Breda O’Brien: All sorts of families need all sorts of childcare help

It would be great for the Government if it could succeed in painting the current disquiet over the budget childcare provisions as a war between mothers. (Funny, isn’t it, that it is never a war between fathers?)

But it is not a war between mothers, much less mothers who work inside the home and outside the home. Women juggle. It is what we do, whether we work full-time at home, full-time in the workplace, or some combination of the two.

At different seasons of our lives, we make different choices. Having more than one child is a trigger for many women to cut back on their working hours. Sometimes it is because cheap and excellent childcare is kind of an oxymoron, and sometimes it is because, as author Gretchen Rubin put it, the days are long, but the years are short.

The first few years of a child’s life are incredibly important and incredibly fleeting, and many mothers want to maximise their time with their children at that time, while also keeping one foot in the marketplace.

Others decide that their college education will be best put to work full-time in the home, and they will juggle everything they can to make that happen, including taking a huge hit in income.

Still others decide that working full-time will not only keep them sane, but will also give them the wherewithal to provide a child with opportunities that they would never have otherwise.

Circumstances change. The first child can sail off to school, but the second can be so sensitive that they need a parent at the school gate when they drag themselves through it, exhausted, at the end of the school day.

Plans put on hold

Or you can fondly imagine that the teen years will see increasing independence, and then your child turns out to need you more as hormones and angst kick in. The plans you had to go back to work full-time get put on hold.

Women juggle. It is what we do. And sometimes, we think that the Government might actually get that, and give us some help with the juggling.

They might trust us to figure out what works best for our families. For example they might give us a refundable tax credit that we could put towards our childcare expenses, whether they are inside or outside the home.

But no. The Government decides that one size fits all, and that paying registered childcare providers is the way to go, leaving the two-thirds of parents who choose the care of relatives or friends or to stay at home, out in the cold.

Some people are really pleased about this unequal treatment of women, including the director of the National Women's Council, Orla O'Connor. She tweeted a picture of herself with Dr Katherine Zappone, herself a former chief executive of the NWCI, both of them resplendent in deep autumnal reds. O'Connor's tweet accompanying the picture read: "After long campaign for universal publicly funded childcare – we are finally getting there #Budget2017."

With no sense of irony, her tweet immediately preceding that one read: “10 cent increase to minimum wage very disappointing, majority of low paid workers are women. #Budget2017.”

And quite a few of those low-paid workers work in childcare centres. Join the dots, anyone? The Association of Childcare Professionals, (ACP) a professional body representing practitioners in early years and school age care and education, can join them very easily.

ACP pointed out that “with an average wage of little more than €10 per hour, many in the early years’ workforce exist in relative poverty. .. poor pay and conditions provide little incentive for the workforce to remain or to attract new entrants.”

Targeted subsidy

The new so-called universal childcare subsidy is targeted at parents of children aged six months to three years who are willing to put their children into creches, or with a registered childminder, for up to 40 hours a week. The more time in the creche, the more of a subsidy you get.

Starting the scheme at the age of six months is unbelievable. Very few parents would want a six-month-old baby in a childcare centre for up to 40 hours a week, in the care of a person earning minimum wage who has two other babies under a year to look after.

Certain politicians keep trumpeting about Nordic-style childcare. There is no such thing, because Nordic countries have very different approaches, but it always includes generous maternity leave, and a recognition that parents of very young children will want to work reduced hours.

In a presentation for Barnardos on the Nordic childcare model by Danish academic, Prof Tine Rostgaard, she pointed out that 0 per cent of babies under a year in Sweden are in day care. In Finland, it's 1 per cent, Norway is 4 per cent, and in Iceland it is 7 per cent.

Because of a generous homecare allowance, which gives parents choice, only 41 per cent of Finnish children up to the age of two are in day care.

No chance of such choice in Ireland, where a mono-cultural ideological approach which only values women's participation in the paid workforce is now in the ascendant.