Should men be given paternity leave?

[The Lawspeaker]

New Urbanists say that population growth should be tolerated by forcing people into living in ever smaller spaces. The Japanese have reached the stage where their population is too much for the land area. People threat about their ageing population which will be hard to sustain, but a fall in their population will be healthy for the country in the long term.
Some people in the larger Japanese cities are already living in one room "micro apartments", so there is a need to control population growth.



One day all this could be yours!


People naturally don't like being told what to do though. A one child policy would have to limit state support to families that have more children, not make it illegal to. And eventually it would have to be abolished so that a stable population at replacement level was maintained (enough being born to replace those that die).

And that's why I want to act now. We aren't at that stage just yet but we shouldn't wait another 20 years before acting. For the rest I agree with you that it should not be made illegal but it should have financial and legal repercussions (if the couple is immigrant they should actually lose their rights to stay in the country and all benefits and if they are Dutch they should lose all benefits) . I think that such a policy (in the case of the Netherlands) could be abandoned when the population hits the 10 percent. To be replaced with a two child policy until the population hits 8 million.

[Albion]

And that's why I want to act now. We aren't at that stage just yet but we shouldn't wait another 20 years before acting. For the rest I agree with you that it should not be made illegal but it should have financial and legal repercussions (if the couple is immigrant they should actually lose their rights to stay in the country and all benefits and if they are Dutch they should lose all benefits) . I think that such a policy (in the case of the Netherlands) could be abandoned when the population hits the 10 percent. To be replaced with a two child policy until the population hits 8 million.

What population size would fit the Netherlands in your opinion? The UK is set to have 70 million people in twenty years, it needs capping at that. Some ministers have proposed it, but most have rejected the idea sadly.
Ideally we'd have a population of around 35 to 40 million. We need to let the population age and drop a bit. This needs to happen across the world though, not just crowded parts of Europe. China and India especially are full and the land won't support many more people.
The more people we add to the earth the more competition there is for resources. People say we can invent our way out of it - engineer GM "super crops" and squeeze people into cities, but there has to be a limit of how many people we can support. If we continue it will mean that the standard of living for everyone goes down.

This is also partly why I support a more mercantilist approach in the west. Instead of helping our competition grow by buying their crap, instead we should be restricting our trade to regional blocs.
Few countries can be truly autarkal, but Europe and North America could provide nearly everything that our nations need if we restricted trade to regional blocs. The EEC (EU+EFTA+others - the European Economic Area) already fulfils this in Europe. We must wean ourselves off globalisation. We have poor regions in Europe to produce our cheap products and richer regions to produce the more sophisticated ones, we don't need China.

Mercantilism is almost regarded as a dirty word amongst today's pro-globalisation economists, but globalisation is leading to our decline. Mercantilism is an economic theory that states that a country / empire and its colonies should seek to function as a collective autarky (or at least, cloe to that). It would have been achievable in the days of the British, French and even Dutch Empires, but only large countries like Russia, America and Brazil could pull it off today.
But this model could be applied to regional blocs, it could be applied to our regional trade areas. I'd be in favour of such policies in Europe. Mercantilism was what drove Europe towards building great empires in the first place.

Mercantilism is the economic doctrine that government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and military security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from the 16th to late-18th centuries.

Other policies have included:

• Building a network of overseas colonies; [we don't need that, there are many countries in Europe]
• Forbidding colonies to trade with other nations; [all countries in the bloc follow restrictions on trade with nations outside the bloc. Only when necessary would outside trade be permitted]
• Monopolizing markets with staple ports;
• Banning the export of gold and silver, even for payments;
• Forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships; [Not so much needed today, I doubt Chinese ships will just run away with our goods. Then again, the shipping industry should be our own anyway]
• Export subsidies;
• Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
• Limiting wages; [disagree, although some bankers deserve a pay cut.]
• Maximizing the use of domestic resources; [very much agree, unless it is of inferior quality]
• Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

The Austrian lawyer and scholar Philipp Wilhelm von Hornick, in his Austria Over All, If She Only Will of 1684, detailed a nine-point program of what he deemed effective national economy, which sums up the tenets of mercantilism comprehensively:

• That every inch of a country's soil be utilized for agriculture, mining or manufacturing. [the land should be put to good use, but the landscape should be taken into account as well]
• That all raw materials found in a country be used in domestic manufacture, since finished goods have a higher value than raw materials.
• That a large, working population be encouraged.
• That all export of gold and silver be prohibited and all domestic money be kept in circulation.
• That all imports of foreign goods be discouraged as much as possible.
• That where certain imports are indispensable they be obtained at first hand, in exchange for other domestic goods instead of gold and silver.
• That as much as possible, imports be confined to raw materials that can be finished [in the home country].
• That opportunities be constantly sought for selling a country's surplus manufactures to foreigners, so far as necessary, for gold and silver.
• That no importation be allowed if such goods are sufficiently and suitably supplied at home.

Adam Smith rejected the mercantilist focus on production, arguing that consumption was paramount to production. He added that mercantilism was popular among merchants because it was what is now called "rent seeking".[36] However John Maynard Keynes argued that encouraging production was just as important as consumption,and he favoured the "new mercantilism". Keynes also noted that in the early modern period the focus on the bullion supplies was reasonable. In an era before paper money, an increase for bullion was one of the few ways to increase the money supply. Keynes said mercantilist policies generally improved both domestic and foreign investment. Domestic because the policies lowered the domestic rate of interest. And it increased investment by foreigners in the nation by tending to create a favorable balance of trade.[37]

Keynes and other economists of the 20th century also realized the balance of payments is an important concern. Since the 1930s, all nations have closely monitored the inflow and outflow of capital, and most economists agree that a favorable balance of trade is desirable.[citation needed] Keynes also supported government intervention in the economy as necessity, as did mercantilism

As of 2010, the word "mercantilism" remains a pejorative term, often used to attack various forms of protectionism.[39] The similarities between Keynesianism, and its successor ideas, with mercantilism have sometimes led critics to call them neo-mercantilism. Indeed, Paul Samuelson, writing within a Keynesian framework, defended mercantilism, writing: "With employment less than full and Net National Product suboptimal, all the debunked mercantilist arguments turn out to be valid."[40]

Some other systems that do copy several mercantilist policies, such as Japan's economic system, are also sometimes called neo-mercantilist.[41] In an essay appearing in the 14 May 2007 issue of Newsweek, business columnist Robert J. Samuelson argued that China was pursuing an essentially mercantilist trade policy that threatened to undermine the post-World War II international economic structure.[42]

Global free trade supporters such as Adam Smith and the Austrian School of economics argue against it. They do so because they don't really care about what happens to a country so long as they can get their stuff cheaper from the developing world.
Notice that all our competitors in Asia and the developing world are adopting Mercantilist policies. They learned from Europe well, only us in the west are being led by selfish globalists. Leaving our economies open and hoping some foreign company will invest is retarded. When they do invest it is usually to steal our research and development or a brand, not because they won't to produce anything in the west.

So Europe and North America will need to look to adapting mercantilism in the future. As competition grows for goods and resources it will make increasing sense to restrict our markets from foreign competition and become more self sustaining.
Sadly the UK political class is very pro-globalisation at the moment (although much of the public are against it).

Hmmmm... this has gone a bit off topic....

[Siberian Cold Breeze]

I voted yes,first two weeks or if mother has given birth with cesarean, mother would need a person by herself ,imagine she has no relatives and nurse beside her ..also psychologicaly needs support or just enjoy happy family atmosphere together ,well deserved .

Children-father relation is not one sided. father needs to feel and enjoy that one time pleasure, a new baby in family, it's food for his soul .He is not only bread tree of family but a human

Economy for human ,not human for economy

[Mraz]

The Swedes and Norwegians have it. And they are Europe's finest economies.

It's because they can afford, I don't think most European countries could, the question is to preserve mothers maternity leave in it's paid version.

[Frigga]

I think it would be very nice if a man was able to enjoy 6-8 weeks paternity leave fully paid, so that he can enjoy the new addition to the family. The newborn stage is so fleeting, and to deny that special experience to a man simply because of his gender is unfair. Father/child relationships would probably be much stronger as a general rule if they were allowed more time with their newborn babies to help facilitate the bonding that happens in those first few weeks, bonds which last a lifetime. There are a lot of hormonal interchanges and exchanges that happen between the baby and the parents, and those hormonal interplays are what makes the bonds possible and stronger. If the father is denied that, it makes the process diminished, not only for him, but for his child as well.

Obviously, more time would be ideal, but personally, I think 6 weeks bare minimum is what should be done here in the States. And a woman deserves 16 weeks bare minimum for maternity leave, as opposed to the scanty 6-8 that is standard now.

[Osprey]

3 weeks for a man and 12 for a woman is enough.
Men don't need to play around with the baby for too long.
They need to discipline it, direct it and give him/her a name.

[Xenomorph]

Yes, but not as long as maternity leave. I couldn't give a definitive period.

[Frigga]

3 weeks for a man and 12 for a woman is enough.
Men don't need to play around with the baby for too long.
They need to discipline it, direct it and give him/her a name.

You'll feel differently about the rigidity of the fatherly roles you've defined, if you have a child yourself.

[The Lawspeaker]

Another good reason to come up with longer paternal leave for women (and paternal leave for men) is that companies should learn that the economy should serve the people instead of the people serve the economy. That may sound communistic but the people should not serve big transnational corporations. Instead these corporations should serve them.

[Flintlocke]

Sure let's get paid for having kids and sit on our asses drinking beers like the muds.