Similarly it would lead to discrimination against large families (large these days being anything more than 2 kids). Employers likely won't tolerate someone having 5 kids over a 5-10 year period and taking all that disruptive and expensive leave.
Because people should totally be making major life decisions on the basis of what employers will "tolerate".
FFS. We've already ceded enough control over our lives to these companies whose only agenda is to suck people dry, and then find new ways to wring even more out of them.
Businesses exist to serve people's needs and interests. People do not exist to serve businesses.
There's not a whole lot you can do about discrimination. Unless the employers are dumb enough talk openly about what they're doing. They can find any subjective reason they like and claim that's the reason for letting you go. You can try to sue, and sometimes you'll even win, but there's no Job Police SWAT Team that will beat down the door and force them to give you your job back in time for your next mortgage payment.
In light of this reality it's good to avoid policies that incentivize even more discrimination.
They can find any subjective reason they like and claim that's the reason for letting you go.
Oh, believe me, I know. I was dismissed from my last job for having the temerity to take a leave of absence — negotiated in advance with the company, with C-staff level approval — to travel for a few months. When I returned, they presented me with a materially altered performance review (fact-checked with the manager who actually wrote the review), filled with straight-up lies, and said that was why they were firing me.
If you dare to decide the life your job pays for is more important than the job itself, well, there's the door...
> Because people should totally be making major life decisions on the basis of what employers will "tolerate".
Shouldn't they? The career you choose, and the specific firm you choose to work for (or start your own, or whatever) is what I would consider a major life decision which ought to carefully be considered alongside other major life decisions like whether or when to have children.
Another interesting way of considering it is that people who exercise their natural right of association make trade offs in doing so that you find repelling. This viewpoint has the benefit of not dehumanizing people who run and work for businesses.
I flatly reject the notion that, with as massive a power differential as the employer-employee relationship structurally entails, it qualifies as an "exercise" of some "natural right of association".
With the way we've chosen to run our world, such that there are orders of magnitude fewer people offering jobs than there are needing them, one side of that dynamic has tremendous power to dictate terms to the other. That is not remotely an equitable relationship, and to suggest that participating in it is some sort of "exercise" of a "natural right", that is freely entered into, is fatuously specious.
That is not remotely what I'm saying, and I gave absolutely no reason to suggest it.
This is the worst case of someone trying to put words in my mouth on HN since the last time I tried explaining something from a feminist perspective...
Yes, because, shockingly, both parents caring for babies helps society as a whole. Maybe you should stop being selfish instead of making it hard for others to have families.
There have been studies that have shown fathers are far more involved in their kid's lives by taking paternal leave. It also means that the parents will both be far more productive post-leave as they would have developed more balanced responsibilities, and don't have to juggle waking up in the middle of the night with a job for at least the first few months, which is arguably the toughest.
The fact that family leave is not government-mandated and involve both parents taking a reasonable (several-month) leave for caring for a baby is ludicrous.
You haven't provided any support for your argument that I, as someone without children, must be made to subsidize the family choices of others.
The resources to cover the extended work absence of the parents has to come from somewhere. In many cases, it'll be one past parent covering a new parent, and then vice-versa. But those of us who can't have children (a) don't get to have children, yet (b) are stuck holding the bag having to pay the costs for others'. Isn't that kind of adding insult to injury for people who can't have babies?
So how is it that you get to make the decision for all of society, such that it must be a one-size-fits-all law, and people aren't allowed to negotiate for the terms that make the most sense for their own personal situation.
I'd say that you came up in the public school system, were raised by a mother who dropped out of the workforce and stopped her other contributions to society in order to raise you, received all the cheap or free healthcare that is available to minors, and took advantage of all the opportunities that society provides to young people in order to help them be successful and functional parts of their community. So you've kind of already had your share and owe it back to us.
I'm sure I won't change your mind, but as a single person with no kids, that's how I see it. I'm quite happy to make a few sacrifices to make life easier for today's children.
I doubt any legal scholar would argue that a pre-schooler is able to sign a contract obliging them to pay back a student loan, so how can you say any given person owes society for their public school education?
It's in my interest as a member of society that there's a well-stocked pipeline of healthy well-adjusted well-educated kids coming up so that my old age is not some kind of hellscape.
> So how is it that you get to make the decision for all of society, such that it must be a one-size-fits-all law, and people aren't allowed to negotiate for the terms that make the most sense for their own personal situation.
Yeah, societal decisions are generally one-size-fits-all laws because it's virtually impossible to make it any other way. In short: tough luck.
