Paternity leave: The hidden barriers keeping men at work
I suppose the article doesn&#x27;t mention the real reason: that it is the privilege of mothers to spend time with their children, because they invested and risked more to have them (or simply because having the womb gives them the better negotiation position).<p>While a small percentage of mothers can not relate well to their kids and prefer to get back to work asap, the reality is that most mothers prefer to spend time with their kids.<p>Who should get to spend time with the kids? The person who spent 10 seconds injecting their semen into the womb, or the person who toiled for 9 months letting the child grow in their womb, often risking their life to do so? In many cases, the discussion does not even make sense. It is even more ridiculous when feminist men pride themselves for taking &quot;the burden&quot; off their wives. All they did is take away their natural privilege.<p>This also becomes even less surprising if one looks outside of the academic box and realizes that most people don&#x27;t have exiting creative jobs where they change the world, but mostly mundane stuff like being supermarket cashiers, or, at best, nurses - which is a nice job, but should women really leave their kids so that the can change the diapers of strangers instead?<p>Feminism want us to believe that taking care of kids is a burden that men unfairly push to women while they go off to have fun at work. And huge parts of society have swallowed it.<p>Here in Europe, many governments think they have to force men to take paternity leave, to further equality. They think men don&#x27;t want to spend time with their kids because of role models or whatsoever.<p>The reality is probably in most cases that the the issue is mostly financial. Even with paid paternity leave, there usually is less money on the table than with full time work, specially since women tend to choose less well paid careers (another privilege - they don&#x27;t have to provide for the family, so they can afford to trade income for convenience and social status).<p>I think it is great if fathers can take paternity leave and recommend everybody to try to do it. but there are actual real world issues preventing it, not just memes (&quot;societal expectations&quot;).