Yes, US median is something like 2-5 weeks maternity leave and many require you to exhaust all of your accrued paid sick time and PTO first and many of them also require you to file it as FMLA (the federal red tape/insurance program for long term leave) even if you don't plan to extend past "given" amounts of maternity leave. So yeah, in corporate dystopian America, 3-4 months sure looks generous.

I think you must misunderstand FMLA. FMLA is job protection to take care of medical issues (you or family member). It isn't really any red tape, but it prevents an employer from firing you during those 12 weeks and it prevents them from denying your PTO. So if you have 4 weeks of PTO saved up they cant deny your time off request to take care of your baby for 4 weeks. FMLA leave is unpaid.

I wish it were just me misunderstanding FMLA. It's not intentionally red tape and I was being a bit hyperbolic, but the "optional" certification forms for FMLA in the hands of a lot of corporate HR drones become "required" because HR wants "CYA" despite that not being the intent of the certification forms. Maternity leave doesn't even have a direct "certification form" nor is it supposed to because it should be pretty obvious to an employer (much less the Department of Labor) to "certify" a maternity, but a lot of mothers in the US workforce get burdened by idiots in their HR departments to fill out CYA paperwork sometimes in the hospital with an implied threat that their job is on the line if they don't. Despite that not being how FMLA works or is intended to work. I don't know why so many companies seem to misunderstand some of these basic facts about FMLA, I just know that forums are filled with pregnant people complaining about their HR representatives giving them paper "homework" sometimes in the worst possible moments, just to "prove" their maternity leave "because FMLA requires it". (It doesn't.)

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla/forms

A lot of people lean on grandparents or spouses for kids. But to be honest, we all worked from home so it wasn't a big deal. It was common to see kids or babies in Zoom calls.

> we all worked from home so it wasn't a big deal

As a parent of an infant myself (well she's one now), I cannot imagine trying to work while also caring for a child. Like I've done it, and it's incredibly, incredibly difficult.

But yeah, if both parents are working you need childcare, and that's expensive if you don't have (much) family support.

I fail to see how this is the company's problem. What if I take on a baby sloth that needs two years of potty training before you can leave it alone. Is my employer somehow morally responsible to make sure that I can stay home for this amount of time? Isn't the responsibly with me who actually chose to get the sloth in the first place?

Baby humans do eventually grow into productive adult humans who pay taxes, and parents who are given generous parental leave do better at their careers in long term. Therefore both are beneficial to a society. Of course a private company won't care for either - that's why in sensible countries you get 12 months of maternity pay, majority of which is paid from the social fund not by the company. After all we all pay taxes for something, no?

Surely you're not comparing the critical initial development of a human child to... having a pet, right? I sincerely hope I'm misunderstanding your position.