Think of the Children

Childcare has made its way back into the media spotlight recently. This is mainly due to government legislation dictating certain qualifications for staff and specific ratios of children to staff. These changes naturally result in increasing costs for service providers. Costs that will be passed on to parents, and you can’t blame them for doing that.

So with that begins what can feel like and endless cavalcade of sob stories from parents who proclaim they cant afford such expensive childcare. The sob story is only part of the big picture though, you never get told the rest. It would be interesting to inquire the parents’ rationale for requiring full time childcare.

Even if the reasons were purely financial, what has led to the circumstances that required two incomes? We don’t hear about this from the media. They could be very genuine and doing it tough. Or conversely they could be merely overextended because they wanted the house in the suburb that was extending beyond what was realistically attainable.

Whatever the reason, as a nation we forget that children are a blessing. They should be treated as such, however they continually get treated as commodities with their upbringing pawned off to the cheapest tender.

From the government’s point of view it is all short term thinking, in the name of productivity. They want to get the highly skilled women back into the workforce as soon as possible. This is all well and good but what about the children who now have two limited or non-existent parents. Their most formative years spent with someone very qualified yet not their parent.

Of course it is difficult to make ends meet on one income. But perhaps we all just need to be content with not having it all.