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The debate over daycare is raging again in Ontario. At the same time
that the province is rolling out all-day kindergarten for four- and
five-year-olds, a four-year, $252-million federal daycare subsidy
expires April 1, 2010. This has prompted calls for the provincial
government to fill in the funding gap in its budget for 2010-2011,
which it is delivering tomorrow.
According to daycare proponents, some 7,600 spaces are at risk
of disappearing, or seeing their costs rise, without the subsidy. On
Monday, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath unwittingly hit the nail on
the head when she asked of Premier Dalton McGuinty, "Will he commit to
keeping those child care spaces open or is he telling mothers and
fathers across the province to quit their jobs and stay home with their
kids?"
Stay home with their kids? What a crazy idea. Much better that
these babies and young children be placed in the care of strangers -
well-meaning strangers, well-educated strangers, but strangers
nonetheless. And strangers who come and go as they change jobs, who are
not a constant in the child's life as parents are.
No matter how you dress it up - stimulation for kids, freedom
for parents to work - institutional daycare is simply not the best
option for very young children. A survey of 450 infant mental health
workers in 56 countries, members of the World Association for Infant
Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, asked the workers to rate child-care
arrangements for children under the age of three-and-a-half.
Respondents were asked to indicate what care they considered best for
infants, assuming that all kinds of care specified "were of excellent
quality by their community's standards, and equally available and
affordable to all."
....
Certainly, in one-parent families, external child care can
become a necessity. But there are many two-parent families who also put
their very young children in daycare. These parents may argue that they
have no choice but to both work. In some cases, this is true, but in
many cases, it stems from other choices the parents have made. Both
parents may work to sustain a preferred lifestyle, not because the
family would go hungry or be homeless with one breadwinner. Parents may
choose to have several children, which can tip the balance between
being comfortable on one salary and requiring two. Or a parent may
simply prefer to work rather than engage in the demanding and often
thankless task of caring for a pre-schooler.
Having children is a choice. Having several children, if one has
trouble making ends meet with just one child, is also a choice. Putting
one's children in daycare at an early age is another choice. But asking
the rest of society to support choices that may not be in children's
best interest is difficult to justify. Before asking taxpayers to do
that, governments, including that of Ontario, should take a hard look
at what is really best for kids - and let that guide their child-care
policies.
- reprinted from the National Post