We kind of do both in Germany. I say "kind of" becaue that year of parental leave (14 months total, shared between parents as desired) is capped at the lower of 1800 EUR/mo, or 2/3 of previous year's net monthly salary - that was significantly lower than either of our net pay, but we did it anyway.

And once the little guy was a year old, daycare for not quite enough hours to work full time (7am - 4pm) was a mere 500 EUR/mo, and would have been less had we not been a 1.5 engineer couple. It drops to 200 EUR/mo when the kids turn three. For awhile, Bavaria was considering giving a rebate to families who didn't use preschool, but then I think they realized that the people whose minds would be changed by an extra couple hundred Euro per month in their pockets were a lot of the people who this rather conservative state really, really wanted to have send their kids to preschool as soon as possible.

This goes hand in hand with very strong protections for parents choosing to work part time. My employer had to allow me to drop to part time for up to three years (prorated salary, of course), with an option to extend it until my kid is eight.

Result? I'm still working in the same department and position I was before the kid, but spend several hours a day with him.

He took to daycare like a duck to water and still loves preschool; it turns out that my little guy is way more social than either of his parents.

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em-bee a day ago | parent [-]

strong protections for parents choosing to work part time

how long ago was that? i thought i read that the right to work part time is now universal, that is after some time in a job you can just request it, and it can't be denied, unless there are some special circumstances (and i think small companies are exempt too), children or not.

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MandieD 15 hours ago | parent [-]

About two years ago - it is possible that the policy has been loosened since then, but I'm not in human resources.

The really strong protections are the first three years after a child is born - you have to be allowed to work anywhere from 15 to 30 hours/week, and be allowed to change it with a few weeks' notice ("Elternzeit" - covers both parental leave and this part time working arrangement).

I had to give a reason for wanting to do the next five years part-time, but "child" resulted in no further questions. I had to commit to only being allowed to work part time, and for the weekly hours I requested for those five years; my employer could choose to accept a request to change them or to go back to full time before the five years is up, but they're not legally obligated to.

	▲	em-bee 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		ah, right, there are two independent regulations. i forgot about Elternzeit which includes a lot of flexibility in adjusting your worktime as needed, whereas the other regulation simply allows you to request a fixed reduction of your worktime. which is a change of your contract, whereas Elternzeit isn't.