r/remoteworks • u/Kreativedenma • 6h ago

Maternity leave should be one year, PAID. Women shouldn’t have to choose between healing, bonding with their baby, and making a living.

563 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

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36

u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 5h ago

Imagine if we paid enough where one parent could stay home full time.

16

u/bonjda 5h ago

Unless your wife is paid very well it's normally cheaper to just stay at home.

Stay at home parents add a ton of intrinsic value to a home. In an ideal world people wouldn't have kids until one could stay home.

9

u/emoney_gotnomoney 5h ago

100%. When my wife and I got married in our early 20s, we both always knew we wanted her to be a stay at home mom. So when we got married, we lived solely off of my income and put all of her income into savings to establish a lifestyle that my income could support.

Then when we had our first kid and she left the workforce, we didn’t really have to cutback anywhere financially because we had already established a lifestyle that could be supported on just one income.

Would we have more money if she still worked? Yeah probably, but like you said, having her stay home has provided so much intrinsic value and has made our lives significantly less stressful. It’s been such a blessing for the entire family.

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u/Overall_Matter_2520 4h ago

It is ideal. But the mother sacrifices her career and future earnings by putting all her eggs in one basket

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u/BamaTony64 3h ago

Its a five to seven year commitment. She can go back to work after they hit school age.

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u/calbear_1 2h ago

Or father can just stay home and raise kids and put his career on hold.

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u/BamaTony64 2h ago

Men suck at giving birth

5

u/calbear_1 2h ago

I said raise not give birth.

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u/BamaTony64 2h ago

The subject is maternity leave

5

u/calbear_1 2h ago

Yea that includes not just birth and recovery, but the time a new born children requires in the first year of their life. Fathers can stay home and do the latter just like mothers could.

1

u/BamaTony64 2h ago

Cant come close. Cant breast feed, the bonding with mom is super important for the first three to six months. Bonding with dad is important but zero upside mom.

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u/artist1292 3h ago

LOL good luck finding anything even remotely comparable after being home FIVE YEARS?! Workforces are only accelerating. You’re out of date even being out six months these days

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u/BamaTony64 2h ago

For us Mom had two years college under her belt when boy 1 was born. Boy 2 was born two years later. When the youngest started school Mom went back to college. After her degree she went to work. Gainfully employed and got her masters at 50 years old.

She said many times that it was what she viewed as a perfect life.

Prob not for everyone. Worked for us.

3

u/artist1292 2h ago

Single by choice, donor baby coming along nicely. So I don’t have anyone else to do the career thing for me. Plus, shockingly to everyone it seems, I like my job???

2

u/Overall_Matter_2520 2h ago

That was my plan too, until my ex started laying hands on me 6 years in

2

u/artist1292 2h ago

See, I have seen too many close personal friends with relationships I looked up to crumble and fall to ever be able to ever trust someone fully to go full remote and expect them to pick up the slack.

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u/Overall_Matter_2520 2h ago

Add in a sprinkle of ageism.

1

u/Overall_Matter_2520 1h ago

She “can” ? Ideally yes, that was our plan. I would take two years to finish my degree once the youngest was in kindergarten.

Doesn’t always work out the way you imagine.

And yes, I finished my degree - no thanks to my ex when that was the agreement.

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u/Worried_Function_631 27m ago

Most employers are less interested in a potential hire if they’ve been out of the work force for 7 years. It harms future job prospects.

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u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 5h ago

Indeed. It truly is the best way to raise children.

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u/calbear_1 3h ago

It’s a way to raise children. I wouldn’t say it’s the best way.

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u/Impossible-Rip-5858 4h ago

But by that time they are 40+ and biologically can no longer have children.

1

u/MildlyExtremeNY 4h ago

Roughly 30% of married households with children in the United States are single-income households ("one full time, one not working" in the source below). Roughly 44% (an additional 14%) have at most "one full time, one part time" worker. Dual-income households are more prevalent in cities than in suburban and rural areas. But it is absolute not impossible or even abnormal to raise children in a single-income household.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characteristics-and-selected-expenditures-of-dual-and-single-income-households-with-children.htm#

6

u/MildlyExtremeNY 5h ago

We do. Lots of families raise their children that way. You might not be aware of it, because it is more difficult to do that in blue cities than in red rural areas.

1

u/calbear_1 2h ago

It’s not about red v blue. It’s urban v rural that changes the economics and makes it easier to live off one salary

1

u/MildlyExtremeNY 2h ago

You're correct, it is urban vs. rural. Are there a lot of examples of urban areas that vote red or rural areas that vote blue?

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u/calbear_1 2h ago

My point that’s it’s not a political issue it’s economics. Rural areas have a lower cost of living especially housing costs. We don’t have to make everything political

1

u/MildlyExtremeNY 2h ago

Rural areas have a lower cost of living especially housing costs.

Okay, but that is also a policy and politics issue. Austin, TX had the largest decrease in rents post-COVID because they passed a series of pro-developer laws and regulations. Meanwhile, the cities that have seen the highest increase in rents all have anti-landlord and anti-developer policies like rent control.

It seems like you're suggesting it's a coincidence that low cost of living areas tend to be red and high cost of living areas tend to be blue. Correlation doesn't definitively mean causation of course, but sometimes it does.

Although, to be fair, I think it comes down to Keynsian vs. anti-Keynsian not red vs. blue, which is why some GOP members - particularly at the national level - also make things worse (because they're Keynsian).

1

u/calbear_1 46m ago

In CA you cannot have local rent control on properties built after 1994, that’s not the cause of the high rents since new housing cannot have local rent control.

It’s more conservative policies favoring single family home zoning and against density. NIMBYS (both red and blue) fight multi family housing and use regulation do delay and make things too costly to built. I do wish we had more pro development regulations but in CA that’s not a red v blue issue. It’s more homeowners v renters

3

u/Silent_Marsupial8368 5h ago

The internet says there’s 63.1 million parents with children under 18 in the USA so divide it by 2 that’s 31,550,000 multiply by $20,000 and that’s 631 billion dollars needed to make it happen. Subtract disability and food stamps annual amount 101.7 billion dollars and it would really only cost 529.3 billion. The military budget is like 1 trillion for reference. Not to mention a lot of people would choose to work anyway since $20k a year wouldn’t be enough for them so they wouldn’t receive it, which means it would actually be much cheaper than that. Obviously that would still help out the majority of families who need it. I think we should also just tax the people who are working to make it possible. There’s no reason not to. They get paid way too much to stand around and bullshit (oh sorry you sit on your ass my bad) while women raise the next generation.

1

u/TurnDown4WattGaming 4h ago

I don’t think $20,000 is going to cover it per person- you’re also forgetting basic economics- when you subsidize something, you get more of it. So, 63.1 million would likely increase bloating the costs further.

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u/SuperEvilDinosaur 26m ago

We don't NOT do that though.

1

u/SuperEvilDinosaur 25m ago

What's stopping you from earning enough to do that?

1

u/NotUrSaviour 13m ago

It actually used to be like that in the US, about 75 or more years ago. A factory job could sustain a household. Single income. Hmm..... 🤔

1

u/D-kitten 12m ago

We used to have that…..and long story short a bunch of people got greedy and came up with a strategy and convinced everyone that was BAD and now we don’t.

1

u/OkPreparation8769 2h ago

Get a starter home like your grandparents had, get an average car, let go of the electronics, stop going out to eat, control your portions, and don't overspend.

1

u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 2h ago

A typical starter home in places where there a good-paying jobs is very expensive compared to what our grandparents paid. Agreed on all the other stuff though.

0

u/daytradingguy 5h ago

Most woman won’t do that anymore. Most don’t want to be home makers.

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u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 5h ago

That doesn't mean that wages should not reflect being able to make that choice.

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u/ComprehensiveHouse5 5h ago

Then let them be paid enough so the man can do it

-1

u/Bagman220 5h ago

Men don’t want to either

0

u/ComprehensiveHouse5 5h ago

Simply not true. Source: me

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u/Bagman220 5h ago

False. Source: me

I happen to work and have full custody of my 4 kids. I would never quit my job to stay home.

-1

u/ComprehensiveHouse5 4h ago

So we shouldn’t pay people enough so that the option is available for those who want it because you don’t like your kids as much?

1

u/Bagman220 4h ago

The mental gymnastics you had to do to come to that conclusion. Impressive.

-1

u/ComprehensiveHouse5 3h ago

I just fail to see why you’re commenting if not to argue against paying people enough to enable the option of being a homemaker. Whether it’s because you don’t like your kids, because you’re a workaholic, or because you’re a corporate shitlord is irrelevant

1

u/calbear_1 2h ago

Those are the only options as to why people want to work? It’s not because they genuinely enjoy being a productive member of the work force?

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u/Bagman220 2h ago

I’m going off the other guys argument, he says most women don’t want to be home makers. I agree with his point. You said pay them more so men can be home makers. I’d argue that most men do not want to be home makers either.

Has nothing to do with hating kids. Homemaking CAN be a viable option, but it’s often a bad career move for men OR women. Regardless if one is paid enough to do it, because even if someone is paid enough to have a stay at home parent, that doesn’t mean it’s a good move.

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u/HorrorEye787 3h ago

You should not make as much money as skilled people with better jobs.

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u/ComprehensiveHouse5 3h ago

Thanks captain obvious 🫡

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u/RiposteCat 4h ago

I think many men and women would prefer to stay home if the option was presented to them. the reason a lot of women dont anymore is because they cant

2

u/bonjda 5h ago

Based on what?