Better, cheaper childcare not so family- friendly

More than a decade after the phrase “ mommy tracking” came into use, family- friendly initiatives are more common. In the second part of the series, the author of a new book advocates on behalf of women “ who want it all, simply not all at once.” Anne Manne believes more accessible childcare is not the answer. Rather, women should push governments to bolster family- friendly benefits so young children can be cared for by their parents.

The book,

Motherhood, suggests it is time for society and

more women to embrace the

mommy track, which accepts as

natural that mothers will want

to step back from their jobs to

tend to children and family.

Author Anne Manne, an Australian social commentator and

writer who defines herself as a

maternal feminist, courts controversy A work- centred feminism that has focused on bolstering childcare and made it easier for women to return to work after pregnancy has sidelined the virtues of spending time with young children, according to a new book about modern motherhood. by attacking one of feminism’s sacred cows, childcare.

Using a barrage of international findings on child development, she argues that better, more accessible childcare is not the answer, and delivers an incendiary treatise on the perils and unnaturalness of childcare for infants and very young toddlers.

“ Children need most not trained, expert, professional care, but the passionate partiality of parental love,” she says in the opening chapter of the book.

“That love is not reproducible, just as to be a mother is not reproducible. Caring is. Mothering cannot be bought or sold, or reproduced by the marketplace. But caring can.”

She attacks as a self-comforting lie the oft-repeated phrase by those who put their children into the care of a nanny or some other form of childcare that their particular caregiver loves their children as their own.

“Care is a very different word from love,” she argues.