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Your boss did not decide to have a child, you did. I agree there ought to be paid leave based on medical necessity associated with pregnancy/childbirth but if you want to stay home with the child that should be on your dime.
If I were a business and required to pay months upon months of child raising leave I would make every attempt to only hire people old enough to be done having babies.
ooh I thought I had been transported back to the 1940's then. Therein lies the issue the antiquated attitude here by most about maternity leave and about women in general! (stay at home and raise them! yes because the father didn't make the choice to have the child too!) The same applies with annual leave here. In the US they have one of the lowest amount of vacation time , plus the fact that even when you gain leave a lot of americans don't actually take time off .
I'm sorry, where in there did I mention women? Male or female, and as long as you are the one who is allowed to choose whether or not you will be a parent, you should be the one who chooses to undertake the financial burden of the child.
I keep waiting for people to demand pet adoption leave, I can see it on the horizon. Wish I were kidding.
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Very few people who want children will completely forgo having them, so let's stop w/ the equally ridiculous argument of "if you can't afford them, don't have them". s.
Ah, yes.
The "everyone is going to make the wrong decision anyway, so let's make it easier on them" argument.
I agree that most CEO's are grossly over-paid, and that's the fault of their board of directors. Those top-rung salaries aren't going to be affected by whether or not the company pays maternity leave. If a company decides it wants to provide maternity leave for it's employees, then fine... all well and good. But it's wrong to force someone (a company) to take on the financial obligation to support someone else's choices. In effect it's saying "I'm going to have a baby, and there's nothing you can do about it..... and you have to pay me anyway". I just don't agree with making it mandatory.
In many countries, the company doesn't pay. The government does. Why? Because it benefits the country to have babies get a good start in life and bond with mom and dad, get situated in a good day care later, get breast fed, etc.
Even China...not the bastion of human rights of the world, for sure....even China's govt requires mandatory paid maternity leave for the mother. It's a bare minimum, though. Three months. What the U.S. makes large cos. give moms. China allows a couple of weeks for dads, I think. And China allows 1 hr off each work day for breastfeeding for one year, OR allowance of that pay, set aside for the future. Also...China does not allow a pregnant or new mother to be fired. That allows for stability in the country and the family at a particularly sensitive time that would impact the most vulnerable among us...the infants.
So a pregnant woman is protected from losing her job for about 2 years....from during pregnancy to a year after birth. She's also protected to a similar extent for abortions/miscarriages. (I think back to my miscarriages.....I took one sick day off, and even then, got a call from my boss to talk about work; he thought I was goofing off.)
Based on your vast understanding of large businesses? It seems everyone's thought process around these types of things involve highly compensated tech workers. In many fields the money is simply not there. The average line worker does not produce nearly enough in economic value for the money to be there.
ANother thing worth major consideration is the fact that this would likely make things WORSE for mothers. What company in their right mind would hire a breeding age young woman if their required compensation was higher than the alternative?
After seeing a few terrible posts and realizing the username was the same on each, it is time for a quick education.
Corporate profits after taxes are near record highs and have been for years running around 10% of GDP. This argument that the corporations can not afford it is simply stupid and needs to be put to rest. There are other legitimate arguments, but that is not one so let it die. I fear you know absolutely nothing about economic value. The difference here is that I'm a financial analyst and make my living (a fairly decent living at that) based on providing actual analysis of the kinds of factors you simply pull out of your ***.
I'm not even in favor of the strong maternity laws because I believe we need to reduce population overload on the planet and one way to do it is to discourage rapid reproduction. The "one child" laws are too strict, but we do need to be encouraging a negative GROWTH rate for population. Having each adult on average contribute genes to 1.5 children (remember it takes two adults) would allow our population to decline in an orderly manner over time.
The employer? He or she didn't have the baby. You? You're the one saying someone else should pay for it.
So who pays?
In many European countries, the leave is publicly funded (either directly by the government (Sweden) or reimbursed by government after salary has been paid (UK)). So the direct cost burden is shifted away from business owner to taxpayer. There are still issues - e.g. employee XY had baby is gone for 16 months, I hired a replacement, employee XY wants to come back, what do I do with replacement who is all trained up, etc.
Corporate profits after taxes are near record highs and have been for years running around 10% of GDP. This argument that the corporations can not afford it is simply stupid and needs to be put to rest. There are other legitimate arguments, but that is not one so let it die. I fear you know absolutely nothing about economic value. The difference here is that I'm a financial analyst and make my living (a fairly decent living at that) based on providing actual analysis of the kinds of factors you simply pull out of your ***.
I'm not even in favor of the strong maternity laws because I believe we need to reduce population overload on the planet and one way to do it is to discourage rapid reproduction. The "one child" laws are too strict, but we do need to be encouraging a negative GROWTH rate for population. Having each adult on average contribute genes to 1.5 children (remember it takes two adults) would allow our population to decline in an orderly manner over time.
This is a gross underestimation of this sort of employment policy. Are corporations making money? Yes. Corporations sole reason of existence is to make money. Could large corporations that have high levels of unskilled labor make lots of money with this policy in place? No. Could Facebook?
Probably
The war on low skilled job's and fields is really a shame.
Priorities. We offer the worlds highest incarceration rate. Does that sound like a country that wants to help out with child rearing? It sounds like a country that wants to fine or incarcerate you. Maybe kidnap the children first.
Since no one seems to agree on either business or tax payers footing the bill, how about designing a plan where perspective parents, who are interested, join together and contribute a fixed percent of their income per month into a leave fund? When you have a child and want paid leave, you can draw from this fund. And when you go back to work, you have to continue to contribute until the amount you used is equal to all payments before and after your leave. If you never have a child or decide not to, you could discontinue contributions and walk away with what you had previously contributed less the cost of administering the program. Yes people could do this on their own, but it's hard for most to save for an extended leave before they have a kid. This would be like a leave co-op situation. And I would have no way out of repayment for any deadbeats who try and game the system. No dissolution of the debt in bankruptcy. And no lock box shenanigans like Social Security.
Priorities. We offer the worlds highest incarceration rate. Does that sound like a country that wants to help out with child rearing? It sounds like a country that wants to fine or incarcerate you. Maybe kidnap the children first.
But we have no property crime. Oh...wait.
Most of Europe is homogeneous. We do not enjoy that economic advantage.
Beyond that I agree with you on incarceration rates, that does not mean my money should be going to somebody because she chose to have kids.
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