Hasbeen,
Probably burnout of the employee is more disadvantageous for the company than driving in a racing car.

Vanna
I always liked having an interesting job, which meant something in developing technology, or in management for me.

However I always took my games fairly seriously. I worked to live, not the other way around.

I have always been slightly jealous of those who can make work their life's interest. It may be boring for some, but if work is your hobby, you get paid to do it, rather than have to earn the cash to afford the hobby.

Yes, I tend to agree with Pericles on this article.

Unless we have figures on anyone who takes, say 6 months off work, and then see what salary changes occur for them, then we have no way of knowing if maternity leave is really just a disadvantage for young mothers and their family.

In nursing for instance, when you return from maternity leave, you get the same money per hour's work as you did before you went on maternity leave, assuming you worked in the same job. If you worked part-time instead of full time when you returned to work, then naturally you were paid less.

One thing is for sure, having paid maternity leave now beats having none while I was off on maternity leave.
We just cranked up the use of our credit card back then!

This is such a difficult topic.

I wanted to give a slightly different perspective. I manage a staff of 70 or so (large Primary School), including numerous ladies either currently on, soon to be on, or just returning from, maternity leave. They are all fantastic staff and I am excited at the prospect of having them back at work. However, the logistics of this are huge!

While I am always conscious of my legal obligations, as well as my moral obligations, to these staff, there is little consideration of the employer in this puzzle. Being a school, I also must consider the needs of the children, as well as the occasional unimpressed parent (my favourite being the parent who couldn't understand why the teacher didn't plan the timing of the baby better!)

Anyhoo, just wanted to post some more food for thought.

Suzanonline,
"In nursing for instance, when you return from maternity leave, you get the same money per hour's work as you did before you went on maternity leave."

So would you think nurses should be paid more, and who should pay this extra?

And should nurses be taking more than 18 weeks maternity leave?

Maternity leave fails to provide couples with the what they need to become parents.

To you and me, maternity leave is a feeble attempt to make children less expensive. But to the government, it is a method of government control of your choices.

You only get maternity leave is you are 1: a woman, and 2: you are working. So most married families with more than one child can not get maternity leave...

It provides a strong incentive towards single parenthood (single motherhood) and an incentive to make sure working parents have small familes.

Instead, we need to make children less expensive. Because, after all, the country needs children and it is immoral to import people from OS as migrants to fund our aging population's medical expenses.

Children cost money, and working, professional parents pay heaps of taxes for other people's kids, then they must support their own kids... not surprisingly higher earning people have fewer kids.

Welfare dependant women have in Australia about 5 children on average, while professional parents have less than one child for every two professional adults. We have a eugenics program in Australia.. one that makes sure that clever people have few children and that provides incentives to make sure that the less-able have many.
.. continued...