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."

Comments

Equal rights

[BitZtream]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.

Re:Equal rights

[BitZtream]

I should add, its ironic that ultraliberal California doesn't consider this illegal, but Ruby Red North Carolina prevents such discrimination.

Re:Equal rights

[lgw]

Every place I've worked, it didn't really matter how much leave you took, you were rated at the end of the year based on how much you contributed. Take a month off, or work at sleep-deprived half-speed for two months, either way you were a month behind everyone else and your review showed it.

Is that a problem? Not by itself IMO, you did less work over the year, why expect equal pay. But I kept seeing those people getting laid off come layoff season, and that's a serious, fundamental problem. To me, paying for work done is quite correct, but treating someone like a slacker when they do their part in the months they're at work? That's BS. It's not like the leave was some surprise to project planners.

Re:Equal rights

[HaZardman27]

That's quite understandable, but if a new mother and new father at the same company with the same job title and same salary each have children in the same year, and the new mother gets more paid time off than the new father, how is that not discrimination?

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Childfree people are being discriminated against because they get no leave. I should be able to take leave to take care of my cat.

Re:Equal rights

[jeffmeden]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.

Then don't think of it as man vs woman. Think of it this way: if a human being comes out of you, you get an extra 8 weeks off. You can be a man OR a woman; as long as a human being comes out of you, then you get the time. See how that works?

Re:Equal rights

[jittles]

Actually in California fathers are granted the 12 weeks required under the FMLA at the federal level. So while it may be legal to give mom's 16 weeks (though I am not sure it is), dads are required by law to get at least 12 weeks.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, bonding between mother and newborn is, and should be, a lot more intense then for the father.

Why? Got any science to back that claim up?

Re:Equal rights

[hedwards]

Under normal circumstances women need less than a week. And in general giving birth is considered the equivalent of day surgery. The main exception being for c-sections.

Remember that as a species we used to have to be on the move constantly, and having women need 16 weeks to recover from giving birth would likely have meant the death of the species.

What's more, there's absolutely no evidence to back up the belief that babies require more bonding between them and their mother than with their father.

Re:Equal rights

[MozeeToby]

Also, bonding between mother and newborn is, and should be, a lot more intense then for the father.

I agree that it usually is but I see no reason that it should be. Fathers who start involved stay involved and one of the most common reasons fathers stop being involved is that the mother is 'better' at doing things. Better at soothing, better at putting the baby down for a nap, faster diaper changes... and why is that? The innate bond between mother and child? Probably has something to do with it. But isn't it possible that a big chunk of that being "better" at taking care of the baby stems directly from the extra time mother's get with their newborns?

For the record, I would have killed for 8 weeks off when my daughter was born. And I still think it's wildly unfair to give mothers more time than fathers.

Re:Equal rights

[toastar]

unpaid

Re:Equal rights

[s0nicfreak]

Then they are discriminating against people that can not give birth. That includes men, some women, and some people in between.

Re:Equal rights

[jimbolauski]

The leave is NOT for recovering from childbirth otherwise it would only be 4 weeks, the rest of the leave is for child rearing. Parents that adopt get leave just the same as everyone else.

Re:Equal rights

[Kongming]

bonding between mother and newborn is, and should be, a lot more intense then for the father.

Not everyone agrees with you.

Re:Equal rights

[Enry]

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.

Re:Equal rights

[0100010001010011]

Except in 30 years that kid could likely be taking care of you in a home or driving a bus or even being a Dr taking care of you. Your cat won't.

Nearly every single other country in the world realizes that long term they're better off if kids are taken care of from the beginning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Brazil, where we've had 10 years of socialist government (seriously, the American say Obama is a leftist, but here he'd be considered extreme right wing, in the same level as the remains of the military government), women get 120 days off and men get 5 days, both with full payment, granted as constitutional rights. The first reference in English I found was Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

Re:Equal rights

[dawnkawamotodice]

Hi Jittles, In my submission, I left out the word *paid* maternity, *paid* paternity leave. You're dead on regarding FMLA's 12 week requirement, but it does not require it be paid.

Re:Equal rights

[smbell]

Not only that but this isn't even a real win for women. It is very likely to enforce the impression (real or imagined) that men are a more valuable worker and enable glass ceiling type behavior during promotional considerations.

Re:Equal rights

[CanHasDIY]

Men are usually more violent.

Watch it, or I'll kick your ass!

Re:Equal rights

[hedwards]

Except that the law isn't supposed to work like that. The US constitution does not permit women to get special rights that are not available to men. Which is why things like title IX don't specify a sex, they specify that both sexes are required to get equal opportunity to resources covered under the title. And that can mean extra resources for men, even though it usually works out benefiting women.

What's more the bulk of the maternity leave has nothing to do with pregnancy, and everything to do with bonding with the newborn. It's questionable as to why we're granting women all that time off and then bitching about how men don't spend as much time with their children. Well, no shit, we don't give them the same sort of break in terms of availability to bond with their own children.

Re:Equal rights

[SJHillman]

No one is forcing her to take off the full 16 weeks. The mother could return to work after 8 weeks.

Re:Equal rights

[Frosty Piss]

You are wrong. It is a life event, not a yearly occurrence...

Clearly you are not Catholic, Mormon, or from the Bible Belt.

Re:Equal rights

[SirGarlon]

It's not discrimination for a company to say "we don't want to give lots of paid leave to both parents." It is discrimination to say "we arbitrarily decide one parent deserves more leave than the other."

In other words, I am fine with giving extensive parental leave to only one parent -- but I think the beneficiary, not the employer, should decide which parent deserves the benefit. I think in more than 90% of the cases, it will be the mother who wants it. I could be wrong about that, and even if I'm not, real equality includes having the freedom to switch roles if you want.

This is, of course, complicated by two factors. Most couples don't both work for the same company, so the employer can't tell who is taking time off to be the primary care giver. That could be addressed by making the employee sign some papers promising he/she is really using the leave for child care. Another problem is that mothers have medical recovery, but that could be addressed by having separating medical leave from parental leave and having them run consecutively (not concurrently) when appropriate.

Re:Equal rights

[haystor]

I'm going to go way out on limb here and say that nursing is more frequently done by the mothers.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

That's quite understandable, but if a new mother and new father at the same company with the same job title and same salary each have children in the same year, and the new mother gets more paid time off than the new father, how is that not discrimination?

Because the man didn't grow and eject said child from his own body.

There is a difference, and it is a significant one. Men at Yahoo should be happy they get any paid paternity leave. It is quite generous by industry standards.

Re:Equal rights

[Kongming]

You are correct, and this pattern continues to make it difficult for women to achieve parity in the most powerful positions; it is assumed that women of childbearing age will take more time off. In fact, countries that offer more maternal leave and more paid maternal leave have, on average, greater employment disparities in advanced positions.

I have heard of one interesting idea. Certain countries, such as Sweden, have programs in which a certain amount of parental leave is guaranteed, but at least some portion of it must be taken by each parent. I understand that it has had some success in decreasing the disparity in terms of leave time taken, although there is certainly still an imbalance.

Re:Equal rights

[BitZtream]

Chapel Hill is not red, the rest of the state is.

Re:Equal rights

[xelah]

In the UK new mothers can have a whole year off work, and fathers much less (something like two weeks). The disruption and costs to employers is actually one of the drivers of discrimination against women. There's been talk of parents being able to share the leave however they like, which sounds like a much better principal to me, but I suspect it'll still be mostly women who take it.

Re:Equal rights

[interkin3tic]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

If you think that's bad, not only do I get less maternity leave than a woman would, but the men's room DOESN'T HAVE TAMPONS IN IT!!!

[/s] Lets not make overly broad declarations. It's only discrimination if the situations aren't actually equal. Which it isn't. Physically if nothing else. I went back to work a few hours two days after my kid was born (voulontarily, to keep things going in lab), my wife at that point still couldn't really walk. Postpartum depression also is a thing women have to deal with, while we don't.

I'd like to hear the reason for the discrepancy before I condemn it as sex discrimination. I know some of you are really anxious to find something about the rare female CEO in a tech company to cry foul about, but this is not necessarily discrimination.

Re:Equal rights

[obarthelemy]

They might require more milk though ?

Re:Equal rights

[chispito]

Under normal circumstances women need less than a week.

Citation need because, frankly, this seems ridiculous to me in so many ways.

Re: Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile in sweden: 280 days per child. Of those, at least two months must be used by the father. All days are payed.

Re:Equal rights

[xelah]

Consider breastfeeding. (Eww, no, not like that). Very young babies have to be fed VERY frequently - like every few hours, 24 hours a day. That's one thing the father can't do so well, not without sacrificing the benefits of breast feeding.

Re:Equal rights

[Rich0]

Well, lots of people do work hourly jobs where this isn't an issue. But, yes, I agree with everything you said in the professional world.

At my workplace the guy who gets FMLA leave for a month and the guy who slips out to go golfing 10 hours per week for four months basically get treated the same by the system. The same is true of somebody who gets sick/disabled, or who ends up sequestered on a jury for a year. They'll never fire you while you're on leave (especially a legally-guaranteed leave). However, they won't give you a big bonus the next year for sure, and when the next re-org/layoff comes you will be near the bottom of the ranking. When they fire you it won't be "for serving jury duty" - it will be because "we just don't need so many people."

At some level this is actually a good thing, because it gives employees more flexibility - my boss really could care less if I take vacation, and so on. The bad thing is that basically it leads to people never REALLY going on vacation - they end up working in spurts or killing themselves to get back. Forced ranking often also lead to situations where the person who just went through a divorce ends up getting fired for something that likely has no bearing whatsoever on their future productivity.

Re:Equal rights

[guises]

You're making a joke about the cat but it's a genuine and difficult problem. Social programs which alleviate poverty and encourage healthy and educated children have wide-ranging benefits: reducing crime, boosting the economy, encouraging entrepreneurship and reducing stagnation, etc. These things are in the interest of the community at large, including childless members of that community, not just the children themselves or their parents.

On the other hand, it's difficult to make child rearing easier without also making it more appealing. So the benefits of these programs have to be balanced against against the detriment of a larger number of babies, a larger population, and the long-term environmental and social impact.

So one possible, but impractical, solution might be something like giving all employees the full twelve weeks off every year, to be spent on whatever they wish. That'd be nice... ::sigh:: ... Anyway. I don't have a real solution, it's a hard problem like I said, but we're going to have to figure something out.

Re:Equal rights

[icebike]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.

I suspect the source of the discrimination is that Men don't provide natural lactation.
Perhaps work on that problem first, then worry about the problem of male availability for a baby that sleeps 90% of the time for the first 16 weeks.

Re:Equal rights

[BitZtream]

Yes, except we don't give them more time off because something came out of them. Medically, its a minor event. You're ready to just about anything you could do before hand (physically) in a couple days. About the only thing you can't do immediately is make another baby. C-sections are different as they have to cut you, but those are not the norm.

If you reduce it to 'recovery from the process of passing a child' then you reduce the time two no more than 1 week, unless the women works in a baby mill, in which case, I think its 6 weeks.

The time off is given for the 'family' not for medical recovery. The time off is so mom can be with her child, not because she is recovering. She isn't even taking care of the child for the most part during her 'recovery' period, its only after that when she starts doing her job.

I'm fairly certain you don't have any experience with women giving birth. We did it for hundreds of thousands of years when taking a break for more than a few hours meant something big and mean ate you alive. They even did it without hospitals ... or someone to tell them they were working too hard!

I want to spend that time with my child too.

Re:Equal rights

[Jason Levine]

Women who chose to go to work soon after giving birth, but who still want to breastfeed can pump and store their milk to be given to the child by someone else (such as the dad). My wife did this so, at times, I could feed our son or we could leave him with relatives for a short while and he could still eat if he got hungry.

Yes, it requires offices providing space for the women to pump, but that's not so hard. (And, no, said space shouldn't be the restroom.)

Re:Equal rights

[interkin3tic]

When you say "ultraliberal" you're thinking of very specific, small places within California. Like Berkley, Hollywood, and San Francisco. And even then, you're only thinking of the most outspoken residents. The OC is very conservative by national standards. The state legislature has plenty of conservatives in it, some of whom subscribe to the "starve the beast" theory, whereby you solve the budgetary problems by refusing to raise taxes without actually cutting spending.

(Also, side note, some residents of the OC evidently hate it when you call it the OC, so call the OC "the OC" whenever you get the chance.)

Re:Equal rights

[jeffmeden]

Except that the law isn't supposed to work like that. The US constitution does not permit women to get special rights that are not available to men. Which is why things like title IX don't specify a sex, they specify that both sexes are required to get equal opportunity to resources covered under the title. And that can mean extra resources for men, even though it usually works out benefiting women.

What's more the bulk of the maternity leave has nothing to do with pregnancy, and everything to do with bonding with the newborn. It's questionable as to why we're granting women all that time off and then bitching about how men don't spend as much time with their children. Well, no shit, we don't give them the same sort of break in terms of availability to bond with their own children.

As many others pointed out, FMLA covers both equally and supersedes this law (with unpaid leave). You can think of it as them giving a bonus to women that isn't available to men. but based on decades of salary data, men were getting bonuses all along and no one bothered to cite the constitution in protest.

In a perfect world anyone with a newborn would get paid leave, but most companies give 0 weeks of leave to fathers and 6 to 8 weeks to mothers (often at a discount) so why are we getting on Yahoo's case for going above and beyond 99% of the employers in the US, with the same difference?

Re:Equal rights

[ethanms]

I'm all for equal rights, and in the case of adoption I think there is absolutely no reason not to have parity between the genders...

However if we're talking about mom's giving birth vs. dad's, then I think there is some legitimacy to the mom getting more time.

Perhaps they can come up with something to make it seem more fair... 8 weeks leave for any new parent + 8 weeks additional granted to ones that physically gave birth? ...actually 4 months seems pretty damn long now that I think about it.

Re: Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

tax rate of 51.1%

Re:Equal rights

[brian1078]

unpaid

Unless you're paying into CA SDI, then you can get 55% of your normal pay for 8 weeks.

Since I work for the state (UC), I don't pay into SDI and had to use vacation/sick time when my kids were born. However, so did my wife (also a UC employee) once her pregnancy disability leave was up.

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

You joke, but it's really not fair that people who choose to have kids get leave that the rest of us don't. I have to work harder to pick up the slack because of your lifestyle choice.

It's also worth pointing out that providing the same amount of leave to childfree individuals would decrease discrimination to some extent. Surely when employers are interviewing women of child bearing ages, some of them are hesitant to hire because they expect to have to deal with a major leave of absence in the future. Giving everyone the ability to take a leave of absence would level the playing field.

Re:Equal rights

[thehickcoder]

I like the way my company handles this. One partner (primary caregiver) gets 12 weeks. The other (secondary caregiver) gets 2 weeks. It addresses all the discrimination/same-sex issues, while also handling the "someone who just had another person come out of them should get more time off" common sense. If the mother works, the father is automatically considered to be the secondary caregiver unless he can provide documentation from her employer saying she only was able to get 2 weeks off. I know fathers who have been able to take 12 weeks off because their wife's employer only allowed 2 weeks of maternity leave.

Re:Equal rights

[BitZtream]

We're not dealing at levels of society where evolutionary issues matter anymore. If we were, mom still wouldn't be allowed to take more time off than dad because sitting on her ass would get her killed by some large angry predator.

Women physically recover from natural child birth to NEAR (not 100%) full health in a couple of days. C-Sections are different and require substanially longer, but those are not the norm.

The rest of the time is so mom can be with baby. Thats great, but if we have time for mom to be with baby, than we have equal time for dad to be with baby. If you want to reduce it to being about medical condition than unless mom's job is to produce babies, she can most likely be back to work in a few days and feeding baby via bottle. She doesn't NEED to be there medically.

It is BETTER if she is there for all sorts of legitimate medical reasons ... 99.999% of which also apply to dad being there as well.

Re:Equal rights

[ewibble]

That no excuse, under the same rule you could pay women less because they have a period. Or maybe give women extra days to recover? The same thing isn't happening biologically so it justifies different employment conditions?

Both are discrimination, It should be based on the person who is the primary care giver to the child. In general that would be the mother (I am assuming) but it is possible that it is the father and in that case the man deserves the same amount of leave. As for the physical recovery that should be sick leave. 8 weeks is a long time to recover from child birth.

Re:Equal rights

[tomkost]

It's not about fairness, it's about reality. The mom needs more time as she is recovering from the labor. Plus she is often the primary care taker and can get exhausted easily. As a father, I can tell you that 8 weeks of paid leave is a real nicety and quite rare in the US. They don't have to provide any paid leave. Paid time off is not a right. I get bewildered by people claiming all kinds of erroneous rights.

Re:Equal rights

[tiberus]

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...

Re: Equal rights

[Troed]

480, not 280.

Re:Equal rights

[jittles]

Hi Jittles, In my submission, I left out the word *paid* maternity, *paid* paternity leave. You're dead on regarding FMLA's 12 week requirement, but it does not require it be paid.

Ah. Yes paid is a big difference. I knew FMLA did not require paid leave. I didn't realize that Yahoo was paying. That does seem to be a bit discriminatory. But then I worked for a company that allowed salaried employees 4 weeks of paid medical leave per year and did not provide any for hourly employees and that probably wasn't very fair either.

Re:Equal rights

[CastrTroy]

But it's a real problem for employers. Unless you're hiring for a factory where employees are easily trained and replaced, there's really no way you can replace an employee while they're off on parental leave. Let's say a lead developer took 6 months off. You probably need to hire the new person a good 2 months before the other person leaves just so they can catch up. And then it probably takes another month or so after the original employee gets back to get them caught back up. The other option is to just take the work of the person who leaves, and split it between the remaining employees, and don't hire anybody to fill the seat. This means everyone else has to either work more so the same amount of work can be done, or they just have to get less work done. Either way, if the person taking the time off is a high level employee, you're still going to be stuck having them work a little bit during their parental leave, if not just answering the phone a couple times a week to fill in missing information.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

If you think that's bad, not only do I get less maternity leave than a woman would, but the men's room DOESN'T HAVE TAMPONS IN IT!!!

[/s] Lets not make overly broad declarations. It's only discrimination if the situations aren't actually equal. Which it isn't. Physically if nothing else. I went back to work a few hours two days after my kid was born (voulontarily, to keep things going in lab), my wife at that point still couldn't really walk. Postpartum depression also is a thing women have to deal with, while we don't.

I'd like to hear the reason for the discrepancy before I condemn it as sex discrimination. I know some of you are really anxious to find something about the rare female CEO in a tech company to cry foul about, but this is not necessarily discrimination.

Nice joke, but dads actually do get shittier restrooms frequently, they don't have changing tables or adequate space to change an infant or take care of other issues children may have. Thank goodness handicapped stalls are required by law, at least you can help a potty training toddler adequately.

Dads in America are frequently, and sometimes abusively, discriminated against. Often the discrimination is actually codified into case law or actual law. If you even bring this up you will often find yourself the target of verbal abuse.

Re:Equal rights

[93 Escort Wagon]

Because the man didn't grow and eject said child from his own body.

There is a difference, and it is a significant one. Men at Yahoo should be happy they get any paid paternity leave. It is quite generous by industry standards.

It's a fact that women will, on average, outlive men by several years. However the courts have declared that when women and men pay the same amount into a retirement system, it is not legal to offer the women a lower monthly retirement benefit.

When policies have been found to discriminate against women, the response by courts has been clear - you can't treat women and men differently, even if there's some fundamental difference that's causing you to draw that distinction in the first place. Given that, I don't see how it's relevant that the woman "ejected" the child from her body - both parents are equally important to that child's well being.

Re:Equal rights

[chill]

An oldie, but goodie.

http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=86420

Re:Equal rights

[DdJ]

I'm guessing that any men who actually managed to give birth themselves would be able to successfully argue for more leave.

(The less tongue-in-cheek way to express the same thought is: if the parents are a married lesbian couple, what does their policy say about the amount of time permitted? If a female parent who didn't carry the baby is entitled to more leave than a man under the same circumstances, then yes, there's no argument by which the policy isn't discriminatory. But otherwise, there may be.)

Re:Equal rights

[unixisc]

You are pretty much telling us what we know - that men & women are different. However, drive from this point to its logical conclusions, and watch the you-know-what hit the fan.

Since nurturing is more of a mom's role, women giving up work once they become mothers is understandable. However, with that comes the natural consequence - one will therefore see fewer women of childbearing age at the workplace as a result, but this then is attributed to discrimination. But it ain't - a woman who chose not to have kids, and instead remains in the work force would do just as fine as a male counterpart. The reason that women statistically as a whole don't is b'cos they drop out to have kids and spend time w/ them, and even among those who don't, they do it more out of economic necessity than out of a desire to prefer their work to their kids. As a result, when surveys are taken, despite all those anti-discrimination laws, one sees a preponderance of men over women in corporate America.

If they want to discriminate against fathers while granting leave, it's only fair that other laws against discrimination against women go out the window. For instance, if there were no laws, an employer may decide against hiring a woman since he could risk losing her once she has babies and resigns, forcing him to restart the hiring and training process all over. Now, this would be common business sense, under EEOC laws, that's discrimination. Fair enough, but if one wants to use that standard, then men who become new fathers should have the same amount of paid and unpaid leave that their wives do.

Re:Equal rights

[Reverand Dave]

If you seriously think that Fathers have less of a bond with their children than mothers, then you, my friend, are part of the fucking problem.

Re:Equal rights

[hedwards]

I do understand the process and I've met women that were back at work the next day. Yes, that's a bit extreme, but animals as a general rule do not require large periods of time to get back to work after pregnancy. The only exceptions to that are when something goes medically wrong or where a c-section is necessary. Both of which are more appropriately handled by a medical leave of absence than included as a part of maternity leave.

Yes, father's are incapable of giving milk, but there are breast pumps and ultimately there are alternatives available as well. What's more, this maternity leave is automatic, whether or not a woman needs to time, they have a legal right to it. My former sister-in-law wasn't able to breast feed, and she still got the standard leave. Same goes for women that choose not to.

Also, I'd like to see some evidence that there's a connection between babies and mothers is related to pheromones. Ultimately, if that is the case, that's an argument in favor of giving men more time than we give to women, as it's socially desirable for men to bond with their children.

Re: Equal rights

[pspahn]

Sounds like Sweden would be a great place to plop out some triplets.

Re:Equal rights

[geminidomino]

Given that, I don't see how it's relevant that the woman "ejected" the child from her body - both parents are equally important to that child's well being.

You must be new to gender politics.

Re:Equal rights

[Kookus]

Citations needed

Re:Equal rights

[JMJimmy]

It shouldn't be rare. Ontario people get 1 year to split between the parents as they wish - that way if the father is the primary caregiver he can take the most time. I know my aunt did that, she was the primary breadwinner (lawyer) so she chose to go back to work after 6 weeks and her husband stayed home and raised their daughters.

What happens if, heaven forbid, the mother dies in childbirth - do you really think 8 weeks is enough for a father/husband to have off to both raise a child and mourn?

Re:Equal rights

[unixisc]

This is, of course, complicated by two factors. Most couples don't both work for the same company, so the employer can't tell who is taking time off to be the primary care giver. That could be addressed by making the employee sign some papers promising he/she is really using the leave for child care. Another problem is that mothers have medical recovery, but that could be addressed by having separating medical leave from parental leave and having them run consecutively (not concurrently) when appropriate.

This is pretty much asking an employer to be incredibly nosy into the personal lives of employees - finding out who wears the pants in the family, and then working out one spouse's leave w/ the employer of the other spouse. Or trying to filter mom's medical recovery from her parental leave. Actually, I believe that the FMLA should have existed in the first place, but since it does, let either parent be allowed to use it, and then decide whether s/he wants all of it or not. That sounds like the fairest way to go about it.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

You believe maternity/paternity leave is solely about medical recovery? And not, say, about bonding with and nurturing the child? Because that's the only way this would not be discrimination.

Fun side note: here in Sweden (yeah, right, we're all borderline commies here, so you can automatically discount anything we do, and we do pay taxes through the nose and several other orifices), not only do both parents have the right to paid leave, to the tune of 96 weeks, but four weeks are dedicated to each parent, lest they forgo it entirely. Our honest-to-goodness socialists here are campaigning to enforce parents' splitting them down the middle... and have the temerity to claim this would be an 'individualized' leave.

Re:Equal rights

[pspahn]

8 weeks is a long time to recover from child birth.

Not really. I'm sure Justin Beiber's mother is still on the mend.

Re:Equal rights

[Blue Lozenge]

Ironically, by giving women longer leave than men, they've created an incentive to hire men instead of women. The discrimination goes both ways.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

And absolutely no scientific studies, to my knowledge.

Re:Equal rights

[pspahn]

You work in a Russian prison, don't you?

Re:Equal rights

[jythie]

Actually, the leave is often sited as one of the justifications for why it is naturally for women to be paid less, after all men do not have those big gaps and thus it is only 'natural' that they would advance more and be more valuable to the company.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL go to a nursing home, no one is talking care of their parents.

Re:Equal rights

[geminidomino]

It's not about fairness, it's about reality. The mom needs more time as she is recovering from the labor. Plus she is often the primary care taker and can get exhausted easily.

This canard keeps getting brought up, and it just makes no sense.

Momma has to "recover from labor" and "can get exhausted easily?" Well, it's a damn shame that pop isn't treated like a parent instead of an ambulatory ATM, then, or he could be there to do some of those changings and feedings so that mom could rest and recover, isn't it?

Re:Equal rights

[Hobadee]

Uhm, as the husband of a woman who just gave birth, I can attest that women do indeed need more than a week, and giving birth was NOT the equivalent of a day surgery.

Re: Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

government usefulness rate of 2000%

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found that most people I've asked tend to be healthier and sick less often than most people.

Re:Equal rights

[tiberus]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Anything less than equal treatment is a distinction. The basis, if any, for the distinction may turn the distinction into a discrimination.

Okay, this is a little blue but, I can't come up with a better example right now. I have never heard of anyone claiming that not putting urinals in a women's bathroom, or having women's bathrooms is discrimination but, both are distinctions.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

It could be argued that this is only a distinction. It would be fallacious to assume that maternity leave is solely used or of benefit after a child's birth. During pregnancy, time could be needed for doctor's visits, tests, bed rest, etc. The father's ability to bond is not hampered in any of those cases.

Re:Equal rights

[BooMonster]

Nope. Once you get an hour away from the coast, the Bay, or the Capitol, California is a red state. But those three areas are where most of the population is.

Re:Equal rights

[hedwards]

You can't have it both ways. If women want to complain about being underpaid, then they're going to have to accept the cut to benefits like this that it's going to take. They're also going to have to be willing to make the other sacrifices that men make in order to get those bonuses.

Also, women should stop complaining about men being less involved in the lives of their children, when men are being provided with fewer opportunities to do so.

Just because they're going above and beyond 99% of the other employers, doesn't make the practice of granting women additional leave any less sexist. It just means that they aren't as bad as the other companies are.

Re:Equal rights

[The Grim Reefer]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

Yes, but women tend to get paid less than men overall. So it kinda balances out. [/sarcasm]

Re:Equal rights

[Wookact]

Google for it. Most hospitals discharge you within a day or two, and tell you to take it easy for a week or two. (Assuming a typical, healthy birth)

Re:Equal rights

[TheCycoONE]

Ug. Your lead developer could die or quit at anytime, they also get vacation time even in the US. Redundancy is critical to running a business, and if you have too narrow of margins to support it then your business deserves to go under.

Re:Equal rights

[SuperAlgae]

I'm not sure exactly how much of your statement is sarcasm, but for anyone claiming that biological differences justify this, you should be careful what you say lest someone hold you to it. Do biological differences really mean a father should not be given equal opportunity to spend time with his child? In the reverse case, how readily should we accept "biological" arguments for giving women lesser treatment? Also remember that a policy like this creates a perverse incentive to favor employing a man instead of a woman-- he's less of a financial liability.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

You have a choice to have a child or not. Men do not get a choice of they get to be a mom or a dad.

Seriously? I thought contraceptives and vasectomies weren't outlawed in the US yet. Nor gender reassignment, for that matter, for those who would be moms (in the non-biological sense, at the current state of technology, naturally).

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah guys, Conservatives are super easy to find in California - you just have to go where nobody lives."

Re:Equal rights

[Sebastopol]

"And if you for an instant believe that women need less than a week to recover from a birth, you clearly do not understand the process."

This is /.

I surmise >90% straight teen male, mostly white ... maybe a little more mature than the reddit demographic, but barely.

Of course they don't understand.

Re:Equal rights

[dannys42]

I actually think it's fine to discriminate in this case. Women and men *are* different and have different needs, especially when it comes to child birth. However, child care is entirely different, and what you suggest makes sense... there should be "primary care" leave as well that's equal between the two.

On the other hand, I think businesses get into this kind of trouble because they try too hard to classify people's personal time. Just give everyone X number of days off and let them manage their time off. I mean you could argue that maternity/paternity leave is also discriminating against single people. I mean why the heck should someone get more days off just because they're giving birth? Shouldn't I be given just as many days in order to find a girl to impregnate in the first place? Who's to judge which one is more important than the other?

Re:Equal rights

[NoImNotNineVolt]

each have children in the same year

The new father doesn't need any leave at all; he can quit his job and make a fortune writing a book about how he was the first male human to give birth to a child.

Re: Equal rights

[sponse]

Sounds like Sweden would be a great place to plop out some triplets.

Please!
someone mod up this as Funny!

"plop out" <-- This is poetry

Re:Equal rights

[Registered Coward v2]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.

Except of course, one economic explanation why men tend to get paid more is they do not take maternity leave so they work more; the problem is pay scales are based on the group view of work rather than individual. If Yahoo gives one more than another salary ranges should be comparable as well. If they already are than I would say men may have a discrimination case.

Re:Equal rights

[SirGarlon]

There's a difference between FMLA leave, which is not required to be paid, and paid parental leave, which is not required by law in my state and which Yahoo and other employers (Google comes to mind) offer voluntarily.

If the employer is offering paid leave voluntarily, in excess of what's required by law, then I think they are entitled to attach some strings to that.

Re:Equal rights

[mjwalshe]

Well the argument would be that its a justified discrimination as men don't have (in fact they cant) to give birth

Re:Equal rights

[hondo77]

Oh, really?

Re:Equal rights

[crmarvin42]

As a counter to your "pheromone" argument, which I don't really buy because the only human pheromone receptors to have been discovered are non-functioning, I'd suggest an argument based on hormones.

Mothers are producing tons of prolactin which has been shown to trigger parenting instincts in people. Even fathers produce prolactin after the birth of a child. Lactating women continue to produce prolactin (sharing the same root word with lactation for a reason) until the child weans, but fathers prolactin levels drop lower (not completely though) after a few weeks. Based on this, I'd recommend giving fathers more time so that they can develop a much stronger bond with their new child since they are at a biological disadvantage here.

This is purely speculation on my part, but it might help with the absentee or emotionally distant fathers we tend to see. The more contact a man has with their child early on, the longer the high levels of prolactin will persist, and the deeper the man will bond with the newborn... Or so my theory goes.

Re:Equal rights

[Intropy]

It's discrimination in the sense that a distinguishment is being made. But it's not really being made on the basis of sex, which would be wrong. It's being made on the basis of differing biological roles. They'd probably give those benefits to men who gave birth too. As a father I'd be happy for such a generous leave, and I wouldn't mind getting one equal to a woman's. But I aslo wouldn't begrudge the mothers their larger leave or get up in arms about it.

Do the benefits between men and women differ for adoptions? That would actually be wrong in my opinion.

Re: Equal rights

[Baton Rogue]

Sounds like Sweden would be a great place to plop out some triplets.

I'm pretty sure it is per pregnancy, not per child.

Re:Equal rights

[GodfatherofSoul]

And, you get dutch-doored in divorce court because the mother has spent the most time bonding with the children and is treated as the primary.

Re:Equal rights

[demonlapin]

Sweden is also a country of ten million people with extraordinary ethnic homogeneity. Some things work in that environment that don't work in countries of over three hundred million people.

Re:Equal rights

[viperidaenz]

Sometimes the father is not known or wants nothing to do with the mother. Are they still forced to take parental leave? Is the mother penalised if they don't?

Re:Equal rights

[Rene S. Hollan]

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.

Re:Equal rights

[dagarath]

Depends on the size of the business. A large mega corporation would have no problem with that type of redundancy. A 10 person small business is a totally different beast.

Re:Equal rights

[viperidaenz]

Leave is easier to plan for an usually not as long.
Death or quitting means you can replace them.
Extended leave while guaranteeing their job placement means you either need to increase your head count if you want to replace them while they're gone or hire an expensive contractor. So so bad for a large company, not so good for a small one.

Re:Equal rights

[viperidaenz]

Oh no. They're incentivising mothers to look after their new born children instead of fathers. Guess what? Men don't have breasts to feed infants. No matter how big they are, male breasts don't function.

Re:Equal rights

[demachina]

People should be given all the leave they want to deal with newborn children. They ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT BE PAID by their employer while they are doing it unless they are using sick leave and vacation time like everyone else. Paid leave for a life styule choice is wrong at every level. Its especially unfair to coworkers who, for whatever reason, are not having childern. Its also unfair to shareholders and customers.

This strikes me as a case of CEO, who just had a child, whose perspective has been warped in favor of people who make the same choices she is making.

If you make paid leave a mandate at a governmental level you are nearly insuring employers will balk at hiring employees who are likely to have children and become a ball and chain on the payroll, taking off huge amounts of time with pay and requiring him to also pay a temp to cover for them.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't take 16 fucking weeks for a woman to recover from giving birth. Obviously most of that time is simply for spending with the new child. New fathers should receive an equal amount of time because it's just as important for them to spend time with their child.

Re:Equal rights

[Troed]

"Ethnic homogeneity" (thinly veiled xenophobic rants) has absolutely nothing to do with how well off we are.

http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-politics-immigration-and-population-ageing-present-policy-challeng-2012-8

http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/nyheter/news-2012/article.2012-12-13.5374023955

As for size, compare Sweden to single US states if you wish.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Fairness is not about everyone getting the same things. It's about everyone getting what they need. Since people are different, they should get different things.

Re:Equal rights

[phoenix_rizzen]

You never heard of a breast pump and bottles?

We breast fed our daughter for over 6 months, yet I (the father) did most of the feedings, especially the night-time ones.

How? My wife would pump throughout the day, we'd store it up in the fridge, and I'd use it as needed.

Not really rocket-science here folks.

Re:Equal rights

[phoenix_rizzen]

Pretty flimsy limb considering breast pumps have been around for decades, and women expressing by hand into bottles has been around for centuries, allow anyone to feed the baby via bottle.

Re:Equal rights

[Darinbob]

But both parents are not necessarily equal when it comes to early childhood development (ie, the first 4 months or so). Pragmatically the mother usually spends more time with the child for many more hours a day. Is this just unfairness or is there some other reason behind this?

I have seen some companies have interesting approaches such as not having the family leave be contiguous. Thus the father and mother can alternate weeks off, or the father can delay the time off until the mother returns to week, thus extending the amount of time that at least one parent is at home with the child.

Re:Equal rights

[phoenix_rizzen]

Especially if its a first pregnancy!

We were in the hospital for a week, and she was basically in bed for another 2, and not fully-recovered for over a month!

A *LOT* of physical (and emotional, hormonal, mental, etc) happens during a pregnancy, and a lot of physical trauma occurs in child-birth. It's not "equivalent to day surgery", except maybe if it's the fourth or fifth child.

If you haven't been in the delivery room with a woman screaming in pain, and had to live with said women after the birth, you really are *NOT* qualified to comment. :)

Re:Equal rights

[Darinbob]

And yet, poor people in poor countries are sometimes forced by circumstance to be back on the job in a week or. It's possible, though it's not desirable.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

People are bent because it is wrong. We have decided that we want a society with equal rights between the genders. This is not equal. Men have gotten the shaft when it comes to children for most of the time society has existed. We are finally getting to a place where we don't have to take one for the team when it comes to spending time with our children vs. actually feeding our children. Now is the time to speak up and say that discrimination is wrong.

Would your defense of Yahoo! be the same if the discrimination was drawn along racial lines instead of gender?

Re:Equal rights

[Darinbob]

Additionally, the healthiest babies are fed with the milk coming from the mother - something the father is incapable of producing

This explains how my baby got a hairball...

Re: Equal rights

[tempest69]

INCOME TAX + SS + Medicare + State Income + State and local Sales + Gas + property + plates + fees + utility franchise fees + workers comp tax + tolls +liquor taxes + other sin taxes + corporate income tax + a whole bunch of stuff
is going to come pretty dang close to the 51.1% for the median family.. The numbers can be moved around some, but taxes are paid something fierce. We just break is down into chunks that each seem fair, some of it falls on the employer, so it is hidden.
I'd take 51.1% total tax in a heartbeat to have really good government services. I'm paying pretty close to that for a system with few safety nets, few employee protections, and for insurance that has been pillaging the population.

Sweden isn't utopia. But I don't hear horror stories from my friends who are Swedish nationals.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

The difference is that salaried/hourly are contract issues. They fall into the same category as how much you are paid. Gender discrimination is like racial discrimination. It is supposed to be illegal.

Re:Equal rights

[unixisc]

Typo in my above post - I meant to say 'I believe that the FMLA should not have existed in the first place...

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

That is complete BS. Just because you are dysfunctional doesn't mean that the rest of us men are. Step out of the 1950s.

Re: Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Move to south america or somalia...those are going to be your best bets. Just don't bitch that the gubmint isn't helping when you get raped and robbed.

Re:Equal rights

[DogDude]

I'd like to clarify that NC isn't "ruby red". It's more like purple. The cities are smart, progressive places with good economies and lots of jobs and well-educated people. The rest of the state is bumfuck, but all of the rural areas of NC are quickly losing population while the cities are all growing.

Re:Equal rights

[flimflammer]

So make the amount equal between mothers and fathers like it should have been from the start and no one will have anything to argue about.

Re: Equal rights

[scot4875]

I don't give a shit about tax rate. Quality of life is the only measurement that matters. If I can have a high quality of life and freedom to do what I want with a 100% tax rate then by all means, take it; I don't care. Money is just a means to an end.

--Jeremy

Re:Equal rights

[Uberbah]

Vote's split between two highly conservative candidates - both had platforms well to the right of anything Bush ran on in 2000. WYP?

Re:Equal rights

[RoknrolZombie]

Is this a surprise to anyone? Most states have most of their Democrats near their city centers, and most states have Republicans on the outskirts. I think the problem with drawing these lines has more to do with the arbitrary manner that they're applied - if you think that homeless people should have assistance, for example, that automatically pegs you as a Democrat...but the reality is that maybe I'm sick of tripping over homeless people living on the street? Rural areas don't have those sorts of problems, so they tend to not show up on an individuals' radar. Likewise, folks in more rural areas might have certain views about protecting business - but that's largely because the businesses in their areas are SMALL businesses that, if they were to close, would really hurt the community.

Don't get me wrong - this is just one perception that has many more variables than I'm willing (or able) to enumerate here, but it seems that the party lines (at least from an individual citizens' perspective) seems to largely depend on the problems that those individuals deal with every single day. People in cities deal with different problems than people in rural areas...it's not a big surprise to me that their priorities are different.

Re:Equal rights

[Holi]

You actually get the same amount of time for bonding. She just gets some additional time for healing (something you do not need).

Re:Equal rights

[meustrus]

hedwards, you have no idea what you're talking about.

1. 1. Mothers normally need at least 2 weeks to physically recover from having a ~5" diameter baby pass through a normally ~1.5" tube, to say nothing of the cervix which before childbirth is normally dilated less that 1/8" and the sore abdominal muscles that forced that baby through. In case of Caesarean section, it can take months for the mother to physically recover.
2. 2. Babies need attention to properly develop. A mother's (or father's) love is vital to a child's emotional and psychological development. The lack of such attention can lead to serious and permanent relationship deficiencies.
3. 3. Newborns need to eat every 2 hours, even through the night, until they are anywhere between 3 and 9 months old. The best food for them is breastmilk, providing superior immune support and brain development to formula. In order for the mother to maintain adequate milk production she must either feed the newborn or pump out the milk every 2 hours. Otherwise she will be painfully swollen and will produce less milk thereafter.
4. 4. Even after the mother has physically recovered, she still has a newborn baby that needs constant attention. You can't get daycare for newborns unless you have at least middle class income. Even then there is a severe shortage of care providers because in most areas there are laws severely limiting the number of infants a single daycare worker is allowed to watch at any one time. This is for good reason because infants really need constant attention not divided between a dozen babies in order to develop normally.
5. 5. Remembering that newborns eat every 2 hours, parents of newborns get very little sleep. Assuming you could get daycare for your newborn, both parents will still be sleep deprived for months unless they are rich enough to afford a nanny.
6. 6. Finally, despite all of this difficulty, parents want to be with their new baby. Mom didn't live through 9 months of random nausea, general fatigue, severe mood swings, and discomfort due to carrying an extra 20 lbs. between her legs, followed by the most painful experience the most women will ever have to live through (and far more painful than anything most men will experience), just to drop the baby off with somebody else and go back to work. Parenting is a special joy and will be the single most gratifying experience in the lives of most people. All people have a natural right to pursue happiness. It is immoral to even suggest that staying home with your children for even the few months when they are most vulnerable is an unnecessary indulgence. Any company not willing to give you that is devouring your soul and will leave you spent, poor, and deprived of any source of true happiness.

P.S. Slashdot, if I use an <ol> it's because I want my list items to have numbers in front of them without having to add them myself. Otherwise I'd just use <ul> or a series of <p>s.

Re:Equal rights

[Bigby]

Or politics around any group of people that have been wronged in the distant past. It is an attempt at a form of reparations. Like that will help...

Re: Equal rights

[Merls the Sneaky]

Basic income, everyone gets it, it is not means tested. That is going to offset the income tax somewhat, it will offset it a lot more ( or totally if your income is low enough) for lower income families and a lot less for high wage earners. It's a bit of a logical fallacy to just quote the tax rate and leave it there.

Re:Equal rights

[Mr. Slippery]

Since nurturing is more of a mom's role

Says who?

Asserting that "women are more nurturing then men", and then making social policy that turns that assertion into a self-fulfilling prophecy, is how sexism works. If Dad doesn't get to bond with the kid as much as Mom does, then it's likely he won't be as nurturing -- then people point at that and say, "see, men aren't as nurturing, we don't need to give them time to bond with their kids."

Re:Equal rights

[meustrus]

Lol somebody's got a 1950s fantasy of women's role in society.

Re:Equal rights

[flayzernax]

Just to be a douche bag online, it sounds like the only sane reason to have children is to hope they support you down the road because obvious our social programs have no chance =P

Re:Equal rights

[flimflammer]

Going above and beyond 99% of employers in the US doesn't make what they're doing any less sexist. In fact, it is less sexist to give no paid leave at all to either parent than giving the mother twice as much paid leave as the father, especially when you consider that adoptive parents get these same benefits, so no one can staple on "women need time to recover!"

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Yes, the benefits of nursing while likely have some benefits over formula, the benefits are questionable at best. I challenge anyone to spot which child was breast fed and which ones were formula fed without being specifically told or seeing physical evidence such as a can of formula in the house.

Unfortunately, breast feeding has become a political hammer. From massive exaggerations for the health benefits to women that breast feed to the point of child molestation, something that should be a complete non-issue has become, well... a political hammer.

Re:Equal rights

[meustrus]

You're right, we're only talking care of other people's parents. But for that matter we should really be talking care of babies. That's what we're here to take about right?

Re:Equal rights

[peragrin]

Dumb Question

If California is ultra liberal Why in the last 50 years only 19 of them have been with Liberal/Democrat Governors? California According to who California elects they are extremely conservative.

Want to see scary. Most of the "ultra Liberal" states have had primarily Republican and conservative leadership. a large percentage of "religious conservative" states, have Democract and Liberal leadership.
Texas is almost 50/50.

Re:Equal rights

[HungWeiLo]

My wife pumps several times a day while at work and brings home the milk. I (or another person) can feed the baby via bottle at home.

It's not easy, but it can be done. The baby still gets all the nutritional benefits, but unfortunately not the bonding experiences.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

I would point out that there is enough evidence that the bond between mothers and their children are sufficiently weak that states like CA (I would presume most states) have literally made laws that allow mothers to abandon their children at drop off points in an attempt to keep them from murdering them.

https://www.google.com/search?q=california+safe+surrender+law&safe=off&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=o-GCUe6LMKbliwL_yIGQCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=928

Re:Equal rights

[Merls the Sneaky]

And in many of those species the father supports the mother during that period.

Re:Equal rights

[Jarik C-Bol]

That's it! Fine! No one gets any more days off for anything! Your all equally screwed! That's what you get for complaining! Suffer in silence you!

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

If someone is perpetuating the species

That's their choice. I choose not to. Neither choice is "right". The perptuation of the species is irrelevant really. What matters is that individuals make free choices. If those free choices lead to perpetuation of the species, that's OK. If those choices lead to the species dying out, that's OK too.

If anything, it's the people who think the Earth needs another little them to suck up resources, and who think they deserve a big chunk of time off, who are conceited and entitled.

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

Fact: A society that's not reproducing at or above its own death rate is a moribund society, in decline and destined to fail.

Who defines failure? If the individuals in that society are happy with their decision not to have children, that's a success. If the society comes to an end, at least it's a happy ending.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Women or not better at those things. People who do those things are better at those things. Saying that women are better at childcare is like saying that men are better at math. The environmental differences so greatly out weigh the biological differences that it you can't even say whether there is a biological difference at all. Yahoo! is a good example of the environmental difference, and they are making the problem worse.

Re:Equal rights

[Meeni]

Also, bonding between mother and newborn is, and should be, a lot more intense then for the father.

Why?

Simple question. I hope trying to answer it will make you realize the deep misogynistic undertone of that statement.

Beside, maybe it's your choice. Not mine.

Re:Equal rights

[flimflammer]

I'll let the adoptive mothers know that, so they can truly appreciate their hard earned leave.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Exactly. Planning for a skeleton crew to be the norm means you already failed.

Re:Equal rights

[ltning]

It doesn't take 16 fucking weeks for a woman to recover from giving birth.

Have you given birth lately?

Re: Equal rights

[Kjella]

If you count direct and indirect taxes, that's possibly not far from the truth. Here in Norway the average direct tax rate is 37% and with indirect taxes it's something like 58%. However I would like to add that for this the government paid my parents to raise me, I got a good and free public education up to and including a master degree at university, I don't have a health insurance as the universal healthcare is good enough, 7.8% of that goes towards paying public pensions that are fairly decent and so on. Across your working years it is high, across a lifetime it's not nearly as bad as it sounds when you add up all that people are paying for college funds, health insurance, 401(k) plan and so on and compare what's really left in the wallet every month. If I live to be 80 I've probably net paid taxes for 40 and net spent tax dollars for 40.

To make a very concrete example, I might be needing some surgery that'll probably also involve a few months of sick leave. The surgery and hospital stay isn't going to cost me anything, during the sick leave I'll continue to be paid my regular salary (up to a full year if the doctors say I need it). It's very easy to just stare yourself blind on the high tax rate alone, of course if you dropped out of high school, is always going to be healthy and die right before retirement age you are going to get a crap deal, but most people are going to need some of that sooner or later. Of course it doesn't really add up because there are people who are mentally or physically handicapped and can't work at all, but for the most part it's a cradle to the grave thing. I mean that literally, they'll even pay for funeral service if the deceased can't afford it or is under 18.

Re: Equal rights

[msauve]

"I'd take 51.1% total tax in a heartbeat to have really good government services."

Rejoice, you've found the answer! Move to Sweden.

Re:Equal rights

[Jyms]

First, equal treatment is a myth. Nobody wants it (not quite nobody, but very few people). Everybody wants their gender, religion, race, etc. to get preferential treatment.

Second, they should just rephrase it. New parents get 8 weeks parental leave and the birth giver gets a further 8 weeks to recover from the major medical procedure they underwent.

Life is not fair. Never has been and never will be. Trying to make everybody the same is pointless and stupid.

So the average female employee is going to get between 8 and 16 weeks more leave than her male colleague over the course of a lifetime. Life is so unfair.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Do you also argue that there shouldn't be different teams in high school, because female athletes are just as strong or fast as male athletes? Because you keep claiming that there are no inherent biological differences between the two sexes.

Re:Equal rights

[kingduct]

The interesting thing, is that it turns out that not only is it discrimination against men as parents, but it is discrimination against women as professionals. The more time men are allowed to take off when they have kids, the less women fall behind them in the rat race.

The New York Times had a good article several years ago about this, explaining why Sweden switched to a system where the two parents get a combined total of 13 months of paid leave during the first 8 years of a child's life. By not allowing any one parent to take more than 9 of those months, they essentially encourage men to take a good portion of that leave and prevent women from taking too much.

Alas, I can only dream of that -- I'll take off a total of 8 weeks of unpaid leave this year for my child while he's under the age of one, since I won't be allowed to in later years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

That's it! Fine! No one gets any more days off for anything! Your all equally screwed! That's what you get for complaining! Suffer in silence you!

Sadly, that is the most sensible reaction, and one that everyone who feels "discriminated against" would prefer over the "unfair" system.

Because they are whiny, selfish children.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 7 billion people in the world, there are no shortage of people to take care of me, I don't need to add to overpopulation so I can have access to slave labor when I'm old/infirm/slick...or are you actually expecting to pay your children to take care of you when you get old? O wait, I know you will tell them that they 'owe you' because you raised them...except they had no choice in the matter...you have a kid it's YOUR responsibility to raise them not societies or anyone else to do it for you...and if you think I'm being harsh, unrealistic or selfish then you are wrong...people certainly do NOT have children for the 'benefit of society' they do it for purely selfish reasons to 'procreate & carry on their genes'...if this wasn't so, there wouldn't be so many children that are abandoned or in poor countries that need good parents.

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

You are obviously choosing to ignore the one great difference between men and women - it's the woman that bears the child, the man does not.

They are treating everyone equally - every person that actually delivers a baby gets three months paid maternity leave. Every person that impregnates another person gets two months off. That "tends" to fall along gender lines, but let's consider same-sex couples:

• If two men "arrange" for a surrogate to carry their baby, do both men get two months paid leave?
• If two women "arrange" for a surrogate to carry their baby, do both women get three months paid leave or two?
• If two women draw straws and one of them carries a baby and delivers, do both women get three months paid leave, or does the woman that carried & delivered the baby get three months paid leave and her partner gets two months?

I suspect the answers to the above answers will show the policy to be legal and fair, and by the way, if the whiners are going to have any impact on Yahoo to change their policy, I strongly suspect they will back on the benefit for new mothers 33 1/3% rather than increase the father's paid leave 50%.

Re: Equal rights

[Meshugga]

The figures for my country aren't accurate: http://world.tax-rates.org/austria/income-tax says 35% for the first bracket from 0 to 11000EUR when in fact it's 0% ( http://www.bmf.gv.at/Steuern/TippsfrdieArbeitneh_7636/SteuertarifundSteue_7922/Steuertarifund.htm ) ... So I wouldn't trust that site too much.

Re: Equal rights

[kenh]

That's 280 days per delivery, not per child I suspect...

Re:Equal rights

[Reverand Dave]

Apparently you are not a father, probably not even a parent. This doesn't have shit to do with PC anything, it's all about discounting a parents love and bond for their children at any point in their life. Again, you are part of the problem. Trying to relegate parental bonding to a later in life experience is really demeaning and shortsighted.

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

The FMLA allows you to take time off for almost anything (unpaid).

What about people without cats? Why can't they take up to 12 weeks off (unpaid) for any reason they like?

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

This is about gender discrimination, not racial. I'm pretty sure that Sweden has pretty close to the same gender variance as every other country on the planet.

Re:Equal rights

[tiberus]

People are bent because it is wrong.

A great number of things in the world are wrong. Don't forget that we are capable of ranking the wrongness of an action. The wrongness of Yahoo's action isn't causing me "any real heart-burn". That is a far cry from this being a "defense of Yahoo." It's just simply not worth this much ink. This ire would IMNSHO be better spent on a similar yet, much greater wrong.

We have decided that we want a society with equal rights between the genders. This is not equal.

Equality doesn't necessarily mean equal. Also, sadly no we haven't.

Men have gotten the shaft when it comes to children for most of the time society has existed. We are finally getting to a place where we don't have to take one for the team when it comes to spending time with our children vs. actually feeding our children. Now is the time to speak up and say that discrimination is wrong.

I am a man, father, who has been treated unfairly in regard to my desires and need to spend time with and care for my children. My employer offers zippo parental leave, which would make them a more honest target than Yahoo.

Would your defense of Yahoo! be the same if the discrimination was drawn along racial lines instead of gender?

Many obviously feel what Yahoo has done is discriminatory, that may be, it may not be honestly I'm not certain. (Also, way to bring race into this, ++Good) Yahoo makes a colorful target for the media and inspires the public to react. I'd suggest that if you want to rail against someone in regard to parental leave, call your state or national reps and demand action. Demand that all persons, not just those who have what is likely a well paying job with nice benefits, are granted paid parental leave.

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

This strikes me as a case of CEO, who just had a child, whose perspective has been warped in favor of people who make the same choices she is making.

Really, you're blaming it on her hormones?

Brave.

Re: Equal rights

[Dahamma]

I don't understand that policy at all... 9 months is 273 days, so 280 days leave means it's basically possible just to keep dropping out kids continuously and get fully paid leave from a guaranteed job without ever having to do any work.

That life sounds like a nightmare to me, there are plenty of people practically doing that around the world right now (just watch TLC for more than a few minutes, ugh). But anyway, why on earth should we be *encouraging* people to keep increasing the population?? I suppose it's intentional Swedish policy?? (To quote Apu: "I have noticed that this country is dangerously underpopulated!")

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Paid leave is not a right. Not being discriminated based on your gender IS. Labor recovery is not even close to 8 weeks. That means that the entire difference can only be attributed to sexual discrimination of exactly the kind that is bad.

Re: Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

You should. You never know when circumstances will make you one of those "slackers".

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

Consider same-sex couples:

What happens if two men adopt a child? I suspect each gets 8 weeks off under this policy.

What if two women adopt a child, do both get 12 weeks off or 8?

What if two women have their own child, with one carrying the child - do both women still get 12 weeks off or does the one that carried get 12 weeks while the other "only" gets 8 weeks off?

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

You don't have to watch...

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Hell, there are species where the mother can't get her own food before the offspring are present as separate animals, much less afterwards. The male of the species brings food back to her. Just because you can't think of them, doesn't make them non-existant.

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

but most companies give 0 weeks of leave to fathers and 6 to 8 weeks to mothers (often at a discount) so why are we getting on Yahoo's case for going above and beyond 99% of the employers in the US, with the same difference?

Welcome to Slashdot

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

No, fathers aren't the same as mothers. Men aren't the same as women. So why the fuck do women demand equal pay?

Sorry, but it's all or nothing. Equal rights or no equal rights. Don't go demanding unequal rights that benefit one population over another.

Shit, next you'll be complaining that men don't take on their fair share of caring for and raising the children.

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

Also remember that a policy like this creates a perverse incentive to favor employing a man instead of a woman-- he's less of a financial liability.

But I thought women make, what is it now, 72 cents for every dollar a man makes? Why would anyone hire a man to do a job if he can get an equally capable/qualified worker for 72 cents on the dollar?

Oh yeah, because it isn't true... Never mind.

ed note: Media Matters insists it actually exists - but oddly they left out the Department of Labor report in their "analysis - shocking!

Re:Equal rights

[kenh]

Who used the word "deserves"?

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

No. But I have many friends that have and none of them have been incapable of working for more than around four days after giving birth.

On the flipside, I know several women that have had a baby, taken 6-12 months off on full pay (depending on employer) then resigned without returning to work.

So do explain why men shouldn't have the opportunity to do exactly the same? Or aren't men allowed to spend time with their newborn children?

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Because the biological process of pregnancy demands it. The biological process of breastfeeding reinforces it. The natural process of species survival depends on it.

Fathers feeding the baby is nowhere near as intimate as the mother breastfeeding, even if he uses one of those devices some snake-oil salesman convinced insecure males that they needed to be complete.

Here's an experiment that's (not quite) as stupid as your statement: Grab some random woman off the sidewalk, pull out her breast, and start sucking on it. Then drop her, go into a store, open a gallon of milk and start sucking on it. Which one will get you the longer jail term? Which one do you think is the more intense experience?

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

In the UK the employer can claim part of the salary back from the government, so it's not impossible for the government to track claimants.

If both partners claim then that's fraud and a criminal offence.

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

nourish it with his non-lactating, hairy man-boobs.

Once you master those tricks, then you can get 16 weeks, too. Until then, quit your fucking whining.

As that's the only trick that matters post-birth, perhaps you can quit your fucking discrimination: Men have all of the necessary physical attributes required to lactate and nourish a baby.

E.g. the second hit on Google (after the unsurprising wikipedia page): http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/misc-articles/milkmen-fathers-who-breastfeed/

Now, about those 16 weeks..

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

Yes, father's are incapable of giving milk

No, they're capable.

Re:Equal rights

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.

Sorry, but no.

There is no law requiring Yahoo to give anybody paid leave when they have a baby. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) does require them to grant an employee leave for a medical emergency (like birth of a child) but that leave is unpaid--any pay you receive from your employer while on leave is strictly voluntary.

Which means these men aren't being "discriminated" against, they're getting an awesome perk where they'd otherwise be getting nothing. The fact that their wives get a bigger perk (16 weeks paid leave to your 8) is uneven, but hardly "discrimination." First and foremost, "men" aren't a protected class in this country, so everytime somebody sneezes and they get offended it isn't "discrimination." Second, they aren't required to offer ANY paid leave after birth of a child--to anybody. The fact that you are complaining about two months pay to luxuriate in the joys of fatherhood marks you as a greedy fucker. Shit man, how much more fucking pork should we kick to you breeders?

What's next: People without kids suing for their "free" 16/8 week paid leaves?

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

My sister couldn't lift her own baby from its crib for over a month after giving birth. Of course, that's because she needed to have a c-section. I lived with her for 6 weeks to take care of my niece (the father wasn't around, go figure). Then I went to boot camp. :^) (true story)

As for my wife, she wasn't 'back to normal' for a couple months after giving birth. Maybe you just have very lucky/healthy friends.

As for the women (or men) who game the system by taking extended paid time off, and never return, the law should require everything after a certain point be considered a loan or lein, requiring repayment if they do so. It is good that some systems are very supportive of new families, and it should not be allowed to be abused so easily.

Re: Equal rights

[dabadab]

That 51,1% certainly does not include a lot of the things you have listed - like the 25% VAT (sales tax), the egregious taxes on anything related to cars and don't even get me started about liquor taxes in Sweden. If you factor all that in, it comes a lot closer to 75%.

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

You're the third person in this discussion to be wrong about that.

Men can lactate.
Men have working breasts.
Male breasts function.

Guess what? You're using faulty evidence to try and justify discrimination. You're wrong. It's discrimination. Stop it.

Re:Equal rights

[jbresciani]

In Canada, part of Mat. leave is actually short term disability, the first month I believe. As a father I haven't looked into Pat leave, in both cases for me I just used up vacation time so as not to take a pay hit or take time form my wifes (the government/EI part of mat/pat leave is shared between the couple involved). I'm not sure if it's shorter for men then women. I have no issue with that as there is a fair bit of physical (and emotional) recovery for a women after childbirth that the man won't go through.

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

So you're saying I should have a child so that they'll look after me when I'm old?

How fucking selfish are you?

How about you just kill yourself, that way the world doesn't get overpopulated, you don't need to worry about old-age care and you don't perpetuate your selfish outlook through another generation.

I don't want children. I have cats. If I can't feed my cats, I'll kill them. If I get old, I'll die. I don't need children, the world doesn't need me to have children and any children I might have had definitely don't need me to pass on my faulty genes.

In 30 years time I'll be dead.

Re:Equal rights

[TapeCutter]

Fairness: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx.

When my kids were born there was no such thing as maternity leave, normal behavior was the woman would quit and the man would take a few days annual leave. I can see that it is unfair to force the woman to quit rather than go on extended leave. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I'm not sure why men would need 8 weeks paid leave just because they became a dad to a healthy new born, one week for men and 3 months for women sounds "fair" to me. It would also be fair if society used the tax system to assist small companies who often don't have the ability to support paid maternity leave..

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

Or maybe I live on an overpopulated island that has a constantly growing population.

Maybe I'd rather every other cunt out there stopped procreating.

Perhaps I have no great attachment to the human species and have no problem whatsoever with its extinction. I merely lack the means.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Nursing is not essential.

Neither are diapers. What's your point?

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

So are you saying bottle-feeding is completely equivalent to nursing, which is what he specified?

Re:Equal rights

[Cederic]

Discriminating on the basis of something that inherently favours one sex or the other is illegal in the UK.

So you can't give people a bonus based on sperm production, or three days off a month during their period, and make those perks available for all staff irrespective of gender without breaking the law.

For some confusing reason child birth is treated differently - although at least there's some movement towards greater equality now.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Only when it's happening to black people and/or women.

White men are always exempt from issues of equality.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Apparently you are not a father, probably not even a parent. This doesn't have shit to do with PC anything, it's all about discounting a parents love and bond for their children at any point in their life. Again, you are part of the problem. Trying to relegate parental bonding to a later in life experience is really demeaning and shortsighted.

When did I do any such thing in my original post? You are reading your personal bias into what I said, and making an ass of yourself in the process. If I said steel is stronger than wood, it doesn't mean I am putting down wood. It means for various physical reasons, one of the two can bear more of a load for a sample of a given size or weight, and it happens to be steel.

Not all women are going to bond with their offspring to the same degree, just as not all men are going to. But between men and women, one group is going to bond more strongly, on average, from purely biological reasons. That group is the women, who gestate the baby for nine months, give birth when her hormones put her body into labor, and breastfeed the newborn infant. If you can't understand biology still has a strong hold on us evolved apes, that is your deficiency. Stop claiming it is ours.

Re:Equal rights

[Algae_94]

No, it's not equal. It also isn't equal that the woman has to carry the child for 9 months, give birth to it, and then breastfeed the child (unless fomula is used). I don't see this as gender discrimination. I think it is more along the lines of the woman having gone through a much bigger ordeal.

Sure I'd be much happier getting those extra weeks off, but I'd rather work those weeks than go through the physical process of carrying and delivering a baby.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Don't bother to try to reason with someone wealthy with choices. Men only get one while women get many. And yet it's always the MEN who get saddled with all the responsibility while WOMEN can CHOOSE to have none.

Re:Equal rights

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't be black or muslim.

Re:Equal rights

[Hentes]

Newborn children need to spend time with their mother. You're just giving munition to the feminists by making a problem out of it.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

One is a violation of property, the other a violation of a person.

That is exaclty my point. I'm not the one equating the two. Other posters are equating using plastic containers with rubber nipples to feed a baby, with a woman feeding a baby from her own body. One item is property, the other is intensely personal.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

You know, that's the SAME way they think about PAY isn't it?

As long as the work comes out of you, you get paid MORE.

But WOMEN who go off to have little HUMANS COME OUT OF THEM work LESS.

That's why women get paid LESS.

I'll never understand why women don't think this is exceptionally equitable arrangement.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

That's the way the law USED to work.

We now live in a GYNO-centric society.

Remember how FEMINISM is supposed to encompass the needs of men too??

So how's that working out for ya?

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

When are you going to wise up?

FEMINISM isn't about EQUALITY, it's about WOMEN.

Re:Equal rights

[Algae_94]

If they had happy endings that might effect the birthrate.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

P.S. I don't actually think women should be paid less. But I do belive in equitable rights, and when it comes to women and reproduction, everything is tilted toward the women who don't seem to have ANY shame about it on their part-- and then THEY bitch and complain about the inequities of the work world. Apparently they want "equality" only when the inequity goes against them and don't really give a rat's ass when it goes the other way. And THEN they have the temerity to complain when MEN don't feel as sympathetic to women's issues.

I will say it many times.

FEMINISM isn't about EQUALITY, it's about WOMEN.

And any man who doesn't get that is fucking dense (or needing to get laid).

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

I agree with you. This is about FEMINISM.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Me too.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

So why don't the men's rooms have rubbers in them?

(Don't bother to answer)

Re:Equal rights

[batkiwi]

I am not saying I feel this way (I don't), but you could easily argue that it's not unequal treatment unless a man who has a baby is refused the 16 weeks of leave, or if a female partner in a gay couple (legally married in a state recognizing gay marriage) was given 16 weeks when her partner (not her) gives birth.

Re:Equal rights

[TapeCutter]

Just for the record, do you actually have any kids? - My grandfather instincts say you don't, or perhaps you just incredibly self-centered and lack empathy for the mother of your children?

Men and women are not equal in the baby thing, for an obvious example, men have no difficulty walking during the last month or two of pregnancy. Nature discriminates against the woman in the baby thing, men simply don't need several months of paid leave to watch their new born eat, shit and sleep (they do little else for the first 3 months). Maternity leave attempts to correct nature's discriminatory ways by equalizing the financial/career repercussions of having a child, ie: the woman does not lose her job to a man simply because she is bearing a child. You seem to think it is a holiday that women get and men don't, if that's the case then you have missed the entire rational for maternity leave. >quote>spending time with our children vs. actually feeding our children

Trivia: In traditional hunter/gatherer societies, women gather the bulk of the food for the tribe, usually around the 80% mark.

Re:Equal rights

[atriusofbricia]

You are obviously choosing to ignore the one great difference between men and women - it's the woman that bears the child, the man does not.

They are treating everyone equally - every person that actually delivers a baby gets three months paid maternity leave. Every person that impregnates another person gets two months off. That "tends" to fall along gender lines, but let's consider same-sex couples:

• If two men "arrange" for a surrogate to carry their baby, do both men get two months paid leave?
• If two women "arrange" for a surrogate to carry their baby, do both women get three months paid leave or two?
• If two women draw straws and one of them carries a baby and delivers, do both women get three months paid leave, or does the woman that carried & delivered the baby get three months paid leave and her partner gets two months?

I suspect the answers to the above answers will show the policy to be legal and fair, and by the way, if the whiners are going to have any impact on Yahoo to change their policy, I strongly suspect they will back on the benefit for new mothers 33 1/3% rather than increase the father's paid leave 50%.

Ah, so you're from the camp that defines equal in whatever what you want. So, women should get the same pay as a man for the same job (they should), they should have the same chance for a promotion as an equally qualified man (they should). Oh, they should get the same time off as a man? No, they get more because they're women.

Your logic could also be easily used to justify lower pay for women (they tend to get pregnant and leave you in a lurch), fewer promotions (same reason) and probably other things I haven't thought of.

You cannot argue for equal rights between the genders and then turn around and say that a clearly unequal policy is equal because it "tends to fall on gender lines". Policies are either racially and gender blind or they are not. I'm not saying whether I'm for or against women getting more time off. What I am saying is that you cannot simply construct some backwards logic to say that this is 'equal' in the manner in which it is unequal and therefore not discrimination.

The policy at hand is clearly discriminatory and blatantly unequal. Whether that is a bad thing or not I leave as a separate question but by supporting the policy you support discrimination and unequal policies and there is no way around that.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Fine by me. It's equitable.

Re:Equal rights

[TapeCutter]

Uggh, should have proof-read that post before submitting rather than after.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Yes, but that's because SHE was being "discriminated against".

FEMINISM is not about EQUALITY, it's about WOMEN.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

So did my wife. And we did spend our time alternately taking care of our kids. I wouldn't have had it any other way. And to hell with any WOMAN who wants to comment otherwise.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Wait a minute. I'm dysfunctional because I work? Or am I dysfunctional because females give birth? Or did females stop giving birth in the 1950's?

I can't quite grok your meaning there.

Re: Equal rights

[physicsdot]

Good advice - but probably not well-intentioned. But it's a balance - stay living in a shitty, anti-intellectual, country or take the massive upheaval of moving to Sweden, finding a place in a new society, learning the language, getting a visa etc. The barriers to entry are very high - but there is no doubt that as a place to live, work and raise a family Sweden shits on the states.

Re:Equal rights

[girlintraining]

You joke, but it's really not fair that people who choose to have kids get leave that the rest of us don't. I have to work harder to pick up the slack because of your lifestyle choice.

You're putting your own financial desires ahead of the survival of the species. Darwin is not amused.

It's also worth pointing out that providing the same amount of leave to childfree individuals would decrease discrimination to some extent.

Because employers conclude that a new baby may be more important than filing the TPS report, and give time off to the new parents, that's "discrimination"? Dude, sort out your priorities. Seriously.

Surely when employers are interviewing women of child bearing ages, some of them are hesitant to hire because they expect to have to deal with a major leave of absence in the future.

Yes. We have a term for people like that: Assholes. And you know, if the employer is, say, the military, then yeah, getting pregnant could be a problem. But if your job is to file credit applications and you've got 50 other coworkers also doing the same thing... umm, dude... that's not an excuse. And as long as we're going on the whole "Let's hate on women!" moment you're having -- A lot of people are saying that men should have equal time off as well. So what you're saying here is that because men just donate the sperm, they don't have the same family responsibilities that a woman does... and further, we're going to reward that lack of responsibility with more career opportunities. Keep it classy there, Mr. Misogynist.

Giving everyone the ability to take a leave of absence would level the playing field.

No it wouldn't. It's just shifting costs around. Now instead of 13% of the population taking a few weeks off, you've got 100% of the population doing it. Which means productivity take a digger and lower production means less wages, and less jobs. It would wind up hurting you and everyone else more due to lost wages, production, etc. You'd make less money, the apparent driver behind your argument here.

Re: Equal rights

[Karl Cocknozzle]

--
Religion is the anthropomorphization of reality, that behind it all there's an invisible man pulling invisible strings.

Your sig is the greatest thing ever. This times a milllion.

Re:Equal rights

[pitchpipe]

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...

Eight weeks is generous. Hell, even four weeks would be generous, and like you said, the women need the time to recuperate. So, I'm sure you'd be on board with them cutting the men's leave to four weeks so the women could have 16, right? I mean what would be wrong with that?

Re: Equal rights

[Farmer Tim]

Sweden's population growth rate has been under 1% for the last 50 years. Doesn't look like the policy is successfully encouraging much to me.

Re:Equal rights

[tiberus]

Hmmm, please re-read the post. After which, please post again and quote the bit about being "on board with them" about anything.

I'd possibly make use of my time to rail against Yahoo for cutting men's paternity leave to 4 weeks after all men have 4 weeks of paternity leave. I know I should have stopped by now, sigh

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Correction: Replace "keep" with "are". I guess I read his post earlier and later, and thought he posted similar comments twice. My mistake.

Re:Equal rights

[dasunt]

Sheesh folks are getting bent over Yahoo increasing an already generous benefit for women but, not for men.

Lets say you have two classes of workers (men and women, both of child-bearing age). If a certain even happens (a new child), one class of those workers will be out for eight weeks, while another class will be out for sixteen weeks.

If you were a manager, working with a small group where ever member's contribution counted, and whose success directly influences your success, which class of people would you want to hire?

It's obvious that, from an employment perspective, policies such as these make men more valuable than women to employers.

While extended leave for women may stem from good intentions, such policies just reinforce traditional gender-based divisions of labor.

Re:Equal rights

[Dahamma]

Given that the cost to raise a child in the US (assuming the standard of living of an employee at Facebook, Google, etc - which would likely be high end daycare/preschool, selective/private schools, top tier colleges) is estimated at $500,000+ (probably more than that if you are just starting now) - and that's not including the opportunity costs of investments, etc - $500k deposited/invested over ~22 years could be enough money that many of those highly paid tech employees could probably hire a 24/7 nurse to take care of them - just from the interest alone!

Not that the American culture is generally the type to care for elderly relatives at home anyway, it's more the "stuff them in a retirement home" type, in which case *financially* you're probably better off just keeping the money. And I emphasize financially/elder care, since that's what you mentioned. Personal fulfillment is up to the individual, but it's hard to understand why a company would try to make that decision for someone.

Re:Equal rights

[Dahamma]

Actually, I don't even agree that they should be given all the time they want. They should be given a reasonable time, sure. But if they are given the guarantee that they can come back to work whenever they want and their job will be waiting for them, the company now has no employee to do their work, no idea when they will be back, and can't hire a permanent employee to replace them!

Re:Equal rights

[Dahamma]

Marissa Meyer herself came back after two weeks, so that kind of disproves that argument. If a woman has a traumatic C-section and can't return to work that's understandable, and she may need to go on disability/medical leave, but why should that be any different from anyone else who had major surgery?

And I'm not trying to minimize C-sections - do these companies who give the same benefits (ie. full pay) to someone who has to take a month of non-maternity medical leave? Or do they use the fairly standard short-term disability insurance, which is not nearly as good?

Re:Equal rights

[Dahamma]

No, actually, the CA law is that both mothers and fathers can get 55% paid leave up to $1000 a week for 6 weeks.

Re:Equal rights

[Benaiah]

No the woman gave birth 8 weeks ago. This is about bonding time not physical recovery. Men deserve the same amount of bonding time with their children as women. Then they can be forced to cash in their leave and work through anyway because as society we see fathers as less important parents than mothers. This decision by yahoo proves the point.

Re:Equal rights

[Runaway1956]

Three time dad here. I held each of my sons before the wife did. I spent more time with them as newborns and infants than just about any dad in my area. Most dads don't want much of anything to do with their kids until they are at least toddling, and some won't even mess with toddlers very much. My kids were more important to me than is apparent from most dad's behaviour.

But, even so - there are some basic facts of life here. Mothers always have been, and always will be, primary care givers. Only a mother can give birth. No dad is debilitated from giving birth. No dad suffers the psychological impact of post partum blues and related stuff. No dad needs time off to recover from either the physical or psychological impact of giving birth. It's just that simple.

Historically, many mothers have died during childbirth. I have never read of one single dad dying from the shock of becoming a dad.

Give Mom her time off - however much time she needs. And, I won't feel slighted in the least.

Oh - I got two days off when the first was born. One day for the second. Due to complications, I got almost two weeks off with the third. I did what was necessary, in each case, then got my ass back to work, to earn the money to provide for those little bundles of joy.

Re:Equal rights

[bingoUV]

That no excuse, under the same rule you could pay women less because they have a period

Or you could pay women more because men behave better around women.

Re:Equal rights

[TheRealDevTrash]

We're not equal though. or are you saying that Dad needs a break from carrying that 9 pound fetus around for 9 months?

Re:Equal rights

[pbhj]

>"She isn't even taking care of the child for the most part during her 'recovery' period, its only after that when she starts doing her job."

Apart from often hourly, and often initially painful, breastfeeding and very regular nappy (aka diaper) changing.

I'd agree with your assertion that for an entirely uncomplicated labour a 1 week recovery would be sufficient for someone seeking to return to a sedentary job. But that's only if the woman can't feed her child and isn't responsible for their ongoing care. As it happens though a child requires their mother to be close at hand for the first 5-6 months as they're the direct providers of their food - initial maternal bonding is to a large extent about ensuring proper nourishment for the child and this initial period has very real health and well-being repercussions.

AFAIK elective c-sections are consider less demanding on the mother than regular birth.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

You are simply rationalizing your misandry. The same logic that says it is not discriminatory to give women more paid leave is the same logic that rationalizes it to be fair to simply fire the women who get pregnant, or just not hire them at all. The 4 weeks extra are not about medical leave. They are about giving women extra time to bond with their children because Yahoo! sees women as being inherently more important as parents than men. It is wrong and it is no more moral than giving extra paid time off to people based on their race.

Re:Equal rights

[pbhj]

>"If you seriously think that Fathers have less of a bond with their children than mothers [...]"

Working for ourselves, breast-feeding aside, we've been able to arrange equal shares of parenting and income supporting work for the two of us. I go ga-ga over little babies too.

I would strongly agree that "Fathers generally have less of a bond with their _babies_ than mothers".

Having never felt a child grow and form inside me and not having the provision to directly feed a child from my bosom that seems quite normal.

Re: Equal rights

[laughingcoyote]

Unfortunately, what people don't realize is that taxes actually do pay for things. I've literally been told by people, here in the US, that taxes are just "wasted" or "stolen" money and don't really do anything. When I ask them if they've ever driven on a public road, or attended a public school, or occupied safe and well-inspected buildings, or taken safe and well-controlled flights, they launch into rants about "inefficiency".

We live in a society, and we're supposed to care for one another, especially those most vulnerable. "I've got mine and %$)@*% you buddy" is not a recipe for a stable or pleasant society, certainly not one that I'd want to live in. And that's said as one who's at least to a reasonable degree got mine--as many of us here know, developers don't make bad money. But that doesn't ultimately mean much if society isn't kept stable and healthy.

It reminds me a great deal of Monty Python's "What have the Romans ever done for us?" sketch. Substitute "gubmint" for "Romans", and you've essentially got the same scenario.

And it boggles my mind that people think private companies bent on making as much profit as possible will provide services at a lower cost than an entity which need not make one.

Re:Equal rights

[demonlapin]

But high ethnic homogeneity in a small population means that you can effectively implement solutions that are impossible in larger, more diverse groups, because you can (e.g.) rely on social pressures to prevent abuse of the system.

Re:Equal rights

[demonlapin]

Missouri is less white than Sweden is Swedish. Try again.

Re: Equal rights

[DigiShaman]

Culture has a lot to do with the success of any system. America is a hodgepodge of cultures with two political parties that throw each other under the bus for political gain and status. The government programs set forth by either Norway or Sweden in America however would quickly turn into oppression and tyranny.

Re:Equal rights

[yndrd1984]

You don't *have* to work harder to pick up the slack unless you're the only other one in the company.

Pray tell, by what magic does this work? If 2/10 people in a department are on parental leave, do 20% of your clients automatically hold off on new orders? If you're getting the same amount of work done, but by fewer people, those people have to be doing more work. And if it's paid leave the money has to come from somewhere.

Re: Equal rights

[__aaltlg1547]

Try telling that to Swedish women. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=sw&v=31 Total fertility rate = 1.67 children per woman. Now you understand why the paid leave benefit for having a child is so extreme in Sweden.

Re:Equal rights

[demonlapin]

I'm not xenophobic, and this has nothing to do with xenophobia. I live, by choice, in a city that is 80% black, as a white man. I am certain that I have more ethnic variation in my daily life than you do. If you would like to find a city in Sweden that is 80% non-white and poor, and move there, then you can begin to consider lecturing me about xenophobia, but as far as I can tell you're going to have to build that city out of thin air.

Your ethnic balance (86% Swedish, 5% other European, 9% other, per Wiki) has nothing to do with your prosperity; that's hard work and determination. But it does strongly constrain what policies can be implemented. You can use social pressure to influence peoples' actions and prevent them from abusing the system, which is something completely impossible in the US. The US is both large and federalist, and both of these make decisive action difficult.

Re:Equal rights

[DigiShaman]

Honest to God statement: I had one latino gal in HR (not my company, at a client) tell me that recovery after one day was enough. She told me that with a straight face! I didn't even response to that. But I have to wonder; was there any truth to that after her sixth child?

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Your grandfather instincts would be wrong. I have one son that is 9, and another that is T - 7 days and counting. I am also the primary care giver for both my current son and the one on the way. It isn't lack of empathy. It is lack of misandry that makes me say this. In a modern 1st world country, women don't HAVE to get pregnant. They GET to get pregnant. Maybe your wife hated being pregnant, my mine loves it. So do most other women who actually want their children. Sure, there are some down sides, but the fact that is, there are also lots of up sides.

men simply don't need several months of paid leave to watch their new born eat, shit and sleep (they do little else for the first 3 months)

That right there tells us both the kind of man you are. Here is a hint. The fact that you are absent from the daily activities of your children and sexist isn't because you have a penis. It is a failing in you as a person. It isn't 1950 any more. Having a penis doesn't stop you from changing a diaper.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

You are dysfunctional because you don't believe your bonding with your children can or even should be as intense as their mother's. Of course, your complete dysfunction prevented you from understanding that. It is likely, even after having it explained to you, you still won't recognize it.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

You mean abuses like men getting equal treatment?

Re:Equal rights

[Lendrick]

Interestingly, it's also good for women if men get equal paternity leave, because having to give more leave to women makes companies less likely to hire women and less likely to pay them equally.

So not only would equal leave be good for men who want to spend time with their newborns, it would be good for women who want to avoid being discriminated against when applying for jobs and getting raises.

Re:Equal rights

[yndrd1984]

Sure, but because they're the only ones allowed to stay home that long, they become the only one who gets pressured to do so.

Re:Equal rights

[demonlapin]

No. But that's just my opinion. I have been forced to take unscheduled call because other people have had children, and if I had a child I would expect to get nothing more than the day of birth off. I chose that situation voluntarily. It's not my partners' problem that my wife gets pregnant, after all.

Re:Equal rights

[physicsphairy]

Ah, so you're from the camp that defines equal in whatever what you want. So, women should get the same pay as a man for the same job (they should), they should have the same chance for a promotion as an equally qualified man (they should). Oh, they should get the same time off as a man? No, they get more because they're women.

Your logic could also be easily used to justify lower pay for women (they tend to get pregnant and leave you in a lurch), fewer promotions (same reason) and probably other things I haven't thought of.

Yeah, the difference is that the latter are strictly financial concerns to the company, and what you are talking about is giving *the company* rights to protect those financial concerns. It may be that men are the more expensive to higher in each case (maybe they're just statistically less reliable). But rather than chasing after all of those distinctions (which may or may not in cases be prejudiced rather than mathematical) we prefer to say everyone is considered equal at the time of higher.

But what we are talking about right now is the physical differences of the person whose rights are being protected. Are you against the American's with Disabilities Act? Are handicapped parking spaces an abridgment of American equality since only a select portion of the population is permitted to use them? If it's unfair that women get more time off than men for pregancy, do you also think it is unfair that they get more time off than men for having cervical cancer?

The fact is men can work straight through a pregnancy doing all manner of exerting activity without missing a beat. Women can't. Not they shouldn't. Not we don't think they should have to because we're chauvinists. THEY CANNOT PHYSICALLY DO SO unless we want to cause them and/or the child serious harm. Giving them maternity leave is required not to advantage them but to make their situation equal to that of men. And if the child is going to be breastfed, the woman is going to need to be there longer to take care of it, because she's the one who can do it. (And if we just want the family to have some time together, then I suppose that is why we are allocating paternity leave as well, in which case, how about yahoo is offering 4 weeks recovery time to the person who just had a major medical incident, plus 8 weeks to both parents to enjoy their new family.)

Honestly, forcing equality where it's not a matter of equality is the surest way to weaken the whole concept. There is a very logical rational of why people should be treated equally, it is called fairness. When you stop considering fairness and just consider whether certain numbers are equal to one another, you are not going to have a stable or desirable system.

Re:Equal rights

[neonmonk]

It's not just discrimination against the dads, it's discriminating against their wives - implying that they should be the stay at homes and how dare they want to get back to their career, which may or may not be better than their husbands. And let's face it, I'm sure their career has a better future, considering they're not working for Yahoo...

Re:Equal rights

[BitZtream]

Let me give you a hint grandpa.

Mom is physically mostly recovered in a matter of days (yes, I have a mother and I have wife who has given me children). She can't go fuck and get knocked up again, but for most jobs in a civilized society, mom is more than physically able to go back to work in just a couple of days.

I have these cool modern inventions they probably didn't have when you were a dad ... they are called bottles, they store this stuff called 'breast milk' that ... I ... as a man ... can feed my child with. Now what is your excuse?

That time off is bonding time. If my wife gets it, then so should I.

Also note: My wife is a doctor, so I know my medical facts on this one, I got them from her.

I'm fully aware of how much work it is to raise a child, this may be MY first child, but its certainly not the first one I've been involved with raising from an early age. Your description of parenting sounds like its from the civil war period.

Re: Equal rights

[BitZtream]

Delusional citizens who can't do basic math: %100

Re: Equal rights

[BitZtream]

And your very much better response to an invisible man pulling invisible strings is ...

'because'

Thats all you got ... and you want to act like religion is stupid?

Re:Equal rights

[zigfreed]

Pay rates are either negotiated per employee or codified indifferent to sex. Benefits being discussed here are codified, are non-medical (this isn't leave due to pregnancy complications), and ignore the fact that the mother (who may not work for Yahoo) may need to get back to work. The argument isn't that men and women are equal, but rather should they have equal opportunity to get things back in order.

Re:Equal rights

[BitZtream]

Uhm. It is. Medically anyway.

You do realize that before 'civilized' history that women gave birth and then immediately began traveling again to find food? Contrary to what you might think, humans didn't always have hospitals and civilization to make it so easy for a woman to stay at home and care for the child exclusively.

Women, for hundreds of thousands of years, would give birth and then nearly immediately walk 10 miles or more, and continue to do so like she'd never given birth while caring for her child.

Whats even crazier ... this is going to blow your fucking mind dude ... THAT SAME THING HAPPENS ALL OF THE WORLD EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Welcome to what its like to be pampered and spoiled ... and to STILL FUCKING WHINE ABOUT IT.

Re:Equal rights

[shutdown -p now]

If those choices lead to the species dying out, that's OK too.

That's where most of the rest of us disagree, thankfully. And since we make the majority, we get to write the laws.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

What scientific proof do you have that, in general, a male is able to form as intense a bond with his offspring, as the bond that a female forms with the fetus that grows within her womb? Or that such a thing is desirable in our society?

And I'm not talking about random cases where a woman has "no maternal instinct", as we sometimes hear described of uncaring mothers. Or cases of drug addicts or psychologically damaged abuse victims. I also never said no father can develop a stronger bond with a child than the child's mother does, in individual cases.

Maybe in a four-sentence casual post, I was supposed to put qualifiers on one statement in one sentence, to make sure everyone who ever reads it knows exactly what I mean. Or maybe you, and thousands like you, stop reading every random post from psuedo-anonymous sources on social websites as if they are attempts at doctoral theses.

I would like to throw your insult back at you, but I don't think you are dysfunctional. Simply childish. You want what you can't have, so you have to insist you have the right to it, and you will have it come hell or high water. And society has to support you in your perverse dementia, because only you have the truth. No one else, even anonymous /.ers, can possibly have a valid point, unless it supports your desire.

Honestly, I've argued various topics with people like you for years. Decades really. The topic has little to do with how you argue, so your rants and insults are nothing new; they don't sting; they barely hold my attention at this point. Especially since they are used to back your claims that have only an emotional basis, rather than either common sense or scientific proof. You don't have any definitive scientific proof, do you? No? I didn't think so.

Re:Equal rights

[Rene S. Hollan]

It's far simpler to make the woman responsible for the expense of raising the child, with shared financial responsibility a contractual possibility prior to consentual sex (and the likely arrangement) and allow for contracts to abort in the event of contraceptive or sterilization failure to be enforceable at law.

Voluntarily having children that one can't afford (to some minimum income level) should be a crime, with reasonable government insurance available against income loss.

Right now, these "laws to prevent freeloaders" encourage defrauding men for their semen. And really, the welfare recipient is ALREADY a freeloader.

Yeah, I know: rich dude fucks poor stupid woman, and she's stuck with the kid. But, in that case, he took financial advantage of her. If it could be proven, he can be held responsible absent a support contract. The point is the burden of proof of fraud or commitment to support should be on the one bringing the child into the world, espescially in a jurisdiction where abortion is legal.

Re:Equal rights

[DrLang21]

I think it's fair to assert that it is sufficient.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Either you are stupid or my son is a zombie. Given that I don't believe in magic, including the kind that make the dead walk the earth, I have to assume that you are stupid.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

You want me to come up with scientific proof that my bond with my child is as strong as what a typical woman has? Do you even listen to yourself? You think that unless men can prove scientifically that they can form as strong of bonds that they should be treated as second class parents? You are definitely not arguing against your dysfunction. I get that you don't want to believe that your inability to bond with your children isn't your fault, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have your dysfunction.

Re: Equal rights

[Evtim]

Yes. This is also included in the 2000% efficiency.

Home schooling is a nice option but it's being used primarily to keep kids dumb, by avoiding "evil science". On the other hand, there are the occasional cases where the kid is bright and bored in class and if mom and dad are PhD',s or least as bright as Feynman's father, they could give better schooling. However, considering the frequency of the above two cases, and the many extra requirements for the successful application of the second (educated, willing parents with free time - is there such a beast in the world) for the good of society, better not have home schooling. Pity that the minority suffers due to the stupidity of the majority but that seems to be the way of the world.

The long maternity leave is....too short. The best I've seen is my country during the totalitarian years - 2 years full pay with reintegration program (if needed). My mom starter working at 19, after secondary school. Gave birth at 27, stayed with me for the full 2 years, did not need reintegration program and then went to become HRM in a company of 4000 people and for most of our lives brought home more money than dad, who was a construction worker.

I was laughing my head off (because the communist got at least one thing very right; there were precious few such achievements like education), after hearing from the Zeitgeist guys (the latest movie) that pregnancy is in fact 3 years, of which 2 years outside the womb, since we could not have the full development inside - the head would be too big to pass. So the first two years of a child's life are enormously important. Many a study have shown that the most crucial aspect is the simple touch between parents and kids, the physical and emotional presence of parents in child's life. Oh, but mom and dad cannot hold you, honey, they have to work, otherwise the economy will collapse! You know, today, when we have so much power and knowledge, when our civilization does not know what to do with unemployment, when we have people who could buy a country, we still cannot somehow manage to ensure healthy environment to raise our kids. Can you put monetary value to properly raised kid? How much money would be SAVED by society by providing good conditions for raising kids? Kids that would be healthier, happier, more productive, more creative and more humane (less crime, then).

Why it is that every time the moron politicians of the world reach for the cutting budget scissors they cut education, healthcare and social programs? Exactly the most important things needed for healthy society and the proper rearing of kids. Why is nobody thinking rationally and working a good compromise based on science?

Re:Equal rights

[Maxo-Texas]

Well, then wouldn't it also be equally fair to avoid promoting and giving equal raises to females because they have babies and are much more likely to "mommy out" during hard projects than men? (Last big project- 4 women mommy'd out. They came back a couple weeks then quit to be full time mommies. Number of males who "daddy'd out"- zero.

Wouldn't it be equally fair to consider that females need more expense on restrooms and milk rooms than men so the men get bigger raises?

Wouldn't it be equally fair to say since the mothers are much more likely to stay home or go home when children get sick that it's fair to promote them less and give them lower pay if the individuals in question do so?

If we are going to ignore the extra costs of treating females equally, then we should treat men equally for policies like this.

But you know what I saw? Pretty damn blatant discrimination by women for women. In one lay off, 80% of the male managers went and all the managers retained were female. One had been a manager for less than six months. The executive who decided who would be laid off was female. If a male did that, it would have been an instant lawsuit.

And then there is the lovely, "the weekends and nights are dangerous so the men have to work them and the females get to skip them... but everyone has to equally be there for the 9am monday meeting."

Not to mention women wearing shirts so low you can see their bras while the guys wear polo shirts. Everyone should wear polo shirts. Or a girl showing that much cleavage should told to button up or go home. Cripes- about three years ago one young lady leaned over the table in the meeting and you could see her belly button. If she had complained- the men would have gotten training sessions- not her.

Equal is equal. This isn't equal. Things are not equal. They probably never will be.

Re:Equal rights

[TranquilVoid]

Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.

This is easily solved (and is in some countries) by allowing the primary carer to take the longer leave. Thanks to social mores and the biology of boobs this is almost always the woman.

Also maternity leave is not just for the mum to spend time with her baby, it is for her to recover from the birth.

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Who said I didn't bond with my daughter? I never said that. But thank you proving your actual problem isn't my statement of a biological process. Your problem is that a company's response to that isn't fair. Or at least, it isn't fair in your mind. (Here's a hint: Equal isn't always Fair.)

As for a scientific proof of your specific bond versus "a typical woman", yes, provide scientific proof or shut up already. Because, again, it isn't the biological process you are arguing against, it is Yahoo's parental leave policy. So unless you give scientific proof that fathers require just as much time as mothers, you're simply having a childish tantrum, as I said earlier.

Re:Equal rights

[Ritchie70]

I had a reply all typed out then found yours. So I cancelled it.

Even with a c-section in the mix, my wife was in good shape after about a week. The first few days were pretty rough but c-section with some other medical issues.

I got to spend 10 weeks home at full pay thanks to sabbatical, vacation, and 1 miserly week of paternity leave. It was great and I loved feeding and changing her.

There's also this stuff called formula, it's kind of pricey but my wife needed to get back on her meds. My petite princess is doing just fine on it.

Re: Equal rights

[fearofcarpet]

As an American living in a high-tax, socialist European country my observation is that taxes are higher here, but you end up spending the same amount of money on day-to-day life. What I mean is that, in the US, you keep more of your income, but you end up having to pay for all kinds of stuff that is free here. A friend of mine just went through cancer treatment; it cost her nothing. My wife got six months of paid leave for having a baby (I took six weeks, but could have taken more). The government pays for over half of our day care costs, most of the interest in our mortgage and subsidizes all sorts of stuff that we use in our daily lives.Whenever I'm back in the US, it's like a vacuum cleaner is attached to my wallet. I get nickel and dimed just walking down the street. Everything costs money there.

Basically the way high taxes work is that the government takes a larger share of our income, but spends it on you. It removes some choices--people with cars still subsidize public transportation for example--but is extremely efficient. It really only works in small countries where people are much more politically involved and have a larger stake in the country as a whole. In the US, you still pay for all the things that the government would otherwise subsidize, but you have a bit more choice. It's less efficient, but it prevents people in Manhattan from directly subsidizing a high speed train between Omaha and Kansas City.

The amazing thing to me is that I make about half of what I would in the US and pay about double the income tax, but my quality of living is considerably higher. It's also nice to know that the janitor at work has all of his basic needs met regardless of his crappy, low-paying job. I think the overall happiness of people here contributes to our quality of life. (But there are plenty of things to dislike here and plenty of things I miss in the US.)

Re:Equal rights

[Ritchie70]

I hate the women who look at you like you're incompetent, or think of you as "babysitting", or even offer to help you with the baby.

I'm not babysitting. I'm taking care of my daughter.

I can change her diaper in under two minutes and make her happy again if she's mad in about thirty seconds. If she's really really crying it might take a full minute.

Leave us alone, nosy grocery store ladies.We're fine.

Re:Equal rights

[Ritchie70]

Until I went back to work (was home for 10 weeks - sabbatical plus 1 week vacation plus 1 week paternity leave) I was as good or better than my wife at all of that stuff.

I no longer am because as baby changed, the person who was there all the time learns the new tricks.

It kind of sucks.

Re:Equal rights

[tbonefrog]

1. Your lack of understanding of mammalian biology is apalling.
2. But there is discrimination aplenty here. This perk is for YOUNG(ish) people of child-bearing age. These people are presumably healthy too. As they can no longer work from home, they are presumably not handicapped to the extent that commuting is difficult for them, and do not have dependents with disabilities at home. As high-tech places tend to encourage way more than 40 hours per week, these young, healthy people tend to burn out as they get older. As they burn out and leave the company, Yahoo keeps a young employee profile, reducing their health insurance costs, saving them more than the cost of the perk.
So we have age discrimination, not sex discrimination.

Re:Equal rights

[TranquilVoid]

Yes, but in the same way that requiring disabled parking discriminates against the able-bodied. The rules of society tend to be about managing the welfare of the whole, not adhering to individualistic philosophy (taken as a whole the philosphies evinced by our behaviour is a contradictory mess).

Re:Equal rights

[TranquilVoid]

You're ready to just about anything you could do before hand (physically) in a couple days.

This is completely incorrect. It varies with the woman. There are stories of women in fields stopping to have their baby then getting right back to plowing, but for most women the hormone relaxin has loosened the muscles to the extent where it takes weeks to get back to the same level of strength and physical activity. Of course physically mundane things like office work and cooking are achievable.

Re:Equal rights

[flandre]

i'm certain that us women are much better at getting pregnant

unless you're like me and have your tubes tied

Re:Equal rights

[TranquilVoid]

Postpartum depression also is a thing women have to deal with, while we don't.

I think this depends. I was told by the birth centre that the research is starting to come out that men suffer in the same proportion as women (about 1 in 7). As a random annecdote my wife's friend's husband had it badly, to the point where their marriage almost broke up (they had twins, he had no interest in them, so compounded stress).

Possibly this wasn't true in the past when men had less to do with child rearing. Also society doesn't 'allow' men to have PND, they are expected to be real men and suck it up.

Re:Equal rights

[Khyber]

Uh, no. My former boss got his leave paid. Riverside, California, here.

Re: Equal rights

[Grumpinuts]

Wish I had mod points today would up your post. I work with kids in crisis and we are seeing more and more with attachment issues. Parents for whatever reason lacked the parenting capacity to bond with the child in the first months after birth and it causes real and measurable cognitive and developmental and social issues as the child grows. I was lucky enough to be around for my youngest daughter when she was under 12 months and I still regards those days as the happiest of my life and it is a source of guilt and regret that for mainly financial circumstances I hadn't been able to do that for all my kids.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

"Those things" that the parent poster was in reference to parenting, caring for children, and sharing a bond with children. Pretending to misunderstand in an attempt create strawman is a common tactic of bigots. Of course, maybe you are just joking and are mocking people that respond that way seriously.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

Your whole argument is that it is OK to discriminate against men because men are genetically less capable of bonding with their children. So, yes, YOU said that you didn't bond with your daughter. At least not beyond superficially. You inability to bond deeply with your child isn't because of your penis. It is because you are dysfunctional. Of course, you know full well that a demand of scientific proof of emotional bonds is impossible. That is why you ask for it.

Re:Equal rights

[BetterThanCaesar]

Sometimes the father is not known or wants nothing to do with the mother. Are they still forced to take parental leave? Is the mother penalised if they don't?

No one is forced to take days off. You get a pool of 480 days off (with ~80% pay). Of those, a certain amount can only be used by the father, if one is registered. The rules are (to my knowledge) gender neutral, and work more or less the same for cases where the children are adopted, or the parents are gay.

Re:Equal rights

[buybuydandavis]

Short translation - screwing women is evil, screwing men is good.

Re:Equal rights

[bluegutang]

Justin Bieber is more than 8 weeks old? News to me.

Re:Equal rights

[dkf]

The time off is given for the 'family' not for medical recovery. The time off is so mom can be with her child, not because she is recovering. She isn't even taking care of the child for the most part during her 'recovery' period, its only after that when she starts doing her job.

A substantial part of the reason for extended time off is that, to start out with, babies need feeding during the night. Preferably with fresh breast milk. Mum spends her time being shattered, and is mostly not awake enough to be actively holding down a job as well. It's fairer on her colleagues for her to be off for at least a few months until daytime-only feeding is established. The time to do that depends on the child, but it is easier for her employer to give a bit more time off than strictly necessary so that a predictable stand-in can be used.

The only sane alternative is to just sack people for getting pregnant and carrying the child to term. That's deemed socially unacceptable by a majority of people on both the left and the right.

Re:Equal rights

[mrscorpio]

This is the same logic used by conservatives to ban gay marriage on non-religious terms - "Gays can already get married! Gay men can marry any woman they'd like, and lesbians can marry any man that they'd like!"

In other words, you are justifying a discriminatory policy based on physiological differences, when in reality, the issue here is conceptual, and at that level man and woman are equal in the eyes of a corporation as "parents" (one who is legally responsible for a child)

Re:Equal rights

[MadKeithV]

What's more, there's absolutely no evidence to back up the belief that babies require more bonding between them and their mother than with their father.

Because there's a risk of someone misinterpreting that statement as implying that parents and children or mothers and children don't need bonding - a quick few googled hits about the benefits of bonding (or risks of not bonding).
There's more out there, but I suggest to go talk to a midwife and/or doula if you are genuinely interested in knowing more about the subject.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

A man chooses with whom to have intercourse. There are cases where the intent was not to procreate; but that is still a risk a man or a woman takes deliberately. Claiming that a man does not get a choice of whether to be a parent is a considerable overstatement.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

Don't bother to try to reason with someone wealthy with choices. Men only get one while women get many. And yet it's always the MEN who get saddled with all the responsibility while WOMEN can CHOOSE to have none.

Sorry, is that the 19th century on the phone? I can't quite hear you: you seem to have misplaced your genders.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

Since the concern should be for the child and its welfare, the only reasonable rule should be that the leave belongs to the child, for its parents to allocate as they see fit. Who else should decide for them how best to care for their own?

And does it really matter against whom this is discrimination?

Re:Equal rights

[chrissfoot]

Except that nobody gets full pay. The current rules say that if you have a vagina (or in their words "prove you're pregnant"...) you get 6 weeks at 90% pay then statutory maternity pay at £136.78 for 33 weeks. If you have a penis you get the statutory rate for 2 weeks then you can steal up to 26 of the mothers 33 weeks from her if she agrees.

Re: Equal rights

[Chrisq]

"I'd take 51.1% total tax in a heartbeat to have really good government services." Rejoice, you've found the answer! Move to Sweden.

Very tempting, but difficult with kids coming up to exams. In the UK with tax, NI, fuel duty and VAT I am paying over 51% tax without good government services (By Swedish standards, much better than US of course),

Re:Equal rights

[Chrisq]

You joke, but it's really not fair that people who choose to have kids get leave that the rest of us don't. I have to work harder to pick up the slack because of your lifestyle choice.

If nobody chooses to have kids you will have a real problem in the future.

Re: Equal rights

[jabuzz]

A quick check shows that Swedish oil production for 2011 was less than 5000 barrels a day. I suspect that you are confusing Sweden with Norway, who do have large amounts of North Sea oil and gas.

Re:Equal rights

[Dr Damage I]

Yup, we must punish our sons and our grandsons to the nth generation to make up for the privileges enjoyed by our fathers and our grandfathers (while they lay in a pool of mud diluted with their own blood and tried desperately and futilely to take just one more breath.)

Re:Equal rights

[Dr Damage I]

Equality doesn't necessarily mean equal

Quite so. Why separate can be equal as well.

Re:Equal rights

[petman]

Same sex couples are abominations and should be taken out of consideration.

Re: Equal rights

[Xest]

Well said.

It doesn't matter how low taxes are or whatever, if everyone is unhappy, and unhealthy it's all entirely meaningless and all for nothing.

Happiness is at the end of the day the human emotion that makes life worth living. Even those who are unhappy and who continue to press on do so in the hope that something will change and they'll become happy.

Re:Equal rights

[novium]

Very true. There's less incentive to discriminate against women when men are equally recognized as caregivers for their families ( and are treated as such).

Re:Equal rights

[novium]

I'm so happy to hear that racism and sexism are a thing of a past. Boy, that's a relief. I mean, social activism is just so much work, it's nice to know that everything's hunky dory now.

Re:Equal rights

[gordo3000]

funny aside, while women might gather 80% of the food, it is the hunters bringing in the stable source of protein that allowed our brains to develop enough to have these discussions....

Re:Equal rights

[Xest]

"Also remember that a policy like this creates a perverse incentive to favor employing a man instead of a woman-- he's less of a financial liability."

This is a real actual problem here in the UK where paternity leave is negligible compared to maternity leave and I've witnessed it first hand. I've known women get passed up for well deserved promotion over male colleagues when the female has been far and away the best choice for the job, both objectively in terms of their performance (i.e. sales figures) and subjectively in terms of the quality and amount of positive and lack of negative feedback from staff they manage in anonymous surveys. I've known male managers to make comments such as "I can't give her the role because we need someone we can depend on and she might get pregnant".

The UK desperately needs fairer rights for new fathers to resolve this sort of problem.

Re:Equal rights

[mcvos]

Depends on whether this time is for dealing with the physical aspects of giving birth. If this is parental leave on top of standard maternity leave for the pregnancy itself, then it's discriminatory. But in most countries, women get 16 weeks of maternity leave simply because they're physically unable to work for a number of weeks before and after giving birth. Time to spend with your kid comes on top of that.

In my country, fathers unfortunately get only 2 days leave: one for the day of birth itself, and one to register the newborn child. This isn't remotely enough, because you simply cannot leave the mother alone for the first one or two weeks after giving birth. So I'd say 16 weeks for the mother and 2 weeks for the father should be the bare minimum for simply dealing with the physical aspects of it.

On top of that, it would be great if they both got (equal) additional leave to take care of the child that's still way too young for any kind of day care. That's not something that should end up only with the mother, because then you end up with a situation where the mother is expected to sacrifice her career, while the father is expected to work.

Re: Equal rights

[gordo3000]

having just moved to the UK, my experience so far has been almost all government services aren't worth a damn. Even the NHS is so bad everyone I have met who can afford to goes private 100% of the time. I feel bad for a place where you are taxed so severely only the wealthiest or those at very generous companies can get anything decently. At least in the US, taxes are significantly lower so you can go pay for your own (the effective case for everyone who wants decent healthcare here it seems).

granted if I was an indigent single, pregnant woman in the UK, I may feel different. But then again, I'm not very happy with a system designed for indigents at the expense of everyone but the very rich.

Re:Equal rights

[j-beda]

LOL go to a nursing home, no one is talking care of their parents.

Those nursing home workers were someone's children, eh?

Most of the "developed world" does not have a birthrate sufficient to keep the population stable. While there are good ecological arguments for decreasing the overall population, economically, "developed world" countries are "rich enough" to make sure that the local kids should be able to be well cared for, housed, fed, and schooled enough to make for positive outcomes when they are old enough to start contributing to the society.

Re:Equal rights

[j-beda]

You are wrong. It is a life event, not a yearly occurrence...

Clearly you are not Catholic, Mormon, or from the Bible Belt.

While members of those groups may have more children then others, none of them come close to yearly.

Poland is about 90% Catholic. The Polish birth rate is 1.4 births per child. (Compared to 2.1 for the USA - wow that is high for a developed country!) Clearly "Catholics" are not universally churning them out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate

Re:Equal rights

[Bigby]

Boy did you take that wrong. Racism and sexism are personal prejudices. I am referring to when those ideas were part of the law. When African Americans and women couldn't vote. And other government enforced prejudices against those classes.

Personal prejudices will always exist for a number of reasons and almost always work both ways.

Re:Equal rights

[Minupla]

Basically the way it works is you get, as a family, 12 months of EI for the birth of a child. You can apportion it in any way you wish up to 6 months for the father or 12 months for the mother.

Like you, I took vacation as we couldn't afford to lose that much of my salary. I think I have a very close relationship with my daughter, in part because I spent that time taking care of her while my wife recovered from the c-section. (As with all things parenting related, YMMV, and this was the case for me. Your case is likely different. Do not take as medical advice. :))

Min

Re:Equal rights

[coinreturn]

Men have gotten the shaft when it comes to children for most of the time society has existed.

Pro tip: You're doing it wrong. If you want children, give the women the shaft.

Re:Equal rights

[jkflying]

So you're saying that the process of giving birth is equally traumatic, both physically and mentally, to both mother and father, so they should both get the same amount of time off?

Re: Equal rights

[coinreturn]

+20, Insightful.

Re:Equal rights

[Ash Vince]

But it's a real problem for employers. Unless you're hiring for a factory where employees are easily trained and replaced, there's really no way you can replace an employee while they're off on parental leave. Let's say a lead developer took 6 months off. You probably need to hire the new person a good 2 months before the other person leaves just so they can catch up. And then it probably takes another month or so after the original employee gets back to get them caught back up. The other option is to just take the work of the person who leaves, and split it between the remaining employees, and don't hire anybody to fill the seat. This means everyone else has to either work more so the same amount of work can be done, or they just have to get less work done. Either way, if the person taking the time off is a high level employee, you're still going to be stuck having them work a little bit during their parental leave, if not just answering the phone a couple times a week to fill in missing information.

This is a problem that employers deal with in other countries though. My missus is just about to take maternity leave, she is planning to take the full 12 months she is entitled to by law (We live in the UK).

The second 6 months will be on vastly reduced pay though she does have the option to transfer some of this leave to me (in addition to the 2 weeks on full pay I also get by law) but since I earn more it does not make sense to do this unfortunately. The fact that she can transfer some to me if she returns to work though does mean we are both fairly equal in this regard. Note that this applies even though we work for completely different companies, if I earned less than her I would simply go into work and explain the situation to my boss and he has to give me the leave (on the same vastly reduced pay as she would get though, basically my pay would come from the government instead of my employer while I was off and they put a maximum weekly wage in place that is roughly equivalent to working in McDonalds).

Re:Equal rights

[j-beda]

You joke, but it's really not fair that people who choose to have kids get leave that the rest of us don't. I have to work harder to pick up the slack because of your lifestyle choice.

One could also argue that it is really not fair that non-parents get to enjoy the benefits of a system that, from a biological point of view at least, exists for the only purpose of creating children. If everyone chose to not have children then "we" would be gone in less than a century. Now, of course, the planet would not miss us. From an individual country point of view, we could just import our future generations from elsewhere I suppose.

Or just live with the results of policies that encourage those who are responsible, bright, and well informed to not have kids, and leave the parenting exclusively to those with poor planning skills, impulse control, and foresight. It makes for a funny movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Re: Equal rights

[Chrisq]

having just moved to the UK, my experience so far has been almost all government services aren't worth a damn. Even the NHS is so bad everyone I have met who can afford to goes private 100% of the time.

I disagree. I have used the NHS extensively and turned down the health care package offered by my employer because the NHS is so good I don't think its worth paying the extra £15 a month tax on the benefit

Re:Equal rights

[I'm New Around Here]

Ok, one last response for you.

I have bonded quite well with my daughter. But my wife bonded with her more. Even though middle-of-the-night bottle-feedings and diaper changes were generally done by me, for quite specific reasons. Go read about the hormones that bond a mother to her own child. They don't bond 'females' to 'random babies', which is what your claims would suggest. Nor do all mothers have the same level of a response.

So, first, stop trying to quantify how much I bonded with my child, because you have no clue what you are talking about. Second, quit having what I can only describe as childish tantrums over your vagina envy. It isn't your fault biology doesn't work how you want it to, but insisting it does is just dumb. Or, third, maybe in your case, you wife just happens to be one of the women who didn't have the normal bonding with your children, so your normal father-child bond was more intense than hers, and you are projecting you experience to every random poster on the internet.

In conclusion, thank you for illuminating the biggest reason not to post my personal thoughts and experiences online. Complete strangers think they know my situation better than I do.

Re: Equal rights

[Mr Z]

Why it is that every time the moron politicians of the world reach for the cutting budget scissors they cut education, healthcare and social programs?

Hint: It's usually a rich politician whose family and friends wouldn't suffer the cuts directly. They sell it by painting the beneficiaries as slackers that are a drain on society, as opposed to the reality. These things solidify the very base of society.

Net result? An ever widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots. That chasm strains the very notion of society.

Re:Equal rights

[cayenne8]

Hey, as long as men can continute to get paid more, then cool.

I mean, it *is* the women having the kids and having to miss all that work and disrupt the business groups.

So, as long as they keep it that way, I suppose fair is fair....the guys are having to take up the slack not only for births, but also when kids have to be picked up from school for being sick, or school holidays, etc.

It is even worse if you are a single guy, the whole office expects YOU to work all the time to pick up the slack for their time off they need for 'family' time. Single guys should be paid the highest rate since they have to clean up for everyone else needing all that time off.

Re:Equal rights

[cayenne8]

And why would guys need off for a new born?

Hell, I'd think most new fathers would welcome the time OUT of the home and away from all the crying and diapers for a bit.

It isn't like they need to be there to breast feed, etc.....they did their business when they fucked.

After that, about all they are there for is $$ support till the kid gets old enough to start talking and interracting, and then fathering begins really.

Between coming and then....men are largely useless and unneeded for newborns. Women are built for that early stuff.

Re: Equal rights

[gordo3000]

wow, you are incredibly wrong. Humans, like most mammals, are at their most fertile when they ovulate right after giving birth. In fact, it's almost trivial to get pregnant 3-4 weeks after a healthy pregnancy and birth. I'm not saying the sex is as comfortable, but that is completely irrelevant to whether or not the girl can get pregnant again if she wants. A great example well understood are thoroughbred horses, where 2 weeks after foaling they are taken tot he breeding shed (and yes, your wife's body works the same way, it's how I have 3 cousins that are all 10 months apart in birthdays).

as to how many births:

after you get past the first one, which is statistically the most dangerous, it's pretty easy to have a lot. Very recently in my family history it was 16 and 9 out of the grandmothers. In India, the average fertility rate used to be 7 per woman, adn this included something like a 25% mortality rate on first births by women (meaning the average was really 10 if you made it past 1).

Yes, in modern life with your job, tv shows to watch, dinner dates, etc, it may seem like quite a stretch to have more than 2 or 3 kids (I don't have any plans on in and neither does my wife), but biologically speaking you are not grounded in any type of reality.

Re:Equal rights

[Bigbutt]

Did you read the linked blog article? It actually says that it is true. That there is a gap. It might not necessarily be 72 cents but that depends on how such things are measured (they used 23 cents for annual wages but 18 cents if comparing weekly wages).

Final sentence: "The pay gap isn’t a myth, it’s a reality – and it’s our job to fix it."

[John]

Re:Equal rights

[gordo3000]

and it's a valid justification for a certain level of difference. though now adays when numbers and data don't matter, we also say women's healthcare is the same price as men's (patently false) so the insurance cost should be the same.

Re:Equal rights

[Mr Z]

My high-tech employer only offers TWO weeks paid paternity leave. TWO. Not the generous eight that Yahoo! offers. That was probably considered progressive in the US in the 60s, but seems hopelessly behind the curve in high tech today. One of my coworkers took an extra two weeks out of his own vacation time to spend a total of four paid weeks with his newborn daughter.

I personally have 8 weeks of vacation time built up, because work keeps me busy enough that I never feel like I can take the time I'm entitled to off. I don't even feel like I can ask for the time off, and it's technically already mine. The culture works against it. We're a country of workaholics, and we're made to feel bad when we ask for a little space.

If we really wanted to do things "right" here in the US, I'd have to ensure I built up a big enough cushion that my wife and I could remain unemployed (and thus, unpaid) for a couple years. And then, hope I could find a job after 2 years out of high tech. Hmmm... yeah, seems unlikely. Or, at least, feels unlikely, even if perception doesn't match reality.

Ah, the American dream: To make enough money that you no longer have to work for a living. For the vast majority of us, it will always remain a dream.

Re:Equal rights

[Kelbear]

Then why not just not hire women because they'll end up claiming 3 months of free salary from you eventually? Maybe even more than once. You'll need to give all their work to someone else anyway. You DEFINITELY don't want to promote a woman into an important role if you might end up having them taking maternity leave on you. Just hire a man instead and you don't have these issues.

Oh? It's illegal to discriminate based on gender? Hmmm, I guess I'll just say that the female candidate didn't have the right experience or made a bad impression in the interview, how can they come up with any proof that I'm discriminating based on their uterus?

Having equality in parental leave for both moms and dads benefits BOTH the moms and the dads. If dads get the same parental leave, moms get less discrimination.

Re:Equal rights

[Mr Z]

Even if this is discrimination, I'm also not clear that this is discrimination against fathers. It might well be discrimination against mothers. Fathers only have to spend eight weeks caring for the new baby. Mothers have to spend twelve.

After which you send it to the centralized child care facility, so the child is never a burden to either parent ever again?

I'm pretty sure both parents are on the hook for child care for as long as the child is a child. The issue is whether they're also on the hook for going to a job other than raising their child.

Re:Equal rights

[Kelbear]

Why should I hire a woman who will eventually demand 3 months of free pay while saddling me with an empty job position, when I can just hire a man instead? I definitely don't want her promoted into an important position if she might take off for maternity leave. Maybe she'll have more than 1 kid.

Nobody could prove gender discrimination in my hiring/promotion practices. I'll just say that they made a bad impression in the interview, or they weren't a good fit for the job.

Equality in parental leave is beneficial for BOTH men and women. When men get equal parental leave, you remove an incentive for gender discrimination.

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

Who's berating anyone? I just want equal treatment.

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

In what way is that a "success"? Dying and leaving nothing to carry on in your wake is not a success, for a living organism

Living a happy life is a success. What happens after that life is irrelveant to the living organism, because he won't be around for it.

you were as TRULY nihilistic as you're trying to come across

I'm not nihilistic. I like my life. In fact, I like it so much that I don't want to waste any time changing diapers, being crabby because of a lack of sleep, running around to soccer practice, etc. etc.

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

You're putting your own financial desires ahead of the survival of the species. Darwin is not amused.

I don't live my life to make Darwin happy.

Because employers conclude that a new baby may be more important than filing the TPS report, and give time off to the new parents, that's "discrimination"? Dude, sort out your priorities. Seriously.

Help me out here. Why is that new baby important to anyone other than the parents?

Re:Equal rights

[gordo3000]

so what you are saying is you are less educated than a teen male about giving birth?

Absent medical conditions during birth and assuming a healthy mother going into the birth (i.e. not obese, no pregnancy related diabetes) most women can be up and about the next day and easily doing productive work in a couple days. It's not a physical limitation that demands maternity leave, and when times are tough, women in 3rd world countries regularly have to treck long distances to and from a clinic to give birth, the same day. Generally though, birth is easier on women in the 3rd world if htere aren't complications because they are fitter, healthier, and therefore more capable of coping with the stress of birth on the body.

Re:Equal rights

[Stuarticus]

Remember that when you're depending on those children to look after you in your old age. Oh don't tell me, you're going to look after yourself forever like that proud individualist Ms Rand?

Re:Equal rights

[Rene S. Hollan]

The bottom line is that one should not presume guilt because of the difficulty of proving it either to a civil "preponderance of the evidence" standard, or the criminal "beyond a reasonable doubt" one.

As it stands now, it's akin to somone stealing a puppy, having it grown up to be an adult dog (say, a Bull Mastiff or other large dog), and seeking support for food and vet bills from the original owner!

Heck, men have been ordered to pay support for kids that didn't even exist on a woman's simple claim they did, and even men who were known not to be biological fathers, were ordered to pay support simply because they took pity on a single mother and helped her a time or two without any romantic relationship!

The standard for support should require ((a) a biological relationship AND (b) proof of consensual insemination) or (c) a voluntary agreement to support. Yes, this is a burden for a woman to prove. The burden for a man is having defensive evidence that sex was consentual and not rape. Yes, this appears to turn "innocent until proven guilty" on it's head, but it should be considered insurance against a fraudulent rape charge that can be very expensive to defend against.

Re:Equal rights

[Stuarticus]

Day milk and night milk have different composition, the night milk helps children sleep better while daytime milk helps keep them awake. So not really the best idea.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Really? Let's see...

MEN can CHOOSE to abstain completely or wear a condom (or get a vasectomy, if they'll accept a quasi-irreversable surgical option).

That's ONE.

WOMEN can CHOOSE to abstain completely or use one (or several) of a number of forms of birth control including "Female Condoms", Birth-Control Pills (or other Homonal-based methods), Cervical Dams (or other barrier devices), various implantable devices, or can even have their tubes tied if they'll accept a surgical option).

That's ONE

WOMEN can CHOOSE to use a "Morning-After Pill" (aka "PLAN B") in case they weren't thinking the night before...

That's TWO

If the woman gets pregnant anyway...

MEN... are out of luck, no more choices.

WOMEN can CHOOSE to have an ABORTION. (That's right, they are LEGALLY ALLOWED to MURDER their UNBORN child).

A Man.... well, he'd go to prison if he tried.

So we're up to THREE choices for women...

Then, if she CHOOSES to have the baby, she can STILL LEGALLY ABANDON the baby at a "Safe Place" (ironically, a Police Station, a Fire Station, a Hospital-- or other well-known aspects of CIVIL AUTHORITY)

A Man... well, there's always prison.

Now we have FOUR choices for women...

Or if she CHOOSES, she can claim she doesn't KNOW who the father is and give the baby up for ADOPTION.

The Man... can't get away with that. He'd go to jail. And there's only a SLIM possibility that her ruse would ever be discovered in order for HIM to THWART HER. So he can't even assert his PARENTAL RIGHTS.

So let's see... now we're up to FIVE CHOICES for WOMEN... the MEN are still at ONE.

Then the KICKER--

After ALL OF HER OPPORTUNITIES TO CHOOSE---

*IF* She CHOOSES to KEEP the baby, she can FORCE the MAN to pay for it until it turns the majority age. In other words, HE has NO CHOICE in the matter and SHE can bring the ENTIRE POWER OF THE STATE to bear to enforce HER will.

So to sum it up... WOMEN have at least FIVE OPPORTUNITIES to CHOOSE NOT to be a parent, whereas MEN only get ONE OPPORTUNITY to CHOOSE.

And somehow WOMEN call this system "FAIR".

Now I ask you, who is wearing the 19th Century glasses here, HMMM ???

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

Whereas MEN can skip TOWN after IMPREGNATING a WOMAN and start writing RANTS on SLASHDOT with completely arbitrary CAPITALIZATIONS on how unfair life is. My bad: I mistook the Stone Age for the 19th century.

Again: both sexes can choose not to procreate. Nothing to see here, move on.

Re:Equal rights

[coolsnowmen]

Your logic could also be easily used to justify lower pay for women (they tend to get pregnant and leave you in a lurch), fewer promotions (same reason) and probably other things I haven't thought of.

Not really. There are a couple wonderful studies showing that women get OFFERED lower pay for the same job, not, rose too slowly due to babies.
Also, getting pregnant give you a 9month'ish window for planning- last I checked most men who leave their jobs don't give more than about 2 weeks notice.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

Whereas MEN can skip TOWN after IMPREGNATING a WOMAN and start writing RANTS on SLASHDOT with completely arbitrary CAPITALIZATIONS on how unfair life is. My bad: I mistook the Stone Age for the 19th century.

Again: both sexes can choose not to procreate. Nothing to see here, move on.

Only until the LAW catches up with them and they are FORCED to PAY child support.

A MAN is NOT allowed to CHOOSE NOT to be a FATHER whereas a WOMEN is ALWAYS ALLOWED to CHOOSE NOT to be a MOTHER.

So go get back into your Flinstone-mobile and pedal your FEMINIST crap elsewhere...

>> Again: both sexes can choose not to procreate. Nothing to see here, move on.

Spoken like a true PRIVILEGED FEMINIST ZEALOT...

BTW, I FAIL to see why there is any real CONCERN over WOMEN getting PAID an EQUAL amount as MEN...

After all, they DO both get PAID, right? It's irrelevant whether one or the other makes more for their efforts, right?

Nothing to see here, let's move on.

Re:Equal rights

[deoxyribonucleose]

Congratulations, troll, you got me to post. Now creep back into your bog.

Re:Equal rights

[bratwiz]

So it's only FAIR and EQUITABLE when it's WOMEN'S rights we're talking about, eh?

UN-Fuck you.

Re:Equal rights

[squiggleslash]

I think a more serious issue is that most women are not able to work immediately after a pregnancy. It's a pretty physically traumatic experience for mother and baby.

Yes, us Dads have a hell of a lot of emotional trauma to deal with afterwards, but we're able to function. Indeed, the major argument for dads staying home with the family immediately after birth is as the necessary support, not because of some biological need to do so.

Re:Equal rights

[Kelbear]

http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20130304/c-section-rates-vary-widely-at-us-hospitals

"Cesarean delivery is the most common surgery in the United States, performed on 1.67 million women each year. Cesarean rates increased from 20.7 percent in 1996 to 32.8 percent in 2011, according to the Minnesota researchers."

You can recover relatively quickly after normal birth, but after getting a big honking hole cut in you, you can barely move for days, and it's about 2 weeks to go move around normally.

Of course, before civilization, mothers all recovered quickly after normal birth, because all the ones with complications which would prompt a c-section would just die. Thus, all that's left are the mothers who can walk around shortly after birth (unless they die in subsequent child births).

Re: Equal rights

[Belial6]

That isn't really true. It actually gives negative 8 to 12 weeks for planning. It is illegal to permanently replace the woman. She loses benefits of she quits to have the child, so the employer doesn't know if he can replace her until here maternity leave is up.

Re: Equal rights

[Belial6]

Let's see it you are brought enough to spot the hypocrisy of your post. My guess is not. It would make you feel bad about yourself.

Re:Equal rights

[hondo77]

Oh, really?

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

"If anything, it's the people who think the Earth needs another little them to suck up resources, and who think they deserve a big chunk of time off, who are conceited and entitled."

That's not berating? Okay, you want equal treatment? Do you want people taking that attitude that you're expressing above and turn it on your choice not to have children?

Read the post to which I was replying. My "berating" was merely turning around what the parent poster said about my choice. And he used significantly more negative adjectives than I did. So whether I want people to insult me or not, they will. Turn about is fair play.

I still don't see any reason why child bearing should be given special consideration. So what it it's "part of a natural cycle of humanity that has persisted for millions of years"? Natural doesn't mean good. What is good and what isn't good is an individual value judgement, based on what we expect to make us happy. Employers should absolutely not attempt to influence the values of their employees, it's simply not their place.

And for the most part, I don't think there is a biological need to have children. I think there's a biological need to have sex, and a cultural imperative to have children. If there was an actual biological need to have children, I'd expect parents to be happier than the childless. Most sociological research tends in the other direction.

Re:Equal rights

[Shirley Marquez]

Interesting question, that. California is one of the states that has a state-level Equal Rights Amendment, so this could well be not merely illegal but unconstitutional.

Re: Equal rights

[Dahamma]

Wow, you managed to be arrogant and ignorant in the same post, congrats.

You can't get pregnant immediately after giving birth, you could speed up the process by not breast feeding, but you still have to wait at least a month and a half for your body to get its parts back where they belong unless you want to risk complications that lead to death during your next pregancy.

I'm sure your mommy told you you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex and masturbation makes you blind, as well, but it just isn't true...

Ever hear of "Irish twins"? I have two sets of uncles who qualify alone. There are many many MANY millions of cases of siblings being born less than a year apart in the world, and plenty of cases of births 9-10 months apart.

And just how many times do you think a woman can actually give birth before her body falls apart?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_Kids_and_Counting

Well, 19 at least. And no, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's well documented and the guy was in the Arkansas Legislature.

In fact, it was very common in the past (and still today in some areas) for women to pretty much have a child every year or two starting as a teenager. Many of them died and sometimes so did the mother, but if you don't think there have been millions of women over the years who have had 15+ children you are the delusional one.

But don't worry, if you cross your fingers, take the stick our of your ass, and stop masturbating so much like your mom keeps telling you one day you too may be able to see a woman's body parts first hand and maybe even (shudder) reproduce...

Re:Equal rights

[phoenix_rizzen]

It can be. Take your shirt off to provide warmth, sound of a heartbeat, and comfort. Cradle the baby the same way a mother would. Put the bottle nipple in approx the same place as the mother's would be.

They get all the same benefits, including the breast milk. There's very little difference between a mother nursing a baby and the father (or anyone else, really) feeding the baby breast milk from a bottle. You still get the same bonding time and experience, but now it's not "limited" to the mother.

Re:Equal rights

[phoenix_rizzen]

It's not like she pumped once a day. Yeesh!

Wife would pump at regular times throughout the morning, afternoon, evening, occassionally at night, and we'd use the appropriate bottle for the time of the feeding.

Our daughter wouldn't latch and wouldn't get anything from the breast. Every feeding was a bottle feeding. But every feeding was also breast milk.

Re: Equal rights

[VisceralLogic]

I don't give a shit about tax rate. Quality of life is the only measurement that matters. If I can have a high quality of life and freedom to do what I want with a 100% tax rate then by all means, take it; I don't care. Money is just a means to an end.

--Jeremy

And who's going to take away your garbage?

Re: Equal rights

[Man Eating Duck]

Meanwhile in sweden: 280 days per child. Of those, at least two months must be used by the father. All days are payed.

In Norway we have you beat :)
46 weeks (322 days) with full pay, or 56 weeks (392 days) with 80% pay, divided amongst the parents with the father having to use at least 3 months, all paid by the government. The keen reader will have noted that for some reason it pays off to choose the shorter duration and use unpaid leave for the remainder if you want the full duration.

I've recently become a father of twins, and we get 5 or 7 weeks on top of that. In addition the father gets at least two weeks of paid leave immediately after birth (my employer granted me four, since twins are "a bit" more hassle during the first weeks). In an average family both parents are working, stay-at-home moms are uncommon here because two incomes are generally needed, so this is virtually a necessity in order to not place your kid in kindergarten at 1 year.

Inb4: Yes, we pay our fair share of taxes to support this (but nothing like the 51.1% I see mentioned in a sibling post), but no-one I know doesn't see the value in that. Not even our most populist political parties argue that this should be changed, our society as a whole has arrived at the conclusion that it is beneficial in the end.

Re:Equal rights

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Giving birth is a major strain on the person's body. It is only normal that the person who goes through that strain gets more time to recover than the person who's merely emotionally involved.

Re:Equal rights

[Man Eating Duck]

Also remember that a policy like this creates a perverse incentive to favor employing a man instead of a woman-- he's less of a financial liability.

It's no secret that this happens - women, for whatever reasons, have significantly more sick leave than men, in addition to spending more time away after birth. A friend who worked for a short while as a middle manager was told outright by his boss to favour men when employing people for this exact reason. This is of course illegal, but a lot of discrimination in employment situations (and not only against women) is covered up by the employers ability to say "we just felt that she wouldn't have fit in here, no ulterior motives on our part". It's also a problem that's almost impossible to remedy by legislation in a good manner.

On a side note, another friend of mine suspects that he got a job at a startup because he was carrying his bag with the cover of "Whish you where here" on it to the interview. Both owners of the company were gay, and his bag had a "rainbow" on it :)

Re: Equal rights

[Man Eating Duck]

Meanwhile in sweden: 280 days per child. Of those, at least two months must be used by the father. All days are payed.

In Norway we have you beat :)

46 weeks (322 days) with full pay, or 56 weeks (392 days) with 80% pay

Seems like I was mistaken about that, as it turns out you guys actually have 480 days. Oh well.

Re:Equal rights

[yndrd1984]

I should have been clearer: the workers or the business (in the form of paying more people) has to pick up the slack.

In a large organization, people have babies all the time.

But even in the best-case scenario, with good planning and an expectation the the business rather than workers should pay the price, the organization needs more employees than it otherwise would. In my mind that's "picking up the slack" for the absent person.

Re:Equal rights

[yndrd1984]

hired temps to fill those roles

So the business picks up the slack, rather then the workers. Someone still has to do it.

Re:Equal rights

[Man Eating Duck]

#1 Sweden is the most socially advanced country in the world.

A "norrbagga" here, I feel that we're not too far behind you in that respect... yet, we don't seem to be part of that study. From a cursory glance at the paper the reason for omitting countries seems to be that data were not available, which I find hard to believe. Denmark, Iceland and Finland were also omitted. You do have cheaper and faster broadband, which might well tip the balance :)

Re: Equal rights

[__aaltlg1547]

Note, that's significantly higher than the total fertility rates in a number of other countries:

• Singapore - 0.79
• Taiwan - 1.11
• Hong Kong - 1.11
• South Korea - 1.24
• Whole bunch of former Communist countries - 1.24 - 1.4
• Japan - 1.39
• Italy - 1.41
• Spain - 1.48
• China - 1.55
• Russia - 1.61
• USA - 2.06

Top of the heap: Niger @ 7.03. It's going to get crowded over there.

Re:Equal rights

[joocemann]

The business owes me toiletpaper, then. Fair is fair.

I stopped reading after your selfish sentence that said 'I choose not to'.

Get out of my species -- rather, you already have, so please go die like a fly.

Re:Equal rights

[Man Eating Duck]

Paid time off is not a right. I get bewildered by people claiming all kinds of erroneous rights.

It seems that you would be quite bewildered in any other country than the glorious U.S of A, since paid maternity leave seems to be regarded as some kind of "right" in the rest of the world. From a quick glance through those tables it seems that you are residing in sole splendor at the very bottom of the list, as the only nation with zero days paid maternity leave by legislation. You are beat by such paragons of societal advance as Ethiopia, Nigeria and Myanmar. Congratulations.

Re:Equal rights

[j-beda]

And a big WHoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooSH to you, fucking moron.

When I first read it I thought you said "fucking Mormon", which was kind of clever what with the "fucking" part in regards to comments about birthrates.

I certainly understood the original poster's reference to various groups having some theological and social pressures towards higher reproduction rates. But none of them comes close to "once per year".
Mormons seem to be about 3.0 births per child - http://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/mormon-fertility-in-the-21st-century/ pretty big but not insane.

Re:Equal rights

[flandre]

oh it's more like... i don't doubt that there are good, caring fathers out there who want to spend time with their children. it's just that in my experiences, they are so rare that it casts doubt on the male motive for wanting 'equality' - remember, less than a century ago, men had been oppressing women for years and years.

anyways, my own father was never present, and my mother ended up filling both parental roles. i think that men underestimate the experience of pregnancy because they don't have to go through it themselves, and a part of me thinks that men wanting the same amount of time off as women does not necessarily equate to wanting to use that time towards bonding with their child. but there's always the exception, and my viewpoint will likely change when i meet and see more fathers being motherly/nurturing to their kids.

don't get me wrong, i'm no bigot or feminist, and double standards annoy me too. i hate it when men will drop everything they're doing just to be the perfect gentleman for a woman, while in the process treating other men as if they don't exist / like shit.

Re:Equal rights

[atriusofbricia]

So you're saying that the process of giving birth is equally traumatic, both physically and mentally, to both mother and father, so they should both get the same amount of time off?

I'm saying one cannot call for equal rights and gender blind policies and then immediately turn around and call for unequal rights and gender based policies. It is either one or the other as they are mutually exclusive. It's the same really with 'affirmative action' or anything else which seeks to determine policy based race, sex, creed, sexual preference or anything related. Either you want a world in which those things do not matter as much as the character of the person or you don't. Either everyone competes and is treated equally regardless of those factors or they are not.

One can argue all they want that child birth is harder on women and that they therefore should get more time off, but if they do then they never ever get to argue again for 'equal rights' or 'gender blind policies'. Further, when that logic is accepted don't be shocked when someone comes along and says that they should be able to refuse to hire women, because they're women, because they'll end up costing them more money and harming productivity.

Re:Equal rights

[Maxo-Texas]

No, I was not one of the male managers.

The retained male managers were demoted.

The entire situation actually worked out great for me. I was going to retire on January 2nd and instead got laid off on December 31st with severance. I can even claim unemployment which I couldn't if I had retired.

Listen- facts are facts and fair is fair. Nothing I said in the above post was untrue.

If Yahoo is going to discriminate- then anyone can discriminate on any basis.

Fathers should get the same rights as mothers to time off.

Re:Equal rights

[Maxo-Texas]

Well, this shot straight to zero but apparently has been modded back up. I don't think it will stay modded up but we'll see.

Nothing I said in the parent post is untrue.

I'm very pro equality.

If women get off 16 weeks, then men should get off 16 weeks.

I can see some unavoidable inequality-- men don't need a nursing room for example. Women DO require more expensive restroom facilities. That's not an argument that we should pay them less. It's an argument that despite the extra expense, we still pay the same for the same job and work.

Taking a few years off to raise a baby is something entirely different. In that case, anyone who takes a few years off from work should be paid similarly with respect to the work gap and reduced skill set.

And-- and I mean this sincerely-- if women can go around wearing lose shirts unbuttoned below the nipple- then men should be equally free to wear revealing clothing-- or neither gender should.

If there was anything I am genuinely PISSED off about- it was the "Men have to work weekends and nights while the women dont' but then the men have to come in monday for the 9am meeting.". I lived that one and it was extremely unfair.

But I've retired-- I'm out of the situation. Now I can relax, play games, travel, and post on random internet boards. Perhaps I'll take up painting.

The proposed 16 weeks off for females is unequal. If we allow that kind of inequality then we can justify ANY kind of inequality.

Re:Equal rights

[Uberbah]

If I call Dick Cheney a pacifist Quaker, does that make him one? Obama's less of a socialist than Ronald Reagan.

Re:Equal rights

[Hatta]

There is a proven biological drive pertaining to procreation

What sort of experiment would prove that?

And your assertion that parents are not as happy as childless is totally subjective

No, that's what the actual sociological research indicates. Having fewer demands on your time, and less to worry about makes people happier. Look it up some time.

there is no parent group doing the reverse and attacking childfree types. The need to criticize and attack others is a typical sign of a lack of happiness with one's own existence

Again, look at the post to which I was replying. All I said is that I wanted equal treatment, and I was attacked. Much more viciously than I replied, BTW.

I can confirm quite definitively that I'm immeasurably happier with two beautiful children in my life than I was prior to their births.

There's a strong selective advantage to make you believe that, but that doesn't make it true. There is a difference between believing you are happier and actually being happier, BTW.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

You are rationalizing. You don't see nurturing men because you don't want to see men as nurturing. That kind of attitude creates situation where men have to appear less nurturing for the safety of their children. I am literally posting this from the maternity ward of a hospital. What I can tell you is that even before a child is born, men are treated like crap when it comes to children. They are insulted. They are sidelined. They are abused.
Being the completely supportive father, I have been told "Men are childish". "She should hit you like I hit my husband". "I don't trust dads." My child has been told "I know, you would rather be with mom." These are just the overt sexist comments that are made in the maternity ward to men. There is a non-stop subtle indications that men are only being tentatively tolerated. I feel very confident if I were to confront any of the people about their disrespect, they would have people with guns first "ask" me to leave, and if that failed, physically remove me from my child. They would feel completely justified in their actions because they have the same attitude that you have. The disrespect and denial of men starts before the children are born and extends every day through the child's life.

Your comment is more of the same. No doubt that the sexist, disrespectful and abusive women working in this maternity ward believe that they aren't doing anything wrong. No doubt they believe they are just recognizing how inferior men really are. But then, that is how most people think when they abuse other groups. Very few people look at themselves and say "I am a horrible person for the way I treat that group, but I'm going to do it anyway." The fact that you don't see nurturing fathers says more about you than it does men.

Re:Equal rights

[Hognoxious]

poor people in poor countries are sometimes forced by circumstance to be back on the job in a week

Poor people in poor countries die a lot.

Re:Equal rights

[Hognoxious]

How does a day or two plus a week or two equate to less than a week?

Re:Equal rights

[viperidaenz]

Look luck feeding an infant with that.

Re:Equal rights

[flandre]

you made a good point - i don't see men as nuturing because i have not seen many men being nuturing. i think that if there were more men like you who demonstrate their desires to be caring fathers, then there wouldn't be so many people like me who were only raised by a single mom and grow up with such a negative perspective of male parents, who go on to share their opinion that women are better parents than men. it's an issue that will change very slowly.

though, i don't really understand how men 'have to appear less nurturing for the safety of their children' - could you explain this?

and i apologize if i insulted you with my comments.

Re:Equal rights

[Belial6]

An example of "for the safety of their children" are things like the hospital I am in right now. If someone spoke to a child's mother the way they have been speaking to me, the mother could give them the what for. Anyone hearing it would call the mother "caring". They would say, "You don't mess with a mother's child", and pat her on the back for being "protective" and "nurturing". The same behavior by a man is likely to lead to the police. So, as a man, you have to just take the abuse and appear to be less protective and nurturing.

Of course, that doesn't even start into situations like divorce where men just get the shaft completely. My 9 yo son has two friends (10 and 14) who are currently being held as political prisoners in the state of Illinois because of the states discrimination of men. Illinois just assumes that women are "more nurturing", so when the three brothers who live with their caring and nurturing father, go on their once a year visitation, the Illinois courts assign her custody. Since Mom's house is violent and dysfunctional, the cops end up being called. The three boys end up in jail with no charges pressed because they had committed no crime other than wanting to go home. The state of Illinois takes the stance that any child that wants to go home to their father when they cans stay and be beaten by their mother must be mentally ill. That is when the 're-education' starts. They dope them up. The keep them incarcerated. The 10 yo get physically tortured. The oldest (16) escaped because his father had a laptop and credit cards smuggled to him and the 16 year old signed up and attended Stanford remotely. Part of the Stanford program required 2 weeks be spent on campus. Luckily for the oldest, preventing him from attending college would have been ugly enough that the state of Illinois let him leave the state and thus he could get back home to CA. It has been 9 months that the two remaining brothers have been held against their will, being drugged and tortured because of people who "don't see men as nurturing".

Then there is the question of what being nurturing really means. Is the father who gives up trips to the park to put food on the child's table less nurturing than the mother who will let the child go hungry so that she can spend time with the child? I would say not. It is common for people to confuse selfish women as nurturing because they use children as a tool to get what they want.

One last point. In many states, including here in CA, special laws were enacted to make being a dead beat mom legal. The reason? To prevent the frequent murders that women were committing to avoid caring for their children.

Do I believe that women are less nurturing than men? Not really. I think that our social-political environment is so screwed up that any biological differences are lost as noise.

Re:Equal rights

[nobodie]

you obviously have no children ... and probably little opportunity for them as well

Re:Equal rights

[Wycliffe]

>
> one week for men and 3 months for women sounds "fair" to me.
>

This logic is the same logic that public schools used to pay men more than women. The logic was that men were the "breadwinners"
so they needed to be paid more than women but single men still got the "breadwinner" bonus while single moms and women who were
the sole providers still didn't. If you want it to be "fair" then it shouldn't be based on gender but based on what the person does not
what the "average" person supposably does.

Re: Equal rights

[Wycliffe]

>
>It really only works in small countries where people are much more politically involved and have a larger stake in the country as a whole
>

If our country was ran like the founding fathers intended and states operated more like small countries and the federal government
was restricted to a small set of limited powers, we could experiment with that here on a state by state basis and might actually
figure out something that works versus large uncontrolled "too big to fail" federal experiments.

"...one smells less"

[bradgoodman]

Which one is that?

Re:"...one smells less"

[stewsters]

At Yahoo, a company with legacy code dating back to 1995, I think you can guess.

Re:"...one smells less"

[HaZardman27]

One smells worse in the short term, but the other will keep stinking for years.

Re:"...one smells less"

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Yup. I'll take a huge diaperfull of steamy pungent poo over server-side Perl every time.

Re:"...one smells less"

[FacePlant]

Ten yard penalty for gratuitous Perl bashing.

Second down and 20.

Re:"...one smells less"

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Perl bashing is never gratuitous.

Re:"...one smells less"

[gman003]

Writing Perl is easy. It's reading it that's the hard part.

Re:"...one smells less"

[Hobadee]

Perl or Bash? Make up your mind!

Re:"...one smells less"

[Dan667]

you can write illegible code in any language and people do.

Re:"...one smells less"

[hondo77]

You can work with a more senior developer to help fix that problem of yours.

Re:"...one smells less"

[Roadstar]

Which one is that?

I had my parental leave a little less than a year ago. While at first returning to work seemed like a nice break from everything related to taking care of a pre-term infant, a nasty issue related to SharePoint was all it took to make diaper changes feel not bad at all actually. In those cases, at least someone is happy at the end and general happiness is restored a whole lot quicker.

Re:"...one smells less"

[danlip]

you can write illegible code in any language and people do.

Yes, but you can also write legible code in most languages, the exception being Perl.

(I love Perl for quick one-off scripts to do text manipulation but I would hate to have to use it for any big project that has to be maintained)

Re:"...one smells less"

[Algae_94]

WTF? It's a loss of down penalty too?

Re:"...one smells less"

[ukemike]

Baby poop from healthy babies that are feeding exclusively on breast milk doesn't smell very much at all.

Re:"...one smells less"

[Man Eating Duck]

Perl or Bash? Make up your mind!

Server-side Bash? Don't give people ideas...

Sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

They shouldn't be so sexist about it. They should offer 16 weeks to any human employee that gestates a fetus, and 8 weeks to the partner of the gestater. That way it's not sexist.

Re:Sexist

[Chris Mattern]

Arnold Schwarzenegger agrees.

Re:Sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

And a hearty "screw you" to anybody who adopts, I guess.

Re:Sexist

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That seems like a sensible bit of future-proofing. If memory serves, somebody (female) is so-far-successfully spawning a fetus using a donor uterus as we speak. I assume that the engineering challenges of hacking a uterus into a male would be considerably greater, but likely not impossible.

In that vein, what's the leave policy for people who outsource gestation to 3rd-party managed uterine providers? Those are surprisingly cheap in low-wage countries already, and will probably be cheaper still once we figure out how to hack some flavor of large livestock into an efficient batch-gestation platform(Something like a cow is a pretty big animal, it could probably support 4-6 fetuses in parallel, each with its own little gestation nodule...).

Re:Sexist

[Nethead]

And the kid gets to brag that he was born in the cloud.

I can now see some wacko religious cult leaders ordering up kids by the hundreds to generate more followers, all with the same DNA.

Re:Sexist

[godrik]

Actually I think the problem is that it is called "maternity leave". If you called it "gestation leave" and allow to take it anytime within 3 months of the delivery data (before or after). Then I am sure no-one will have a problem with that.

Re:Sexist

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Goodbye baby Banting; you'll soon need decanting."

Re:Sexist

[i kan reed]

Close... I'd say gestater, and new parents. If you adopt, you should have leave to spend time with your child, but you don't need 8 weeks to handle the last 2 months of pregnancy.

Re:Sexist

[boaworm]

How would that work for surrogate mothers? Since they are the one who "gestates a fetus", they would get the 16 weeks. But I somehow doubt they will.

Re:Sexist

[Belial6]

No kidding. They should also make hiring practices that give preference to humans that can guarantee they won't gestate a fetus too, right? Because that wouldn't be sexist? Making excuses for your misandry doesn't make it any less sexist.

Yes, well..

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the diapers that smell less, right?

Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[CanHasDIY]

At least, that's how Corporate America seems intent on treating male parents.

Society, too - basically, if you have a penis, you are considered tertiary to the rearing of a child. Look at custody battles - The mother is given the benefit of the doubt almost without exception. Case in point, my ex-sister-in-law has documented psychosis, multiple suicide attempts on her record, and a known history of violent behavior, whereas my brothers record is sterling; yet she was given damn near full custody of my nephew anyway.

One has to wonder if the unbalanced treatment of fathers in our society has anything to do with the number of them who bail on their spouses/offspring...

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[i kan reed]

If I had to place a guess, I'd guess it goes all the way back to the Roman republic. There was a legal principle there called "Mater semper certa est," which much like in Judaism, rulings about uncertain ancestry were determined strictly by the mothers. I believe the concept also spilled over to divorce, but divorce wasn't really common until the modern era, so it's possible we're still working all this out.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[Jason Levine]

You see this reflected in sitcoms too. The dad is the idiot who couldn't be trusted to look after the kid if the mom set everything up beforehand and just needed an adult to keep the child from climbing on the counter and getting to the knives. The mom is the all-knowing, ever-right parent who suffers through the dad's antics and who could keep the children occupied (safely, mind you) if all she had on hand was a crayon stub and a diaper.

Back in real-life, I've heard of dads harassed because they were taking pictures of their kids in public because a man taking a photo of a kid = pervert but a woman taking a photo of a kid = loving mother. Dads will be patronized about being "babysitters" for their kids (what I'm doing is PARENTING, not BABYSITTING). Stay at home dads are still looked at as being "less than" for not going to the office to work.

In general, dads are considered minor parenting figures. It's alright if they're around, but the mom is the official parent and knows much more by virtue of being female. The irony is, if dads were given more respect as parents, more would take on more parenting responsibilities, more would stay home with their kids, and staying home with the kids would finally cease to be viewed as "women's work." In other words, increasing dads' rights and respect helps dads and moms.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[briancox2]

At least we now know which animals on the farm are more equal than others.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[KeithJM]

Well, your brother married someone with documented psychosis, multiple suicide attempts and a known history of violent behavior. Can you really be sure his judgement is that much better?

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[Tailhook]

At least, that's how Corporate America seems intent on treating male parents.

Until very recently Government America used males (exclusively) for cannon fodder about once a generation. Be thankful the worse you'll ever face is a paid-leave time off disparity.

Or don't. Farming internet karma with 10+ poasts a day (!) when you're supposed to be actually earning your salary is much more fun.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[GodfatherofSoul]

You'll be more than a sperm donor if you ever get divorced. That's when the courts really start to show appreciation for your role as financier for your ex and her kids.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[unixisc]

Look at custody battles - The mother is given the benefit of the doubt almost without exception. Case in point, my ex-sister-in-law has documented psychosis, multiple suicide attempts on her record, and a known history of violent behavior, whereas my brothers record is sterling; yet she was given damn near full custody of my nephew anyway....

Your brother could wait until your nephew is 16, at which point, the latter ceases to be a minor, and can decide who he wants to live w/. Once he has had enough of her crap and can make his own call, he'd probably move in w/ your bro.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[CanHasDIY]

In general, dads are considered minor parenting figures. It's alright if they're around, but the mom is the official parent and knows much more by virtue of being female.

That is, until he's not around.

Then he's "that deadbeat loser who couldn't handle the responsibility he brought upon himself."

Not that I'm defending fathers who abandon their families, just pointing out yet another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" aspect of the issue.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[CanHasDIY]

That all came after; pretty sure she was just looking for a sugar daddy, and once she realized he wasn't it, Mrs. Hyde came out to play.

Can you really be sure his judgement is that much better?

You ever been in love, or thought you were? "Best judgement" doesn't typically describe folks in that state of mind.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[CanHasDIY]

Until very recently Government America used males (exclusively) for cannon fodder about once a generation. Be thankful the worse you'll ever face is a paid-leave time off disparity.

Don't speak too soon, I'm still eligible for selective service.

Or don't. Farming internet karma with 10+ poasts a day (!) when you're supposed to be actually earning your salary is much more fun.

What evidence have you that I don't? None? Alright then; go sit on it, asshat.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[CanHasDIY]

Another damn fine reason not to have any!

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[CannonballHead]

All this, and yet we all bemoan the hardships of being a "single mom and having to work three jobs while going to school and taking care of my infant baby." For anyone in that situation, I am sure it is hard, and I'm sorry about it, and I wish it did not happen, and I wish guys took more responsibility; that's not the point ... the point is that we as a culture make fun of guys being dads (and who needs a dad anyways?! ... well, until you find out how important it is, later in life), yet complain when they aren't being dads.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in real-life, I've heard of dads harassed because they were taking pictures of their kids in public because a man taking a photo of a kid = pervert but a woman taking a photo of a kid = loving mother.

I had a bad case of this and I'm not even a dad. I'm 10 years older than my little sister and look a bit older than I am. I used to take her to the park often. One time I had a camera on hand and began snapping photos of her playing on various things. About a half hour passes and I'm approached by a police officer asking what I'm up to. I tell the man I'm here with my little sister. He asks me about my camera. I tell him I've been taking her picture. Then he asks me if he can see the pictures. I ask him what business he has and called my sister over to explain to him who I was.

Apparently some random mother thought I was a predator and called the cops on me.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[Garridan]

Wait, what? Why shouldn't children play with knives? The earlier, the better. Goddamn helecopter parenting...

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[pbhj]

Preach it brother.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[yndrd1984]

If I had to place a guess, I'd guess it goes all the way back to the Roman republic. There was a legal principle there called "Mater semper certa est," which much like in Judaism, rulings about uncertain ancestry were determined strictly by the mothers.

While that's true for some situations (like unmarried mothers, or questions of ethnicity (e.g. Jewishness)) for the most part Roman and English common law favored fathers when it came to actual custody, because of the stigma against bastards and the trade inherent in the marital contract (support in return for children). In a divorce the father kept the children because he'd 'paid' for them with food and shelter, and the mother got compensated for producing those children in the form of alimony. Not great, but everyone got something they needed - he got kids that are probably his, she got money that was hard for women to earn, and the kids had a father whose name they could take and thus be accepted into 'proper' society.

The move to favoring custody for the mother and visitation for the father didn't take hold until the 19th century, and then in the late 1970s joint custody become more common. Now there's a move to "parenting schedules" where there's no strict distinction (thank goodness).

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[bogjobber]

The worst was Ann Romney. At the RNC last year, she got a fucking standing ovation for saying that women work harder for their families than men.

Re:Sperm Donors, That's All We Are

[bratwiz]

Yeah, that'd be good-- after he's already nearly grown and he misses out on all the fun kid stuff.

Saskatchewan

[Nos.]

Here, the mother gets 17 weeks, and there are an additional 35 weeks that can be split up however the parents decide. There are some requirements (you have to be eligible for Employment Insurance - worked a minimum number of hours, your income must be significantly reduced, etc.).

Sweden, 1 year

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden has 1 year paid parental leave, covered by the government, with a bonus if split close to even between parents.

Move here. It is nice. Well... except for the moose.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[Stargoat]

A MÃÃse once bit my sister ...

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[Anonymous Coward]

Those responsible for the maternity leave discrimination have been sacked.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[Cassini2]

In Canada, taking one year off at reduced salary with the birth of a child is pretty normal. I think school teachers even have a way to take two or three years off, some of which are without pay. With certain limitations, you even have the right to return to your old job when it is all over.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[jonathanjespersen]

Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[JaredOfEuropa]

Nice. Here in (self proclaimed) ultra-modern and progressive NL, the man gets 2 whole days... That's it. IIRC, the woman gets 16 weeks.

While it's good to give some time that the man and woman can split between them, 1 year total does seem a bit excessive. The government doesn't really cover this as they have no money of their own, all they do is redistribute our money.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[phoenix_rizzen]

Canada does to.

There's a total of 52 weeks parental leave; the first 8-ish have to be taken by the mother (which makes sense as she's just leaving the hospital), but the rest can be taken by either parent. It's only 60% of your normal pay, but it's better than nothing. And a lot of companies provide top-up benefits (we got 13 weeks top-up to 100%).

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[HornWumpus]

Don't let the door hit you on the ass. But seeing as you were studying sociology they likely don't want you. They want people with useful skills.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[Troed]

It's 480 days, not [just] a year.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[c_sd_m]

Canadian mat leave is about 60% of your normal pay but only up to the EI insurable limit, so it can't be more than 60% of about 45k. You only get it if you and your employer have been paying employment insurance (EI) premiums, so there's no benefit if you don't have an income. Employer top-ups, if you have one, generally don't cover more than a few months.

I have been seeing a lot more fathers taking a month or two lately, including one older EE who took the last 2 months while his wife went back to work. The most common scenario seems to be for the father to take the first month or two off along with the mother.

Re:Sweden, 1 year

[Stargoat]

Mynd you, mÃÃse bites Kan be pretty nasti.

Our church did the same thing

[swm]

I was on the personnel committee at our church.

We grant 2 weeks parental leave to any employee who becomes the parent of a child (natural or adopted)
and 2 additional weeks to any employee who bears a child.

Women on the committee who had borne children did not think this was excessive.

What about lesbian couples?

[Nadaka]

Do they each get 16 weeks?

Re:What about lesbian couples?

[Swampash]

The one who squeezes the watermelon-sized thing out through the lemon-sized opening gets more leave than the one who doesn't.

Re:What about lesbian couples?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Which would be neither, unless one of the lesbians is an elephant.

Re:What about lesbian couples?

[skine]

That might make sense if the men only got 15 weeks, and that didn't start until one week after the birth.

Re:What about lesbian couples?

[Hentes]

No, because they can't procreate.

How men could use this

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

1) To wife: "If all goes well I'm taking a week off after the baby comes."
2) To work: "I'm taking all eight weeks off."
3) Enjoy seven weeks of 8-5 freedom.

Re:How men could use this

[Infiniti2000]

A good way to improve the golf game.

Re:How men could use this

[i kan reed]

Can we make sure xxxJonBoyxxx never reproduces? Not just for the gene-pool's sake, but for his children.

Barbarian.

Re:How men could use this

[HornWumpus]

Also: Report no raise when you get a good one. Use the money for important stuff.

Re:How men could use this

[Wookact]

Judging a person based upon a joke?

Can we please make sure i kan reed never reproduces, we don't want them to pass on a complete lack of a sense of humor.

Re:How men could use this

[flimflammer]

Sure, as long as you and your entire family tree also agrees to be sterilized in whatever fashion suits their individual gender.

As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 years

[t0qer]

Nothing motivates you better to go back to the grind of corporate work than 7 years of shitty diapers. I love my kids, but 7 years of diapers was enough. Much happier with a regular paycheck and a nanny.

Why shouldn't dad's get equal treatment?

[Anonymous Coward]

This inequality just furthers the discrimination between the sexes in our society. By giving men less leave, they are saying that men are less inportant and/or less effective when it comes to childcare. What if the mom doesn't get any leave at all? What if mom wants a break after 8 weeks? Or what if the mom completely abandoned the kid to the father? I see no excuse for this.

Re:Why shouldn't dad's get equal treatment?

[mysidia]

And just why do you think that you need to breast feed a child?

The mother needs to breast feed the child. The child doesn't need to be best fed; this is not a need of the child, a physical and emotional need of the mother.

As a stay-at-home dad and former IT worker

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never, ever, give up the time I've spent with my child for a job. Your children are only ever that age once. To miss that time with them would be far greater loss than anything else.

Re:As a stay-at-home dad and former IT worker

[bratwiz]

I absolutely agree. I pushed hard when my kids were born-- both with my wife and my job. My wife and I split up the parenting duties and my job agreed to let me take several weeks off and then go on a 4-day schedule so I had more time to be at home with my kids while they were little. Fast forward to today and me and my kids are still ultra-close. We do almost everything together. I walk them to and from school nearly every day-- (I drive them when its raining). Which is not to say that my wife is not in the picture, she definitely is, and we split up the parenting decisions and duties between us. I've changed more than my share of dirty diapers, as has she. Any company who tells me I can't spend time with my kids can go pound sand. There are always more jobs, but your kids are only kids once.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Literaphile]

Nothing motivates you better to go back to the grind of corporate work than 7 years of shitty diapers. I love my kids, but 7 years of diapers was enough. Much happier with a regular paycheck and a nanny.

Maybe your problem was leaving your kids in diapers until they were 7?

Real motivation here

[bradgoodman]

Hmmm...A head scratchier

Let's try to figure this one out...

The new CEO - a woman who just gave birth (or is about to?) - and has publicly cracked-down on people putting time in at home comes up with a Maternity/Paternity policy....

Re:Real motivation here

[Jason Levine]

She already had her child back in September. This led to a big controversy. She had her baby, worked from home for awhile, and then (in February) decided that no other employee should be allowed to work from home.

Re:Real motivation here

[Chowderbags]

Marissa Mayer put a private nursery right next to her office. Not exactly a luxury afforded company wide.

Re:Real motivation here

[ebno-10db]

After a baby is born, the dad is less functional at work for the first 2 months or so. Sleep time is hard, and adjustments at home mean he's got other things on his mind.

You've never been the father of a newborn, have you? You go to work so that you can get some sleep.

Re:Real motivation here

[Lynchenstein]

She realized that NO mom can really get much work done when constantly tired, permanently attached to said baby via the boob, or dealing with colic. So, may as well have the moms get some paid time off instead of pretending to do work and getting paid anyway. Makes sense to me. Dads are still getting the raw deal, but they may welcome the relief.

Re:Real motivation here

[bratwiz]

Yes, she's a first-class bitch.

Canada!~

[Literaphile]

Happy to live in Canada where both men and women can take 35 weeks of parental leave, covered by employment insurance.

Re:Canada!~

[ehud42]

Just a note that women - or more specifically "the biological mother who is unable to work because she is pregnant or has recently given birth" can receive an additional 15 weeks of Maternity leave.

Re:Canada!~

[p43751]

I see Your Canada and raise You a Norway.
47 weeks(100% pay) or 57 Weeks(80% pay).
Dad HAS to use 12 of the weeks or they will be lost.
Apart from a small part around birth, all weeks can be used by either mum or dad.

Re:Canada!~

[wisnoskij]

Ya, I know someone who collected wages for years and just had to go to work for a few weeks inbetwean, In some cases maternity leave can be as long as 52 weeks here (Canada).

Re:Canada!~

[Literaphile]

I saw a TV special about social programs in Norway once. Believe me, I'm jealous!

Re:Canada!~

[DogDude]

That may be nice for you. But I can say that as a small business owner, it's untenable. My business is expanding rapidly in the US, but it'll stop at the Candadian border for this reason and similar ones.

Re:Canada!~

[Lynchenstein]

There is real benefit to the child and parent for bonding with the baby during the early months (and years). Why bother to have a child if you're so eager to get back to work and not spend time with it? I get that you're pouring on the sarcasm (I'm reaaaallly hoping you are) but why not have a few well adjusted happy kids and parents to try to balance out all the unwanted/neglected wards of the state?

Re:Canada!~

[Lynchenstein]

You realize that for dads to get maternity leave, they would have to be mothers, right?

Re:Canada!~

[Literaphile]

Great! More business for Canadian owners then. Everyone wins.

Re:Canada!~

[Microlith]

Nobody knows who the fathers are, but the babies will be taken care of by their rich uncle, Uncle Sam (aka taxpayers). Free food, free medical care, free cell phone, free housing, free utilities, etc. ad nauseum.

I know, right? If they can't afford to pay for their own medical care, food, and housing they should just do without!

My belief is that anything over a month for mother or father is too much.

Get back on the treadmill! Your corporate masters demand your servitude!

Re:Canada!~

[Sandman1971]

You require to work at least 6 months (37.5 hr work week) between maternity leaves in Canada. Since a good portion of maternity leave is EI, you have to meet the minimum amount of hours worked to be able to claim it, regardless of the cause. If memory serves me right the number of required hours is around 900 hours. A little more than just a few weeks.

If you're employer tops you up on top of EI, they have their own guidelines too. I know in the case of my wife's employer, she must work at least a year to be able to get her maternity leave topped up again.

Re:Canada!~

[wisnoskij]

OK. I do not know much about the details. But I imagine one you come back from a long extended maternity leave pregnant and indeed close to term, that does not mean that maternity leave will make you get an abortion or give you absolutely no time off when you have the baby.

Re:Canada!~

[Sandman1971]

The mother to be of course wouldn't be forced to have an abortion, nor would she not be given any time off. What it does mean however is that she can't collect any EI benefits and probably no income topoff from her employer, so you get 0$ for the time she is off. It would end up being an unpaid leave of absence.

There's really no such thing as a 'maternity leave payment'. It's Employment Insurance, but instead of collecting it because you got laid off, you're collecting it because you gave birth. And by law, your employer must have the same or similar position available to you upon your return.

This exact thing happened to my wife's acquaintances. She ended up pregnant 3 months after the birth of her first child. It was pretty tough for them for a couple of years.

Re:Canada!~

[Man Eating Duck]

A few years ago, when I was as inclined to become a father as I was to swimming the Atlantic Ocean, I still gladly paid the Norwegian taxes supporting this (amongst a host of other societal boons). As a recent father of twins, I am immensely glad that I live in a society which provides us with paid leave to care for our kids.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[avandesande]

Gross! You're supposed to change them at least once a day, aren't you?

Give me the diapers...

[macbeth66]

After the past week of looking at some really stinky code around here, I would cherish diapers.

a discrimination case waiting to happen

[KernelMuncher]

American federal law prohibits policies that discriminate based on sex. By giving different leave times according to the person's gender, Yahoo is in violation. They could be subject to EEOC fines or even sued in civil court by any aggrieved parties (meaning the dads).

Re:a discrimination case waiting to happen

[faedle]

Except the policy doesn't technically discriminate on the basis of sex. A woman that does not bear a child only gets 8 weeks, just like a man. The additional 8 weeks is for recovery from pregnancy.

Now, it would be interesting if a FtoM (that is, somebody who was born female but happens to be considered "male" by society) happened to get pregnant if they would get 16 weeks. My guess is that they would, precisely because of this distinction.

Re:a discrimination case waiting to happen

[whoever57]

Except the policy doesn't technically discriminate on the basis of sex. A woman that does not bear a child only gets 8 weeks, just like a man. The additional 8 weeks is for recovery from pregnancy.

Unless Yahoo can show that 8 weeks recovery time is normal, then this is discrimination. Making up a bogus rule that has a discriminatory effect does not get you a pass on discrimination laws.

Re:a discrimination case waiting to happen

[meustrus]

He/she is about culture, not biology. Unless you're in a biology class, I suppose...

...but if you're talking about plugs in an electronics class...?

Re:a discrimination case waiting to happen

[mysidia]

or even sued in civil court by any aggrieved parties (meaning the dads).

Except a portion of the additional leave can be attributed to medical reasons.

And that item would not look good on someone's resume "Yahoo... xxxx - 2013" ... Fired due to occasional tardiness after telecommuting ban and excessive reports of bugs in my code (coindientally... very shortly after suing employer for discrimination, over paternity leave duration matter.")

Not many people would be doing that.

Re:a discrimination case waiting to happen

[giorgist]

No problem, so lets change the wording ... For any citizen in a relationship that bares the child ... 12 weeks. The partner ... 6 weeks.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Sez Zero]

Maybe your problem was leaving your kids in diapers until they were 7?

Unless he had multiples, they don't all arrive at the same time. Sometimes just as soon as one is out of diapers, another one pops out.

I loved my parental leave

[grub]

When our daughter was born I took a month off to be home. Coffee and sleep deprivation was the order of the day, but I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Against the grain argument

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, the fathers (typically) aren't the ones who *had* the baby and have to recover, physically, chemically, emotionally, mentally, or have to breastfeed. An AC above posted the following:

"They should offer 16 weeks to any human employee that gestates a fetus, and 8 weeks to the partner of the gestater. That way it's not sexist."

This is actually a pretty valid argument even though it was meant as a joke. Seriously. Female to male transgender fathers can have babies too. What would they do in this case? Any man that can have a baby can have 16 weeks off. Sounds logical to me.

Re:Against the grain argument

[Jiro]

There are light-skinned blacks and tanned whites--at least as many as transsexuals who can have babies--but basing benefits on skin color would still be racist and I'm pretty sure a court would rule that way. Courts aren't stupid.

Re:Homosexual couples?

[cc1984_]

This gives the shaft to homosexual couples where there is no mom to take 16 weeks leave with the child.

The child could have two mums although I guess if that's the case however there would be no shaft.

Grow a pair of tits

[Anonymous Coward]

A newborn needs to be with his mother - and nursing on mother's milk.

I agree 100% with you but in corporate America the next best thing is to have the mother have more time than the father since we are stuck with this treatment.

And if Americans weren't so infantile about breast feeding, the mother should be able to bring her baby to work and nurse them there.

I don't see what the big deal is about mothers nursing their babies. We Americans are so fucked up when it comes to things regarding reproduction, sexuality and other things regarding family.

But yet, we have NO problem letting our kids see someone's brains get blown out in the movies or in video games.

Re:Grow a pair of tits

[Belial6]

A newborn needs to be with his mother - and nursing on mother's milk.

My perfectly healthy son would be evidence to the contrary. Comments like yours are spouted regularly, but they are simply BS. We can debate whether there is benefit to breast feeding or not, but once you say "Needs" you lose credibility.

Missing the point...

[grmoc]

Ensuring that men have and *must take* as much leave when a child is born ends up improving equality *for women*, as now employers have no productivity basis for discriminating against women w.r.t. having kids.

Re:Missing the point...

[HornWumpus]

Except the significant % of women that never come back from required maternity leave.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[pnutjam]

If you send them to a boarding school too, you only have to see them a couple times a year.

Diapers Smell Less?

[Jason Levine]

Would that be the diapers that smell less? Diapers don't typically stink until the baby starts eating solid food. This happens at around the 4 to 6 month mark. So if dads got 16 weeks of paternity time, they would head back to work just when the diapers began to smell.

Yes, I'm a dad (two wonderful boys) and yes I changed my fair share of diapers when they were younger. (However, I'm glad that we're out of the diaper phase for good now!) Unfortunately, I didn't even get 8 weeks of paternity leave. I took a week off when my first son was born (out of my own vacation days) and then took a couple of days off when my second was born. I would have loved to have spent 8 weeks pampering my wife and helping her with our newborn.

Re:Diapers Smell Less?

[HornWumpus]

Admit it. Your wife reads your /. posts.

Re:Diapers Smell Less?

[pbhj]

IME formula fed babies diapers are stinkier. When they hit solids though, man-oh-man, took 2 weeks before I decided we had to start potty training! (It worked to some extent too).

Re:Diapers Smell Less?

[quenda]

Mod parent informative. Breast-fed baby poo smells very nice. Hold off on solids as long as you can :)
Some of the surprises in parenthood are actually pleasant.

Re:Diapers Smell Less?

[Jason Levine]

It's fine as long as it stays in the diaper. However, beware of the explosive poops. My oldest had these and was able to rocket his (semi)solid waste about six feet away. I would've been impressed had I not been diving out of the way.

Re:Bad incentive effects

[HornWumpus]

The bad incentives are based on biology. Only women can become pregnant (thank Bob). Nothing can change this fact.

We're supposed to ignore it.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[kthreadd]

Ehm, some people get more than one children. Then the time can just add up.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Jason Levine]

Mentioning "changing diapers" still brings up flashbacks to what my wife and I call The Infamous Seven Diaper Diaper Change. *shudders* The horror! The horror!

Re:Yes but see

[hedwards]

No, men don't get paid more than women. I've yet to see a study that comes to that conclusion without gerrymandering around the other aspects of compensation and productivity. And the whole idea doesn't make any sense anyways. If women really were working for 80 cents on the dollar for what men are being paid, what's your explanation for why companies aren't preferentially hiring women? Because that would be the cost effective decision for the business.

The answer is that the payrate is only one aspect of compensation. Things like maternity leave and preferences with regards to benefits are another dimension that needs to be considered. Not to mention the willingness to put up with crap that the companies expect of their employees.

There may be a compensation gap, but without actually looking at the whole cost of employing an employee and the productivity you can't say with any reasonable certainty that women are being under paid.

so what if

[hypergreatthing]

I can't have children and i adopt. Am i afforded a few weeks to settle my family life and get time off?
How is this even fair?
Maybe if companies just gave enough time off for people to budget taking off for children without having to deal with m/paternity leave this wouldn't be an issue.

I'm not sexist...

[FuzzNugget]

...and I'm a guy, but even I'll say it: don't you think that the mothers have just a little more to deal with? I mean, they just pushed a 3-5kg or so sack of flesh out of an an orifice in their body, they're spending any number of hours day and night feeding the thing, they're bodies are readjusting from various hormonal changes...

Maybe, just maybe, giving moms more makes a bit of sense.

Re:I'm not sexist...

[Jason Levine]

Yes, mom bears the brunt of the recovery, but that doesn't mean dad can't pitch in. In fact, it is all the more reason for dad to stay home and help out. After our first child was born, I stayed home for a week so I could help take care of things around the house, take care of our newborn, and do anything else I could to help my wife recover post-birth.

Re:I'm not sexist...

[MacTO]

This a thousand times over. Every account I've seen describes childbirth as painful. On top of that, women have to put up with many undesirable symptoms during pregnancy. Then there are the mothers who make many sacrifices in their lifestyle in order to ensure the health of the baby. Suggesting that Yahoo's policy is sexist is denying the fact that pregnancy and childbirth are inherently sexist.

Also, expecting mothers often take time off of work for their own health and their baby's health. Expecting father's don't (unless they have a desire to coddle their wife). The article didn't mention if this leave covers that as well.

Yet all women will still complain about inequality

[nomad63]

We all know that women will still complain about inequality in pay (read as in less pay) than men. But if you ask them, this 16 to 8 week difference for maternity is a sure thing and should never be questioned. At least I personally know women with this mind set. Selective equality anyone ?

What the hell happened?

[onyxruby]

Not only is the policy blatantly sexist (coming from a female CEO makes this even worse) but it actively discourages Dad's from participating in their kids lives. This perpetuates the myth that only women can be active parents and has no business in the 21st century. There is absolutely no reason that a father can't provide just as good of care and be just as involved with raising their child as the mother.

Sexist attitudes like this are why men get taken to the cleaners in family courts all over the world. This same woman probably bitches about men not helping with diaper changes and parenting duties. If you have a kid, never ever let someone do this to you, get involved and refuse to let sexist twats keep you from being part of your kids life. Take the opportunity and raise your kid right, teach them the things you wished you learned and have fun with the.

Fathers are supposed to be more involved in their kids lives than providing a paycheck. Take responsibility, stand up to sexism, raise your kids as they deserve better. If doing the right thing doesn't inspire you just remember that if you don't you'll be taken to the cleaners if you ever go to Family Court.

/Rant off

Re:What the hell happened?

[neonKow]

I feel like everyone is so focused on the "inequality" part of the article that no one is paying attention to "holy crap, 8 weeks is a lot of time off." Seriously? 8 weeks of paid leave to spend with your kid? I don't think that constitutes a policy that "discourages dads from participating in their kids lives." At most, there's a bit of grumbling about how it's unfair that your coworker in the next office got 8 more weeks paid off than you did, but then your wife will smack you in the head, remind you that you didn't have to carry a baby around for 9 months including many weeks where a lot of basic movements we take for granted become very difficult, and then force a small person through our genitals. And it's not like you can't take additional unpaid time off, no questions asked.

I've seen people who've worked with a company for years still have to take vacation time to make up for a very meager paternity leave, so even if you have a point to make about sexism, which I may or may not agree with, you are simply moaning and groaning about a completely unrelated topic if you're complaining that 8 weeks of paid paternity leave somehow is inhibiting the fathers from being parents or that this somehow reduces fathers to only a source of income.

And please, even when making a valid point that we should start treating dads as equal parents as moms, don't ignore the huge difference in physical changes that happens to a woman giving birth that do not happen her husband.

Re:What the hell happened?

[onyxruby]

Having lived through that I can assure you that the changes do not affect the women alone. The man will hear about them, lose sleep with them, accommodate them, be stressed by them and even on average gain weight with them. Eight weeks is nice, but I simply can't get over the inequality of the thing and there simply isn't anyway to whitewash away the double standard.

Re:What the hell happened?

[onyxruby]

I can and will abuse apostrophes, dammit.

What about parents of multiple (Twins/etc)?

[DontBlameCanada]

My wife gave birth to twins 2 years after my eldest was born. I got *no* company supported paternity leave, because only mothers got time to recover. HR spun this as medical recovery for females that men didn't need as we weren't the child bearers. Let me tell you, parents of multiples need BOTH parents off for the first couple months in order to handle things. Add in a toddler... I don't recall the first year my twins arrived. I have the odd snapshot of a big, usual bad, event but otherwise the entire year is blank except for a vague recollection of utter exhaustion.

Be consistent

[still cynical]

You want fathers to participate equally in raising their children, give them equal leave to stay at home and bond with them when they're born. If you think fathers are just there to provide a paycheck, then I guess it doesn't matter.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Literaphile]

You may want to adjust your sarcasm detector.

Eurotrash vs US white trash? The best parents?

[G3ckoG33k]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Europe

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it is standard that mothers stay at home for 3 years after a child's birth, which may extend with additional children[citation needed]. Mothers can decide to take 2, 3 or 4 years of maternity leave. It is also possible for the fathers to take the leave instead of the mothers but it is not common. For the whole period mothers are supported by the state[citation needed]. In Slovakia the standard duration of parental leave is 3 years; for a child with a disability it is up to 6 years. The state pays support of 256 Euros per month for the child's first 2 years, reducing to 164.22 Euros per month thereafter. A similar model is also used in Austria where mothers can choose between 1 and 3 years.

Sweden provides working parents with an entitlement of 16 months paid leave per child at 80 percent pay, the cost being shared between employer and the state. To encourage greater paternal involvement in child-rearing, 2 months out of the 16 is reserved for the "minority" parent, in practice usually the father, and some Swedish political parties on the political left argue for legislation to oblige families to divide the 16 months equally between both parents. Norway has similarly generous leave. In Estonia mothers are entitled to 18 months of paid leave, starting up to 70 days before due date. Fathers are entitled to paid leave starting from the third month after birth (paid leave is however available to only one parent at a time).

Re:Eurotrash vs US white trash? The best parents?

[sponse]

I heard that most of the couples in Europe has only one child and this leads to demographics with more old people than young people.
I think the long leaves and state's support may be related to that.

Want time off to spend with your child?

[wisnoskij]

Then quit your job, or ask your boss to let you have some unpaid time off. I am no Republican nor a capitalist but it is not the government's job to raise your child.

Re:Want time off to spend with your child?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Captain Libertario! I was waiting for you to show your face around here. But, you won't foil my dastardly plans to provide for the community well-being THIS time. Hahahahahaha!

Re:Want time off to spend with your child?

[wisnoskij]

Promoting child birth is considered good for the community?

Re:Want time off to spend with your child?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Promoting child birth is considered good for the community?

Yes. Because if you don't, wait a little while and there's no more community.

Re:Want time off to spend with your child?

[wisnoskij]

The same could be said for the results of promoting child birth.

Re:Want time off to spend with your child?

[swillden]

Promoting child birth is considered good for the community?

Promoting strong parent-child bonding and involved parenting is good for the community.

Re:Want time off to spend with your child?

[Man Eating Duck]

Then quit your job, or ask your boss to let you have some unpaid time off. I am no Republican nor a capitalist but it is not the government's job to raise your child.

Who's talking about "the gubbinment raising them kids" in this story? This is about paid paternity/maternity leave. Your government does not ensure paid leave at all, as the only country on that page AFAICT.

Politically correct ideology bumps into the facts

[sideslash]

Yeah, companies shouldn't discriminate against women in hiring. A woman can perform just as well as a man. In fact, she must be even more efficient in her work than a man, for her average to stay as high even with her longer maternity leave. /sarcasm

I have a huge problem with society-enforced institutionalization of untruths. Don't demand that people smile, nod their heads, and repeat along with politically correct mantras that are obviously false. Tell it like it is. People can (learn to) handle it. Women of childbearing age are statistically at higher risk than others for being lower performers for a company in the long term, both during and after pregnancy. Maybe we should or shouldn't allow discrimination (I'm not commenting on that because I'm making a different point), but the numbers don't lie. Neither should we.

Full disclosure: I am a male who as a teenager and twenty-something was charged higher auto insurance rates than females my age, because (once again) the numbers don't lie.

Re:Have any of you actually thought why?

[englishknnigits]

You are missing the heart of the matter. The real issue is that preferential treatment towards men is considered wrong regardless of any considerations while preferential treatment towards women is okay as long as it has a justification. Charging men less than women for haircuts because, by and large, their haircuts take less time and attention is unlawful discrimination even though it has a perfectly reasonable justification. Your explanation does make sense and could be seen as a reasonable justification. However, if we allow discrimination in favor of women in some cases we should also allow it for men in some cases as well. Femnatzis battle to take away all discriminatory advantages held by men while retaining all discriminatory advantages held by women.

Maternity/Paternity Leave exists?

[LearningHard]

I've worked at one regional bank and three Fortune 500 telecom companies. None of these businesses has offered anything beyond FMLA leave for mother's that give birth. There was absolutely nothing offered for males except you could put in a vacation request.

I guess that is one of the benefits of being in a right to work state?

Re:Stop Breeding!

[ebno-10db]

Some of us think we have enough mouths to feed on this planet as it is.

Feel free to reduce that number by one, anytime you want.

Nice logic there

[PhamNguyen]

Whenever men are discriminated against, come of with reasons after the fact why this discrimination works in their favor.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[GodfatherofSoul]

Coincidentally, Mr. Mom has been playing on cable lately. Very interesting how much gender roles have changed in 30 years.

Sounds nice. I got 10 days.

[Picass0]

...And we had twins.

>> Dawn Kawamoto: "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."

How very condescending. You really think all dads dread the responsibilities of parenthood?

Re:Yes but see

[Americano]

And yet it seems that numerous such studies have been conducted, and concluded the precise opposite of what you just asserted:

Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data for 1979 and 1995 and controlling for education, experience, personal characteristics, parental status, city and region, occupation, industry, government employment, and part-time status, Yale University economics professor Joseph G. Altonji and the United States Secretary of Commerce Rebecca M. Blank found that only about 27% of the gender wage gap in each year is explained by differences in such characteristics.

[...]

Similarly, a comprehensive study by the staff of the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the gender wage gap can only be partially explained by human capital factors and "work patterns." The GAO study, released in 2003, was based on data from 1983 through 2000 from a representative sample of Americans between the ages of 25 and 65. The researchers controlled for "work patterns," including years of work experience, education, and hours of work per year, as well as differences in industry, occupation, race, marital status, and job tenure. With controls for these variables in place, the data showed that women earned, on average, 20% less than men during the entire period 1983 to 2000. In a subsequent study, GAO found that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor "should better monitor their performance in enforcing anti-discrimination laws."

More examples abound, with references and sources, at that link. Perhaps you have some counterexamples to offer which show that all of the disparity can be adequately explained by non-discriminatory factors? Other than blanket assertions, I mean?

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Lynchenstein]

I believe that is referring to the maximum capacity of the diaper, not the age of the child. Or have I been wrong all these years?

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Darinbob]

As a fellow procrastinator, I can understand his stance.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Nothing motivates you better to go back to the grind of corporate work than 7 years of shitty diapers.

Maybe if more geeks did this Tour of Duty, one of them would be motivated enough to invent a diaper changing machine . . . ?

. . . maybe just modifying a 3D printer with Lego Mindstorms, or something like that . . ?

Re:Bullshit

[flimflammer]

What small bowling ball are adoptive mothers excreting from their orifice?

Re:Homosexual couples?

[HungWeiLo]

I see what you did there.

what happens if you adopt???

[markana]

Do the mothers still get the extra 8 weeks, even though there was no traumatic (and apparently debilitating) childbirth involved?

Or do adoptions just not count (no leave for you....)?

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[meustrus]

If an inside joke is told and nobody knows what it means, does it make anybody laugh?

Not seeing the problem here...

[Chas]

Seriously guys. Think about it. If you had to shoot a kid out from that region of your body, how long would it take YOU to recover?

She did all the work. You just had a bit of fun.

The "sexism" goes both ways ...

[MacTO]

There are good reasons why mothers should get additional leave.

However, I do have one concern: it reinforces the notion that women are the primary child minders. Of course, this is a sexist attitude towards men because it deprives them of a role that they may wish to fulfil. Yet it is also sexist towards women, since it perpetuates a role that many women want to grow beyond.

Seems like a bad idea

[geddo]

CA State Disability pays 6 weeks leave, or did when I had kids, for both Mother and Father. Seems to me the state should only pay disability to whomever is actually 'pregnant', since that is the medical portion of having a child. Companies that want to provide this benefit typically do so for bonding time and that should be given equally to both parents, that's not a medical issue its a family issue. Incidentally these benefits are usually provided by companies in the case of adoption as well, if this is the case with Yahoo would a lesbian couple that adopts a child get the longer leave for both but a pair of gay males get the lesser for each??? Murky waters, I haven't read their policy but this seems like a bad idea.

Re:Yes but see

[Cederic]

..and yet:
- women under the age of 25 earn more than men the same age
- women in their 30s that don't have children earn as much as men the same age that don't have children
- women working part time in the uk earn more per hour than men working part time

Strangely the government report stating all of that was publicised with the headlines "Men still earn more than women". Because if you look at all men and all women, average pay for men is higher.

This is definitely influenced by hours worked, by worklife balance, by negotiation skills (and intent), by career gaps (e.g. having children) and by choice of different careers.

I don't know any women that earn less than men doing the same job, within sensible tolerances. Drop to the raw numbers and I know women earning a little less than men, and women earning a little more than men. Shit, I know women that earn more than I do and do the same job as me, and have children, and work less hours in the week, and (more subjectively) aren't as good at the job.

So please, don't pretend that men are somehow unfairly compensated at work.

Pad maternity leave is bs.

[Karmashock]

For women or men.

My mother saved up her vacation days and took the time off without claiming maternity leave. No one needs it.

She was out of work for about two weeks tops and then back in work again.

Companies pay you to work. Part of what is screwing up the economy is all the people that think they should be paid when they don't work. We have some people that get two or more months of vacation a year... paid. As well as all sorts of sick days which aren't vacation days but which are effectively the same thing since you can use them the exact same way. And then you have maternity leave. And then you have some places with 3 to 4 hour lunch breaks leaving about 2 to 3 hours of total work. That's unusual... but there are places where that is "normal."

And uniformly when this sort of thing goes rampant the businesses dumb enough to support them die.

Now, Yahoo is not Google. They do not have money flowing out of their ears. They if they pay people they need to actually have them accomplish something of value to Yahoo.

What I'm saying here is that we should curb our expectations to something reasonable. Should women be able to take time off to care for children or babies or whatever? Sure. But the company likewise doesn't need to pay them for that. And if the men want to take time off to do the same they can also not be paid while doing the same. If they want to get paid, they need to show up for work.

Is the above not what people want to hear? Welcome to the real world. It isn't made of unicorns and rainbows.

Re:Yes but see

[Americano]

Strangely the government report stating all of that was publicised with the headlines "Men still earn more than women". Because if you look at all men and all women, average pay for men is higher.

Same question I asked hedwards above: which report is that? Love to see the actual report(s) you're citing, rather than just read your assertions. Surely ONE of you you can provide an example of a study that supports your argument.

Re:As a guy that was a stay at home dad for 7 year

[Jason Levine]

I figured that the title alone would give people enough of an idea of what it entailed without bringing up the disgusting details.

Re:Politically correct ideology bumps into the fac

[Arker]

It's true that men and women are different. But what you describe as the basis of modern feminism is simply the basis of statist utopianism, the common faith of nanny-staters. Modern feminism is based on an entirely different and contradictory premise - that men are the root of all evil, and women are inherently oriented towards the good and only do evil as a result of evil men having power over them.

The two premises are logically incompatible yet a many modern feminist nanny-staters seem to hold both simultaneously so I can understand the confusion.

And despite agreeing that, clearly, men and women are different, I disagree that the law should recognise that difference. All individuals are different (even more different than men and women!) but equality under the law is fundamental. Of course the law probably shouldnt be involved in post-spawn leave either...

And about that leave. Yes, men and women are different. But nothing in that difference prevents a father from taking care of that baby. There are even single fathers, women sometimes die in delivery, imagine that. Add insult to injury by giving said newly-single new father less maternity leave than a single mother? Is the father getting anything else in the deal here or are the male employees actually subsidising the benefits of the females?

Recognising that men and women are different isnt sexism, but designing something important like a benefits package around gender stereotypes (even if they are not completely false) just might be. It's one thing to recognise that statistically women are more likely to use leave for a particular purpose, it's another to simply give them more days for nothing more than possessing a vagina. If I were a woman I think I would find this policy slightly insulting.

Re:Yes but see

[yndrd1984]

Perhaps you have some counterexamples to offer which show that all of the disparity can be adequately explained by non-discriminatory factors?

From your own citation:

Furthermore, O'Neil found that among young people who have never had a child, women's earnings approach 98 percent of men's.

They found that the average wage rate of females was only 87.4% of the average wage rate of males; whereas, when earnings were measured by their index of total compensation (including fringe benefits), the average value of the index for females was 96.4% of the average value for males.

I'm not trying to assert that one set of number is the right one, only that with a range from 2% to 15% it's pretty easy for people to pick out one they want to be true (or find politically useful) and run with it.

No. You're confusing culture and biology.

[aussersterne]

Bonding is largely a matter of care. Evidence says that adopted infants and infant children of single dads do not suffer from the psychological disorders that commonly proceed from poor parental bonding.

Now the data do tell us that amongst the sample populations that we have, your data is accurate—the bond between mothers and children is, on average, stronger. But your reasoning about the cause is wrong.

It is precisely because there is a strong cultural bias offering (or requiring of) women far more caretaking that the numbers tell us that more bonding occurs. You're putting the cart before the horse—it's not that children bond with mom because she's a woman, it's that because she's a women, children have infinitely greater opportunity to bond with mom.

It's primarily a social outcome, not a biological one.

Re:No. You're confusing culture and biology.

[I'm New Around Here]

Firstly, let me thank you for arguing from a viewpoint of actual reasoning, with a goal of discussion, or even simply enlightenment of myself. I have had enough of arguing with fools for today.

While general bonding is mostly a matter of care, as you say, the biological processes in a pregnant woman can't be overlooked. Indeed, without them this whole discussion wouldn't exist. Then, the further processes of birth and the initial days of breastfeeding have their own importance. There are homones that the woman's body releases that men's bodies either don't have, or men have in much smaller amounts with no spike like in a woman's body during and just after birth.

I never said fathers don't bond with their children, or that paternal bonding isn't important in its own right. I think a few people twisted my original off the cuff comment, based on their own desires. Especially based on their dislike of a maternal/paternal leave policy they see as discriminatory against their interests.

Googleing around earlier to find support of my point, I found this site: http://thebabybond.com/BondingMatters.html

High oxytocin causes a mother to become familiar with the unique odor of her newborn infant, and once attracted to it, to prefer her own baby's odor above all others'. Baby is similarly imprinted on mother, deriving feelings of calmness and pain reduction along with mom. When the infant is born, he is already imprinted on the odor of his amniotic fluid. This odor imprint helps him find mother's nipple, which has a similar but slightly different odor. In the days following birth, the infant can be comforted by the odor of this fluid

Gradually over the next days, baby starts to prefer the odor of his mother's breast, but continued imprinting upon his mother is not food related. In fact, formula-fed infants are more attracted (in laboratory tests) to their mother's breast odor than to that of their formula, even two weeks after birth .

I don't see how any male can bond at that level, without significant artificial effort to mimic that natural process of a mother and child. Even an adoptive mother or wet-nurse can't bond at that level, though each fulfills certain key aspects of the mother-child relationship.

Re:Politically correct ideology bumps into the fac

[sideslash]

Women of childbearing age are statistically at higher risk than others for being lower performers for a company in the long term, both during and after pregnancy

Please provide link(s) to said studies with said statistics.

I laid that out very concisely myself, by pointing out that women would have to sustain a higher than average efficiency to make up for not being there when on leave. My basis of assumptions for the thought experiment (and belief in real life) is that men and women have very similar IQs and can be recruited at similar strengths and abilities to perform a given job. I suppose there are some jobs where the workers are pretty much cookie-cutters and interchangeable; but in the kind of jobs I care about, it matters very much having each specific member of the team there, and you notice if somebody's contribution is absent... even for the noblest of reasons, which care of a newborn certainly is.

And mods, please do NOT +1 Informative such posts without links. They certainly can generate interesting discussion, but not without something to substantiate their viewpoint.

Do your own moderating, Mr/Ms. AC. :p

they do squeeze the baby out

[circletimessquare]

and then have to squeeze a lot milk out

that requires a lot of recuperation

i believe this basic biological difference is due some consideration with extra time off

The disparity is no reason for feminists to cheer

[LihTox]

When we give women more time off than men to take care of an infant (and that's what parental leave is mostly for), we are strengthening the notion that the mother is the better person to take care of a baby. And what about women who don't *want* to take so much time off from work? My wife is a researcher running her own lab, and needed to get back to work as soon as she could after our son was born. Fortunately, I was working part-time and I could be a stay-at-home dad (with some babysitting assistance). But suppose I had a similar job to hers, and the University said "OK, she can have 12 weeks off but you can only have 6", isn't that putting added pressure on her to take the leave, regardless of the relative importance of our positions? Isn't it telling her "We can spare you a lot more easily than we can spare your husband, because he's a man"?

So I see no reason for women to cheer this disparity.

Equal rights for all!

[AbRASiON]

Give both of them NO goddamn paid leave.
If you can't afford children - don't have them. Why do I need to subsidise your breeding?

I work in gov and the amount of days off I see people take because of sick children "compassionate leave" or maternity / paternity leave - it's just mind boggling. So I pay more tax, don't get bonus's while people busting out children left right and centre are being spoon fed my money.

Nope, you breed it, you pay for it.

women need recovery time

[Chirs]

Realistically women need some physical recovery time that men do not, especially if they have a C-section.

That said, I'm *so* happy to be in Canada where we can take up to a year of parental leave, most of which can be taken by either parent.

larger problem

[Chirs]

I have no problem with a woman that gave birth getting some time to rest up and recuperate...especially after a C-section.

That said, the bigger problem in the USA is that you *only* get 8/16 weeks. Up here in Canada we get a year of partially paid leave, some of which is reserved for the mother but most of which can be taken by either parent.

I only took 3 weeks off work for each of my kids, but I work from home so I'm also available if needed during the day.

Parenthood is a bit more than changing diapers

[StephanieK]

If someone feels that way, they're not that much of a Dad. And if the attitude of not giving men the same amount of paternity leave as women persists at Yahoo!, that's not really saying much about equality, non-discrimination and a forward-thinking company.

Have any kids of your own?

[Nine Mirrors Turning]

I take it the poster doesn't have children. I'll take taking care of my kids anyday. I'll be looking at code for the rest of my working life one way or another but my kids, they are my joy!

Re:Have any of you actually thought why?

[novium]

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Also, feminazis? Really? Nice strawman you've got yourself there. If you knew ANYTHING, anything at about feminism, had spent any time in actual feminist spaces, you'd know feminists are some of the first people advocating hard for paid "parental leave" that is the same for everyone.

And yeah. They don't scream bloody murder about women getting 12 weeks of paid leave vs 8 weeks for the men if a company offers it, because it represents a huge giant step forward from the status quo. (Though there will be some criticism for it). Instead, they advocate for more leave, and more leave offered to both parents, but they're hardly going to try and get rid of it, rather than trying to fix it. Jesus Christ. It's not rocket science.

Money

[DarthVain]

Even throwing out the whole moral or ethical side of things, from a purely corporate perspective it makes no sense.

A perfect example, is that a few years ago I was working on a project that included a particular DB dev. Part way though the project she leaves on parental leave. Another is assigned. She has to start pretty much from scratch and be brought up to speed. A few months later, she goes on leave. Another is assigned. Repeat. The last one managed to stick around until completion. But the project was very delayed by this. For myself I was frustrated and couldn't believe the manager assigned several pregnant women to my project in a row. Then again, managers are likely not supposed to discriminate against that. Fine. They have those rights and I would never argue against that, however from a purely empirical perspective of getting work done for a project... sorry it happens. Women get pregnant and leave the workplace/projects. Even allowing for men to do the same, it is more often and longer.

I look around me and most women I have worked with have had at least one or two at this point over a period of the last few years. This means you are supporting a work force of nearly half that are not actually "working". Meanwhile I have been here the whole time working for years more than many of them. Then when you think about pay level and seniority, etc... how is that fair to men? Anyway that is not to say that I won't participate in having a child or taking time off, however I haven't thus far...

Anyway it is a double standard. Actually there was an author that recently was on the CBC promoting his new book, and he actually had the balls to point out that statistically women actually shouldn't make as much money as men simply because they do not work as much due to pregnancy. If you are trying to be totally fair, and not getting into the morality argument etc...

Re:Money

[CAIMLAS]

As a single man who is unable to become pregnant, I find it offensive that I am excluded from paternal leave.

Should I not get conception leave?

Re:Money

[DarthVain]

No. I am saying that society shouldn't get concerned at the idea of a man who doesn't take paternal leave being compensated better because of it.

Sad really

[DarthVain]

In principle I think home schooling would be the way to go given an ideal situation as you describe. Unfortunately I would say in 99.9999% of the cases of homeschooling, this is NOT the case. Much more likely is that they have some weird beliefs that most of society doesn't subscribe to and they don't want their children to be influenced by say a public education, which might *gasp* actually educate them.

As a result whenever I hear about someone that was "home schooled", I am immediately filled with skepticism about how normal, un-weird, and not fucked up they are. Seems most are taught to believe the earth is 5000 years old, or that humans rode dinosaurs, or that Jews are bad, or any of a host of unlikely or offensive things.

I know of perhaps one couple that might be able to do it that would (they are slightly hippy), as I would consider the mother very smart and not ignorant (was grasping for a better word and gave up), and as it is I believe the kids likely (or will) go to public school, but I could see her additionally augmenting their education (which is probably the way to go anyway if you have the time and ability).

Re:Politically correct ideology bumps into the fac

[Arker]

You do have different strands of thought that are called feminism, and importantly individual feminists who, as individuals, think differently. Camille Paglia and Wendy McElroy are a couple of my favourites. But what I tend to see much more prominently packaged with that word are nanny-statisms which rule out individualists like that and you get a spectrum essentially from Andrea Dworkin to Anna Hutsol, with a fundamental misandry and a determination to make people behave by force the common denominator. It isnt always as in your face and unmistakeable of course, but it's implied where it is not outright stated.

Who is this "we" that wants women to have careers? I want women to have a choice in the matter. "We" need the labour in modern welfare states because the non-productive sector of society has grown too fat and too entitled. Have you ever thought about how only 80 or 100 years ago it was still possible for regular people, commoners if you will, to support a family well on a single income, and our technology and productivity have only increased dramatically since then, yet today that is not a realistic possibility for most people. I dont agree with the presumption of some earlier ages that this was simply a womans place (and neither did everyone in those times) but neither do I agree with this presumption that the option should not be open to them, or that they need to be bullied or propagandised or 'educated' to desire something else instead, or that 'we' should imagine ourselves as part and parcel of the non-productive sector or rulers rather than identifying just as much with the productive sector, the commoners, the plebians who did not care about the glory of wars and killing so much as the crop outlook and providing for their families.

Re:Yes but see

[Americano]

So what you're saying is the link I provided showed that the researchers arrived at 'unexplained' salary numbers from 2 to 15% lower for women than for men.

How does that support the contention that "No, men don't get paid more than women," which is, specifically, what was asserted by hedwards?

He went on to argue that the "only" studies that show this discrepancy "gerrymander" their samples to support a predetermined conclusion. Yet he falls silent when asked to provide an example of a study that doesn't "gerrymander" the samples. Any study I've found shows there is some discrepancy that the researchers can't explain even with controlling for the numerous "time off" factors he's citing, yet he still maintains that there is no discrepancy, and dismisses a multitude of studies as flawed while offering none to support his own argument.

There's a word for the tendency to draw this sort of unsubstantiated conclusion based on opinion rather than fact. It's not "science," and it's not "logic."

Re:Have any of you actually thought why?

[englishknnigits]

I didn't say feminists because I didn't mean feminists. I am male and I am a feminist. I believe men and women should be treated equally under the law and should not be discriminated against solely based on their gender unless there is a good, physiological reason to do so. For example, women's bathrooms should not need to contain urinals even though that is a form of discrimination. Femnazi's are radical, rabid people who hate men and think all men are out to get and oppress all women. Femnazi's, as I described, fight to end all discriminatory practices against women but hold onto discriminatory practices against men.

Offensive

[Murdoch5]

I'm all for equal gender rights but that key to that is equal rights. If a mother can get 18 months off then a father must be able to get 18 months off, if a father gets 8 weeks the mother gets 8 weeks. What bothers me about this mostly is the fact that women will complain until it's mandated it but the second men speak up it's sexist and suppresses women's rights. If your going to fight for things to be equal then make them equal, tipping the sea-saw over to the other side just shifts the problem. So again I support gender equality but that means being equal as in 1 == 1.

Re:Yes but see

[yndrd1984]

How does that support the contention that "No, men don't get paid more than women," which is, specifically, what was asserted by hedwards?

It doesn't. But it does support his other statement:

There may be a compensation gap, but without actually looking at the whole cost of employing an employee and the productivity you can't say with any reasonable certainty that women are being under paid.

And as far as I can tell that's a perfectly reasonable claim.

I'm sure there's a word for the tendency to hold people to the letter of their most extreme opening statements even when they clearly were trying to covey something both more complex and more reasonable.

Re:Discrimination isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[Pseudonym Authority]

Do you want your 13 year old daughter changing into a swimsuit in the same room as a 45 year old man?

It isn't a bad thing to assume that every man is a pedophile?

Re:Have any of you actually thought why?

[novium]

Feminazis are a straw man. I've been very, very active in feminist and social justice circles, and i have never met these fable man-haters who want to oppress men. It's nothing more than the same old bull that people have been using to tar feminists since at least the early 19th century.

Is anyone really surprised

[dave87656]

Men are discriminated in business (quotas), in divorce, in the news and in the justice system. Otherwise, we're treated equally.

Re:Have any of you actually thought why?

[englishknnigits]

I took a women's studies class (Women, Gender, Religion, and Society) in college and roughly a third of the class were feminazis. They are not a fabled creature, they are real. We read papers written by femninazis, one of which talked about how Catholicism was invented by men for the sole purpose of oppressing women. The few men in the room would get glares as people discussed the papers discussing why men are evil and how the world would be a much better place if it were run by women. I won't disagree that they have been used to malign feminists but that doesn't mean they aren't real and don't have any impact. The people who are heard the most are the people who scream the loudest. Feminazis are pissed off, scream loudly, and are active in the court system. You can pretend they don't exist if you wish but you aren't doing anyone any favors.