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CHOICE IN CHILD CARE
Summary by Sharen Frewing
British Columbia
REAL Women of Canada
A Talk by Peter S. Taylor
Board Member Journalist and Writer
Canada is on the verge of a new social policy
that will alter family choice in child care.
The universal national day care policy being
pushed by Ottawa is parents' least favoured childcare arrangement.
Repeatedly, when asked, parents give the following answers
to the question of with whom they wish their precious children
to spend the bulk of their day: 64% want their children to
be with a parent or blood relative, 23% would choose a non-relative
in the child's own home (perhaps because there are no relatives
in the vicinity?), and only 13% would choose a day care centre.
A study by University of Lethbridge Sociologist,
Reginald Bibby, found that parents gave the following preferential
ranking in child care: 1st ) parent in the home, 2nd ) grandparents
in the child's own home,3rd ) a relative in the child's home,
4th ) a 'family' day care in someone else's home, and only
in 5th place was a formal day care setting. Three to one favour
relatives over formal day care arrangements if the parents
are not able to care for their own children at home. Preferences
in Quebec match those from across the country, even though
that province has established a $7 per day "universal"
child care programme (which, in fact, only accommodates half
of Quebec's children under 5 years of age).
So why does Ottawa see formal child care as
the panacea for the dilemma parents face when they must go
out to work? Is the statement by Ken Dryden, Minister of Human
Resources, that national day care "reflects the reality
of today's child", correct? To whose reality does he
refer? Certainly not the reality of parents whose stated preferences
from across the nation are clearly otherwise.
While some parents freely choose to find employment
in the paid work place after having children, the real issue
for many families is excessive taxation. With a national child
care plan, all taxpayers, including families of young children,
will be forced to pay for a type of childcare that very few
want. For millennia, across cultures, mothers have taken time
from other work to stay home while children were young, or
the children have been cared for primarily by grandparents
who stay home, which, of course, is still the preference of
Canadian families today.
Given the misguided federal Liberals' policy,
which flies in the face of parents' wishes, one has to ask,
"Who stands to gain from forcing day care onto parents?"
Taylor noted three prime culprits:
- Union organizers who want to unionize day
care workers: The high sounding federally-
funded Child Care Human Resources organization is actually
simply a union mouthpiece, run by union organizers. Daycare
workers feel that their wages are too low. So we could end
up simply with more expensive care due to day care workers'
increased wages.
- A peculiar form of "parental loathing" that exists
in universities which discourages normal
parent/child closeness.
- Minister Ken Dryden suggested three other
"benefits" to national day care. First, it would
encourage (force?) more mothers to enter the workplace. But
what are the long-term consequences of that? Poland did this
when it was in desperate need of workers, and short term it
did result in more mothers entering paid employment. But it
also promotes a view of children as objects to be removed
rather than as treasures to be savoured. Second is the "anti-poverty"
theory, but that has already proven false as the biggest users
of day care are wealthy 2-income families. Third is the "super
baby" theory. A comprehensive study, however, found that
children put into formal day care at an early age were more
aggressive and less attached to their mothers than those who
were raised at home. Moreover, there was little indication
that such children were more advanced than children raised
at home.
Whatever studies may show, the bottom line
is that no matter how much a child care worker is paid, or
how much she likes a child, no one loves that child like his
or her parents or close extended family.
What have other countries done? Australia
abandoned its day care policy in 1991 and, instead, gave parents
vouchers that they may use for the childcare of their choice.
The Australian Government also provides a family tax benefit
to stay-at-home parents and a $3000 grant to new parents.
The result? Only 18% of children are in formal day care. The
Australian family is able to make up its own mind without
government coercion. Finland gives $500 per month to stay-at-home
parents and the vast majority of Finnish parents opt for this
rather than formal day care.
What are some more positive alternatives to
universal child care? Number one, says Mr. Taylor, is a fairer
tax system for everyone. Horizontal equity would treat families
with similar incomes similarly. Our current tax system punishes
the first priority of parents - to care for their own children
at home by imposing heavy taxation. This situation is detailed
fully in the Fraser Institute's 2004 Family Taxation: "Tax
Penalty on Single Income Families". (See page_____________
).
Joint spousal income tax returns would be
a step in the right direction. Since strong nurturing of children
benefits all of society, a child tax credit of $2000 for each
child would save the government billions over the national
day care scheme. A tax credit would cost $3 billion federally
vs the $12 billion annual bill which is probably the real
cost of a universal child care programme. Grants that increase
with the birth of each successive child were shown to encourage
the birth of third children in the Province of Quebec several
years ago.
Childcare is a provincial matter, yet universal
childcare is being pushed by the federal government which
wishes to control day care by insisting on national standards
and reporting criteria. Too often, historically, this has
been a social engineering experiment with a goal to have all
children in the care of paid strangers in a fulltime, formal
"schooling" arrangement from the tender age of 2
½. Who stands to gain from this? Certainly not the
children. What will it take to get the Liberals to listen
to the real parenting preferences of Canadian parents?
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