The big, dirty, unspoken secret is that while the parenting of children is critical to the future of society, there is not one single aspect of it that benefits an employer in the short-term. This forced benefit will not improve the bottom lines of any employer other than the IRS and Jarrett nows it.
Employers tend not to worry about whether or not a well-parented little Timmy will grow up to be a promising young sales employee twenty years from now. They worry about why his dad is taking Wednesday afternoon off to go to little Timmy's baseball game now - when they have a crew of childless 25-year-olds who are willing and able to do the dad's job cheaper.
Within the limits possible, expect parents who demand and use this type of benefit to be the first ones laid off or fired, when the opportunity arises.
LinkedIn is becoming a useless welfare state echo chamber very quickly. It had promise a few years ago, but I hardly look at it now - there's always some blowhard bloviating about some new social welfare scheme with a chorus of seminar posters chiming in with comments.
Tell me about it. I just had a guy on my crew come back from 6 weeks of paternity leave.
Frankly, I encouraged him to take some time. "New First Time Dad" is something that you don't get a second chance at, ever. Some things are more important than work. And, he had the time, saved everything up that he could, and so forth, so he had most certainly earned it. That, and the fact that he's my top guy, merits a lot of slack.
But that didn't make re-arranging schedules, plus me working double-time to cover for him (especially over Thanksgiving and XMas), any easier.
I see the opportunity for rampant abuse in this program, and I deal with white collar workers, who are generally "Type A" overachievers. Further down the ladder .... forgetaboutit.
And it will only encourage more offshoring of jobs.