<story><title>Paternity Leave Was Crucial After the Birth of My Child</title><url>https://parenting.nytimes.com/work-money/alexis-ohanian-paternity-leave</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mabbo</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m quite fond of Canada&amp;#x27;s system for parental leave[0]. The person giving birth gets 15 weeks off with 55% of their pay covered by their employment insurance (EI), and the couple get to share, however they decide to split it, either 40 weeks (at 55% pay) or 69 weeks (at 33% pay). No cost to the employer, but they have to ensure there&amp;#x27;s the same job waiting when the person gets back. It also covers adoptions.&lt;p&gt;It probably is hard as an employer but every business is playing on the same field. It&amp;#x27;s not like &amp;quot;Well, I won&amp;#x27;t participate in that because my competition would have an advantage over me&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not optional and it&amp;#x27;s illegal to fire someone over it. Every business with employees has to accept this will happen eventually. The only optional choice (which my employer does) is to cover the other 45% of the pay for a certain number of weeks.&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, often you hear about people getting in at businesses because &amp;quot;they had a temp opening because of a mat-leave!&amp;quot;. This works a lot like an internship, where the employer gets to test out a potential employee while not committing to them since the person on leave will be back on a specific date. Great way to get experience and networking for young people.&lt;p&gt;My teammate, for example, left a few weeks ago when his child was born. He&amp;#x27;ll be back in January. Sucks for our team to work without him that long, but it&amp;#x27;s nice to know that if I decide to have kids that option will be there for me too.&lt;p&gt;[0]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.canada.ca&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;services&amp;#x2F;benefits&amp;#x2F;ei&amp;#x2F;ei-maternity-parental.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.canada.ca&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;services&amp;#x2F;benefits&amp;#x2F;ei&amp;#x2F;ei-maternity-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amscanne</author><text>It’s worth noting that the 55% is capped at the equivalent ~29k&amp;#x2F;yr, and the 33% is capped at ~17k&amp;#x2F;yr.&lt;p&gt;Many employers will top off to 80% or 100% for some period of time, but I don’t know of any companies that do 18 months.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Interestingly, often you hear about people getting in at businesses because &amp;quot;they had a temp opening because of a mat-leave!&amp;quot;. This works a lot like an internship, where the employer gets to test out a potential employee while not committing to them since the person on leave will be back on a specific date. Great way to get experience and networking for young people.&lt;p&gt;You’re failing to articulate the down side of this. Both as a direct consequence (backfill) and indirect consequence (not wanting FTEs that can disappear for multiple 18 month periods with no recourse), there are far more recurring contract-only positions.&lt;p&gt;I know multiple people that are stuck in perpetually-renewed annual contracts, no security and no benefits. At least two of those cases started as backfill, and as you note.. they did a good enough job that the employer wanted them to stay. But why would they actually risk hiring young women of child bearing age?&lt;p&gt;(Just to cut off the obvious criticism, several of the people that I’m aware of actually work for the government, directly and indirectly. Canada has a big public sector.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Paternity Leave Was Crucial After the Birth of My Child</title><url>https://parenting.nytimes.com/work-money/alexis-ohanian-paternity-leave</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mabbo</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m quite fond of Canada&amp;#x27;s system for parental leave[0]. The person giving birth gets 15 weeks off with 55% of their pay covered by their employment insurance (EI), and the couple get to share, however they decide to split it, either 40 weeks (at 55% pay) or 69 weeks (at 33% pay). No cost to the employer, but they have to ensure there&amp;#x27;s the same job waiting when the person gets back. It also covers adoptions.&lt;p&gt;It probably is hard as an employer but every business is playing on the same field. It&amp;#x27;s not like &amp;quot;Well, I won&amp;#x27;t participate in that because my competition would have an advantage over me&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not optional and it&amp;#x27;s illegal to fire someone over it. Every business with employees has to accept this will happen eventually. The only optional choice (which my employer does) is to cover the other 45% of the pay for a certain number of weeks.&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, often you hear about people getting in at businesses because &amp;quot;they had a temp opening because of a mat-leave!&amp;quot;. This works a lot like an internship, where the employer gets to test out a potential employee while not committing to them since the person on leave will be back on a specific date. Great way to get experience and networking for young people.&lt;p&gt;My teammate, for example, left a few weeks ago when his child was born. He&amp;#x27;ll be back in January. Sucks for our team to work without him that long, but it&amp;#x27;s nice to know that if I decide to have kids that option will be there for me too.&lt;p&gt;[0]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.canada.ca&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;services&amp;#x2F;benefits&amp;#x2F;ei&amp;#x2F;ei-maternity-parental.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.canada.ca&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;services&amp;#x2F;benefits&amp;#x2F;ei&amp;#x2F;ei-maternity-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cperciva</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m quite fond of Canada&amp;#x27;s system for parental leave&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You mean the system where, in upwards of 90% of cases, women take 50 weeks of leave and men take 5 weeks?  I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call that a great system, personally.</text></comment>