Questioning the need for more creches

A recently published book opens with a series of pertinent questions. Having acknowledged the progress made by Irish men and women in recent decades, it asks: "What is happening to our children? To whose care are they being entrusted? How well in this thriving, forward-looking country are we taking care of our most cherished beings, our children?"

For Our Own Good - Childcare Issues in Ireland by Bernie Purcell is not examining the often scandalous situation of the most deprived children, but the ordinary children, yours and mine. In many ways it is a brave book. It takes courage in the era of the Celtic Tiger to question the mantra that what we need is more creches.

She cites, without flinching, the evidence from childcare experts such as Penelope Leach, that babies and toddlers are not well served by spending days in creches, unless they are run to supremely high standards where babies receive one-to-one care from the same person for years on end. One does not have to resort to Jolly Tots, the Limerick childcare facility whose owner was recently castigated for her standards, to realise that this level of care is not the norm.

She quotes Steve Biddulph, author of More Secrets of Happy Children. He says bluntly that children who go into care at two or three months and stay for seven or eight hours a day are basically spending their childhood in care.

This is a frightening concept, and one which many parents do not want to hear. Such children who are "raised in care" may be adaptable, and very much at ease in social situations, but may pay a high price in terms of their ability to maintain long-term relationships.

She is equally blunt in her own assessment of how we are meeting the needs of children. Acknowledging that dreadful things were done in the past, she says this generation, with its knowledge of the needs of children, cannot plead ignorance. "Next time there will be no major perpetrators of evil such as institutions and systems to carry the blame: it will be all of us who are blameworthy."

She is also brave in pointing out the downside of separation and divorce for children, quoting research and her own clinical experience (she is director of the Roebuck Counselling Centre in Dublin). She says we have in many cases replaced large families with disparate families, where children acquire new step-siblings and may then lose them again, but are expected to adapt without much difficulty.

She is critical of parents who narcissistically put their own needs ahead of children, and who indulge in serial monogamy without considering the effect it will have on children.

Bernie Purcell has written an interesting and challenging book, but there are a couple of points I would disagree with strongly. Although critical of feminism in other ways, she seems to have bought into the idea that to be a full human being one must be economically independent. For example, she endorses wholeheartedly the Swedish model of child-rearing, where parents receive generous parental leave and supports, but where everyone is expected to earn their own living.

She advocates "peer couple" relationships, where everything from housework to parenting to paid work is shared equally by the couple, and dismisses the idea that it is ever good for one person to opt permanently for full-time work in the home. She is quite scathing about women who have spent their lives looking after children, saying that all they have left after the children are gone are "hobbies and charity work", which she describes as "essentially a life of retirement".

Those hobbies and charity work are often vital activities which enable the rest of us to have a better quality of life. Without the active voluntarism of the women who organise everything from meals on wheels, to La Leche conferences, to the local Vincent de Paul, Ireland would be even bleaker.

Ironically, Bernie Purcell says her own children were minded by relatives and benefited greatly from the ensuing stability. If everyone is busy juggling childcare and paid work this kind of care by relatives will not exist.

It is also surprising that she does not speak much of the financial pressures, especially of mortgages, which force women out to work. This may come from her own rather different experience. She moved to the country, then moved back, retaining the country house as a holiday home.

Then she bought a very large house as a place to work and live, and subsequently used this house entirely for work, building another home in the garden to live in with her partner and four children.

Without wishing to begrudge her good fortune, this is fantasy land for many young couples who could not afford a henhouse in the country, much less a house in the city.

Because she does not believe that one parent choosing to stay at home is an equitable option, she is not critical of how the tax code discriminates against couples with children where one parent does not work. The tax burden of a one-income family with children is significantly higher than that of a married couple without children. She does, however, endorse Childcare 2000's campaign for a parental payment.

For someone who advocates women and men working shorter hours, she also does not acknowledge that our tax system makes it difficult for a parent to work part-time outside the home.

At the moment, a parent in the home receives a £3,000 allowance, equivalent to a tax credit of £600. He or she can earn up to £76.92 without losing this allowance, but once earning the princely sum of £100 a week loses it completely, and therefore even this tiny acknowledgment from the State that unpaid work is of value.

This book is excellent in many ways. However, because she advocates the peer couple who divide everything equally as the only solution, it short-changes those parents who wish to arrange their lives differently and do so to their own satisfaction and that of their children. In the current system they must do so at great financial sacrifice and with little support from the State.