We all know by now that childcare will be a very big issue in the next election. Today the National Women's Council of Ireland launched its proposals for a ten year plan costing 1.7 billion euro. This, say the NWCI, will bring us into line with the childcare funding and provision of most European countries.
The headline elements of the package are:
- A 50% reduction in childcare costs for all parents of one and two-year-olds and up to 100% reduction - depending on income.
- Paid maternity leave to be increased from 18 to 26 weeks.
- Five days paid paternity leave to be taken within one month of birth.
- Paid parental leave, on top of the 26 weeks maternity leave, for 26 weeks - for mother or father.
- Free childcare programme for three-and-a-half hours each week day for all three and four-year-olds, with subsidised childcare for the remainder of the day.
- Subsidised after-school care for five to 14-year-olds - depending on income. All parents would get a 50% subsidy on childcare - regardless of income - this would be extended to 75% for those paying the lowest tax rate of 20% and free childcare would be provided for those on minimum wages.
The NWCI claim that their proposals are based on the OECD report Early Childhood Education and Care Policy published last year. There is a consensus that more resources for childcare is a good thing and the NWCI proposals appear to be a good mix of policies that might avoid a one size fits all approach. However the more I read about childcare, the more complex the issue becomes.
Breda O'Brien, in her Irish Times column on Saturday, raised some questions about the possible harmful effects of childcare, particularly for very young children. As she says herself, the child care argument is nowhere near settled. Because she raises issues about childcare that are not just about more resources she runs the risk of the usual ad hominem attacks that she is some kind of catholic traditionalist who wants mothers to stay at home.
A quick search on the web based on some of her cited material yields some interesting material that needs careful consideration. There is some information on the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development longitudinal study here and here. Professor Edward Mulhuish's literature review is available here. And there are a couple of good articles in the Australian and the Guardian here and here.I will have to return to this topic at a later date once I have digested some of this stuff.
Apart from the issues raised by O'Brien, there is the question of what is really driving the childcare policy agenda? It couldn't be entirely unrelated to the insatiable demand of the Celtic Tiger for unprecedented numbers of women to enter the labour force, could it? This type of approach would manifest itself in the demand for more childcare places, i.e. more creches and nurseries, an almost industrial approach to childcare. On the face of it the NWCI proposals have the advantage of a more flexible mix of policies that include longer leave and more flexible work practises. Perhaps the idea of refundable tax credits should be thrown into the policy mix as well, thus giving greater choice to parents to invest it in childcare or help at least one parent reduce the amount of time she/he is forced to work.
I recently finished reading Finola Kennedy's Cottage to Creche: Family Change in Ireland and in her conclusion she makes the point that "changes in family patterns have been driven by economic factors, which, when they gained sufficient strength, tended to outweigh those of tradition and religion. Policy and institutional changes were frequently introduced to accommodate choices already made by the people." Economic factors are probably driving childcare policy in much the same way but it would be good to be able to intervene and not just accept what blind economic forces try to dictate.
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