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On Tuesday, August 4th, Neflix announced on their blog that they would begin offering new parents a progressive parental leave policy:
...Today we're introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child's birth or adoption.
The Boston Globe picked up the story earlier today and compared Netflix's new policy to Google's, which offers 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of "baby bonding" time. The Boston Globe also notes:
The US and Papua New Guinea are the only countries among 185 nations and territories that hadn't imposed government-mandated laws requiring employers to pay mothers while on leave with their babies, according to a study released last year by the United Nations' International Labor Organization.
This new policy "covers all of the roughly 2,000 people working at [Netflix's] Internet video and DVD-by-mail services, according to the Los Gatos, California, company."
However, not all media voices are pleased with this change. Suzanne Venker, author of the recent book The Two-Income Trap: Why Parents Are Choosing To Stay Home, writes for Time :
Offering new parents full pay for up to one year is akin to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The needs of children are huge, and they do not end at one year. On the contrary, they just begin. Taking a year off of work to meet those needs merely scratches the surface.
What does Soylent think? Should companies offer new parents lengthy paid leave after they bring a new bundle of joy into the world, or do generous policies do more harm than good?
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:14PM
For my wife and I, this did not turn out to be true at all. My wife had a VERY GOOD part-time job, but she recently gave it up, and we're better off now than we were.
The problem was daycare. It was costing us almost her entire monthly wage to pay for decent child care for our two kids (Age 5 and 3). We did the calculations, and figured out that she was working 8 hours a day, 3 days a week, for less than $300 take home. Once you count the cost of commute, etc, she was working so someone else could raise our kids, not for any amount of money more than pocket change.
The situation would be different if they were older, and in school. Then we wouldn't have to pay for full time child care. Once they're older working might actually be worth it, and she probably will get a job again in a few years.
Full time daycare is priced almost exactly the same way here, so that unless you have a really, really good job, it makes more economic sense to stay at home. (If you have the right temperament, starting a dayhome is probably the best bet. Stay home with your kids, socialize them, and get paid to do it!)
If employers or governments want to retain both parents in the workforce, the simplest way to do that is to make early child care more affordable. Otherwise one parent ends up working for almost nothing for the first 6 years or so.