I'm not a big "babies" guy either. I'd love if you could delay this leave till they were older. But are you really telling me you'd rather go to work and pay for child care than take 7 months off, fully paid, and be at home? You could take the leave, pay for child care and go hiking every day if you wanted...
I can't speak for how they do it in Finland, but at least in Norway you can take the paternity leave over a period of 3 years. I think most people take it out in full, but a lot of self-employed people do that in order to keep things running.
That's really smart. I get the health impacts are different for women, but I never saw the point of spending time with new borns, compared to 18-36month olds.
