> who don't get weeks of time off for _their_ families, and who are expected to cover for the parents on leave

I'd be all for policies that supported caring for an ailing spouse or parent also. But let me tell you, taking care of a new baby is about as far from "time off" as it's possible to get. It's hard, stressful work, and if you discourage paternity leave or imply that it's equivalent to vacation time, you're implying that it's womens' work.

Would "time away" be better do you think. I mean they are "off of work" as in not at their job.

If you took some time off to do something else equally taxing I would normally refer to it as time off, probably with a caveat in day to day situations, just like if they were on parental leave.

Thinking about it I probably wouldn't if someone was taking time away from work for reserves work (military, fire service, etc).

I suppose "time away" would work, but that's basically what we mean by "leave" as well. What got my dander up was the implication that me taking leave to be with my spouse and infant child (which I did not get the opportunity to do) is the same as vacation time.

I agree that raising children is taxing. However, the mere fact that you _chose_ to do an activity that is taxing does not, to my mind, entitle you to impose costs on your fellow employees. Volunteering for the Peace Corp is taxing, caring for elderly parents is taxing, climbing Mt. Everest is taxing. Yet, alone of all those activities, parents think they deserve to be subsidized.

Only those having children are choosing a taxing activity that essentially everyone who hopes to retire is depending on, since—public or private, defined benefit or defined contribution—virtually every retirement option relies on the economic activity of generations after those of the retiree.

You're suggesting that parents are some kind of limited special-interest class, as if we're snowboarders asking for powder leave, rather than the overwhelming majority of people. The question of how we treat parents is really a question of how we all want to treat each other -- whether we want to give people support when their children are born, or whether we would prefer to force them to choose between work and family. Furthermore, since this is a discussion about paternity in particular, speaking out against paternity leave is speaking out against women working outside the home. I regard this as a very regressive position and unjust to women.

> IMHO, all employees should get the same amount of time off, regardless of whether or not they have children.

Parents get more time off than non-parents and that's unfair? That's an understandable perspective but here's another one.

1) Children don't get to choose whether to be born. Infants and post-partum women are vulnerable people and giving parents time off helps protect these vulnerable people. Looking at this from the perspective of what's best for the child it's clear that paternal leave is very important.

2) People have a choice of where to work and at least in the US, employers are free to choose compensation that they feel will attract the workers they want. I know several people who have chosen where to work based on paternal leave policies.

3) Life is unfair. If I made a list of injustices in the world an infant spending a few extra weeks with daddy isn't even in the first 1000.

Re: 1) But parents decide to have children, and they have the responsibility for caring for those "vulnerable people". I'm not saying they don't need more time, but to say they've been put into some untenable situation that must be dealt with by everyone else is absurd. There's never been more access to birth control or knowledge about the reproductive process. There's never been a point in the world where there was less space for another child. Looking from at this from the perspective of what's best for children, having a child is selfish. Adoption doesn't add people to the world and would decrease overall suffering assuming you're a better parent than the foster system.

2) This is recently becoming a national issue, as it well should be. There needs to be a mechanism in place to protect the employees surrounding parental leave if it's going to be enshrined in national law. I don't think you can make the argument that businesses don't have a history of pushing the costs of regulation onto their employees when possible.

3) By that argument bringing up parental leave at all is a completely moot point. We have nearly 438,000 children in the foster system.[0] 45% of all child deaths are from malnutrition.[1] If I made a list of injustices in the world, a parent being unable to spend every waking moment with their child for a couple months isn't even in the first 1,000.

[0]: http://www.childrensrights.org/newsroom/fact-sheets/foster-c... [1]: https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-a...

What's the difference between a woman with an unplanned pregnancy and a woman with another type of unanticipated medical condition that would qualify her for medical leave?

>There's never been more access to birth control or knowledge about the reproductive process.

There's never been more access to knowledge about nutrition and preventative health, and yet diabetes and other lifestyle diseases are at all time highs. The US now spends >$200/billion annually on diabetes alone. As a matter of public healthy policy, should we be able to hold people with medical diseases or conditions more accountable based on how much public health information is available?

"unplanned" Does this women not know how sex works? Does she lack access to IUD's, condoms, abortions? There are rare instances where women have a child against their will, but the number is vanishly small. The vast majority of children are carefully planned _choices_.

The "Medical leave" portion of the time off is covered under completely different laws, so I'm not sure which portion of what I've said you're replying to.

No one is being sent back to work without medical leave from their attending physician, who is charged with determining when the mother is healthy enough to go home and can go back to work. I absolutely do not, under any circumstances, believe in any being or institution ever getting between a mother and her doctor's right to determine what is medically best for her and her child. That is essentially what society was built to protect.

1) Should children suffer the mistakes of their parents? It's a question of values.

2) I don't follow what you're trying to say here? If the fed. govt. mandates paternity leave the unfairness will be a bigger issue? Sure but right now FMLA is the law and it allows unpaid leave to care for family.

3) I agree it's moot but I didn't bring up paternity leave, the grandparent did.

It's a benefit for the children, not the parents. Because everybody gets to be a child exactly once, everybody benefits equally.

That includes you. You can be gay or a Catholic priest, and you benefit.

Ignoring the fact that you had no choice and that benefits may have been different back when you were born, it isn't fair for you to take these benefits as a child and then deny them to the next generation.

No. Having children is, well, literally the activity most essential to the survival of society and our species itself. Of course people should get extra time off to do it.

The problem isn't that we have too many natalist incentives. The problem is that we don't have enough of them! The replacement rate is below replacement in general, and it's worse in cities.

If children, fine. But I don't begrudge people who do.

I don't begrudge people having children. If you want to have more children--and pay for them with your own time and money--more power to you.

What I begrudge is being forced to donate _my_ time and money to subsidizing those who have children, at the expense of the things that _I_ value. Subsidizing the creation of the 385,001th child born today is quite low on the things that I would spend money on given the choice. I would rather spend that money on anti-aging research, or prison reform, or a new startup. And if I were inclined to give money to help children, I wouldn't give it to the relatively wealthy parents of children in the US, but to the children of parents who make less than $2/day.

That suggests that "more people" is an unmitigated good, which I don't believe. There has never been a time when you were more able to avoid unplanned childbirth. The number of children in foster care has been increasing since 2013.[0]Whatever good could be done by having a child could be done better by acknowledging some of the people already in this world and giving them a real shot. We're all responsible for any situation that becomes a "tragedy of the commons", and we need to start behaving like it.

[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/30/567615510...

There's nothing wrong with wanting your kids to be your own, nor with the desire to ensure that part of you makes it to the next generation. I'm sick of anti-humanism backlash against doing the thing that every organism ultimately exists to do.

Considering humans are the demonstrated reason for climate change, I'd argue some anti-human sentiment is a bit overdue. Nature's going to be fine. Life will recover once we're gone. It's us humans that are going to suffer because of our humanist entitlement.

The idea that some environmenal metric is more important than human suffering is bizarre and vaguely masochistic. The environment is an instrumental good for humanity's use, not a legitimate moral object in itself. Human extinction is a maximally bad scenario no matter how well the environment does afterwards

Society has decided that having children is important, and individuals, companies, and governments encourage that activity by providing benefits like these.

I guess your humble opinion would change if you had a child.

So if he was to benefit from it, his opinion would change? Its' obvious it is likely it would.

Would OP be envious of someone's leave while they were battling cancer? Benefits exist because we have collectively decided they increase quality of life.

Not everyone will have children, but that are necessary for a vibrant, healthy economy (in the long term) and to provide societal continuance. Therefore, the benefit provided to parents is valuable, both to the parents and to society.

Honestly I had the same initial reaction. It’s kind of like sick leave: people who get sick a lot use it and people who are healthy cannot. Perversely incentivizes getting sick. The alternative is “paid time off” which can be used if you’re sick or for vacation. Unfortunately this means you can blow half your vacation time for the year by getting a cold that lasts a week.

Just provide more time off to everyone and don’t bucket it into specific purposes. Why does your employer need to know whether you’re using your allotted time off for vacation, taking care of a kid, or due to illness? I’d argue it’s none of the employer’s business.

> Perversely incentivizes getting sick.

This is a stretch, since "getting sick" isn't generally something one controls directly. At most, it could incentivize illness-risking behavior. However, even then, to be an incentive, the benefit of paid leave combined with being sick during that leave would have to be more attractive than being healthy and working, which is not a foregone conclusion.

Instead, lacking distinct sick leave perversely incentivizes getting coworkers sick (in situations that a sickness is contagious and workers are co-located). Rather, it incentivizes the risky behavior, where the risk is borne by everyone else and, by extension, the employer.

Did your parents get any benefits when you were a child?