We don't know if mosselman is exceptional or typical of Dutch fathers.

That is, if only 10% take time off, and you only know 5 middle-class people who could afford it, then odds are that even at the Dutch level you wouldn't know anyone who does that.

I suppose it's possi ... okay, that was too easy. A search for "how many Dutch fathers parental leave" comes up with http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/06/just-one-in-fo... which says "Just one in four Dutch fathers takes parental leave".

Not sure how this conversation went into parental leave - I actually know fathers who've taken that :) But that's just a month or so. I was talking about working fewer hours (rather than stopping altogether) on a longer-term basis. I find that much harder to achieve than taking a leave, which is similar to regular vacations, which companies are used to handle.

I did consulting work for a Swedish company. They have very generous parental leave policies, including people who were on 50% time for a year.

I also read that in some of the European countries (I'm from the US) there is a right to part-time employment while on leave. I figured that mosselman was from one of those countries.

Searching now I found http://cepr.net/documents/publications/parental_2008_09.pdf from 10 years ago which says:

> Of the 21 countries studied here, ten allow parental leave to be taken on a part-time basis: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Portugal is notable in that it gives parents an incentive to choose part-time over full-time leave: parents have three months of full-time parental leave or 12 months of part-time leave.

Based on mosselman's followup, my guess was correct.

Thanks for the link! I had no idea our law allowed for that!