The attack on parenting led by this Government and proposals put forward by the PDs, suggests ignorance of recent research into child psychology, writes Victoria White
How can Progressive Democrats spokesman on education John Minihan describe his childcare policy as "child-centred", as he did on this page last Tuesday?
If it were a child-centred policy, it would include parents. Children tend to really like their parents. Parents tend to really like their children. It's nature's idea of a child-centred childcare policy.
Only when you banish parents, does childcare become a "problem" to be "tackled", rather than a joyously challenging part of being human.
In Sweden, where generous paid parental leave is offered as well as institutional childcare, nearly all parents take the leave. But Minihan's policy is concerned solely with making paid, formal childcare more available. It includes no measures to allow parents more choice to care for their children.
It's pretty much forbidden to mention such fripperies under the present Government. A concerted attempt to provide for paid parental leave was recently thrown out by the Department of Finance.
Fifteen other EU countries have paid parental leave, seven of them for three years. Three of the remaining six have a statutory right to part-time work. But for our Government, the problem with parents as minders is the perceived cost.
The comparison even with Britain is shocking. There, the Childcare Commission, which reported to government in 2001, concerned itself as much with support for parents as for paid childcare. Because it reported potential damage to a child if his or her mother returned to full-time work within the first year, paid maternity leave was extended to 12 months. We get 18 weeks. Because it focused on children's need to be with their parents, part-time work became a legal right for parents of young children. We can sing for it.
It recognised that in a two- income society, parents need direct financial support in their children's needy early years. A tax-related, and so means-tested, payment for parents of children under three was proposed, which could fund parents to stay home, or be passed on to a creche or childminder.
By contrast, Minihan baldly suggests tax relief against childcare costs, which only benefits working parents. As far back as 1998, the Commission on the Family rejected the idea of tax relief against childcare as inequitable. They suggested tax individualisation, and proposed instead a new, direct payment to the stay-at-home parent of a child under three. Charlie McCreevy name-checked the commission as he introduced tax individualisation.
But he left out the parents' payment. Increased child benefit, neither taxed nor targeted, can't begin to make up the income lost by the parents of preschool children.
The attack on parenting led by this Government is aided by ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of recent research into child psychology.
Surely Minihan must have consulted the report of the British Childcare Commission? Maybe not, for he proposed that schools stay open from 7am to 7pm, if necessary.
Under the heading "Some children are not happy in childcare", the British report says: "There are also some issues concerning childcare arrangements using school facilities as it is often seen as an extension of school."
It is shameful that the report of the National Childcare Strategy (1999) confined its research into group care to children aged from three to six. The negative research findings for children in group care nearly all relate to the under-threes, and particularly the under-twos.
Child psychologist Penelope Leach, co-director since 1998 of the largest ever UK study into childcare, Families, Children and Childcare, told the Guardian: "It is fairly clear from data from different parts of the world that the less time children spend in group care before three years, the better."
Why then is the Government committed to creating childcare places for one in three of the under-threes by 2010? Why, when part-time group care seems to be associated with few negative research findings, is the Government actively discouraging it in favour of full-time places? Because the Government cares about women's earning power and not about children.
And hardly anyone seems to care.
Victoria White is a writer and journalist, currently researching a book on motherhood in Ireland