Idolising Children?

I’ve always had an interest in the work-life balance debate because I think our attitudes to work and productivity impact significantly on our children and contribute to the reasons why we idolise and misplace what is actually best for them.

Mum hasd been feeding me a few newspaper articles that are starting to share the stories of over-worked duel income households who are getting fed up with the pace of it all. It is fine when they are child-less, but people with children can’t maintain the ethic of 14-16 hour days many industries now expect.

So, it was disappointing not to see greater disapproval with Kevin Rudd’s recent comments about the work ethic he expects of the public service - day and night I understand he said.

Thankfully, Andrew Hamilton of the continually great Eureka Street online journal holds our PM to account…strange no one asked Kevin what happened to the hard fought for 40 hour working week.

Read a great piece here - http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=7566

…there are hundreds of millions of rants being posted everyday. most of it is worth the small about of bytes it takes up in (cyber)space.

But, over at Fairfax, some clever person has convinced Martin Flanagan to blog.

The world wide web will be a better place becuase of it. Read here.

Over at Eureka Street they have gone daily, and no longer are subscriber based - like New Matilda.

Their first daily offering are two beautiful poems from P.S.Cottier - a poet of whom I know nothing about and a ‘google’ search produces very little.

You can read my favourite “Progress” - here.

It resonates - because I’m definitely still following through as well…

Simon Castles had a great piece in the Sunday Age. He manages (where others have failed) to begin to express a concern about the impact our obsession with “seeking to protect our children from pedophiles” is having on men’s ability to relate and interect with children.

It reminds me of when I was doing childcare work and a young boy came up to me when I was doing a days casual work at a centre I am not usually at and asked me, “When are you going to work?”

When I told him I was working at the childcare centre for the day he was so rapt, he and many other boys spent the whole day following me around and hanging on every word I said.

More men in childcare…when that happens we will really know we are beginning to do the right thing by children. That is one key indicator of our success.

Thanks Simon - great piece.

Funky columnist at The Oz and new mum, Emma Tom has a piece today that describes really well the ongoing challenges for parent’s traversing the wide range of parenting dogma. You can read it here.

What Emma concludes with is the most sensible advice…we just hear it too infrequently.

Like Barker, I wouldn’t recommend control crying for everyone. It’s hard and heartbreaking and doesn’t always work. But I would urge other sleep-deprived parents to ignore the preposterous extremes prescribed by some of the pundits and try more nuanced approaches in the long search for that slightly sweeter-smelling bucket.

Acknowledging the fact that it will be different for all children and all parents, and to avoid dogma is advice worth listening too.

We move to where we live for a reason. That reason is becoming clearer everyday.

Respecting children inherently means respecting the future. Climate change, along with wealth distribution will grow to become the issues of our times. Ultimately, it is our children who will be left to live with the consequences of our actions.

Hats off to my local community. You make me very proud.

The Human Rights and Equal Opprtunity Commission are gaining soem more traction on the issue of maternity leave. It is good to see the call for paid maternity leave has not gone away.

What has gone away was the calls from a couple of years ago by HREOC for a partnerhsip movement. Pru Goward was a fan of this concept. She said:

Men and women are the two faces on the coin of humanity; to pit them against each other is to damage both.

A partnership movement would be different - in tone, in approach. Inevitably it’s going to be more complicated and less spectacular than the glory and spoils of war, but it might be the only real choice if we are to resolve these issues.

A refocus not simply on what women deserve, but opn what men should also be doing and deserve is needed. Otherwise the debate will continue to be out of step. Men need to be given the chance to work less and contribute more domestically. Goward used to run the line that while women statsitically have increased their workforce participation, men have not increased their participation in domestic life.

Real balance is about having a suite of options. It might be that Labor’s policy has a better chance of meeting the needs of the contemporary family who want a range of different arrangements at different stages of their life. I’d argue that it still needs some work…but it does need a greater commitment to maternity leave…along with flexibility.

My call…women must have paid maternity leave - but even when they do men still need to help cook dinner, do the dishes and look after the baby!

Once again, childcare and supporting “working families” is dominanting pre-budget discussions.

There is good reason for it and to face the reality that Costello is definitely pursuing pro-natalist policies because he sees the impact our declining birth rate will have on economic growth.

That said, I’m interested in how much longer “family-friendly” budgets can last in a society where the traditonal nuclear family is on the decline.

The Australian Insititute of Family Studies has produced some great material that should have us thinking more about this. Firstly, their 2004 report on fertility-decision making which indicates that despite our desire to have more children, it is unlikely that young Australian’s will have the number of children that they say they want.

Secondly, is this graph based on ABS data on Projected Family Types.

This graph clearly shows the rise of couple-only families. A combination of fewer couples having children and more significantly baby boomers heading into older age with no dependants. What it shows is that in 2016 couple-only households will pass couple with children households as the most common type of household. What impact will this have on family-friendly budgets? Will Costello’s pro-natalist, populate or perish approach still stand when the more people live in households without children?

I’m not sure. But, there is the possibility that in 4 elections time the landscape of family-friendly politics will have changed dramatically and that couple-only households will begin to dictate fron-page policy debates and budget decisions.

The Brack’s government in Victoria are having a stab at influencing national early childhood policy.

My concern: the title deviates from Victoria’s usually holistic stance.

“QUALITY TIME -REGULATING FOR QUALITY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE IN VICTORIA”

The focus on education is a concern. Where has the word “development” gone?

Also, the whole idea of “quality time” has been rpoven to be bunkem…it is a play on words, but looks like this document is about reinforcing the old ideas, rather than exploring new ones. At a glance, it looks like it has some good stuff in it, but again refuses to consider systematic change.

Paul Austin at The Age writes about it here.

The 50-page policy document can be found here.

Blogs are problematic. Some days it seems bloggers are on fire. Other days they sound like broken LPs from the 80s.

Sam deBrito (a fairfax blogger, and one of the more successful) at All Men Are Liars runs the old “parenting isn’t all beer and skittles - I know some of you hate it” line over here.

On one level it is boring, especially as it feels like Sam isn’t really putting the effort in on this one. He wants to hear from parents who will say - “shouldn’t have had kids”. It seems like a pretty pointless exercise in a way.

Of course sometimes we hate it. Life is like that. We all have moments where we question where how life has been. We all need to be a bit existential at times.

But, you can run exactly the same argument for people pursuing the single life, or the couple without children life, or the divorced couple with kids life. Should we? Or shouldn’t we? And, does it really matter?

Of course the childfree movementis probably a fair reaction from people who don’t have kids to our idolising of childhood and youth. But, really, they don’t need to waste their energy.

In 2016, AIFS data shows that couples without children will become the dominant family type. That is in three elections time. So, those into family-friendly politics better make the most of it while it lasts…it will be the extended family and netowrk of friends that might just matter more in the future.

Do we need to worry about being “childfree”?

Well, perhaps we do - because despite Sam & co - most of us still want to have children.