” Sweden

France Outlaws Paying for Sex

French prostitutes (The Independent UK)

French prostitutes (The Independent UK)

Earlier this month, France made a major move: The country has now made paying for sex illegal.

If someone is caught paying for sex, they’ll be fined up to $1.7K for a first offense, and up to $4.2K+ for a second time. The offender may also be required to attend classes on sex workers’ conditions.

France isn’t the only country to pass a measure of this kind, or even the first: The country follows in the footsteps of the U.K., Sweden, Iceland, and Norway.

Advocates of the new ban claim that this will help sex workers get out of the trade. But sex workers are opposing this new measure, reasoning that it will expose them to more violence.

It’s estimated that France has between 20K to 40K sex workers. (Naturally, it’s difficult to get an accurate count.)

How Many Countries Offer Paternity Leave?

Dad with newborn baby (Babble)

Dad with newborn baby (Babble)

Happy Friday! Last month, Massachusetts passed a law requiring businesses to give eight weeks of paternity leave. That’s right, paternity leave. For the fathers. The U.S. doesn’t have a paid paternity leave policy (come on, we don’t even have a paid maternity leave policy), though the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act offers 12 weeks of protection, but only if the employee has been working for the company for over a year and the company contains over 50 people. The new law would include companies with a minimum of six employees.

Work-life balance is increasingly becoming more of a concern for men as well as women, and the concept comes sharply into focus with the addition of children. The U.S. lags behind other countries in our paternity leave policies. A 2013 Pew Research Center study examined 38 countries, and found that 25 of them have guaranteed paternity leave for new fathers. Time off can range from less than one week to over eight weeks.

Several countries that offer paternity leave are within Europe. Norway, Ireland, Iceland, Slovenia, Sweden and Germany have protected paternity leave, which would allow a new father time off secure that he’ll be able to return to his job without being fired or let go. At least a portion of this time off is required to be paid, except in Ireland.

South Korea also has a paternity leave policy, in which new fathers can take up to five days off. But parents with children under three years old can request to work part- or full-time for one year to care for their child. It appears that this policy applies to both mothers and fathers.

Hopefully this new law will push policy towards a national paid leave policy, for both mothers and fathers.

Do Musicians Get Laid More?

ACDC's Malcolm Young, 1970s (ACDC)

ACDC’s Malcolm Young, 1970s (ACDC)

Happy Friday! We’ve all heard that musicians get laid more than the average dude with no guitar skills. (Well, not just guitar, substitute any instrument here that you prefer.) It’s thought of as a evolutionary differentiator to allow potential partners to pick them on the basis that they’d be a good mate for life, or for just one night.

But is this true?

It turns out that this might not be the case. A recent study, published in “Evolution and Human Behavior,” surveyed 10K+ Swedish twins ages 27-54, both women and men, to determine this dilemma. The study examined benchmarks such as the age each person first had sex, number of sex partners reported and the number of kids they had.

Here’s what the study ultimately found:

Contrary to predictions, the majority of phenotypic associations between musical ability and music achievement with mating success were nonsignificant or significant in the other direction, with those with greater musical ability scoring lower on the measures of mating success.

Looks like every musician you crushed on in high school had some other stuff going on that you found attractive. Because it wasn’t evidently just that guitar.

The results follow two earlier Swedish studies that found that music doesn’t hold enough weight as a desirable-mate signifier to definitively say that the trait/skill alone attracts mates.

So if you’re debating treating yourself to music lessons after that hard-earned promotion, and if you’re looking for partners (short- or long-term), you might want to skip the lessons and just use that promotion as a talking point.