re: What’s your opinion of paid maternity/paternity leave?

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Paternity, no.

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Why?

From someone who’s had two c-sections, it would’ve been amazing to have my husband be able to stay home with me for a bit. You are in no way healed up & ready to take care yourself in 1-2 weeks, much less a newborn and/or other children. I’m not advocating for months, but a few weeks would’ve been awesome.

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Men who take more than 2-3 days are milking it.

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We have a small business and we pay 90 days for maternity leave, even though we have no legal obligation to do it.

Getting hit with reduced income during a stage in life when income takes a turn is hard. Take that stress away from the employee and they will remember it. I know of one woman who went back to work three weeks after the birth because they could not afford the loss of income. Crazy.

Not going to assume that all of my employees will be loyal, but we have been open for nearly five years and have yet to have a resignation. Perks like this mean a lot for people.

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What’s your opinion of paid maternity/paternity leave?

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Depends on whether or not the company is required by law to do it.

If it’s the law, then it’s theft.

If it’s not the law, then that’s fine with me, I will make more money working for a company that doesn’t have leave.

Farmers, oil rig workers, Carpenters. You know real salt of the Earth people. How many of those men do you see taking off for maternity leave. I would bet it's not that much. Their kids see their fathers go to work and know that that's the way it is. A lot of men out there that take maternity leave are kind of like pete buttigieg.

As a dad, they gave me 6 weeks paid leave. I quit and left for another job on week 6.

Its been 2 years and I still feel bad about it.

Strong recruitment tool in a tight labor market. Good way to attract younger talent who can be paid less than your existing older employees if that is what you want to do. I do some consulting with a massive federal contractor and they started a program last year to pay 6 weeks paternity leave AND have aggressively started a student loan repayment benefit....and use both in their recruiting efforts. It has paid off...they went from having a really hard time recruiting young engineers and such to being able to find them and get them hired fairly consistently. Its not a lot of money in the over-all scheme of things IF you are needing young talent and it may also create some loyalty in younger employees. It has also caused some resentment among older existing employees but that only seems like typical sour grapes and has not been a major issue.

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You are replaceable and they will get rid of you in a heart beat if they chose too so take advantage of any benefit you get and don’t ever feel bad about it

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Its business, it is not personal although it certainly feels that way. An employer is in no position to give an employee anything, the employee must earn every benefit they receive, every penny is the cost of employing said employee. Employees who do not use their benefits are merely losing some part of their salary because the employer is not giving anything away, if they are a competent employer, the employee is earning every penny of compensation whether its salary or benefits. I guess there are some truly incompetent employers who do give shite to their employees but that is a mismanaged business. It may be extremely profitable and last for years and years but if their employees are not earning the full cost of their compensation they are mismanaged by definition and they are losing some profit in the process.

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As a father, I'm not taking months of paternity leave. Two weeks tops. There's no need for me to take more than that. Make sure the baby is okay, wife is healed up enough to handle everything on her own then I'd have to go back to work.

ETA: I would like for more to be available in case of complications though. I'm just saying if everything goes smoothly, I wouldn't take it all. I'm not a stay at home person.

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If that works for you and yours that is fantastic and good for everyone involved. It may not work for other people. It may not work for other employers. I am of the opinion that employers are either competent and know what is in their best interest or they are not competent and are probably not going to be employers long. The market will work itself out. I do not think its a good idea to be mandated by law but I do think it should come with some tax benefit for the company if they do offer paid paternity and maternity leave. Mandated is a bad idea, encouraging is perfectly acceptable in my thinking.

I owned a business with employees when our first was born and I owned a business where I was the only employee when out second was born. In neither instance did I have any paid leave for any reason....I owned the companies, it was 24-7-365. That said as the owner I was free to take as much or as little time "away" (you do not own a business a business owns you) as I could manage. I did not take a full day away either time but I did do a lot of shite around the house for about 6 months and worked more in the evenings and weekends for the first 6 months. That is not practical for an employee who is normally either all in at work or all out, without a lot of grey area. My son was born at 330 in the afternoon, I was at the hospital from 7 PM the evening before straight through but turned in a bid on a $1.7 million project at 9 AM from the hospital the day he was born. Did not get the project but I was batting about .100 at the time and did not expect to get it. I was in Germany when my wife was due with our daughter and flew home and met her at the hospital. They induced labor that evening and she was born shortly thereafter. I worked from the hospital the next day. I was blessed, it is far different for an employee and every situation is different, that is why mandating such things is a bad idea....it simply does not work in every situation.