Family Policy & Early Childhood Support

I will promote policy that generates family centered funding, gives priority to families having time together and supports them interfacing with society in a manner that is optimal for their specific needs. The British Columbian Family as an institution is quaking under the strain of post-war societal trends and contemporary economic realities.

There is an alarming trend in society whereby, every aspect of our existence is institutionalized. We are born in government institutions, we are educated by government institutions, every aspect of our life is affected by government institutions and we die in government institutions. In this heavily institutionalized environment, the individual and the family are withering, and they are being replaced by a monoculture. Proper support of families is one policy initiative that can protect against the industrialization of child rearing, the destruction of the family and the social ills that fall out of it – it is bad for the people affected and it is bad for British Columbia.

People ofttimes misinterpret my call for the maintenance of family as a call to take us back, oft times the term “family values” is interpreted by people in the feminist movement as a regressive assault on their cause. I am eager and think it is critical to support the advancement of women to full partners in all matters societally. So please understand that my interest in supporting families includes supporting women in their pursuit of careers outside the home or to bring the discussion into the gender-neutral space – support parents generally in their pursuit of life with family.

Why is it important for parents to retain influence over their children? There is a unique dynamic that occurs as parents come together and make a family, family cultures and genes merge and a phenotype emerges from the process. The children can only become steeped in the culture peculiar to their parent’s merger if their parents contribute to their rearing. From the merger of family cultures children are shaped in a unique way, that “phenotype” combines with the ambient culture to generate outcomes, this is the wellspring of diverse people and thought – we need to preserve it.

There is no substitute for love in the rearing of children. When I listen to people speak on the subject of early childhood development they use terms like “we need to get them early” – as if, the sooner children are in a government facility the better off they will be. I disagree with this premise entirely, however, there are instances where parents are unfit or uninformed – in those instances the family needs support. We should build policy that effects best outcomes for the mass of the population and generate measures to remediate deficiency – nowhere is this point more critical than with child development.

As we’ve institutionalized society we have effectively stratified society by age class. We do it in our school system and in various ways throughout society. This trend generally is troubling because as its intensity builds the family unit descends further toward full disintegration. This trend has become particularly acute at this juncture in our development, as postmodern realities come to bear on the “young families”.

Many young women encounter a high degree of distress in returning to work and leaving their young families in care – this is worsened in circumstances where the care is unreliable. This comment, to be clear, is a statement of empathy rather than an indication that women should remain with their children. I submit that a loved one should be with children and that any support offered by the government in the care of young children should support an option where family cares for family.

The situation is that women are in the workforce in record numbers and this will be our reality henceforth, there are challenges that have emerged out of this reality that has caused a call for government intervention. Governments are being pressured to provide young families with support. The most ardent advocates are women forwarding the issue is support of the overall liberalization of women. The bulk of the lobby is pushing toward a “universal government day-care system”. While I share the concern that is driving the lobby, the solution being posited is alarming to me. It is alarming because by funding daycares we are funding children’s removal from the family unit and contributing further to an already damaging trend.

There is another option however, that is a child care subsidy. When parents receive a child care subsidy they can direct the funds as they see fit, to daycare, to a loved one doing child care or they can keep it and care for the children themselves.

For purposes of illustration, if the government expends approximately $9000 per year per child for daycare and the average home has two children, that is a total of $18,000 per year. The “marginal tax” assessment or the gross income required to net $18,000 is about $35,000 - $26,000 in income and $9,000 in employment-related expenses. For many households, one of the spouses would be better off with the subsidy than going to work. The subsidy may serve to augment a limited senior’s income should a grandparent care for the child. With the subsidy, the daycare option is open, family care is open. By building a government daycare system, people who want to pursue these other options are punished – they not only fail to get funding, they help pay for other people’s daycare.

($9,000 is the approximate amount for a childcare spot in Que. & an elementary school spot in BC - the initial amount would have to be less and find the right balance over time as other efficiencies facilitate the process) The subsidy could be started at a rate that is manageable and further federal support can be solicited. I am very mindful of the cost of government and this program would need to be addressed in the context of overall spending and other priorities.

     

Suport CHILDCARE - Say NO to factory daycare

We want Canadian’s to have a good life, we want well-adjusted children and we know that the choice to have children is taxing, relative to avoiding having children. Parents have raised children since the dawn of time absent government intervention and the world has progressed. I think people sense that providing help in the form of a child subsidy of some sort would ease the load that new parents encounter. So let’s just say that parents’ need help and we are going to give it to them; it is better to give parents help (money) than to build another institution to put little children in.

I am eager to call attention to a generalized trend in society, a trend that promises to generate a cultural monolith rather than diversity, as we know in nature, a mono-culture is dangerous and so it is in society.  The trend is the institutionalization of our country – we are – from coast to coast to coast institutionalized – institutions by their nature feed the center of bell curve, the exceptional and the challenged get winnowed out.  

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Lenin

Our education system is a monolith; the “school” culture is nearly pan Canadian, save small variances. The capacity for the school system to adapt to trends, to absorb technology and to attend to the individual is grossly retarded by the size of educational institutions alone.  The vast majority of individuals in the system providing services are exceptionally trained and good people; the challenge is the environment we create for them impairs their being as effective as they could be.  There is a push in Canada to expand the school system further down into the early childhood sphere, to institutionalize child rearing; it is a disturbing thing to see people lobbying government to put their children into an institution. People should be lobbying government for MORE time with their children as opposed to trying to farm them out.

The institutionalization of childhood and development of children, is troubling. At every turn children are put into organized environments, organized play – it is making a generation of followers who are creativity deficient. I get tired of seeing kids in uniforms, in schools, in single file walking down streets behind a “childcare” worker. I want to see them figuring things out, in environments where there is inter-generational knowledge transfer. People tend to forget, child rearing is in no way child minding, we should avoid occupying them until they are adults. Child rearing is the building of an adult, they need one on one time with adults for that to occur effectively.  

Why is it important for parents to retain influence over their children? There is a unique dynamic that occurs as parents come together and make a family, family cultures and genes merge and a phenotype emerges from the process. The children can only become steeped in the culture peculiar to their parent’s merger, if their parents contribute to their rearing. From the merger of family cultures children are shaped in a unique way, that “phenotype” combines with the ambient culture to generate outcomes, this is the well spring of diverse people and thought – we need to preserve it.

When I was a child we use to use the term “school of thought”, how often do you hear it now? There really is only one school of thought now, one approach to challenges and opportunities; group think pan Canada – let’s hope no one walks off a cliff. 

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Funds Yes - Institutions No

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Parents need help raising children in modern urban settings. The expectations of parents to work, provide elevated opportunity relative to the past and maintain a home is taxing the middle Canadian household; particularly women who tend to get burdened to a greater degree with domestic drudgery. Given this reality, it is expected that women are the strongest advocates for expanded government presence in daycare. Women also realize to achieve equality they, more than men, require societal intervention.

My position for years was that no one paid to raise my children, so why should we start now, that view has moderated over the years to the point where I think families need more support in raising children. The challenge I have is that people advocating for daycare support, seem to be thinking in terms of more institutions – government daycares – more or less as an expansion of the education system. There are a lot of reasons this is a bad idea, the government is crumby at running things generally, the service is standardized and never in the history of the world has a government institution loved anything – schools are bad places for children, they have no place in the lives of infants. We can do much better if we fund parents as opposed to institutions.

Please contemplate the graph above in the context of Quebec funding levels.  Let’s assume the cost of infant care to be $1000 / month or $12,000 per year, let’s also assume that there are two infants for a total family requirement of $24,000 per year. In Quebec, the government is subsidizing the cost of infant care, for argument's sake, in the amount of $12,000 per child per year. In Quebec, the $12,000 dollars is going to fund an institutional daycare. This is consistent with much of the daycare lobby’s intent; it seems that people are asking for an institution to care for their children. This funding solution is fine if you want to send your child to daycare, but it punishes the families that want to access other solutions ranging from live-in help, accessing the help of extended family or just staying at home.

Many of the people accessing daycare are working at jobs that pay less than $24,000 / year, they and their children would be better off if they could access the $24,000 directly. When you add in $7,000 in tax, $3000 in clothing, $5000 in transportation and other employment costs, the home caregiver would have to make in excess of $40,000 per year to net out the same benefit financially; worst, however, is that they will have had to leave the children in an institution for care, rather than having the children in their own care. Why I wonder is the childcare lobby neglecting this constituency, many people would rather care for their own children; they deserve equal consideration in government policy.

Tax breaks for people who purchase daycare are good, however, you need income to access them so there is a regressive element in deploying them. That is the beauty of the universal child allowance as a solution, it can be deployed at the discretion of the parents and those who can afford it, have it clawed back, whole or in part, at tax time. People should be lobbying to have this expanded to cover early childhood care and then as children access the school system it can be cut back.

We need to support families and early childhood development, the last thing we need are more big government institutions that only serve to have people working more and more for less and less.  We need children to be in loving spaces – institutions fail to make the grade. Be careful what you wish for.     

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