Why are conservatives so weird about parental leave?

[Aimless]

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i know it's a tired trope but both Tuck and Walsh appear to quite literally be what you get when you don't hug your kids enough. In all seriousness, how do people get to be this way?

[Steely Glint]

Men taking an active role in a child's upbringing is a goes against traditional* gender roles, which makes them mad. Then you consider that, on top of this, paternity leave is paid time off and they're literally shaking with fury.

* 1950s

[Ominous Gamer]

The party of family values lol

[Loki]

They're playing to their dumbest supporters, because they know the smart supporters aren't going to call them out for it.

[LittleFuzzy]

I'm almost entirely in agreement with all of you. I do have one smidge of agreement with Walsh though. The head executive of any organization with tens of thousands of employees/equivalent managed staff isn't really in a position to take a couple of months paid family leave. Cutting back on hours some, absolutely. And I think taking the time off entirely IS a good thing. I just kinda think at that level, if you're going to take the time off the responsible thing to do is step aside/down

[Loki]

Considering how many utterly unqualified secretaries of transportation we've had, I wonder if they actually do anything.

[GGT]

Conservatives get hung up on messaging. It's key propaganda for their "War on Culture" strategy to inflame-and-divide.

If the covid pandemic taught us anything....it's that lots of managerial jobs can be done remotely; and just because you're taking Family Leave doesn't mean you've totally checked out and gone AWOL. CEO and cabinet-level positions are never really on vacation, the job follows them 24hrs/day.

It's hilarious that "conservatives" also think Buttigieg is responsible for the kinks in our supply chain/logistics, and that his paternity leave made matters worse. GOP as the party of Family Values and Freeee Markets, lol

[LittleFuzzy]

Considering how many utterly unqualified secretaries of transportation we've had, I wonder if they actually do anything.

It is true that one might claim it doesn't really matter for the heads of cabinet offices because they're all so excessively overstaffed at the executive level that having the head gone makes no real difference, but I could say the same issue means having the head around preserving continuity and minimizing disruption is even more important.

[wiggin]

I'm almost entirely in agreement with all of you. I do have one smidge of agreement with Walsh though. The head executive of any organization with tens of thousands of employees/equivalent managed staff isn't really in a position to take a couple of months paid family leave. Cutting back on hours some, absolutely. And I think taking the time off entirely IS a good thing. I just kinda think at that level, if you're going to take the time off the responsible thing to do is step aside/down

I actually disagree pretty strongly. You're absolutely right that parental leave is disruptive to an organization, especially if you're a key part of that organization. But precisely because of that, it's imperative that people in charge of such an organization lead by example. If they can't take the time off, they delegitimize it for everyone else, especially for paternity leave in the US which is still quite infrequently taken in any substantial amount. I don't think the Marissa Mayer approach is healthy or good leadership.

While it's true that any key employee or leader is going to be missed during a parental leave, I think that it's important that our workplaces start getting used to the idea of this being the new normal, with all of the attendant headaches. This doesn't mean that key employees or leaders should expect to be completely switched off during their leave - they should expect to at least stay roughly abreast of what's going on and provide input for key decisions - but they should do their damnedest to be a good model for other employees with far less power to set a norm.

[Flixy]

Fully agreed with Wiggin there. Also, otherwise you'd imply that women in such positions are not allowed to get a family because they have to take extended time off.

[Being]

Society at large should not be the ones to sacrifice anything so you can have children. You chose to procreate, you make the sacrifices. I'm tired of the whole "Wah, I have kids, I need the government to make my life easier."

[LittleFuzzy]

Fully agreed with Wiggin there. Also, otherwise you'd imply that women in such positions are not allowed to get a family because they have to take extended time off.

I don't like that it's my conclusion and I really disapprove of how it disproportionately affects women (and I do strongly agree with Wiggin's "lead by example" point, which I think Biden and Buttigieg were both intending here) but I do think it's not possible to be a good effective leader on that scale and simultaneously be a good parent. You should choose to be a good parent if you actually have kids (and I feel this applies to both parents and not just one or the other. If only one parent is stepping aside from those other committments to focus on the kids, then only one of them is actually being a good parent)

[GGT]

Society at large should not be the ones to sacrifice anything so you can have children. You chose to procreate, you make the sacrifices. I'm tired of the whole "Wah, I have kids, I need the government to make my life easier."

Wait, what? Societies generally benefit from people having children. Especially since modernity has extended life-span and grown elderly populations exponentially. Just look at Greece, Italy, Japan etc. to see what it's like to have more seniors than children.

I think you've got things backward, gramps. Millions of people who want government interventions that make life better and "easier" are old geezers in wealthy first world nations, like you and me.

[GGT]

We keep having the same arguments, over and over again. I think it mostly boils down to propaganda used for political purposes, instead of looking at reality and trying to come up with reasonable/rational solutions, along with short attention spans and myopic thinking.

Just one example: http://theworldforgotten.com/showthread.php?t=7823 Being, you didn't make one post in that thread. But now you want to imply that families having kids are the "real" burden to society?

There are real flaws in how we communicate with each other, what we expect from our governments/legislatures, and how we define concepts like Conservatism, Liberalism, Democracy, Socialism, Freeedom. We've been caught up in the language and false promises of Authoritarianism; it's practically a global phenomenon, and a real threat.

It's been said our destruction won't come from some outside force or threat, but from within. Yeah, propaganda is a good tool, and we allow it to undermine our own best interests.

[Steely Glint]

If people stopped having children, I wonder how long before total social collapse occurred. Guestimate maybe 20-30 years?

[Loki]

Isn't there a movie with that premise?

[wiggin]

It's a book you philistine.

[Ominous Gamer]

And it was 18 years

[Loki]

It's a book you philistine.

To be fair, the movie sucked, so I had no reason to check what it was based on.

[Ominous Gamer]

Hey now, it's got some of the most beautiful long takes in cinematic history.

[Aimless]

okay what the h e l l are you nerds talking about

[Loki]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men

[Aimless]

Weirdness about parental leave taken to its logical extreme

[Steely Glint]

Isn't there a movie with that premise?

Apparently, the premise of this filmbook is that people stop having children because they're infertile, whereas in my scenario people voluntarily stop having children as they come to realize that the continuance of the species is less important that not harshing Being's mellow. My scenario is totally different and original.

[Loki]

Looks like you have the plot for a sequel.