Astronomer

Are you serious? Giving birth is probably the most traumatising thing a woman will ever go through, and will need time off after it for both physical and mental recovery. If people get sick pay, and have a medical certificate for being sick, why shouldn't maternity leave exist? Because the 12 weeks after having a baby are hell on your body. Not to mention that you now have another human being to look after. Ask any woman and I doubt they would say that they would have a child just to get 12 weeks pay of not doing their job. That is a joke. A child is a HUGE amount of work, for life.

If maternity leave didn't exist, no women would be able to stay in the workforce. She would have children, or a child, have to leave her job and then have no money to look after the child. Even if the father is contributing an income there is no way a single income would be able to comfortably raise the child. This means no money for childcare or other services and so the mother would be stuck at home looking after the child (which is fucking damn hard work) and not being able to re-enter the workforce until the child is old enough. With such a long break from being at work it will be incredibly difficult for the mother to re-enter the work force at the same level in which she left it. Maternity leave is there to ensure that women can have the same opportunities to have a place in the workforce, just like men. Why do we send girls to school if they're just biologically engineered to have children and look after them? Because they deserve the same opportunities to have an education and a career just as men do.

Maternity leave is also beneficial to society like tore said. It is ensuring that parents, not women, but parents have the adequate resources to raise their children effectively. It's not like the woman is going to go off and spend her maternity leave money on new clothes and a good time. That money will all go towards raising the child. To deny maternity leave is not only denying women equality in the workplace, but is also denying families the chance to have comfortable resources to raise their children.

Over here men also have access to paternity leave, but you're right in that they don't get paid. Men do not need to recover from the act of giving birth. They don't need to be there to supply milk out of their breasts for the baby. They can still go to work after the baby has been born. This is why it is not paid leave.

Suggesting that women are having babies just to get time off work is ridiculous. And if any woman thinks that she can have a baby to 'get out of' something (like crash suggested) makes me think that that woman is going to be in for a big shock when she has the child and realises how much work it is and how much of a toll it takes on your body and your mind.

I'm not going to bother arguing here anymore because obviously the majority of males on this website believe that women are meant to churn out children, not get paid, and stay at home because that is what they are biologically programmed to do. It makes me so upset to hear guys complain about women getting 'privileges' when they have no fucking idea what it is like to be a woman in the world, what it is like having to give birth and raise children, what it is like having to see men progress in the world and earn lots of money and recieve personal fulfillment while you don't because you have kids at home that you have to look after. You have no idea what it is like waking up every morning and having to fight for your rights, written and unwritten, all day just because you were born with a vagina.

I also find it ironic that none of these arguments are coming from people who have had kids, and have no idea how difficult it is raising a family in these times both financially and emotionally. When you start thinking about having a family, and you have a female partner in which you are having kids with or whatever, you will realise how much it costs in terms of money and personal strength, to raise children.

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