Exit plans highlight our lose-lose system of childcare
IN much the same way as the border with Northern Ireland almost scuppered Brexit, childcare — the thing no one gave any consideration to but that ultimately everything hinges on — threatens to do the same to our plans to exit lockdown.
And it is, of course, for the exact same reasons. No one in Westminster cared enough about the North to give it a moment’s thought. No one saw it as important. And that is how childcare has always been viewed here. Unimportant. Irrelevant. And something parents (mothers) need to cobble together themselves, mostly from a patchwork of grandparents, black-market childminders and hugely expensive creches, that often cost the equivalent of a second mortgage.
And all of those things are gone at the minute: grandparents are cocooned; childminders can neither have your children in their house nor come to mind them in yours; and creches were closed en masse in March. Working parents are expected to do their often full-time jobs from home at the same time as they mind, home-school and generally entertain their children 24/7.
But now those working parents are expected to return to their workplaces over the next few weeks. And it’s quite revealing of the Government’s view of the importance of childcare to the workforce that it is only fully opening creches two months after those who work in a whole host of different jobs are expected to return to them.
That opening childcare and people returning to work were not dovetailed by the powers-that-be shows a complete lack of understanding, or possibly interest, by our politicians about how young working families live their lives.
What’s even more astounding is how little they appear to understand about designing a childcare system — despite us having a Department of Children. Minister for children and erstwhile elected TD Katherine Zappone was caught napping when the scheme to provide childcare to frontline workers fell flat on its face after only six providers signed up to take part in it.
All sorts of reasons were given for this, but childcare providers themselves said that the scheme was not fit for purpose and was, in fact, unworkable.
This will come as little surprise to parents or childcare workers here who have been grappling with a system that pays workers buttons but charges parents astronomical fees for what many feel is a fairly unexceptional standard of care.
Which brings into focus the stark question: what happens now? We are told that when children — who have been described as everything from super spreaders to not contributing to transmission at all in this pandemic — return to childcare, they will exist in ‘pods’.
That means children will be placed in small groups where they can mix freely — but kept apart and socially distant from other small groups. Childcare workers and toys will be assigned to these specific pods so intermingling will be much reduced.
This will be coupled with reduced ratios of children to childcare workers, which makes me wonder about the cost and the affordability. If a creche place for a toddler already costs as much as a mortgage every month, will you have to actually sell that toddler to be able to afford one going forward? And how will creches manage to stay financially viable if the numbers of children within them — just like pubs and restaurants and everywhere else people previously congregated — is reduced?
And with fewer childcare places available, how will those who rely on childcare — particularly if they are not well paid — manage to go to work at all?
We are designing a childcare system that functions only for the wealthy elite. If you or your partner are barristers or brain surgeons, childcare remains a possibility. If neither of you is — or, heaven forbid, you’re a single parent — forget about it. The pandemic has merely drawn attention to how cock-eyed childcare is in this country — a lose-lose system that doesn’t serve most who use it, or work in it, at all. And a system that will only be accessible by the very well paid in the future.
This highlights a major problem. In the main, it is women who give up their careers in order to be a stayat-home parent. Sometimes that’s a choice. Often it’s because they are the lesser earner in the couple. But being a stay-at-home parent gives you less financial independence. Less likelihood of a pension. And less of a security blanket should the marriage hit the rocks.
It also means that when the societal expectation is that it is the woman who stays home, there are fewer women working in senior positions — that takes career commitment. And there are fewer women in other positions of power. All of these things perpetuate gender pay gaps, a lack of female representation and the poverty trap being more of an issue for women than men.
That childcare has been about as pressing an issue for the TDs in Leinster House as the North was for MPs in Westminster is no coincidence. These issues didn’t occupy the minds of parliament because, in the main, they aren’t issues that were relevant to the majority of those in those parliaments. Thanks to their age and gender, childcare isn’t something most TDs care about.
But we need childcare if we want Ireland’s economy to get moving again — and with granny taken out of the picture and Covid-19 restrictions about to make creches financially non-viable for users and providers, the State will have to step up.
This is not a role they will relish. They have avoided it like the plague up until now. Ireland has been an outlier compared to other European countries in terms of childcare. Most offer heavily subsidised State childcare as a matter of course. But, of course, Ireland has always treated women differently to other European countries.
Is this merely the last vestiges of the backward misogynistic Ireland of old? Yes, it probably is.