Left to carry the baby
DR DEIRDRE Horgan, deputy director BA (Early Childhood Studies) UCC, believes while the Government encourages female participation in the labour force, there appears to be little tangible support in policy and financial terms. National policies on early childhood care and education are weak.
She says the Irish Examiner/Lansdowne Market Research survey findings reinforce this view with childcare costs perceived as high and a significant dependence on unpaid family care.
“Because Ireland has a low investment model, parents are left with a lot of the individual responsibility for childcare. It is important for the Government to realise that parents need financial support. Public investment is less than 0.5% of GDP which is the lowest in Western Europe.”
Dr Horgan points out that SIPTU, in a recent report on Childcare in Ireland (2005), highlighted the increase in grandparents labour market participation, because of the greater demand for labour and because some employers have specifically targeted this age group.
“If you have a situation where more grandparents are returning to the workforce, this will in the long-term have the effect of reducing the already diminishing reservoir of unpaid carers. We need to broaden our options. We need to look for alternative forms of childcare.”
She says there are conflicting opinions on the effects of childcare.
“There has been a lot of contradictory research relating to the long- term effects on children who spend a high quantity of time in structured childcare.
“However, the National Institute of Child Health & Development (NICHD) study on childcare in the US has looked at 1,300 children and their families at regular intervals from birth onwards since 1991. Its findings suggest that maternal sensitivity and not the quality and quantity of childcare determines secure attachment. It concludes that good quality childcare does generally have positive effects on children’s cognitive and emotional development.
“Longer working hours and commuting times to and from work eat into quality time spent with children, this explains why many parents working outside the home in this study had worries about the effects on their children,” Dr Horgan says.
“In this respect, we need to look at measures to allow parents to spend more time with their children through developing more family friendly work practices and statutory entitlements.”
“There is a very low percentage of women in different types of ‘atypical’ work such as job sharing or working from home, simply because the structures are not there to facilitate this.
“It is completely understandable that parents are not availing of parental leave in larger numbers given that such leave is currently unpaid and therefore many parents cannot afford to avail of it. Also, there has been inflexibility in the structures. For example, to date employers have not been obliged to grant parental leave when requested.”
Dr Horgan believes families can no longer be expected to rely solely on their income to fund their childcare needs given the current spend on fulltime day care is approximately 20% of average income.
In this respect affordable childcare provision is an important means to employment and gender equality. However, as well as meeting the needs of the market, the subsidisation of childcare would recognise the work done by parents who remain in the home and challenge the perception of childcare as a service for working mothers alone, Dr Horgan says.
“In terms of recognition of children’s needs and rights in the early childhood care and education sector, we have a lot of catching up to do. The Nordic countries are light years ahead in having significant investment, integrated childcare policies and programmes which are designed to support parents and promote children’s potential.”
