A perfect world?
I got my regular newsletter from the Families Commission the other day. The lead story is about consultation and a report about out of school childcare services. In it, we discover that those consulted wanted quality services that were more than babysitting, but that provided "choices between relaxing, fun, education, and recreational and cultural activities". Families wanted these services at a place and time convenient to them. Oh, and they wanted someone else to pay for it.
Well....yes. This is all quite rational. In a perfect world, all this might happen as a matter of course.
It's easier to criticise than do, and it's quite possible that the communications person who wrote the story missed the juicier, more intellectually satisfying parts of the research. But seriously, I hope that not much money and time was spent discovering these particular results.
The real problem with this sort of stuff is that it doesn't appear to be linked to any meaningful outcomes. It's like we are researching out of school childcare because we want out of school childcare. But what is the purpose of this childcare? What are we hoping to achieve? What incentives are we creating? Could we achieve these goals by doing something different?
For example, if we're trying to create better opportunities, care and education for our school-aged children, perhaps we could achieve these results by enabling parents to be there for their children when they're not at school, if this is what they wish.
You see, as a parent, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the tendency to professionalise and institutionalise child rearing. We're most definitely seeing this in the early childhood sector, and now it seems to be more and more the focus of our children's lives out of school. This increasingly separates children and adults, and compartmentalises family life into a frantic box of time, where we have to fit in the housework, leisure and our relationships. I've written about "quality time" on a previous post, but I firmly believe that quality time can only be built around a base of quantity time - being there for the everyday things that represent most of the real learning opportunities for children.
I think it was Germaine Greer who wrote that the divide between the adult world of work and the child's world of home (and care/education) was why women can feel so isolated if they choose to stay at home with their children.
Anyway, this is definitely not to say that parents shouldn't work. It may be entirely appropriate for both parents to work full time. And this is not about women and whether or not mothers should work outside the home - it's about families. I will always advocate strongly for the right to make choices and the freedom to find happiness through those choices for yourself and those closest to you. But we need to be aware of the environment we are creating and constantly check in that the possible outcomes are what we were seeking in the first place - especially when we're funding it through taxes.
Well....yes. This is all quite rational. In a perfect world, all this might happen as a matter of course.
It's easier to criticise than do, and it's quite possible that the communications person who wrote the story missed the juicier, more intellectually satisfying parts of the research. But seriously, I hope that not much money and time was spent discovering these particular results.
The real problem with this sort of stuff is that it doesn't appear to be linked to any meaningful outcomes. It's like we are researching out of school childcare because we want out of school childcare. But what is the purpose of this childcare? What are we hoping to achieve? What incentives are we creating? Could we achieve these goals by doing something different?
For example, if we're trying to create better opportunities, care and education for our school-aged children, perhaps we could achieve these results by enabling parents to be there for their children when they're not at school, if this is what they wish.
You see, as a parent, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the tendency to professionalise and institutionalise child rearing. We're most definitely seeing this in the early childhood sector, and now it seems to be more and more the focus of our children's lives out of school. This increasingly separates children and adults, and compartmentalises family life into a frantic box of time, where we have to fit in the housework, leisure and our relationships. I've written about "quality time" on a previous post, but I firmly believe that quality time can only be built around a base of quantity time - being there for the everyday things that represent most of the real learning opportunities for children.
I think it was Germaine Greer who wrote that the divide between the adult world of work and the child's world of home (and care/education) was why women can feel so isolated if they choose to stay at home with their children.
Anyway, this is definitely not to say that parents shouldn't work. It may be entirely appropriate for both parents to work full time. And this is not about women and whether or not mothers should work outside the home - it's about families. I will always advocate strongly for the right to make choices and the freedom to find happiness through those choices for yourself and those closest to you. But we need to be aware of the environment we are creating and constantly check in that the possible outcomes are what we were seeking in the first place - especially when we're funding it through taxes.
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posted by Mary at 10:23 am
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