Sometimes traditionally conservative parties become prisoners of their ideological histories in quite a contrary manner to what you might expect. It has in recent years become clear, for example, that fear of being dubbed "out of touch" has been driving much of Fianna Fáil's social policy agenda.
Because the party founded by de Valera is perceived and therefore perceives itself to be backward in "understanding the needs of a modern society", its recent tendency has been to look outside itself for answers to social policy questions, and to appease interests which are otherwise inimical to Fianna Fáil.
On the childcare debate, for example, the party has taken to echoing the positions of State-feminists and other extremists with opaque agendas. At the recent launch of the National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) "Accessible Childcare Model", Minister of State for Justice Frank Fahey endorsed his hosts' analysis of the childcare issue and gave assurances that the Government would provide substantial numbers of low-cost childcare places. Asked what would be done to support parents who stay home and mind their own children, Mr Fahey said that he was "not aware of any plan at the moment".
The NWCI proposals include a ritualistic call for an extension of maternity and other forms of parental leave, but the overall thrust of its policy is a prescription for the non-parental parenting of children. Its proposals include: subsidised full daycare for one and two-year-olds; universal early childhood education for all three and four-year-olds; subsidised after-preschool care for three and four-year-olds and extended care for five to 14-year-olds. It amounts, in effect to a scheme for the farming out of Irish children from the age of one - a direct import of the disastrous US "daycare" model already identified as causing massive damage to young children. Research since the early 1990s indicates that children in full-time day care in the US are nearly three times as likely to develop serious behavioural problems as those cared for at home.
The NWCI was last week invited to debate its proposals with us on Questions and Answers, but declined to participate. In pursuit of a niche that tolerates it because it holds power, Fianna Fáil has taken its traditional supporters for granted and will pay dearly for this.
Meanwhile, bizarrely, it may be left to the Labour Party to talk sense about childcare. Speaking at last week's party think-in in Clonmel, the Labour spokesperson on childcare, Kathleen O'Meara, warned of the dangers of perceiving the issue in economic terms. Announcing that Labour will shortly publish a substantial childcare policy, she hinted, "I think we have to be very careful that we absolutely and totally keep the welfare of children at the heart of the debate".
This is interesting if ambiguous: a female spokesperson for a party confident of its "socially progressive" medals seems to sound a warning note, while "conservative" politicians clamour for the favour of extremists. We shall see. We would do well, of course, to be wary of the Labour Party, which in its last period in government did much to undermine the underpinning of Irish family life and parenting. For example, the present process which nudges us towards homosexual marriage and adoption was bedded down under the last rainbow coalition, at the prompting of the Labour Party, which left behind it a host of bogus "equality" mechanisms and dubious-to-dangerous legislation.
I have remarked previously on how precisely feminists, ostensibly representing women, now echo the desires of the economy, the corporation and, yes, The Man. If the market could articulate its most cherished longings, it would sound very much like the NWCI. If such interests have their way, we will end up with a society in which parenting by parents will not be regarded as a worthwhile contribution. Not only will both mothers and fathers be obliged to participate in the "real" economy, but they will be required each morning to hand over their children to fuel a further sector of the increasingly insatiable Celtic Tiger.
We are playing here with elemental forces. The failure to appreciate the non-transferability of a parent's role is priming a massive social time-bomb to be left ticking at our children's feet. Two centuries ago, the western family was traumatised by the industrial revolution, which removed the working, teaching father from the daily lives of his children. Now we find ourselves at another critical moment, when, ostensibly in fulfilment of the demands for what are called "women's rights" the de-parenting project enters its final phase.
Although presented as a means of liberating women, the demand for, in effect, a nationalised system of childcare is calculated to inflict the same damage on the mother-child relationship as has already been achieved with the father-child one. Those parents now under such pressure to keep afloat that they join in the chorus for State-funded childcare would do well to reflect on the certainty that with this development will come the final destruction of family integrity and autonomy.