This is precisely one of the cultural obstacles to correct. Dropping in a 1 year policy without substantial organizational preparation and planning is -- surprise -- doomed to fail. Like every single other aspect of organizational planning.

The problem in the US is we simply do not value these kinds of things. We value individuality foremost and I believe its among the top reasons parental leave is incomprehensible to many people.

At some point, as a society we set a minimum bar on what kind of successful businesses we want to employ people. What that minimum bar is can be debated, but "more businesses will fail" is not exactly a straightforward indicator of the value of a regulation.

Plus, certain types of labor laws, particularly those around leave, only apply to businesses above a certain size.

Uh... that's not valuing the individual (or individuality, the ability to make choices freely for one's self). The lack of paid parental leave adds an outside a government mandated influence to the decision of whether to have children or not.

Unless... you're talking about the individual rights of the corporation to not have to pay parental leave, through some twisted extension of citizen's united. As a society it benefits us to encourage people to have children, so making the process even more difficult is a bit silly.

I've been thinking that it might be an interesting experiment to apply some of the restrictions that we have only to corporations, but allow more leeway to individuals. So e.g. if you're a sole proprietor, you can arbitrarily discriminate in employment or service (it's your personal freedom of association), but if you register as an LLC, then that comes with the usual strings attached (since an artificial entity doesn't have proper personhood and any rights associated with that).

I suspect most businesses, even small, would still be LLCs.

My parental leave entitlement has been the same since my first job after graduation at 22.

You have made about 23 comments in this discussion, many regarding "your country", but you haven't stated it once. You've then generalised across all of the EU based on the one country.

I have to disagree: If a cultural obstacle at all, to me it's rather labeling civilizational accomplishments like ownership or property rights as a "cultural obstacle".

> We value individuality foremost and I believe its among the top reasons parental leave is incomprehensible to many people

While I can't speak for the US, in Germany we have a pretty generous m/p/x-aterinty leave system. But still only a few fathers take advantage of it. Certainly it's not because of culture (it's not the 1950s anymore). It might be just the plain truth that it is deeper ingrained in us.

Another big factor is the high increase of bachelor degrees. 40% of our high-school students [1] go to college [2], of which 3 out of 4 finish. By the time they finish they are in their mid-twenties and depending on what they've studied [3] will add another two years for a masters degree. In effect you'll get women who enter the job market 10 years later than their mothers did. So when the biological clock ticks louder they are often faced with a dilemma: Either less kids than originally wished for, or give up your first career years in exchange for fitting as much child-bearing in them as possible.

Again, I don't see how individualism is at the epicenter here. Instead I'd take a good look at lack of intelligent regulation (nudging), medicine and misguided education policy.

[1] & [2] since educational systems are complex to translate, I just went with the most aproximate US counterpart

[3] mostly because the job prospects in a given field are non-existent with 'just' a bachelor's degree

It’s precisely because of culture. “Plain truth” is a bit of a sham.