It's a science, Courier Mail, 22 May 2006
22 May, 2006
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In the post-budget wash childcare has crept back into the public consciousness. Once again, the debate doesn’t get beyond the current situation in Australia’s long day care centres and the issues of access, quality and costs. But, if we are serious about the interests of children and families it must.
Centre-based long day care dominates the childcare debate. It is regarded as the most efficient and easiest method of delivery for the care of our children. But, the care of children isn’t the new and sophisticated science we are turning it into. Mums, dads, extended families and communities have cared for children forever. In a comparison it is centre-based care that is the baby.
This tide of criticism against centre-based childcare is growing through controversial books on the subject like Anne Manne’s Motherhood and Steve Biddulph’s Raising Babies: Should under-3s go to Nursery? Both authors refer to international research into the effects of childcare on children’s brain development. These “cortisol studies” measure the presence of stress hormones in young babies. The presence of stress hormones is known to affect the brain development of young children. A lack of cortisol is linked to increased aggression and anxiety in older children in long day care. Scientists now think that these brain changes to affect the way children deal with stress and anxiety in later life.
Of course, there are other studies demonstrating that cortisol levels rise in children attending high quality childcare. The nature of these debates is that they don’t give parents any certainty; even the science takes a punt both ways. Parents are damned if they do, or damned if they don’t.
If we want to put children first then we don’t need a debate about whether childcare is good or bad, or whether we need more places in centre-based care or not. We need a debate that begins to unpack the complexity if children’s needs and families’ situations. A policy of more childcare places doesn’t go far enough towards addressing issues of parental guilt, or the complex needs of children and parents.
When will we start seeing cost-benefit analysis that compares compulsory paid maternity leave for 18 months versus the best quality care for children under the age of two? When will governments stop regarding centre-based care as providing flexibility and start considering a model that promotes real flexibility?
Policy serious about flexibility and choice would offer both parents the option of part-time work. It would consider compulsory paid maternity/paternity leave for up to two years. It would deliver early childhood development services in a variety of ways and ensure tertiary qualifications for all early childhood workers and teachers (just like our primary school system). A government serious about the early years would stop seeing childcare as welfare or a model to enhance workforce participation and deliver it as a universal service for all children. There would be caps on the amount of time a child could spend in an early childhood service each week and advocates would focus on not perpetuating the guilt parents feel about the decisions they make.
The governments persistence in successive budgets investing in out-of-school hours and family day care show a real disconnection with the needs of young Australian families and their children. The process for developing better systems for early childhood development isn’t easy, but radical reform is required.
Ultimately, our assumption that large amounts of centre-based care will always be regarded as beneficial to children is wrong. In recent times both aged care and disability support services have shifted from promoting institutional models of care to believing that a better system is one where people are supported in their own homes and community. The speed at which we have adopted our current early childhood service models, as our work-centred and individualistic society has thrived, suggests we can’t be as aware of its impact as we could be.
The solution isn’t more or less centre-based childcare. The best interests of our children and their development will be served when the debate places their needs at the centre. Those needs are complex and diverse. Our current systems are simplistic, narrow and far too variable.
Daniel Donahoo is a father of two boys under 5 and is currently writing a book on our obsession with childhood and youth.