Beware of the perv

In March 2007, Spain introduced a national policy granting most new fathers two weeks of fully paid paternity leave. The policy proved exceptionally popular, with 55% of men eligible in the first year opting to take the paid time. The amount of leave covered by the program was doubled in 2017 and expanded to five weeks in 2018, with additional increases expected between now and 2021.

Economists studying the effects of the original 2007 policy examined what happened to families that had children just before and just after the program began, and found differences in the outcomes. While the early cohort of men who were eligible for paternity leave were just as likely to stay in the workforce as the men who weren’t eligible, they remained more engaged with childcare after their return to work, and their partners were more likely to stay in the workforce as well. In that sense, the program seems to have done what policy makers would have hoped.

Unexpectedly, though, the researchers also found that families who were eligible for the paternity leave were less likely to have kids in the future. In a study published in the Journal of Public Economics(paywall), economists Lídia Farré of the University of Barcelona and Libertad González of University of Pompeu Fabra estimate that two years on, parents who had been eligible for the newly introduced program were 7% to 15% less likely to have another kid than parents who just missed the eligibility cutoff. While the difference dissipated further into the future, even after six years, parents who had been eligible for the leave were still less likely to have a child again.

The researchers suggest an intriguing reason why.

After paternity leave was instituted, surveys of Spanish men ages 21 to 40 showed they desired fewer children than before. Farré and González think that spending more time with their children—or the prospect of having to do so—may have made men more acutely aware of the effort and costs associated with childrearing, and, as the researchers put it, “shifted their preferences from child quantity to quality.”

au where everyone lives to salute america’s ass ™

(click for higher res as usual)

I’ve spent the past… five? Let’s say five - the past five years analyzing the structure of Disney Musicals as part of the process to write my own/a parody of them, and the thing is that all the modern ones have roughly the same number of songs - except Mulan.

Mulan has about half, because after AGWFF ends with that unresolved final phrase, there are no more songs until the end credits, which isn’t even sung in-universe.

Mulan wasn’t even the REALM of fucking around - when they arrive at that village, when the true horrors of war are brought into the story, not only does it interrupt THAT song, it breaks the entire fucking mold - the movie’s damn genre changes; it is no longer a musical.

And the Huns represent this from the start - Jafar and Hades are notable for not having proper villain songs, but Jafar does get his Prince Ali refrain and Hades and his plan get sung ABOUT by the muses. No scene with the Huns has any singing, they are mentioned once in song (the second line of Man, natch), and they of all Disney Villains are probably the most serious - no jokes, no witty asides, no sassy delivery of dry humor. The Huns are an invading army who plan to straight up kill a fuckton of people, including children, and AGWFF’s sudden end is the moment when our happy go lucky MUSICAL protagonists finally come in contact with them and their work directly - and it breaks them. Because shit like the Huns cannot exist in happy go lucky musical world. They just exist in our world. The real world. And you can’t sing your problems away here.

also me: