Now, werepossum, I did appreciate your post, but you're incorrect in expressing a 'well said' praise towards poofyhairyguy:
What society needs is more children with solid backgrounds and the tools necessary to be economic successes in their adult life. By leaving maternity leave to be a benefit offered by an employer, that creates a system where those who have the most resources to provide for the needs of children (aka have good jobs) are incentivised to have children.
Ahh, the old evolutionary bastardisation of survival of the fittest, and therefore only the wealthy and secure procreate the greatest assets into society. Economic eugenics. Why not take your vile position into hyperbole to test and license those who you deem worthy to have children, while sterilise those who are not?
The problem with the argument that government must force mandatory maternity leave for "the overall benefit of society" is the argument is based on a belief that it is always good to have more children.
'
More children' is not the argument nor practical return for adequate maternity/paternity leave and pay. You are projecting a falsehood and ignoring the incentive for such social practice as to curtail the economic burden, loss of job placement and employability of new parents.
If it is mandated policy to give maternity leave, then that incentivises those who can't afford kids to have them. This already happens to a large degree because those who don't have the skills to get a good job often also don't have the skills to see the long term problems that a single night of sex can do to your bottom line if it produces a kid you can't afford. Why make it worse?
Worse? As in higher fertility rates? Despite lacking national legislation for comparable maternity/paternity benefits, the USA is '
worse' than those more socially developed states who recognise the long term social, economic, and stability benefits in not imposing an excess burden upon those who have attain an infant. Such social help does not equate an increase in the fertility rates -- in fact, it can be demonstrated and argued the opposite to your unsupportable position.
Your position that the availability of maternity/paternity leave with partial returns a practicing incentive for more kids? You are wrong.
:thumbsdown: No, poofyhairyguy, no quantitative analysis can support your projection for what you ideologically feel to be. Twelve pages ago I already refuted such rhetoric:
Here's a link to another map (
Wikipedia - List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate), though not as damning as the OPs, yet still quite clearly distinguishes states on the globe, with the USA again strikingly distancing itself away the most developed states, and joining the lesser so.
The USA is on par with Mexico, North African states, Saudi Arabia, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Yes, in all those states you appear to argue how at ease and in successful health it is to raise a chosen larger family, as your argument being for the USA. Economic ease must be why larger families exist?
There you have it, poofyhairyguy, your assertion that the ready availability of leave with partial wages after having an infant returns a greater fertility rate is false, as it does not correlate to such relative rise. The less socially development states such as the USA, Mexico, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia have fairly equally high birth rates, yet those more developed states with more rational support for new parents have lower rates.
Your expressed argument that such care with leave is to promote greater births and return such a rise is a failure. Care to concede your error as false ideology?