CHILD CARE: Harper’s attack on women, workers and children
Three cheers for the best direct action of 2006 thus far! In mid-April in Burnaby, BC, while announcing his plan of inaction for children, Stephen Harper had his nose squeezed by a six month old child, Solomon Buster Sitar.
Amongst the most stressful things we do are raise children and work for pay. Stephen Harper is clearly trying to make both harder and more unpleasant to do. The Conservatives’ cancellation of an attempt at a national child care plan and their proposed $1200 children’s allowance is a vicious attack on working women. It helps to shore up support from both social and fiscal conservatives, undermine confidence and support for non-profit child care and public education from kindergarten to grad school, and create hazards for people dependent on existing programs.
In the lead up to the last federal election, there were numerous instances reported in the mainstream media of students considering dropping their studies in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and of working mothers looking to move because there wouldn’t be sufficient child care options to allow them a decent living. Pragmatically, these decisions may not be bad ones. Overwhelmingly, women provide care, both in the family home and as paid workers.
Statistics Canada reported in April that more than half of the children under five were being cared for outside the family home, in licensed nonprofit or for-profit centers, nanny services, non-licensed neighbourhood homes or by extended family. This reflects the deeper integration of women into the Canadian labour pool.
WHAT KIND OF CARE?
While many neighbours or family members may do a fine job of caring for a child, their ability to do so is often unreliable. Along with extended family, for-profit child care services and non-licensed babysitting services come greater possibilities for abuse, unsanitary conditions, poor nutrition, lack of access to public support and lousy (or no) earnings for the people who are doing this difficult work. This is hardly the way children or their families deserve to be treated. I have heard of one “center” (really someone’s basement) where children were having fruit taken from them because their caregiver could not afford to buy fruit or vegetables for themselves.
Canceling support for public child care is another way of reinforcing key ideological tenets of neo-conservatism: there is no society, only individuals and families; we get what we deserve; market forces will solve problems; women are meant to be kept in their place.
Is expanding child care dead? No. Basic tendencies of liberal capitalism drive women (and the occasional would-be stay at home dad) to work out of the home for wages. Women in Quebec withaccess to less expensive and more (but not enough) child care spaces are able to participate in the work force in a more consistent way, helping to ensure their social and economic rights. Alberta, on the other hand, is facing particular labour shortages due in no small part to the erosion of social services under the Klein Conservatives. About 70% of Canadian mothers of children five and under work outside the home; only about 15% of Canadian children 12 and under have access to a regulated childcare spot. Please note the disparity of ages! Young children need much more care and attention than children a few years older. This pennypinching is just one more attack on women and children.
THE AUSTRALIAN MODEL
A recent Globe and Mail editorial argued for “Aussie-rules daycare.” Australia has been offering relatively generous subsidies for parents to encourage a neo-liberal venture capital approach to childcare. Two-thirds of child care spaces in Australia are in for-profit centers. This represents a Walmartization of child care where, yes, the basic services are there, but questions of human rights and equity, living wages and basic social rationality are out the window. Child rearing is state-subsidized, with parents as shoppers and children as problems to be dealt with.
In light of the April 2006 federal budget and the drive towards privatization, it is entirely possible that Canadian child care could be moving in this direction. The tax cuts being offered in the current budget only apply to organizations which are taxed. This excludes the non-profit centers which have been proven to be the best for children, their families and for workers. Small federal grants and tax cuts would be start-up money rather than sustained funding. Capital investments in infrastructure – providing adequate funding to make or adapt centers to be child care friendly – are a relatively small part of the overall cost of quality child care. The primary cost is labour.
Feeding, cleaning, toileting, providing creative activities, reading, negotiating conflicts and difficult emotions, teaching how to wash hands and tie shoes – doing all this with and for young children takes a lot of work. The burnout rate in ECE is quite high. With federal and provincial cuts to post-secondary education, the debt burden for graduates of ECE and related fields grows higher and higher, while in general wages and benefits in the care field stagnate.
CHILD CARE AND THE LEFT
So where is the Left in all this? A number of important campaigns have been developing. The best has been coming from the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which has been pressuring different governments on these issues in coalition with community and intellectual allies. The Canadian Auto Workers has also been strong on child care and has been part of developing innovative strategies for childcare. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has taken up the fight as well with public advertising demanding a decent child care plan. Despite the conservatism of the CLC, it does appear to support this issue and may be an area that it could be pushed further on. The federal NDP is lackluster on this issue. While it has a strong women’s caucus, and their critic on this issue, Olivia Chow, actually knows about childcare, the party’s platform is weak and is timidly reformist, well to the right of center-left advocacy groups.
However, sectarian rejections of modest reforms are no way forward. Caring for children can have a conservative influence on caregivers. Worrying about how much milk Lucy drank, or how Ahmed scraped his knee and why, or will Benjamin grow up to be an axe murderer because he was hugged at the wrong time and on and on, makes working people shut down at certain points. Paying attention to all these details and attending to an overwhelming number of needs while keeping one’s sanity discourages involvement in broader forms of social, cultural and political life. The organization of child care centers and the training of child care workers is most often rigidly authoritarian and intellectually disengaging. While I worked towards my own diploma I was not required to read anything but parts of textbooks and endless numbers of loose photocopied handouts.
NEGLIGENT ON CHILDREN’S ISSUES
The Right has had a strong grasp on families and children (and wishes to retain it) while the Left has been negligent on children’s issues. The more radical Left has been weak on children’s issues for many different reasons. Ultraleft critiques of the family, once popular amongst segments of the sexual liberation movements of the 70s and 80s, and a base conservatism around childhood and actual children haunt us. Popular images of childhood and children are laden with saccharine sentimentality. In reality, children are disempowered, denied basic needs and desires and frequent victims of violence at the hands of adults and other children. The Harper government wishes to both raise the age for sexual consent from 14 to 16 years, while allowing 14 year olds to be tried as adults.
WHERE CAN WE GO FROM HERE?
The parents as consumers model of childcare will help reinforce the oppression of children, and may lead to the covering up of abuses and lack of support for families as wholes. The kind of child care that socialists need to fight for is free, universal and democratically-run centers and agencies with an explicitly pro-child perspective. When I first volunteered with infants and toddlers I had flags raised about the possible abuse of a child. A woman who mentored me said, “When it comes to picking a side I always side with the child.” Caregivers, whether paid or unpaid, need to be given that mandate, along with adequate opportunities for education, dialogue and social support and without fear of violence or poverty.
A number of positive steps can be taken. Many child care centers run on the sweat of part-time casual women workers, who often work more than fulltime. These women are often immigrants or the children of immigrants. Alliances between anti-poverty groups, immigrant and refugee rights groups, community organizations, arts and cultural groups and labour unions will be crucial. Expanding licensed child care is necessary, but so are other spaces for children, like parks, community centers and sports, library and recreation programs.
Support is also needed for existing organizations and campaigns. In political terms, the best of these are essentially social democratic. Proponents of genuine socialism need to support the modest improvements in child care that such organizations and campaigns demand while also proposing more effective and creative strategies and tactics.
