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So What If Yahoo's New Dads Get Less Leave Than Moms?
Dawn Kawamoto writes "Yahoo rolled out an expanded maternity/paternity policy that doubled the family leave for moms to 16 weeks. But new dads at Yahoo get only 8 weeks. It turns out that Yahoo is not the only Fortune 500 company to short-shrift news dads. But, really, do new dads think it's worth crying over? Hmmm...changing diapers or cleaning up code — both are messy, but one smells less."
Last I saw, FMLA says unpaid leave. Yahoo(!) is offering paid leave. Dads can still take 12 weeks, but the last 4 have to come out of vacation or unpaid time.
Don't forget that with FMLA only applies to certain companies (50 or more employees in the area), may not apply to you (upper 10% of earners and your leave would hurt the company), you and your wife work at the same place (then you have to split your 12 weeks). Pretty sure most companies require you to burn your paid time first, so it may be unpaid leave.
While time to bond would have been great, I don't have any real heart-burn about Yahoo's benefit offering for a few reasons. 1) I do believe that on average, women are likely to need more time off to recoup from giving birth, especially as it seems troubled pregnancies are becoming more common. 2) I'm much more bent over how a female dominated field like education (birth - high school) has zippo paid parental leave benefits. Considering the current overall state of such benefits Yahoo deserves applause, albeit possibly with a raised eyebrow.
Sheesh folks are getting bent over Yahoo increasing an already generous benefit for women but, not for men. How about we cut them a huss until everyone else in the country has the paltry 8 weeks of leave dads at Yahoo will get, then we can paint signs, hop on a buss, protest outside their offices, sign "Give Peace a Chance" and boycott their services...
No, men don't have a choice if contraception or sterilization fails. Women can always chose to abort. Contracts to abort in event of contraceptive or sterilization failure are unenforceable at law.
Men can become fathers, with legal child support obligations, if their semen is stolen out of a used condom. It has happened, and the argument is that the child's needs for support outweigh the father's rights to not be made a slave.
Men can become fathers, with legal child support obligations, if they donate semen for artificial insemination, and later the child goes on welfare, with exceptions existing only if the sperm donation was done under state guidelines.
In Liberty, Rene