Or you have a small business. Not every company is a 10,000 headcount multinational. Over 90% of small business employ fewer than 20 people and small businesses make up 30% of the economy.

Realistically, 1 person missing from a small business can mean 10% of their workforce is gone - and due to the size of the company they may not have people to cover the missing staff.

If small businesses in general can't afford an employee going on [mp]aternity leave, that seems like an argument for socializing the cost.

You don't need to have 10,000 people working for you to be able to afford to hire cover for when people going on parental leave.

10 people or 10,000 people, if you can't afford your staff going on parental leave / long term sick / vacation, you don't have a sustainable business.

> if you can't afford your staff going on parental leave / long term sick, you don't have a sustainable business

You've never run a startup or small business. At the beginning margins can be razor thin, and unplanned or extended leave can have a huge impact.

There's plenty of small business owners who are perfectly capable of managing the risk of losing staff for whatever reason without it sinking the company. Many business run at a big loss when starting up, never mind razor thin margins. The ones that survive manage their investors, debts, cashflow and staff risk properly.

If you run a business on the assumption that you're going to have all your current employees working for you continuously for the foreseeable future, you're going to have a bad time.

Parental leave shouldn't be unplanned though, there should be several months of notice surely