Who speaks for children in the childcare debate? What baby, given a choice, would choose to spend time in a creche rather than with his or her parents? What toddler would express a preference for being bundled into a car at seven, not to return home until seven that evening, with parents who are frazzled and tired?
This may seem emotive, or an even worse crime, judgmental. However, I suspect few parents want this for their children, either. Certainly they do not want it for them for 40 or 60 hours or more a week. The Late Late Show recently hosted a discussion on childcare. It was obvious that mortgages were a key factor in increased labour market participation by women, and that most of the women wanted to work fewer hours, not more.
Is it not ironic that at a period of great prosperity in Irish history, fewer and fewer parents can afford to rear their children themselves? Instead of looking at why this is so, the mantra of childcare is trotted out as the solution to all these problems. Why not question instead why mortgages are so high, why workplaces are so inflexible, why the need of parents to be with their children is given such low priority? Why has childcare as a term become synonymous with third-party childcare? Why have the right and responsibility of parents to rear their own children been almost entirely sidelined? We shrug passively as if this were the only way we could structure our society, as though it were written in the stars that everyone must be an active member of the paid labour force.
This Budget, despite some good moves such as increased maternity leave and better child benefit, reinforced the idea that only paid work is of value. If you are unable to work, or have chosen voluntarily to care for others outside the paid workforce, there was little comfort for you in this Budget. The miserly social welfare increases were a disgrace, as was the continuation of individualisation. In different ways, each of those measures reinforces the idea that human value is to be gauged by the size of the pay-packet.
Similarly, cutting the top rate of tax was a clear message that those who are already very well off are of more value in this society. And if they are a dual-income family, they are significantly more valued than their neighbours who have sacrificed a second income to care for children.
It is good that 38 per cent of low-income earners will now be outside the tax net. But is it good that the only way out of poverty for many families is to take up low-paid work with poor prospects, which forces them to sacrifice time with their families? As a society at a time of unprecedented prosperity, could we not make it easier for parents to parent full-time, rather than much more difficult?
There is an unholy alliance of employers, trade unionists, feminists and liberal economists all pushing the line that women must be in the paid workforce either for the good of the economy or for their own good. This blithely ignores the fact that women are different from men, in that they bear children. It also ignores the long-term good of society in favour of short-term profit.
Other societies which have progressed much further than we have towards so-called equal participation in the labour force are beginning to see the consequences. The extent of childlessness or single-child families on the Continent is quite sobering, a veritable demographic time-bomb. Ireland's fertility rate is still relatively high, but we will soon follow suit, as juggling parenting and paid work becomes more and more difficult.
Again, childcare is at best a partial and simplistic answer. Those countries with heavily state-subsidised childcare did not experience an increase in child-bearing until generous maternity leave, flexible and shorter working hours and other family friendly measures became the norm.
The welfare of children seems to be so low in our priorities. There is ample evidence that group-based childcare is not good for children under three. But this is never adverted to in the childcare debate. One woman on the panel on The Late Late Show attempted to raise this issue and was not given space to develop it.
Similarly, the preference of most parents who work is to have the substitute care supplied by someone who will be a permanent presence in the child's life. Yet all the interest seems to be focused on providing creche places.
And have you noticed the new mantra? Child benefit is an excellent anti-poverty measure but does nothing for the childcare problem. This is at best disingenuous. Sixty per cent of recipients of child benefit are not in poverty. So any additional money they receive will help them to make freer decisions regarding childcare. Of course, child benefit should have been increased by far more, or even taxed, but that would have been too brave a move for this Government.
It is time we acknowledged that raising children costs greatly both in terms of time and money. If one parent chooses to work full-time in the home, it is expensive because of the lost income. If both parents choose to work outside the home, it is also expensive, because replacing the quality of care given due to the intense bond of parent and child should cost a lot, if it is to be done at all well.
To pretend that one group has greater expenses because they participate in the paid workforce is to ignore the loss of income of the other group. Therefore everything which is introduced has to be introduced for all. Employers may not like it, but it is the only fair way.
Most importantly, we need to acknowledge that parenting is work, as valuable as anything done in the paid workforce, and that society as a whole suffers when the quality of parenting declines. Then perhaps we can begin to say we are genuinely interested in the welfare of children.
bobrien@irish-times.ie