7 myths about child care
Before we can have a proper debate, we need evidence-based research, declares Hillel Goelman

[Hillel Goelman is a professor of education and associate director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP), an interdisciplinary research centre focusing on early child development. HELP associates include faculty from the biological, medical and social sciences at all six B.C. universities. It's based at the University of British Columbia.]

Toronto Star
April 20, 2006

The current debate over child-care policy in Canada is plagued by a number of old myths that refuse to die and which get in the way of a reasonable discussion on our policy options.

It is time to put these myths to rest so that we can have a national discussion based upon what the evidence-based research on child care actually says. I come now not to praise these child-care myths, but to bury them.

1. Non-parental child care is bad for kids. More than 30 years of research in many countries, including Canada, have determined that good quality child-care programs have positive short-term and long-term effects on child development, school readiness and school success. These positive effects are even more pronounced with children who are vulnerable or have special needs.

2. Non-parental child care is really "substitute" or "institutionalized" or "government-run" child care that undermines the family.

Non-parental child care is a family support program that supplements the care children receive in their families, but does not substitute for the family.

These supports include programs and information on child health and nutrition; screening for developmental delays and interventions for children with special needs. Good quality child care is offered by a wide range of community-based organizations (churches, the YWCA, parent co-operatives, etc.) that are neither "institutionalized" nor "government-run."

3. We have to choose between "funding the child" and "funding a child-care system." We can't have both. In other areas of social policy, Canada does do both. We fund "the child," for example, through such vehicles as the Canada Child Tax Benefit, the National Child Benefit Supplement, and the Child Care Expense Deduction, and at the same time we provide free universal health care and education systems.

There is no contradiction between offering enhanced family allowances and also funding a system of quality child-care services. Like all other industrialized countries, we can and should do both; but unlike other industrialized countries we put much less of our national wealth into our child and family benefits packages.

4. Child care is only for the poor, or only for working parents, or only for middle-class or wealthy parents who can afford it anyhow.

The research has shown that good quality child care has cognitive and social benefits for all children and parents regardless of income levels and parental work and study patterns.

Despite the prevalent and powerful mythologies, good quality child care is not a welfare service for poor families nor is it government-sponsored baby sitting for tennis-playing moms; it is a family support system from which all families and children benefit.

5. Most working mothers would prefer to stay at home.

Over the past 50 years, the percentage of mothers in the paid labour force (they may be working from home) has doubled to more than 72 per cent without any substantive increase in licensed child-care services outside of Quebec.

Currently, 54 per cent of young children have at least one non-parental child-care arrangement, up from 42 per cent in 1994-5. Of mothers with young children, more than 1.2 million mothers are in the paid labour force earning on average $2,067 a month.

Canadian women enter the paid labour force —surprise, surprise — for the same reasons that men do: to earn money, to have a career, to contribute to the public good, to have fulfilling lives, etc. There is no research that I know of that demonstrates the readiness of large numbers of working mothers — or working fathers, for that matter — to abandon their studies, careers and incomes to stay at home nor are there any demonstrated social policies that reverse this major societal shift of the past 50 years.

6. The national child-care program of the previous federal government has failed. How can a five-year program that is less than a year old, or, in the case of British Columbia, less than six months old, be described as a failure? In this short time B.C. decided to use part of its federal transfers for capital improvements to licensed child-care programs in communities where large numbers of children were significantly below accepted levels of school readiness. In addition, more children were able to attend licensed child-care programs due to changes in child-care subsidy rates and child-care eligibility criteria. These federal funds can have a substantial impact on the quality, accessibility and affordability of licensed child care. The cancellation of these funds will place current and future progress at risk.

7. The current government's plan to give families $100 per month for every child under age 6 will give families more child-care choices. There is no research base that demonstrates that giving out small amounts of cash will enable parents to afford the fees in licensed, community-based child-care programs, increase the number of spaces in child-care programs, expand opportunities for children with special needs, increase the training opportunities for child-care staff, or provide badly needed operating funds to licensed facilities.

Recent StatsCan reports have shown that the only real "choice" most Canadian parents have is to place their children in unlicensed child-care settings that research indicates are more likely to be of lower quality.

It is only by clearing away the distractions of these myths that we can begin to move ahead and plan programs and policies that will support the lives of all children and families in Canada. Let's get started.