Paid Maternity Leave

I feel ya, Shai. Why can't two people help to have a unique person part of both of them, if every precaution is made to have said child healthily?

 

Just to be clear... is your issue with maternity leave or overpopulation or both? Do you support maternity leave if the person just adopted a newborn or do you think it's unfair in all cases?

 

I think that the solution to world over population is to simply stop having sex.

I bet you can't guess were I am going with that one.

 

:rofl:

ound:
:laugh:

 

It was mentioned on John Stewart that (I think it was) Sweden that has a 10 month paid maternity leave and a mandatory 10 week vacation a year for everyone. It seems to work for them.

I don't have children and am heading in the direction of the age where it will be unlikely that I ever will. Children do provide good for society beyond the benefits to those that have them. I think people are required to be more unselfish and giving when they raise a child. Children are also some of the few truly innocent individuals. For those kinds of reasons, it doesn't bother me because I see value for the society as a whole. I think the point of maternity leave is that the woman is working with the baby and doesn't have resources to do the additional work at the job. I can see where this would raise an issue for some people when it is drawn across clear gender lines.

I was presented with the theory that the number of offspring in a society is directly related to how much energy and resources are required to raise the child. That is why first-world countries have a lower birth rate than third world countries. I doubt that taking on paid maternity leave will solve, or even put a slight dent into, the issue of overpopulation. It is more strongly correlated with poverty.

 

Because companies have taken a humanistic bent.
For the most part, a respectable company doesn't treat their employees like interchangable cattle.

Take care of employees health (through health insurance) and state of mind in crisis (through EAP) and with life transitions (such as maternity leave) and you'll have a higher morale among your employees and a more successful company.

Also, they do it to benefit themselves through maintaining a good morale in employees which actually leads to more productivity and profits.

 

Hey, it's good for business. Do you think a flourishing business able to pay 10 months maternity leave would actually do it if they weren't benefitting from it?

 

And, business' may have had to take a humanistic bent based on legislation to protect workers' rights... but that doesn't mean they're philanthropists. They aren't going to pay money for something that isn't going to bring them more money in return...

I understand you are ranting about overpopulation, but it doesn't really apply to business' motives for paying maternity leave..

 

A person who is paid for 10 months vacation of nerve wrecking baby sitting is totally a morale case. Also, it's really bad advertisement going around firing mothers of newborn babies: people tend to root for them.

 

Infanticide is the easy answer for overpopulation. Easy, not the only, and propably not the best either.

Also, if you are worried about your financial rights, you should propably be pointing fingers somewhere else: it may be arguably unfair to pay someone for squeezing out a baby to further harm the planet and humankind, but seriously, there exist far worse offenders than those enjoying the benefits of paid maternity leave.

 

I'm interested in knowing what the motivations are for companies to pay for maternity leave when the bottom line dollar is typically the motivation in business. In the larger picture it isn't that big of an advantage to women who as a gender have been paid less and kept from education etc. in a historical context. I will admit though that such a fact does not make for an argument to actually support paid maternity leave, but it makes me a little more easy going about it.

One argument against paid maternity leave is that it could encourage companies to not hire women of childbearing age. If being fair and such is the goal, then I could see every employee having some kind of benefit package that included the options of: paid maternity leave, company paid education, paid cash bonus, etc. Of course the actual salaries would probably have to be a lot lower in such a case.

 

Interesting.
But does it?

 

I seriously don't know. I know women have been at a disadvantage to gain employment anyway. I also know it is illegal to ask a female interviewee if she is planning on having children (at least in aspects of my profession) I've never encountered any sort of benefit like it in my life. I don't understand how companies can pay for that sort of thing (or for continuing education for that matter), but I've mostly worked for struggling businesses and schools for a pittance. I would personally prefer it if it was profitable and beneficial for everyone. That would be fantastic, but I don't have an explanation for how it works.

 

I live in Finland which is basically a socialist country, really. We have universal healthcare, free university education, paid maternity AND paternity leaves, the government pays the rents of really poor people (as long as they live in cheap apartments) etc. Yet our economy hasn't crumbled, there has been no massive bloodshed on streets, and in my city there are like 7 homeless people, even though I suspect they actually have homes: they are just old junkies who like to hang around the streets.

I'm just trying to say that government making people help those in need of help isn't as radical and detrimental a thing as many people think it is.

 

I like being called Morpheus, maybe I should change my username to that! It's a zangier (what-the-hell-ever that's supposed to mean anyways) name than mine.