People want free money. If the system allows them to get money and inconvenience their employer or do neither they will overwhelmingly do it. I can’t be the only person to note that teachers are much more likely to have children during the school year than over the summer.

I think it's less defensible that people want free money than it is than corporations want free money. Because fundamentally lots of people don't want to live off handouts.

It's kinda telling that economics treats trained workers as something that springs into existence unbidden. While raising children is mere 'leisure' and government funded education is dead weight loss.

> It's kinda telling that economics treats trained workers as something that springs into existence unbidden. While raising children is mere 'leisure' and government funded education is dead weight loss.

Every word above is false. Gary Becker’s economics of the family has many, many flaws but assuming children happen by accident is not among them. Leisure is not “mere” in economics. It’s everything that’s not work. It’s what work is for. The point is not the production; it's the consumption. If we could do the latter without the former sustainably that would be paradise. There are none, zero, no economists who think government education is dead weight loss. Even Bryan Caplan of The Case Against Education thinks it’s at least 30% human capital building and it’s glaringly obvious after the past few weeks that the child minding function of school is enormously valuable.

I work off the following. What drives policy is the core. Everything else is mere words.

In practice economists assign a value of zero to child rearing. Because simply economists hate reasoning about externalities.

I'd be interested in seeing the data on this. My wife's a teacher, and in her school district there is no maturnity leave, you need to use sick time. So we were trying for the opposite - to make sure our child is born during the summer.

365.25 days in a year, roughly 80 days of summer, seems like a solid bet that they'll likely give birth during the school year just by chance alone, no?

thefz didn't say they timed pregnancies to screw over their employer but to maximize time off work.

> I have seen some time up precisely their pregnancies to maximize time off work, but still getting paid 100%. Others getting pregnancy leave while planning to resign the day they have to come back to work, sucking up all that their employer has to give and then leaving him.

I think you're being pedantic; the entire tone of @thefz's comment is that employees time their pregnancies to maximize time off work and effectively screw over their employer

> I think you're being pedantic

But I don't think it is pedantic to point out there is a difference between

1. Maximizing your time off work, even if it screws over your employer.

and

2. Timing your pregnancy in order to screw over your employer.

You're being disingenuous by making it sound like GP is arguing that they are doing it in order to intentionally screw over their employer, when clearly GP is saying they are doing it to maximize their paid leave, which also screws over their employer.

The premise of 'screwing over their employer' is what is broken here. This is the narcissistic viewpoint of a small business owner who sees dollars already counted as his own going into someone else's pocket. No well managed business is running at such a tight margin that it can't afford to meet its obligations to its employees. The employer is only getting screwed in the sense that the owner can't buy a new boat this year.

Precisely! Thanks.

Believe it or not, when after a certain period of time one gets only 70% pay but if they fall pregnant again the system resets and they get to be home with 100% pay for a year or so, someone is going to get out the calculator.

Witnessed this with my eyes many times.

I'm going to guess that you:

1. Don't have kids 2. Are a male (I'm male as well)

Having kids is a big decision. (I'm lucky enough to have two so far).

We (wife and I) have had to make a lot of sacrifices, both financially and at a family/career/personal level. We are lucky that we both have reasonably good jobs.

However, being pregnant is an absolute b*tch, and seeing what my wife went through, and what some of the other mums in our parents group went through - I am very dubious anybody intentionally gets pregnant only to get a few extra weeks/months of leave.

If you're a guy I suspect we probably can't know how bad it is. Let's just say that tearing or being cut down there isn't fun, and for many women it can have lasting impact on your body.

For both of you it upends your entire life - and you're on the hook for the next 18 years (at least). And not just financially, but you need to actually spend time with them - feeding them, changing nappies, reading books, playing games, looking after them when they're sick, taking then to school every day, teaching them, ferrying them to activities etc.

I have zero regrets - but it really irks me when immature people start commenting about how providing things like parental leave will encourage people to "abuse the system".

Those people were likely already going to have kids anyway, so I don't see why we as a society shouldn't support them - unless we want to deal with the demographic and sociological implications that comes with a rapidly aging population and no young people.

Just so you know, I was motivated to have an articulated discussion with you until you implied that having two kids made you mature, and called me immature.

Let's get out the calculator and see what it costs in time and money to raise a child for 18 years and then reconsider whether someone would take on the debt of having a kid that they didn't already plan on having to get some paid time off.

So because you don’t know who’s done it, you don’t believe it? I know several who have openly admitted to it.

It does exist. I personally know a person who did that, on purpose, and got away with close to 3 years of contigus maternity leave before quitting their job.

That being said, this is ONE person I know, I have no hard data or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's a minority.

They absolutely will time them to maximize benefits. I commented on how teachers time pregnancies so their leave is adjacent to summer break.

Also pregnancies are delayed until after a pay increase, so leave pay is higher.