On May 19, 6:13 am, Declan Murphy <declan_mur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> My (mostly female) staff have been jabbering on about ikumen this week
> and have posted to the bloghttp://preview.tinyurl.com/29kdac6
> (http://www.businessjapanese.com/news/post/2010/05/14/
> JBPPe69599e7a791e69bb8e291a1.aspx)
>
> The "stay at home dad" tv dorama series seems to be one of the
> reasons.
> (for non japanese reading folk:http://tinyurl.com/24vpmkx)
>
> Funnily (and worryingly) enough, I wasn't even aware that paid
> parental leave even existed in Japan. Admittedly most Japanese men
> can't utilize it for a variety of reasons.
>
> http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/parental_2008_09.pdf (page
> 6 if you're lazy)
>
> Turns out only Australia and the USA don't currently seem to have paid
> parental leave.

Companies typically require you to take all sick/vacation days you
have accumulated and then you go on 'short term disability' (which is,
I think, appropriate and should apply to honeymoons as well) and that
comes with some percentage of salary. Tennessee supplements FMLA with
maternity-specific laws, i.e. the Tennessee Maternity Leave Act which
says it's illegal in Tennessee for a company of 50 or more employees
to deny maternity leave. I don't think there's any law saying salary
must be paid, which I agree with; I have coworkers and friends with 5
kids and that could get expensive if the mother/father is taking off 3
months every year or so because they don't want to wear a jimmy hat.

John W.