Maureen Gaffney appears to have a certainty that the rest of us lack, writes Breda O'Brien. During the week, it was reported that she had said in relation to childcare, "the argument was now settled".
She told the Fianna Fáil conference that "irrespective of the amount of time in childcare and the age of entry, the proportion of children with secure emotional attachment was exactly the same at 62 per cent as those reared at home by their mothers".
If the argument on childcare is settled, why do major longitudinal studies suggest that it is anything but settled? The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in the US, starting in 1991, is following more than 1,000 children from birth onwards. The first results published dealt with ages 0-3 and, unsurprisingly, found that children were less likely to be securely attached if they had mothers who were poor, or if their mothers were less sensitive and attuned to the baby.
However, the headlines tended to focus on one finding. By age three, no negative effect was found on mother-child attachment for kids with sensitive mothers in high-quality childcare.
Ah, but the devil is always in the detail. The headlines mostly neglected to point out that the study also found that longer hours in childcare "predict less harmonious mother-infant interaction and less sensitive mothering at six, 15, 24, and 36 months of age, even when quality of childcare and family variables are controlled".
There was a slight improvement in cognitive functioning for children who spent time in childcare. However, as child development specialist Penelope Leach pointed out, it's easier for an infant to catch up on cognitive skills later on. Insecure attachment is not so easy to overcome. It can lead to poor relationship skills, and even affect ability to learn.
NICHD research then focused on children aged four and a half. It found that those children who had spent more than 30 hours a week in group childcare were almost three times as likely (17 per cent as against six per cent) to show aggressive behavioural problems, than those who had spent 10 hours or less, regardless of the quality. A Dutch study re-examined the data this year, and found that the NICHD data had underestimated the link between commercial childcare and aggression.
How glibly we use the words "high quality" when it comes to childcare.
Prof Ted Melhuish is a highly respected figure in childcare research in the UK. He conducted an audit of all available research on childcare for the UK's National Audit office and a major study on the effective provision of pre-school education. He concludes that children under the age of 18 months need almost one-to-one care. It is possible to provide it in childcare, but it is so expensive that it is just as cheap to provide paid parental leave for 18 months to two years.
Parents have a built-in connection to and emotional investment in their own children that is hard to replace with any kind of paid care. Parents will literally kill themselves for their own children. It appears that this is exactly what they are doing. A fascinating piece of Australian research shows that parents who work outside the home do everything possible to maximise their time with their children.
Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 1997, researcher Lyn Craig showed that parents managed to squeeze in as much time as possible with their kids by "reducing time devoted to other activities (principally sleep, leisure, bathing, dressing, grooming, eating)". I bet it rings true to the harassed commuter-belt parents for whom Fianna Fáil is belatedly showing such concern.
What is the best way to ease the pressure on a family where two people commute daily and their children spend eight to 10 hours in institutional childcare? Prof Ted Melhuish makes the perceptive comment that in Sweden, high-quality infant care has long been available. It was widely used during the 1970s and the 1980s, but when parental leave improved during the 1990s, demand for childcare for small children dropped dramatically. Given the option, Swedish families voted with their feet.
The British government also backed off from plans to provide nursery places for all, largely because of Prof Melhuish's research. They have now decided to increase maternity leave to a year by 2007. Given a real choice, most Irish parents would opt for flexible work practices and longer leave, rather than longer hours of childcare.
What about those who want to raise their own children full-time? Are they to become even more economically disadvantaged when their counterparts who go out to work receive all sorts of help? The only equitable solution is a refundable tax credit that allows parents to decide whether they want to invest it in childcare, or in helping to finance one parent to work part-time or not at all.
However, Fianna Fáil can't sell that one to ISME and Ibec, who seem to be increasingly setting the agenda for this country. Ibec is now mouthing platitudes about the value of early childhood education. Certainly, there is strong evidence for the value of pre-school education after age three, particularly when children are already disadvantaged.
But listening to IBEC, you get the horrible feeling that children are supposed to be academically advanced so that they can provide a better quality workforce, and the happiness of children or parents does not feature at all.
With their new-found focus on childcare, Fianna Fáil is neatly managing to divert attention from the fact that its policies created most of this mess in the first place. It was under Fianna Fáil's stewardship that Meath, Kildare and Wicklow were rezoned for expensive residential housing. The builders and the developers loved it, but what has our society been left with? Sweden spends 2 per cent of GDP on childcare, and it is rare for a child to enter it before 18 months.
Ireland spends 0.2 per cent of GDP, and it is becoming a privilege reserved for the very rich and the very poor to actually raise their own children. We are richer than we have ever been but when it comes to quality of life, we have lost our way.
If the "settling of an argument" requires pushing more and more children into longer and longer hours of institutional childcare, it is clear that we have a lot more arguing to do.