Stay-at-home mothers deserve childcare help SUSIE O’BRIEN HERALD SUN JULY 15, 2014 12:00AM THERE’S a Facebook post that’s doing the rounds. A dad walks in to find his house in chaos. There’s mess everywhere and his kids are hungry and filthy. He finds his wife curled up in bed reading a book. “What happened?” he asks. “You know how you always wonder what I do all day?” she says. “Well, today I didn’t do it.” This reflects one of the common assumptions about stay-at-home mums: that they don’t actually do all that much. They’re either too busy playing tennis and having coffee with the girls, or they’re lying on the couch eating chips and watching Ellen while the kids drink coke and play with matches. So it doesn’t surprise me that stay-at-home parents are next on the Federal Government’s hit list. On the weekend Childcare Minister Sussan Ley suggested they’re clogging up childcare centres by taking spaces that belong to working parents. I simply don’t agree. We wouldn’t expect non-working parents to pull their kids out of primary schools just because spaces are tight, so why is childcare any different? To deny childcare to stay-at-home mothers or fathers is to deny the importance of the unpaid caring work that many do. Access to good-quality childcare is a right that should be open to all parents, regardless of what kind of work they do. Who are we to judge what other families need? I recently suggested stay-at-home mums, or dads for that matter, shouldn’t get paid parental leave because they are not in the paid workforce. I stand by this: paid parental leave is a workplace entitlement designed to minimise the career and cost disadvantage faced by working parents who take time off to have children. It makes no sense for stay-at-home mothers to get it. But childcare is different. Some will say it’s just a babysitting service for parents who work, and non-working parents shouldn’t qualify. However, I would argue childcare offers a broader social benefit that should be equally available to every parent, regardless of their work status. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 304,000 families with both parents working put their kids in a childcare centre compared with 98,000 families with only one parent employed. Just because stay-at-home mums and dads don’t get paid, it doesn’t mean they are not working. Many of the stay-at-home mums and dads I know play a vital role in their school and kinder communities and spend at lot of time caring for other family members in times of crisis or illness. Subsidising a day or two of childcare is a small price to pay for this kind of work that keeps our communities functioning. As usual, the unpaid domestic work done by many women — and a growing number of men — is undervalued, just like it has always been. Numerous studies also show childcare is particularly valuable for children from chaotic, dysfunctional homes because it gives them vital routine and security. Interestingly, the rate of stay-at-home mothers in some disadvantaged areas such as Greater Dandenong is almost half, compared with less than a third in wealthier areas. Some of these kids from disadvantaged homes where mothers are socially isolated, or don’t speak English, have much to gain from childcare. There is also the mental health benefit that childcare offers parents. This isn’t something to be lightly dismissed. Looking after kids full-time is one of the hardest jobs around, and I think we should respect the need for some parents to have a break. I suspect many of the non-working parents with kids in childcare have a baby at home, and rely on the sanity break that comes with putting an older toddler in care a couple of days a week. Others would be on maternity leave and would not want to relinquish a precious childcare place. We simply don’t know what’s going on in other people’s families: what might look like relaxation to you or me could be an essential time-out for a very stressed mum. In any case, federal guidelines already mandate that childcare centres can prioritise places for at-risk kids and parents who are working, training or studying. So I don’t think we need to further disadvantage non-working parents further by stripping them of access to childcare funds. However, it does seem like major changes are needed to the childcare system. For a start, there are two different welfare payments — the Childcare Benefit, which is means-tested, and the Childcare Rebate, which is not. This doesn’t make any sense. The two payments also have different work tests: to get the benefit for up to 24 hours a week you don’t have to work, but to get the rebate you have to work three days a week. But the work test for the rebate has no minimum hours, and you can include 15 hours a week of unpaid voluntary work. With costs rising steeply and demand soaring, the $6.5 billion system does need to be kept in check. But why not collapse the two payments into one means-tested payment and wind back the Coalition’s exorbitant paid parental leave scheme? Surely these are better measures than dividing parents into those who work and get paid, and those who work and do not get paid. heraldsun.au/news/opinion/stayathome-mothers-deserve-childcare-help/story-fni0fhie-1226988832662
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 13:45:01 +0000
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