This article isn’t strictly about being Chidlfree. But it’s causing such a furor in Alberta, Canada right now that I thought it was worth sharing and seeing what you thought. I found it quite interesting if only for the sheer number comments it generated. The comments are almost always the fun bit.
Raising Kids Properly Means One Parent at Home
It never fails to surprise me how some people seem to have no problem at all telling people how they should live their lives. Of course, when it’s a politician with a severe case of foot-in-mouth disease, there’s not much one can do except shake one’s head. It’s arrogant at the best of times… but Iris Evans doesn’t seem to be bothered. She might if she find she has to resign though – people are calling for her to either apologize or step down.
So what’s she said? Well, basically that if people want to raise their kids properly, both parents going out to work is a no-no. One person should be a stay-at-home, and people would just have to sacrifice.
You don’t have to be childfree to know that to work or not to work when you have kids is a question that isn’t going away anytime soon. When my husband and I were deciding whether we were going to be childfree, it was a huge consideration for us. I had no desire to stop working, being a SAHM didn’t appeal to me in the least. Yet I knew day care – if you could get it – cost a fortune and would have to be paid for – on top of everything else. Not to mention that one of us staying home meant a severely reduced income, loss of independence and reduced career prospects to name a few. On the other hand, having children to some extent implies you’re going find some way to raise them. Even before these economic times, living on one income – unless that income is considerable is risky. And what about people who choose to work – who would like to have an identity other than via their kids?
Personally, it was just one me strike against having kids for me.
My own parents both worked and we are all the better for it. They couldn’t afford not to.
The interesting thing about this article though is that it again brings up the tension that seems to persist within childed ranks – one side telling the other they’re bad parents because they go out to work, the other side saying that they are bad, lazy parents if they don’t. The fact that every situation is different seems to be lost on people – especially folk like Iris Evans.
When you’re childfree you, of course, can sit back and let them all aim arrows at each other. But take note. As a childfree person, affordability of children is one of the little secrets people don’t think about prior and will hardly ever admit afterwards. Whenever I mentioned the economic aspect in terms of being childfree, I was always told – “Oh, you just find a way to manage. It’s all worth it (giving everything up) when your kids smile at you…” “you simply sacrifice…” and so on.
Yes, and everyone looks like a happy Cornflake Box family. Quite.
If you are not quite decided about whether to be childfree or not this is a huge issue.
We were laughed at (or should I say scorned?) for even daring to mention that there just might be an economic impact to having kids that we might not be interested in exploring. Well, we were told, “if everyone thought that way, no-one would have kids!” Yet some more honest parents will tell you they regret giving up dreams, career, advancement and lives to stay home with their kids.
If you have kids it’s your responsibility to bring them up and pay for them. But so far I’ve seen no hard and fast rule that “good kids = stayed home and didn’t go out to work.”
When an article gets over 500 comments, you know it hit a very big nerve. Check them out… and please share your thoughts. I’m curious to know your views.
Raising kids means one parent home
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
First of all, I’ve only lived in Canada for four years, but it seems to me that these kinds of provincial, narrow-minded opinions are what Alberta is known for. Am I right? And it also merits mention that the Liberal politician who started this whole kerfuffle is a man whose wife stayed at home with their kids. It’s just political mudslinging, something designed to get people worked up over something emotional so that they don’t worry about other issues. Blanket statements like this are characteristic of the political back-and-forth that goes on when these two parties are thinking about elections.
Whew. Let’s shake off my Canadian politics rant.
I guess I can see how she meant well. If more people really considered the many, many ramifications of having children, some people who aren’t financially ready would put off sailing in. And I do think that if people are going to make the decision to raise children, they ought to parent more than a couple of hours a day. But to imply that people should abandon daycare and stay at home is ludicrous. Kids are too expensive for most people to live that way.
Here is something I was surprised to learn when I moved here that may shed a little light for some of your readers: In the article, she condemns putting children in daycare. At least in Ontario, the term “daycare” can mean anything–from an actual facility with childcare workers, or just a home where people drop off their kids during the work day. Anyone can have a daycare here.
http://www.gov.on.ca/children/english/programs/beststart/care/STEL01_136527.html
Let me quote: “In Ontario, caregivers who look after five or fewer unrelated children under the age of 10 do not have to be licensed.” Basically, anyone can babysit five children and legally call that a job. Let me tell you–in my dinky little suburb, there are a LOT of people who do this for a living, and the slots fill quickly. When the flyers go up around the mailboxes to announce openings, the little tear-off strips at the bottoms are gone in hours. Otherwise-qualified childcare is vastly more expensive and even harder to get into. In Alberta, they’ve experienced a population boom in the past ten years or so, and I’m sure the situation is even more dire there.
I think where she dropped the ball is that she implied that parents who use daycare are expecting the daycare provider to “raise” their children. People who expect that from an unrelated provider whose attention is split between several children–no matter their qualifications–are sure to be disappointed. This is not to say that helicopter parenting is called for, either. To me, stay-at-home mom-ness (or dad-ness) starts the slippery slope to homeschooling (and don’t get me started on *that* today).
Hey Tricia, another Alberta resident here! “waves” Great commentary on the state of Alberta, BTW
You’d think that parents, of all people, would know better than to tell other parents what to do. As Britgirl says, maybe it’s about time we just stayed out of each other’s business and got on with raising kids fullstop, instead of being so damn concerned with everybody else’s opinions. Everyone’s situation is different. Some women are thrilled to be SAHM’s, and others would go stir crazy. Some kids thrive on being away from their parents, some don’t. Some mothers have to work just to make ends meet, because living is expensive and getting more so every year. And some parents are so screwed up that the more time their kids spend with others, the better off they are.
I remember a very similar debate when they bought in the federal family tax credit. There was a lot of screaming about how the money should be spent on licensing and improving standards in approved daycares, but the government’s take (quite rightly, to my mind) was that the money should be spent in whatever way the family needed – because every family unit is different. Hallelujah. At least someone recognised that.
It’s just like everything else with raising children. There is no black and white, it’s all shades of grey and highly dependent on our makeup as individuals. What works for one isn’t going to work for all, so give up trying to find the universal solution. As long as the kids are happy and healthy, who cares how they got there?
It’s one thing to say that’s what you believe and practice, but adding that little “should” indicates that it’s something you think all people should adhere to. While I’m childfree, I find the intersectionality around reproductive choices interesting: you can draw the inference that since the “proper” family should be able to afford a stay-at-home-parent, the families that don’t are shouldn’t have kids – it tends to break down along class and race lines by valuing some families more than others and really feeds in xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment.
I honestly don’t care what people do, so long as they don’t whine about how haaaaard it all is. (Occasional bitching between friends is fine – everyone knows these rules in their heart of hearts.) But the idea that one parent (usually, if they’re honest, the mother) ABSOLUTELY MUST STAY AT HOME is stupid. For one thing, it leaves many mothers afraid to admit that they want to have a job, regardless of whether they really *need* the money. That’s unfair. On another note – closely related – it leads to the idea, which we periodically see in Ireland, that mothers must be subsidised to stay at home, and everyone else must make sure that they never face any negative consequences. That politician’s idea is patronising and the idea eventually hurts everyone. Butt out!
Whenever anyone starts saying one should do anything, it sets of warning bells. Even stupid politicians who should know better still don’t get it. All they do is show how out of touch they are.
To me, it’s not so much about one parent needing to be at home as it is about the anti-human, false, capitalistic economy demanding that ALL people spend the majority of their waking hours for the majority of their lives AWAY from home, working as wage slaves, creating profits for those at the top, while usually engaged in largely abstract, unproductive paper-shuffling. This isn’t what life’s about. The problems experienced by working parents (which, really, is all parents in our culture) just make unavoidably obvious the absurdity of the whole setup.
Become aware of what your kid’s are watching on t.v. Sit down and watch it with them.
I guess I can see how she meant well. If more people really considered the many, many ramifications of having children, some people who aren’t financially ready would put off sailing in. And I do think that if people are going to make the decision to raise children, they ought to parent more than a couple of hours a day. But to imply that people should abandon daycare and stay at home is ludicrous. Kids are too expensive for most people to live that way.
I would be more apt to target just how a family spends their money when looking at this issue. Is the potential-stay-at-home parent working solely to pay off the new motorboat, or items/debt that isn’t totally necessary?
I don’t believe a parent needs to stay at home, nor should anyone be telling people that’s what they need to do. However, I do believe when making the choice to have kids, those kids should definitely be the priority.
I think a big problem today is that parents want to have their cake and eat it too–living beyond their means financially to pay for extra luxuries and in turn, sacrificing time with their children.