or not, be wary of hiring young women, as they are worried they'll get pregnant and request time off. By making it more acceptable for males to take paternity leave, it helps to solve this problem.

by **Ormurinn** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:08 pm UTC

Angua wrote:Some countries do a short amount of time enforced for each parent (say 2 weeks) with a larger amount of time that can be split between the parents however they want. The good thing about enforcing paternity leave is the fact that some employers will, consciously or not, be wary of hiring young women, as they are worried they'll get pregnant and request time off. By making it more acceptable for males to take paternity leave, it helps to solve this problem.

You're imposing a cost on young men by doing this though. You're forcing them out of work for two weeks. Why is it fair to impose a cost on men to create a more favourable labour market for women who intend to have children? It certainly wouldn't be far to enforce the wearing of blindfolds at work to create a more favourable labour market for the blind.

by **natraj** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:11 pm UTC

yup, the handicapper general is just a few steps behind equal parental leave for all new parents.

nobody is going to force all young men to take leave just because new mothers take leave. anyone who is not having a kid will still not have to take parental leave, honest!

but if both parents have parental leave it may shift the weight of the burden off of only one parent all the time.

by **Chen** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:21 pm UTC

I don't imagine any company will actually force you to take parental leave. I'd imagine the "enforced" means that a company (or government) provides a mandatory amount of leave available to men, rather than a company or government saying "you just had a child, you may not work for these next two weeks". If it is latter, I would agree that's a little silly.

by **Zamfir** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:37 pm UTC

There really is a lot to stay for force leave, even from the pov of the company. The big problem with these kinds of leave is that they offer a way to show off for ambitious employees. Keep working at the cost of your family shows that you care a lot about your work and the status and money that comes with it.

And it easily becomes a rat race, where everyone takes less holidays and does more overtime and does not take all their parental leave. Because if you do take you allotted time off, people will both consciously and subconsciously mark you as the wrong kind of person for promotions.

That 's obviously bad for employees, but it is not necessarily good for the organization either. Because people are not stupid, and good employees might well leave if the company culture becomes to hostile to parental leave. Forced (or at least strongly encouraged) leave becomes an equalizer, a message to both employees and their managers that parental leave will not be an issue when it comes to judging employee performance.

by **Angua** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:42 pm UTC

Given that the forced parental leave would be paid at 100% anyway, it's not like it would be causing young men to miss out workwise.

by **KestrelLowing** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:37 pm UTC

I'm also fond of the specific amount of leave mandatory for both parents and then freedom to split the rest however the couple chooses. I really just think this could help our society in general become more equal when it comes to parenting, which I think everyone usually agrees is a Good Thing ^TM. I know several guys who had kids and came back to work right away and didn't take any time off after. It wasn't because the guy didn't want to be around his kid, it was simple economics. Someone's got to pay for that rather expensive crying mass! Obviously the person who gave birth needs some resting time so I understand why it's the non-birthing partner who goes back to work right away.

But then it appears that in many relationships, the non-birthing partner gets intimidated because they haven't been around from the beginning and therefore feel as if they don't know how to care for the kid. Then you get the birthing person who has more opportunity to learn how to take care of this kid and gets annoyed when the non-birthing partner doesn't seem to be as 'in tune' with the kid. This creates unequal parenting and can be difficult if the couple is striving for equal parenting. Also something is to be said about the power of the boob for calming kids down, and dads just don't have that power... However my mom evidently got mad because when we'd look at my mom we'd want food, but we'd smile when we looked at my dad!

The only part where this could be a bit weird is because of breastfeeding. Pumping doesn't work for everyone and forcing someone to pump or to feed their kid formula is something I'm really not in favor of.

by **Garm** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:52 pm UTC

I like the idea of having a pool of time off that can be split between the parents (don't they have that in Sweden?). I would have taken advantage of that, no doubt. When my son was born, I took five days of paid time off and then an additional five days unpaid. Then economic realities forced me back to work.

by **johnny_7713** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 8:31 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:
johnny_7713 wrote:In the Netherlands it's pretty standard in some sectors to be able to convert money into leave days and vice versa, within certain limits (i.e. there's a max number of days you can buy and there's a max number of days you can sell). You will still get 20-odd days without having to hand in salary though*. At my employer (a university) on a full time contract you can choose to work 36, 38 or 40 hours. Your paycheck is always based on a 38 hour week and the number of leave hours (yes they track it in hours :p) is adjusted up or down if you choose to work for 40 or 36 hours.

*That is compared to the base salary offered, I've seen it argued that the high level of secondary benefits (vacation, pension age) enjoyed by Europeans (usually the French specifically in this argument) is paid for by lower salaries compared to Americans.

Is 20ish days the standard for relatively new employees? The standard is 10 days when starting, and I believe there's typically ~10 paid holidays. At the current place I work, you won't get 20 vacation days until you've worked there for 10 years! You have to work there for 5 years before you get 15 days.

I wonder if places with more holidays and flexible time, etc. see as much of this difficulty with raising kids and working. It seems like it would be a bit easier, but I wonder if that actually is shown.

Amongst most of my recently graduated friends 20-ish days seems to be the standard, not sure if and how that holds outside of engineering. Don't have time to look it up at the moment, but at my university you get semi-automatic (dependent on your annual performance appraisal) raises annually, I think holiday time stays the same however. As is common practice in Holland the terms of employment have all been hammered out by the unions and the employers in a 'collective labour agreement'.

In Holland it's common and relatively accepted for women to work part-time (24 or 36 hours) and look after their family in the remainder. There are quite some people who trumpet this as a failure of emancipation, but there still seems to be less pressure on women* to have a full-time job. I agree somewhat that it's a failure of emancipation, but because I think it should be just as common for men to work part time and look after the family in the remainder, not because women should also all be working full time.

*Note I say this as a man, I could be completely wrong.

by **elasto** » Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:45 am UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:
johnny_7713 wrote:In the Netherlands it's pretty standard in some sectors to be able to convert money into leave days and vice versa, within certain limits (i.e. there's a max number of days you can buy and there's a max number of days you can sell). You will still get 20-odd days without having to hand in salary though*. At my employer (a university) on a full time contract you can choose to work 36, 38 or 40 hours. Your paycheck is always based on a 38 hour week and the number of leave hours (yes they track it in hours :p) is adjusted up or down if you choose to work for 40 or 36 hours.

*That is compared to the base salary offered, I've seen it argued that the high level of secondary benefits (vacation, pension age) enjoyed by Europeans (usually the French specifically in this argument) is paid for by lower salaries compared to Americans.

Is 20ish days the standard for relatively new employees? The standard is 10 days when starting, and I believe there's typically ~10 paid holidays. At the current place I work, you won't get 20 vacation days until you've worked there for 10 years! You have to work there for 5 years before you get 15 days.

In my first job in the UK I had 25 days paid holiday plus 8 bank holidays plus essentially unlimited paid sick days: if you took a week or more off you'd need a doctor's note but otherwise it was just self-certification. (If someone abused the system they'd likely be slacking off while on the job too so it'd not be hard for the employer to seek to replace them.)

Honestly, it strikes me as a much more humane job market than Americans suffer under. If you didn't use up all your holiday entitlement the company would buy them back off you too, so it'd seem to be the best of both worlds. I don't think my contract was especially unusual either.

In terms of Maternity/Paternity rights, the situation in the UK appears to be this (figures might be slightly out of date):

- Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) is paid for 39 weeks.
- For the first six weeks of maternity leave, SMP is paid at 90% of the woman's average earnings. For the remaining 33 weeks, mothers receive that figure or £123 a week - whichever is the lower amount.
- They are then allowed to take another 13 weeks maternity leave, but that will be unpaid.
- Fathers are allowed to claim two weeks of paternity leave at 90% of average wages.
- Employers pay the maternity/paternity pay but are reimbursed by the Treasury

There was a plan to allow the mother to transfer any portion of her 52 week entitlement to the father, but I don't know whether that legislation ever passed.

by **kiklion** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 1:29 pm UTC

I always thought that complaints that UK companies always seem to be on bank holiday or vacation stemmed from us having alternating days off. (Company did not go on vacation, but contacts would and we would need to bounce over to a new contact and wait for them to get up to speed). Sometimes it seems like a contact would get almost 10% of the year off. Hence why my company and our clients have been moving away from non-US companies.

by **KestrelLowing** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 5:55 pm UTC

You know, reading this just makes me sad. Maybe I should move to Europe!

I'm not really certain what the 'standards' of maternity leave are in the US, but the only guaranteed leave by the government is 12 weeks unpaid. Most corporations will do better than that.

Stupid Puritan work ethic!

by **LaserGuy** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:08 pm UTC

elasto wrote:I like the idea of having a pool of time off that can be split between the parents (don't they have that in Sweden?). I would have taken advantage of that, no doubt. When my son was born, I took five days of paid time off and then an additional five days unpaid. Then economic realities forced me back to work.

This is fairly similar to what we have here in Canada, although the premiums are somewhat low (compared to, say the UK numbers discussed above). My wife and I were looking this up a little while ago because we're planning on having our first in not too long. It's something like this:

-Mother gets 17 weeks at 55% of their earnings up to a maximum of about $46000. This can be started up to eight weeks before pregnancy.
-After that, there are 35 weeks of parental leave that can be shared in any distribution between the two parents at 55% of their earnings up to the same maximum, I'm guessing.
-If your income is going to end up really low as a result, they can top you up to 80% of your take-home earnings.

This is the guaranteed government minimums. Employers can add to this in whatever way they like, AFAIK.

by **Ashlah** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 8:17 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:I'm not really certain what the 'standards' of maternity leave are in the US, but the only guaranteed leave by the government is 12 weeks unpaid. Most corporations will do better than that.

I don't know how true that is. A lot of corporations tend to do the bare minimum that is required of them. And businesses with less than 50 people (like mine!) don't have to provide any leave at all.

According to this article over half of US businesses employ less than 50 people, and only 16% of companies with at least 100 people provide full pay during maternity leave (though it doesn't say for how long). Some hugely successful corporations provide good parental leave benefits, but I'm afraid that is far from the norm in our country. Many, if not most, people have to use sick or vacation days if they want more time at home with their newborns.

by **KestrelLowing** » Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:59 am UTC

Ashlah wrote:
KestrelLowing wrote:I'm not really certain what the 'standards' of maternity leave are in the US, but the only guaranteed leave by the government is 12 weeks unpaid. Most corporations will do better than that.

I don't know how true that is. A lot of corporations tend to do the bare minimum that is required of them. And businesses with less than 50 people (like mine!) don't have to provide any leave at all.

According to this article over half of US businesses employ less than 50 people, and only 16% of companies with at least 100 people provide full pay during maternity leave (though it doesn't say for how long). Some hugely successful corporations provide good parental leave benefits, but I'm afraid that is far from the norm in our country. Many, if not most, people have to use sick or vacation days if they want more time at home with their newborns.

Ah, yes. I forgot that the reason a lot of people have longer maternity leave is because of vacation. There are a few corporations at least that will let someone work part time for a while if their child is an infant, although I've only seen this given to female engineers.

EDIT: this is likely because I'm really only around engineers

by **Garm** » Thu Jul 05, 2012 2:54 pm UTC

KestrelLowing wrote:
Ashlah wrote:
KestrelLowing wrote:I'm not really certain what the 'standards' of maternity leave are in the US, but the only guaranteed leave by the government is 12 weeks unpaid. Most corporations will do better than that.

I don't know how true that is. A lot of corporations tend to do the bare minimum that is required of them. And businesses with less than 50 people (like mine!) don't have to provide any leave at all.

According to this article over half of US businesses employ less than 50 people, and only 16% of companies with at least 100 people provide full pay during maternity leave (though it doesn't say for how long). Some hugely successful corporations provide good parental leave benefits, but I'm afraid that is far from the norm in our country. Many, if not most, people have to use sick or vacation days if they want more time at home with their newborns.

Ah, yes. I forgot that the reason a lot of people have longer maternity leave is because of vacation. There are a few corporations at least that will let someone work part time for a while if their child is an infant, although I've only seen this given to female engineers.

That depends on your boss. My wife is in finance. When our son was born, she took six weeks off and then did twelve weeks at part time. Once she was back to full time she worked two days a week at home. It was a nice arrangement. Having a boss that has two children helps a lot.

by **cjmcjmcjmcjm** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:38 am UTC

I'm posting this after reading just the first page, so…

The reason why it is usually women who wonder why they can't have it "all" is that, as others have pointed out, women (in general) have a much more expansive definition of "all" than men. I'm not really sure what could be done to correct this, since trying to put women in the workforce did not move more men (assuming heterosexual marriage partners, because these fora demand all assumptions be clearly stated) taking the housemaking work. Maybe trying to add homemaking to the standard male pallet will help balance things, or maybe it will only spread the misery…

Outchanter wrote:Artificial wombs would also be nice. That way older women and gay couples could have kids without having to use a surrogate.

…or they could adopt.

by **johnny_7713** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 6:16 pm UTC

cjmcjmcjmcjm wrote:I'm posting this after reading just the first page, so…

The reason why it is usually women who wonder why they can't have it "all" is that, as others have pointed out, women (in general) have a much more expansive definition of "all" than men. I'm not really sure what could be done to correct this, since trying to put women in the workforce did not move more men (assuming heterosexual marriage partners, because these fora demand all assumptions be clearly stated) taking the housemaking work. Maybe trying to add homemaking to the standard male pallet will help balance things, or maybe it will only spread the misery…

Outchanter wrote:Artificial wombs would also be nice. That way older women and gay couples could have kids without having to use a surrogate.

…or they could adopt.

I'd say that a better correction would be to recognize that a high powered career and spending lots of time with your family are things that are very hard to combine given the finite number of hours in a week. I'm all in favour of shifting more of the housemaking work onto men, but just as important is to be less judgmental of the choices women make. A man who goes for his career is seen as ambitious and hard working and making a good living for his family. A man who spends most of his time on his family is heroically defying gender roles to be there for his children. On the other hand a woman who stays at home to take care of her children is squandering her potential and giving in to old fashioned stereotypes, whereas a woman who works full-time (not to mention the overtime often required in high powered careers) is a bad mother. That's the attitude that need to change.

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