Do you think it might be related somehow to why men make more money than women? The fact that I went back to work the day after my son was born, while my wife took three months off?
You think employers don’t notice or don’t care about these things?
Do you really think that a woman who takes three months off deserves the same consideration that I do(for promotions, raises, bonuses, etc.), coming back from work the day after my son was born?
BTW–this is not just a hypothetical. That employer had one on maternity leave and another pregnant girl. We were getting behind on the job, so his options were (1) work everybody else harder, (2) hire and train a temp, then fire the temp when the girl got back, or (3) not get the work done, and run the risk of the client leaving, which would reduce revenues.
There were also three other young-twenties girls who had announced their desire to have kids in the future.
The reality is that the rise of women in the workplace has created a number of social problems from stagnant wages (due to an abudance of available labor), to declining marriage/childbirth rates. Maternity leave is just a band-aid designed to address the difficulties of raising a family while both parents work full time. It cost a lot but doesn’t fix anything. Even in Canada, with their absurd one-year maternity vacation, the mother still goes back to work after a year, right? Is the child somehow independent at that point, or is he dropped off at daycare to be raised by some other woman? Obviously the latter.
For centuries, we had a strong marriage-based system. The Left has systematically chipped that away with the sometimes-stated goal that the family unit should be replaced by a social unit. The result is a bunch of failed social experiments and children raised without boundaries. But hey, at least women have the wonderful opportunity to spend half of their waking lives in a cubicle.
Well, it’s not simply the employer’s fault, as long as there’s this social stigma of ‘paternal’ leave, then yes the majority of parents taking parental leave would be the mothers.
I’ve never had kids so I don’t know first hand, but it’s a major procedure that often ended in deaths not too long ago–I would think it’s highly unlikely that ANY mother, no matter how career driven, would return to work 12 hours after giving birth.
Of course, then why would a career-driven woman have children? Maybe find a surrogate? Those are fine ideas… except that usually there’s a man behind all those pregnancies too. That’s the point I’m trying to convey. Your [the man’s] promotions, your raises, your career success is achieved at the expense of the mother. It’s also at the expense of the father not being at home 12 hours after the child is born. That may be a personal choice for some, but others, as you mentioned, would fear termination if they suggested paternal leave.
If a woman who wants/has/is about to have children is seen as a liability solely due to her child-status, whereas her partner is not seen as such, then I would argue that’s sexual discrimination.
I don’t know. That’s an anecdote. I took nearly three months off and was promoted ahead of a whole schwak of people six months later. Generally the guy that contributes the most gets the promotion, and that is only tangentially related to the time he spends in his chair.
Right or wrong, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… and for many women it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, and it’s likely to be simply easier from an individual employer’s perspective to just prefer to not deal with losing employees for a number of months if they can.
Of course. But Emi is right, if more men took leave then that gap would close (I did my part). Sweden has an interesting model where both spouses MUST share the leave at some kind of minimal ratio. Sweden, as a note, also provides 18months of leave to be shared, if I recall.
@Emichan - It’s absolutely sexual discrimination. I agree with you. But it’s completely justifiable and 100% deserved.
You and Geo get the benefit of discussing the issue as a global/macro socioeconomic issue, with philosophical points and hypothetical questions.
My employer has bills to pay at the end of this month. He has tax returns that are due TODAY. (FYI–I’m a tax accountant, if you didn’t know.) He has clients that are pissed off at him TODAY.
He has to pay my salary on the 1st and 15th. If he doesn’t, I will leave, and he can do all those tax returns by himself. He can e-mail all the clients himself. He can call them and ask for the information himself. The other option is to go out of business.
Just because I’m a woman and go on a three-month maternity leave, do you think the IRS is going to push back the filing deadline? Maybe he can ask for an abatement of the $300,000 penalty that our client will get because his assistant is on maternity leave. (That’s how much our biggest client would owe in penalties if we missed the deadline by one day. That’s a real penalty. Somebody’s got to pay it.)
The world doesn’t stop turning because you have a baby. The bills keep coming in, and the customer demand their products.
^ I sure hope the employer starts planning before the woman disappears. With this thing called modern medicine, you kind of know about 7 months out about when you’ll be off. Plenty of time to plan. I’m sure the clients tax return will get done if the manager is competent.
I can already hear people saying, “Greenie is an obvious tard. He lives in podunkville West Texas. He doesn’t live in the “real world” like the rest of us.”
It’s comforting to know that in NYC and Philadelphia, clients don’t mind paying $300,000 because their tax return was late, due to a woman being on maternity leave.
I’m glad that if your firm doesn’t pay its rent, they won’t get locked out. I mean, if you’re not profitable don’t pay your rent, you can always say, “Well, it’s because we don’t have the money to pay you. You see, our staff is on maternity leave, and we don’t have anybody working, so we haven’t made any money in a couple of months.”
^ Inky: Obviously you live in an economically depressed region. There aren’t enough men to even come close to filling jobs here. Perhaps that’s what this really boils down to. Reality is you need women to work. So how best to accommodate and make that work for everyone.
You don’t need women to work. You need women to work in order to depress wages. Why do you want people to earn less for their work? This is perplexing…
That would be nice if the clients brought us their stuff in February. Some people don’t drop it off until October 14. (And I’m dead serious. I stayed until midnight last night trying to finish a tax return, because the client didn’t bring us their information until noon on Oct. 14. That’s right–she brought it in on the very last day out of nine months and fifteen days.)
Why is the return late? Seven months heads up wasn’t enough? That’s poor management, end of story. If someone had a heart attack and was out for five weeks (an actual surprise), would the whole business implode? Please. If so, its poorly run.
Holy shit, 1940. If you seriously think America was better off when women were kept barefoot and pregnant you’re ignoring decades of progress. My wages are fine. And my wife makes great coin too. Our real wages are higher than similar occupations in the 1950’s.