So I live in Canada, and work in a very Canadian organization, full of very Canadian women. And you're absolutely right - there is just a plague of women getting pregnant exclusively for the purpose of milking a year of paid maternity leave, then leaving the workforce forever after a year. It's actually one of the biggest problems facing the Canadian economy today.
I live in America and get 10 weeks of paternity leave. That was really the reason why my wife and I want to have kids, so I can get a 2.5 month vacation.
Kampf do you have kids? Because it's pretty fucking easy to say daycare isn't expensive if you've never had to pay it. My wife and I have one child and for 5 days of daycare in a facility that I wouldn't put my wife's dogs in its 145 a week. Better places charge more, so say 800 a month for childcare. That's what my mortgage is. Oh and that is for one kid. For those with two or three it's brutal.
I pay $1600/mo for two. The only break I get is my company has a childcare FSA set up that allows me to put in $5k tax free annually. Still sucks a fat baby's dick though. EDIT: It goes up for my daughter next year when she joins the place my son attends - just shy of $2k. It stings, it stings bad.
This probably won't get much media coverage. Three female suicide bombers killed 30, injured around 100. Boko Haram. But since it didn't happen in a 1st world country no one is gonna care.
This. A thousand times this. You know what I had to go through to get back in the job market? It was hell. Bear in mind I had experience as a business owner, 10 years in IT, I was a journeyman carpenter and glazier, and a shit load of other experience. But owning my own business left me with a huge gap in verifiable employment. I was 50 years old and in a strange town where I didn't have the connections to land a job. So I started at the fucking bottom. Again. My first job was putting flyers on doors. I got nine cents for each flyer I distributed. In Summer. In Las Vegas. It came out to about $7 an hour. I then got a gig doing phone surveys for minimum wage. It was easily the worst fucking job ever. I hated every minute of it and every low life fucker I worked with. After 3 or 4 months of that shit I moved to a seasonal job that lasted 3 months. Once I had some recent work history under my belt, I was able to land my current job which pays well with great benefits. I think a lot of young folks believe that their degree are a Golden Ticket and people will be knocking on their door for the honor of having them as employees. It doesn't work that way. You've got to prove yourself first, and usually proving yourself means eating a lot of shit.
l. Yeah, that happened. Yep, it was totally legal. You guys are so naive you actually don't see how this shit is DEFINITELY going to get abused? You don't deserve to be paid to spend 44 weeks with your kid. You do not need 44 weeks off to accommodate a pregnancy. If you find a spouse who wants to take care of all the finances while you do that - great. But you are not entitled to it. They're averaging 44 weeks off not because of some medical or dire emotional necessity, they're doing it because they're getting paid. I don't care what they do in Canada. It's dumb and not economical. I just don't want to see it here. Ghetto, that's great most of them don't quit before they come back. As an employer I would be fucking thankful if they did. The only thing that could be worse than the first 44 paid weeks off would be the next 3 kids. No, I don't have kids. 145 a week doesn't sound expensive, but I don't know what kind of dump you're talking about. Where I live it averages $170. You can go much cheaper than that if you hate your kids. I'm sure it's much more expensive in other places. Put a lot of thought into that one did you? Stop being retarded.
Utopia, you're living in it. http://www.whattoexpect.com/forums/canadian-parents/topic/2nd-pregnancy-maternity-leave.html I want to work the absolute minimum possible so I can take the maximum amount of time off! Yeah, these people don't really exist. She's just a fringe dweller. Most mothers don't use the full year. They only use 44-48 weeks.
I don't know if that's directed at me, but as I said - I support some paid maternity leave. A full year off with pay checks is fucking nuts. Then you only have to work 15 weeks before you qualify again? That's not a reasonable accommodation. That's "I fucking want this and if you don't support this you hate women and children." Silencing opposition and portraying them as assholes is pretty much the only way you can get something like that to pass. Another very good article about our bleeding heart friends from up north: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-strategy/the-dark-side-of-maternity-leave/ A world of no to that shit.
I live this every day. I work in marketing, I'm authorized to give people motel rooms, air fare, and even cash to come to this horrible town. I don't give my clients shit. It was my experience as a business owner that folks will abuse the shit out of free stuff. And the moment you quit giving them free stuff, they get all butt hurt. My company offers a service that stands by itself and other then a few exceptions the people will come here without incentives. People suck and will abuse the shit out of anything for their own personal gain.
I swear media won't be satisfied until every indivisible is pissed off with every OTHER individual. Let's all draw a line in the sand around ourselves. Same day. Same FUCKING DAY:
Well, we do have Medicare for mostly older folks and it works fairly well. And, with supplemental insurance, has excellent coverage. If we had gone to expanded Medicare coverage instead of ObamaCare, we'd be better off because adding healthier younger people would lower the per capita cost. We also have Kaiser, from which we can learn. Funding is always an issue because a lot of (not very bright) people expect full free health coverage and lower taxes. Riiiight.
To illustrate this point, I move that we all petition Toytoy for rooms, air fare and cash for the annual Idiot gathering in Vegas!
In Canada (I'm excluding Quebec because their system is different and I'm unfamiliar with it), you are guaranteed three months maternity leave with a percentage of your wage paid up to a cap of about $1500/mo, born in part by the employer and the rest by the government. After that there's 9 months of parental leave, which either parent can take. Same financing. Daycare is paid by the parents. So I guess I'm confused...you're pissed off at the notion of anyone daring to take time off to raise an infant? If every credible medical source says you should nurse a baby for a minimum of six months and ideally a year, how do you do that when you're back at work in 10 weeks? The amount of people who abuse the system are far less than the amount of legitimate parents just trying to raise kids. Isn't this exactly what social programs are for? If you should expect no time off, no government assistance and zero break with child care, who in this country could actually afford to have kids? And before you flippantly say that only the wealthy be allowed to breed, first remember that people will have kids regardless of circumstances, so every time undue hardship hits a family, you greatly up the risk that the kids will either be criminals or themselves continue the cycle when they mature. If I have to pick between my tax dollars going to the newest war or to young families, I pick the parents. Also, as a snarky comment, a woman electing to not return to work at the end of parental leave isn't scamming the system. It might just be the most economically prudent choice for the family, given her wage and day care costs. Or, gasp, she might want to invest her time with her fucking kid.
Here's a link. Massive police response for three dudes hitting a jewelry store. Better safe than sorry though.