Nurseries have babies up to six weeks old, and although most mothers take a longer period of parental leave, few take more than a year.
There is no doubt that some children, especially those at risk of abuse or neglect at home, are more likely to thrive in daycare than at home.
If we are serious about giving options to working women, governments must also be willing to support them in choosing to stay home for the first few years.
And of course, there are many women who are desperate to get back into the career and still do a great job raising their children.
But there are also many women who don’t have a career, they have a job. Given the choice of many of them, I suspect they would rather spend the first few years of their children’s lives with them.
If we are serious about giving options to working women, governments must also be willing to support them in choosing to stay home for the first few years.
Instead, the clear political signal from both coalition governments and workers is that they should return to work.
This is not just an Australian problem, the work of raising children is devalued throughout the Western world.
There is no doubt that meeting a child’s physical and emotional needs is exhausting, but it is also a highly skilled job. And a job that has a transcendental impact on the next generation.
The downside truth is that parenting is important, especially in the early years.
Parents ’commitment to their children in this period has an impact on their education and later life experiences.
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The last time the UK government looked at the extent of this impact, it found that raising children in the early years had “a greater influence on their future than wealth, class, education or any other common social factor “. Maternal presence in the early years helps children develop emotionally, setting them up for life.
However, we subsidize daycares to replace parents during almost all of our children’s waking hours. In doing so, we send a strong message to mothers who cannot afford to be out of the workforce for too long.
And most can’t. It is extraordinarily difficult to pay a mortgage in a capital city with an income. And there’s no doubt that some employers are hesitant to hire someone with a multi-year gap in their resume.
Some will no doubt say that if mothers of young children want to stay home, why should the rest of us support them in this election?
Although we accept the benefits for the children themselves, surely if the parents decide to form families this is up to them.
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On the one hand, the nation will benefit if we make it easier for people to have families. Twenty years after Peter Costello asked families to “have one for the mother, one for the father and one for the country,” our fertility rate has dropped to historic lows. With a rate of 1.58 babies per woman at the end of last year, it is almost 50% lower than 50 years ago and the lowest rate ever recorded.
The reasons are complex, but University of Melbourne Professor of Demography Peter McDonald offers one: “Every passing generation is more highly educated, more career-oriented, more interested in improving their economic situation through work “.
This message has not been lost to me as a mother of three young children who works in various jobs and has worked full time during her early years.
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What is missing is the message about the social and economic benefits of having children and taking years out of the workforce to raise them.
They still exist. Not just for the children themselves but for the nation. The Treasury’s 2021 Intergenerational Report made it clear that “Australia’s biggest demographic challenge is an aging population caused by rising life expectancy and falling fertility rates. As the population ages, there will be fewer people of working age relative to the number of older Australians. This presents long-term economic and fiscal challenges. “
If the government takes this challenge seriously, it could do worse than allocate part of this childcare subsidy pie to support women returning to work after a leave of absence. prolonged parenting. And maybe we’d all like to stop asking new moms when they get back to work.