First post: Woman gets a three month paid mommy holiday. Not good enough. She wants MORE! Our culture "DEMANDED" that a woman who had a child she couldn't afford without working actually do something to support her family. A mother should NEVER have to work if she doesn't want to, she says. It's emotional and PHYSICAL TORTURE if a mother doesn't get more than three months of free money for not working for each of her children. The ENTIRE CULTURE that gave her three months of free money for not working "places very little value on caring for infants and small children."

Second post: Article about a woman whose employer generously gives her maternity leave. Not good enough, she wants MORE! After the three month vacation, the employer generously (insanely?) says she can bring her baby to work with her. Not good enough. She wants MORE! In the end, she is forced to work part time and she doesn't get to wear the fashions and cosmetics she prefers, and buy a new car because she has to support her own family rather than getting the free money for not working that she thinks her employer owes her.

The ladies at 2x are in a rabid fit. It's tragedy that they can't spend money someone else earned, they say. Men have worked to support their children for 200,000 years, and they still do today. Nobody has ever said, and nobody says today that it is tragic that men do not have the rewards of being full time caregivers to children. Nobody says it is tragic that children are deprived of fathers. Nobody has ever said, and nobody says today in substance that children suffer without the full time attention of fathers. Not one of hundreds of comments mentions either of these things. Some comments point out that it is breastfeeding that is valuable, therefore fathers don't have value as caregivers for infants.

So, women lived off the labor of men for 200,000 years. Now that the labor of men is not enough to provide them with new cars while they don't work, they are looking for another source of free money: employers. Somebody, anybody but women, must pay women who don't work. When women, for the first time in history, got a taste of the burden to work and support their families, a burden men have had for 200,000 years and still have, it is a tragedy. For women. Not for men. And someone damned well better pay for it! We need a law to make sure women don't have an equal share of responsibility for their families. If they can't get a man to pay, they demand a substitute - either employers or the government.

Fathers have no place in the family leave discussion because they have no place in the family other than as paycheques, and the inadequacy of men as a source of free money is the problem to be solved.

If you are inclined to say that European family leave policies allow men a few weeks at home, this is because women could not politically sell their free money grab any other way. It has done nothing to reduce the burden on men to support women with free money if women don't want to work.