Suffer the Little Children

Parenthood

n. Keeps the rain off mum or dad.

I'm happy to see that the latest piece of populist nonsense floated by the government appears to have sunk without trace. Apparently, Blair was minded to make the parents of excluded children take time off work to look after them. Top idea! The atomised materialist society we are blessed to live in makes the majority of folk struggle hard to get on the property ladder, get a new car in the drive, have a plasma TV etc etc. This does not come cheap, particularly given that the flexible workforce ministers are so proud of effectively means that people accept lower wages and salaries than they might otherwise be getting. The upshot is that in most families with children, both parents have to work, and neither are able to spend a lot of time with their children.

Who looks after them? Well, given that society is atomised, the extended family could be the other side of the country, or even abroad. Professional childcare is often the only answer, given that there are not nearly enough state-funded nursery places available. Of course, the child carers are also in the materialist churn, and they have mortgages to pay as well. Two friends of mine were living in Kent with their young son. All that the father earnt went on the nursery where their son was sent while the parents were at work. Madness! Still, societal pressures are such that stay-at-home mums are looked upon with a mixture of scorn and pity, not to mention stay-at-home dads. "What's wrong with you, can't you get a job?"

I do believe the main imperative for both parents to work is simply the cost of life - a roof over your head and the 'essentials' of a comfortable existence - in the UK. However, there is also the legacy of decades of work fighting for gender equality - women have fought, and rightly so, for the right to be accepted in the workplace, never mind receive equal pay for doing the same job as men. This is a battle that has not yet been won. The trouble is, might this fight be imposing a subtle pressure on women to reject full-time motherhood as an option? Might it be seen as somehow a betrayal of what previous generations have fought for? There seems to be a widely-held view that encouraging women to stay at home and mother their children is a very reactionary, conservative, even Stepford Wives position to take. I'm a little worried that I might be thought to espouse such a world-view myself by arguing in this way. To clarify, it is not my view that a woman's place is in the home, baking cakes and bearing children. However, if you do happen to choose to have children, might they not be better off having more time with one parent or another rather than going quickly to nursery?

In fact, research has shown that the earlier children are removed from their parents and placed with in a nursery or with childminders, the more likely they are to develop behavioural problems in later life. These are the very children that TB and his drones are saying should be excluded from school and looked after by their parents. If the parents take too much time off work, they will lose their jobs. So the whole sorry race on the treadmill to get the nice house and new car will have been in vain. Hmm, what price a happy and settled family environment once the financial problems kick in and the repossessions start? That will solve any 'problem' behaviour, won't it?

Still, none of the following measures would get the same frothing tabloid headline coverage, would they? The odd tax break for working families (and wouldn't it be nice if that system actually worked?); maybe a bit more pressure on employers to accept flexible working practices (or does a flexible workforce only bend one way?); maybe even the extension of paid maternity leave to at least a year, not to mention an increase in paternity leave. These would be public goods in their own right, but since this no longer seems to be sufficient basis for policy-making, from an economic point of view might it not also produce happier, less fraught and, therefore, more bloody productive workers? Oh aye, and it might just reduce the number of 'problem' children in our schools. QE-bleedin'-D.

It's all a load of bollocks, so bollocks to it all!