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Magdalen's avatar

I'm most familiar with the parental leave policies at tech companies, and they seem to take the approach that you get a "parental" leave of 2-3 months for becoming a parent and then an additional "medical" leave of 2-3 months for giving birth. So for an adoption, each parent would get 3 months, but for a birth the father gets 3 and the mother gets 6. I think the division between "leave for becoming a parent" and "leave for giving birth" makes a lot of sense, and it values caregiving for its own sake while also acknowledging that giving birth takes a specific toll on mothers.

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Jenn's avatar

Our daughter just had her first baby. The value of stories like the one in The Washington Post, where the author meticulously tracked the “cost” of time spent feeding her baby is to set realistic expectations. With smaller families it’s less likely that today’s new parents spent any time around newborns. Stories like these help new moms know what to expect so they don’t feel like failures when they have days where literally all they do is feed the baby.

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