Despite reports, there’s nothing wrong with looking after your kids

IT makes me want to tear my hair out when I read reports such as those on this week’s Dublin conference — Scandinavian Childcare: making it happen — because it seems no-one asks: what is childcare?

The care of children? Then why is parental care not childcare? For years we have been barraged with the ideology that it is not good for young children to be in the care of family members. We have been told that the progressive Scandinavians have left us far behind because they don’t mind their kids themselves but put them, instead, in State-funded creches.

People never ask what is wrong with parents raising their own kids. They’re scared they’ll be labelled “right wing” or even worse, “traditional”.