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Roughly half of Canada's children between the ages of six months and five years were in some form of child care in 2001, the latest year for which Statistics Canada has figures. That's approximately 1 million young Canadians spending some or all of their day away from their parents.
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"Canadians really do have to ask themselves, what is it they want?" says Alan Mirabelli, executive director of the Vanier Institute of the Family. "What is the vision they have for raising the next generation of Canadians? Will it just be up to mom and dad, or do we have a shared interest?"
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He's not alone on this. Scrape away their war paint, and ideological foes in the child-care debate are surprisingly united.
"The question really should be, How do you 'do' family policy? What else is needed? We haven't had any discussion about that," says Martha Friendly, co-ordinator of the University of Toronto's Child Care Resource and Research Unit and prominent child-care advocate. "The way the interests are being played off one another just illustrates it's not a fleshed-out discussion. It's so disheartening after all these years."
The issue hasn't been adequately discussed, says Kate Tennier, founder of Advocates for Child Care Choice, a grassroots organization lobbying against a national child-care system. "All the parties need to move beyond their sound bites and talk about how this fits into family policy in Canada."
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What we don't have in 2006 is a clear commitment to young children in the form of a comprehensive family policy…. There is some funding for child care, but it doesn't nearly approach the need. There is no baby bonus, no way to give parents who choose to stay home a significant financial acknowledgement for their sacrifice.
All of this plays out in an economy that is giving neither type of family a break.
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This tension puzzles Sheila Kamerman. A social work professor at Columbia University, Kamerman has done extensive research on child care and family policy in North America and Europe. She looks at Canada and sees a gaping hole where child care ought to be.
"It's interesting that Canada could be so generous with its parental leave policy and not recognize that when the child is one, the need for care does not end," says Kamerman. "What is a parent supposed to do when a baby is one year and one month old?
"It's probably the weakest part of Canadian child policy," Kamerman adds.
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How did a society that prides itself on its social programs decide that the day-to-day care of hundreds of thousands of children was none of our business? When did we decide the state has no place in the romper rooms of the nation?
We didn't. There has been no national discussion, no reaching for a consensus. It's hard enough just having a private conversation about child care. Get a group of parents with young children in a room and ask them about child care, and it won't be long before voices are strained and backs are up. For good or ill, child care goes to the heart of how we are raising our children.
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Many women want to work, and many more can't afford not to. Neither could the country.
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It's a similar story across much of the industrialized world.
The difference is that while Canada has dithered about what to do for families, other countries have developed extensive efforts to help them cope, by expanding parental-leave provisions and child-care programs.
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Canada has more junior kindergarten programs and drop-in centres than it used to, but not everywhere and not always full-day, leaving it up to parents to find care for the rest of the day. Although even supporters said the money promised was not nearly enough, the Liberal child-care agreements (cancelled by the Harper government last month) were Canada's first significant steps toward creating comprehensive early learning and child care programs.
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Today, as in previous generations, each family makes its own arrangements for care. Some work part-time, some have grandparents helping, some send the kids to a neighbour, others join a co-op or a private centre. The wealthy hire nannies, while the poor hope for some of the very limited subsidies. Those who want to and can afford to, stay home.
None of them get much help from the rest of us.
"Parents who have young children at home are never far from the awareness of how hard it is to make it all come together, but it's considered private, and has rarely translated into what we call a public problem," says Susan Prentice, a historical sociologist at the University of Manitoba who has written about child care.
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Yet figures from Statistics Canada show that the use of child care rose steadily through the 1990s across all demographic groups, whether the children have two parents or one, whether they're rich or poor, whether they live in the country or the city. It rose in spite of the fact that good child care is expensive and often hard to come by.
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Which brings us to the issue of quality, another minefield in this debate. Before you can create a child-care program, you have to know what you want that care to achieve. Is good quality child-care primarily intended to enable more women to be in the work force, by helping make sure their children are cared for when they're at work? Is it meant to give families more choices, between working and not working, full-time or part-time? Does it provide older children with stimulation and preparation for school? Should parents be doing part or all of it, or should the job go to trained staff?
"When you look at what other countries are doing, you realize that they've been thinking about what they're trying to achieve," says Friendly. "This has not happened in Canada as a system, as a country."
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With a promise to give families $1200 for each child under the age of six and set aside funds for tax incentives to encourage businesses to open child care spaces, the Conservative platform appeared to offer more to all parents, regardless of how they organize they child care. Since there is no requirement that the money be spent on child care, it amounts to a new family allowance payment, not an enhancement of the care options available. It's a much-needed boost for families that no political party could attack, but also somewhat ironic; it was the Conservatives under Brian Mulroney who cancelled the old family allowance.
Calling their plan "choice in child care," however, is misleading. The payment is close to useless for child care if nothing is done to improve the availability of care. The tax incentive approach proved a failure when Mike Harris tried it in Ontario; child-care advocates claim not a single space was created as a result.
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All sides are guilty of massaging the debate to fit their purposes, and stay-at-home parents have certainly bristled at the suggestion that "experts" in the child care field know more about their children than they do. But the Conservatives have outdone everyone with their constant references to using day cares as "institutionalizing" children, and suggestions that parents who use child care are not raising their children.
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What's stopping us from truly embracing several options, and developing a strategy that addresses the needs of all families? What's wrong with being flexible, and trying to reflect the way family life has changed in the last 50 years?
"Those who raise the next generation have expenses that others don't, and they need support," says Mirabelli. "We've lost sight of why kids matter. Kids matter because they give life to the society, and families are raising the people who will look after us in our old age.
"The question is, how is the nation-state going to support them? It's not doing a good job if it pits the interests of one kind of family against another."
- reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen