Maternal and Paternal Leave around the world.

Recently, the Prime Minister of Singapore invoked the Swedish model as something to look to, for Singapore. For those who know what the Swedish Model is, this must have raised a lot of hope. I decided to check it out.

In Sweden, 480 days of paid leave is available for distribution between the parents. The first 390 days is paid at 80 % of a normal salary - and the remaining 90 days at a flat fixed rate. To encourage paternal involvement in child rearing, Sweden has a rule requiring 3 months of that time allowance to be used by the father. Thus, far from denying paternity leave, as is the case in Singapore, in Sweden PATERNITY LEAVE IS MANDATORY.

This is a very interesting situation, for it means that the State believes that parenting is of greater importance that mere employment. Whatever work responsibilities the father has, the State is saying that the father must set them aside to be a dad.

There is another aspect of child rearing that is different in Sweden. Child care/Kindergartens are subsidized by the State rather heavily and there is a cap of 100 pounds sterling per month for charges relating to it. Compared to a typical Swedish wage this is a modest price for childcare. (As background the CIA estimated in 2007 the GDP per capita in Sweden to have been 50,415 US dollars per head - not bad.)

Thus, the parents in Sweden have a lot of time with their newborns - and when they go back to work, they can afford childcare.

Good as it might seem, the situation in Sweden is not even the best in the world. Bulgaria, for instance, according to a Wikipedia article on parental leave, states that any mother may take 45 days sick leave, prior to the due date, on 100% of salary, 2 years of paid leave, after delivery and a further 1 year of unpaid leave. The employer must allow the mother to return to her original job after the leave expires - and pregnant women and single mothers cannot be fired.

Estonia is similarly generous. Paid leave entitlement is 18 months for mothers and it may start up to 70 days before the due date. Fathers may take paid leave from the third month after birth. Though, oddly, only one parent may do so at one time, otherwise one is unpaid. Pay is at 100 % of salary, capped at three times the national average.

It surprised me, somewhat, that relatively poor countries, in Eastern Europe, could be so generous to their new parents. It seems that their priorities are geared towards creating a society that is good to live in and that looks to the future.

The UK is not as generous, but even there benefits exceed those in Singapore. Mothers are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave, 39 weeks of which are paid, the first 6 weeks at 90%, the rest at a fixed rate.

Bearing these examples in mind, Singapore's situation does not seem particularly generous. The closest examples to Singapore's stance on this are found in places such as Africa where 12 and 14 weeks of leave are common.

If Singapore is to truly address the issue of its inadequate fertility, it may need to be somewhat more bold in initiatives designed to support parents. Other countries, even much poorer ones, manage to be very supportive of parents - so this is not about money: it is about outlook and beliefs in what is important. It seems that in Singapore, saving money is more important than the patter of little feet. Of course, without little feet, there will be no-one, in future, to make money from...so, short-term gain, leads to long-term loss.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

On Maternity and Paternity Leave.

Singapore's leaders are waking up to the fact that soon they will have no-one left to lead. By this, I mean that Singaporeans simply aren't having enough children: they virtually halve at every generation - and, as any schoolboy mathematician will tell you, it doesn't take an awful lot of generations, at that rate of decline, for there soon to be no Singaporeans left at all. Something has to be done.

So, the government has proposed a number of initiatives to improve the situation. I shall focus on the implications of one of them, in this post. The government has extended the statutory period of maternity leave from 12 weeks to 16 weeks. This is great for mothers who wish to, and need to, spend more time with their newborns. It is great for the babies, too. It is not so great, however, for employers - particularly smaller employers - for they have to arrange cover, by generally less well-informed and competent staff, while their new mother is away from work. This can be expensive, is inconvenient and may affect the business. Thus, employers won't like this change very much.

Then, again, even 16 weeks is too short, really. What is needed is a much longer period of maternity leave (as in many European countries), but this would only heighten the problems for Singaporean companies which, traditionally, don't really care very much about the well-being of their staff.

This creates a big problem for women throughout Singapore. Employers may come to look on a female employee as a nightmare waiting to happen. They may see a female name and drop the CV in the bin. Why? Because down the line, all they can see is the incurred expense and inconvenience of maternity leave. Employers who think like this will tend to avoid employing young women and will only open the doors to post-menopausal women. It may create a strange kind of ageism in which OLDER women are preferred to younger ones. It would be a curious reversal of present trends.

While the government is intent on improving the situation for mothers, it seems to have forgotten fathers. Dads now have earnt the right to a week off work, sometime, during the year, to help care for their child. A week is a bit pathetic, really. What is needed is for men to have paternity leave. This would give new dads the chance to get to know their children - and their children to get to know their dads.

Paternity leave serves two purposes: it allows dads to be dads - and it ensures that mums will have jobs. You see, if dads get 16 weeks paternity leave, too, then there will be NO difference to employing men or women in the workplace. Employers would have no reason to discriminate between men and women: for both would come with the same potential cost. Indeed, equal maternity and paternity leave for men and women is the ONLY way that a sex divide in employment prospects will not develop in the Singaporean job market.

This, of course, gives rise to a general principle which should apply in all matters relating to employment: whatever breaks or allowances that women get, men should get, too, so that there is no reason to discriminate between men and women in the workplace. It seems the eminently intelligent thing to do and resolves many problems, at once. However, somehow, I don't think it will be implemented. Other considerations will probably still take precedence over the resolution of the population issue - and so the population of actual Singaporeans will continue to decline.

We shall see what is done.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)