Stay-at-home moms need no defence
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times
13 Apr 2007
By: Lynn Easton

There's a magazine in my kitchen that sums up, for me, the deterioration of the child-care debate since the federal government decided to axe the National Childcare initiative over a year ago and replace it with a $100-per-month subsidy for parents.

In this magazine, a couple of mothers face off about childcare: "The working Mother. The stay-at-home Mother. Two sides of a divisive issue."

Now, instead of debating how best to deliver a much needed universal day-care/early learning initiative to all of our children under school age, we are now back in the murky old waters where women are having to defend their choices to work or to stay home with their children.

The backward slide into this tired debate takes the heat off the politicians who don't want to be the ones to take responsibility for either creating or killing a child-care policy that has been talked about for decades in this country. It's tough to remember that subsidies for daycare and caps on operating grants are hurting preschools, daycares and parents. The argument slowly shifts from how to create a national child-care plan to should there be one at all. And that's the real shame.

Dr. Fraser Mustard, a nationally-respected early child development expert, has just released his latest report into the social and brain development of children in the early years. Once again, he's ready with science and statistics to tell us how important these early years are. And this time around, he's got some examples from around the world about how to make a cohesive childcare program that offers both working and stay-at-home parents the support they need....

Canada: dead last in relative funding for childcare and early learning initiatives. Canada: dead last in number of childcare and early learning opportunities. ...

According to Mustard, and the experts in early childhood development at UBC's Human Early Learning Project, it's time to stop worrying about whether we have a Cadillac child-care service as one local politician dubbed our system, and start gearing up to create enough different roads to drive a whole bunch of SmartCars to the finish line.

I have had the opportunity to talk to those who drive things locally lately -- business people, politicians, our communities' best bureaucrats about how important the early years are. They understand we must do something as a community if we want kids who are empathetic and intelligent. So perhaps its time to be positive. To forget about the divisive debates between stay-at-home parents and working parents, between the rich and the poor, between business and workers. If we start thinking of childcare as the responsibility of our whole community, the politicians will follow. They always do.

Imagine an expectation that we will put money into the care of our youngest children at the most crucial time in their brain and social development.

Imagine no child-care waitlists. Imagine respected, well-paid workers who aren't in short supply. Imagine a child-care system that works like a well-oiled machine. A Cadillac, a smart car -- I don't care what you want to call it.

That's the model I want to take for a spin.