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PROPAGANDA ON CHILD CARE
It's a shame that the federal government doesn't
tell Canadians the truth. This is especially the case when
it comes to high profile issues like the proposed national
child care plan. We're treated like children by this elitist
government, which apparently wants to make all the decisions
on our behalf and doesn't want us to have background facts
and information with which to dispute its authority.
For example, Statistics Canada reported in
February, that 53% of children under age five were in some
form of non-parental care, while parents work or study.
It turns out, however, that only 13.1% of
children are actually in day care compared to 47.5% of young
children who stay home with their parents while one or both
of them work or study. The remaining approximately 40% are
looked after by relatives, friends or in other private arrangements.
Significantly, the Vanier Institute of the
Family released a study in February of 2,093 Canadians on
their attitudes towards child care. The results were quite
a stunner. These findings tossed all the Federal Government's
arguments on child care out the window. Among the Institute's
findings:
- 90% of Canadians believe that, in two-parent
families, one parent should ideally stay at home and raise
the children.
- Daycare centres rank a distant fifth when
Canadians are asked whom they would prefer to care for pre-school
children. Having a parent provide the care came first, a
grandparent second, another relative third, and home daycare
fourth.
- Even in Quebec - which has a daycare program
of the kind the Liberals plan to introduce - most people
would prefer to have children cared for by a relative.
- Canadians are almost evenly split on how
they care for young children. While 53% of children, as
discussed above, are in some type of child care - either
family, private or public - not necessarily formal daycare
- 47% are cared for by a parent at home.
- A growing number of parents are opting
for care by a family member. Between 1995 and 2001, the
proportion of children cared for by a relative rose from
22% to 32%. Daycare centre enrolment also rose, but less
dramatically, from 20% to 25%.
- Canadians place as high a priority on having
the state provide financial help to parents who stay at
home to look after children (32%) as they do on having the
state assist parents who work outside the house and put
their children in daycare (33%).
When the results of this study were raised
in the House of Commons in February by Conservative newcomer,
35 year old Rona Ambrose (Edmonton Spruce Grove), Mr. Dryden,
the Minister of Social Development, responsible for child
care, patronizingly dismissed the study by comparing the survey's
results to asking people if they would like to eat "chocolate
twice a day" while at the same time asking them if they'd
like to lose weight. The response to both would be 90% in
favour, he predicted, adding people often tell pollsters contradictory
things.
He then dug himself a deeper hole by dismissing
the findings on Canadian attitudes toward child care as merely
being an expression of parents' feelings of guilt about not
spending more time with their children!
This prompted Ms Ambrose to respond that he
was just another "old white guy" who thinks he knows
better than parents - particularly mothers - how to raise
their children.
If Mr. Dryden was taken aback by that response,
so were the child care advocates who have long used similar
rhetoric to demand government operated day care, claiming
they represented the views of Canadian women on the issue.
They do not.
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