Hello hello! How’s everyone doing this weekend? We got our first real snowfall here this week, so we’re starting to do that awkward thing where you dress your kid up in so much warm clothing they kind of can’t move. Ah well. Anyway, what can I interest you in today?
If you’re looking for….some atheist parenting links:
The atheist experience has a handy little set right here (from Lance)
If you’re looking for….some international perspectives:
Germany is instituting new (and quite generous, cross-gender) parental leave policies. They’re trying to raise the birth rate, and I’ll be interested to see if it works.
If you’re looking for….an interesting survey of parents (who read Buzzfeed):
Parents weigh in on today’s interesting parenting questions. Some results are encouraging, others not so much.
If you’re looking for….a Dad’s point of view:
New parenting and time juggling from a Dad’s point of view.
Also, Slate asked a conflict zone photographer father how becoming a Dad changed his view of his profession.
I truly believe one of the best things the media can do for the cause of family equality is to ask men the same questions about parenting that they ask women. Constant articles about women “not being able to have it all” do reinforce the notion that family choices are women’s unique burden.
If you’re looking for….some science on screen time:
New evidence based standards for toddler screen time. I hate to immediately endorse things just because they agree with what I do, but I do believe my son has a much better relationship with my parents because he Facetimes with them regularly.
If you’re looking for….some research on cliques:
Any article on research that starts with a Breakfast Club reference is destined to be an interesting read. Why cliques form ins some high schools and not others.
Ehm, no, the German reformation of parental leave is not new (I was wondering if I’d missed something), it’s from 2007
In short, you have an unpaid parental leave of up to three years. The new (2007) Elterngeld means that you get reimbursed up to 65% of your pre-parental income for up to 14 months if you share the time.
This sounds incredibly cool, but here’s the pitfall:
You need a steady job for those benefits to kick in and those have become as rare as gold dust. People who do freelance, who have a limited contract, who have a so-called mini-job (less than € 450 a month), they luck out.
You laso have a right to a child daycare place when the kid is one. Problem, even with subsidies those cost that much that for a woman in a low pay job whose husband is making enough money to keep them above welfare it just makes no sense to work 8 hours a day when your whole salary gets eaten up by daycare and daycare food expenses, so they stay at home and drop out of the labour force.
Also, if you’re on welfare you don’t get any additional benefits, so fuck the poor.
So the whole thing mainly helps the middle classes. If you watched the interview, one of the German women has an au-pair. That’s not even middle class anymore…
I had read that article with the Breakfast Club reference! It is definitely interesting!
Gileill: I think it’s just that we are so far behind you that it sounds awesome to us. It sucks that it’s not that good for the poor, but compared with our system of “you can have 12 weeks off unpaid”…