EXCERPTS.
In the crass world of Canadian right-wing politics, there is a surefire way to diffuse voters' earnest desire for affordable, high quality child care and early learning options: play the guilt card.
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley did it just last week in response to a federal Liberal promise to revive the national child-care program Paul Martin said he would implement before losing grip of his fledgling minority government five years ago.
Finley reportedly said: "It's the Liberals who wanted to ensure that parents are forced to have other people raise their children. We do not believe in that."
Her comments caused a firestorm, revealing the left-right framing divide on this issue.
Liberal MP Bob Rae responded in outrage: "For decades we've realized that women are working, men are working and the second thing we've realized is that there's a great benefit to children from working and playing with others and learning with others. The notion somehow that child care is some form of alien abduction is just completely preposterous."
NDP MP Olivia Chow did too: "Finley insulted all teachers, all early childhood educators, child-care workers, organizers of parents' resource centres and even babysitters. She is trying to inflict guilt on all working parents -- a truly shameful, divisive behaviour."
Child care expert Martha Friendly spoke for working parents when she noted Finley's remarks are out of sync with modern day reality.
"I'm stunned to hear a government official say this in the 21st century," said Friendly, who is executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit. "The view that women who work 'give their kids to someone else to be raised' is an astonishing one. I'm sure that hardworking mothers and fathers who are employed believe they're raising their own children and are just hoping for some support to help them do so."
So why do Conservatives deploy a frame that seems at odds with the majority of working families today? And how do they get away with it?
Within the neoliberal frame, Conservatives equate the problem of child care with parents' responsibility to figure it out themselves. In the process, Conservatives tap into parents' anxieties about leaving their children in other people's hands while they work. It comes out as child care = bad parenting and it reinforces the conservative value of individual responsibility (none of this 'it takes a village to raise a child' stuff for conservatives).
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