Better childcare is in everyone's best interests
The Vancouver Sun
25 Apr 2006
Letter to Editor by Nerys Poole, Bowen Island

Re: Women leaving job market in large numbers, Working, April 22

This article should have been on the front page or, better yet, pasted to the forehead of every politician in this country.

I am the mother of a highly educated, professional, pregnant daughter who is looking at the combined whammy of the high costs of living in Vancouver and the lack of quality childcare. I am perplexed as to why so little has changed since I was a young mother advocating for better and more childcare back in the 1970s.

I am also extremely angry that the Conservative government is axing the federal-provincial childcare agreement and replacing it with an annual pittance for parents. What young parents need -- and what we need as a society if we want our younger generation to reproduce and to raise productive children themselves (who will in turn help the needs of us aging boomers) -- is choice, not removal of choice as Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing. For most young parents living in Vancouver, staying at home is not an option and $1,200 a year will not make it one.

If we don't care about the struggles of young parents trying to make ends meet, perhaps we should at least (selfishly) be concerned about the problemas expressed in Jay Bryan's article: With inadequate or no childcare spaces, are we losing young professionals who will be badly needed as the baby boomers leave the workforce in droves? What we need are more options, not less: more childcare spaces, more flexibility in the workforce to allow young parents to work part-time and longer paternity/maternity leave programs during the infant years.