Trent University honours a child-care champion

Martha Friendly’s doctorate from school a milestone for the field

If you have been lucky enough to get your children into a licensed, high-quality daycare, you can thank Martha Friendly.

The Toronto-based founder of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit has been toiling in Canada’s daycare trenches on behalf of parents, children and the community for almost 40 years.

And on Friday, Trent University is giving her an honorary doctorate, the first time anyone in the child-care field has received such an award for research and activism.

The university notes that without Friendly’s research there would be no national statistics or analysis of the state of licensed care in Canada.

“What’s more, her advocacy has helped shaped the views of both parents and policy-makers across the country,” the university adds in background material for the award.

The Childcare Resource and Research, which Friendly founded in 1982, is the only child care policy think-tank in the country and is respected both nationally and internationally for its research and advocacy work.

“Martha is the person who established child care as a serious area of academic inquiry in Canada,” said Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.

“I think it’s well past time that she be recognized for that huge contribution to our field.”

“I am personally honoured. But I also think it shows how child care is really coming of age in this country.” MARTHA FRIENDLY

Laurel Rothman, past co-ordinator of Campaign 2000, a national coalition fighting child poverty, praised Friendly for “persistence, honesty and integrity about a tough issue.”

Friendly said she was “floored” when Trent University president Leo Groake called earlier this year to tell her about the award.

“I am personally honoured,” she said. “But I also think it shows how child care is really coming of age in this country.”

U of T economics professor Michael Krashinsky, whose 1998 research found that every public dollar spent on child care saves $2 in future spending, says Friendly is Canada’s “go-to” person on the issue.

“I am delighted they are recognizing her contributions,” he said.

Friendly, an American who moved to Toronto in 1971, says her daycare journey began when her own young children were part of a co-op daycare at York University.

Now the grandmother of 2-year-old twin boys, Friendly says she can’t believe the country is still struggling to deal with the issue.

“It’s so ironic that after working on this for all these years, that it is still an issue for our grandchildren.”