Interesting--thank you for taking the time to explain it to me!

I like the flexibility of yours--it's interesting that it applies to various types of leave. I believe that the government here at one point was talking about adding a family-related leave programme (for taking care of dying parents or spouses, for instance)that would work more or less the same as the parental leave, but for a shorter amount of time (13 weeks? can't remember). Not sure that got off the ground yet, though (and thankfully, I haven't needed to investigate that type of issue).

Of course, as you say, our taxes are much higher here--somebody's got to pay for this kind of stuff!

peace
minnie