Thank you.
Kids First is a 100% volunteer-run charity that receives no government, union, or corporate funding. We work for the support and optimal well-being of children and support for parental child care.
Canada is now at a stage where the goal of economic growth, narrowly defined as GDP enlargement, is openly in conflict with the goal of improved quality of life. Harm and hurt produce GDP growth, employment increases, and profits, but this is a false economy. We need to replace the GDP as a measure.
There are two parts to the problem: faulty definitions, and measures of production. We need inclusive definitions of work—work must be defined to include the caregiving work that parents and others do—and inclusive definitions of child care and early learning. These must be defined to include the child care and early learning—all of it—provided by parents and by anybody who does it.
We also have a second problem, with the destruction of the conditions for optimal child rearing, which damages quality of life and the very formation of human and social capital. This problem has been exacerbated by the circulation of misleading data and suppression of other data by the publicly funded day care lobby researchers concerning mothers' work, effects of day care on children, demand, costs, enrolment, vacancies, etc.
I'm willing to answer questions on this information problem, and I have the most recent unpublished study by the NICHD, from Dr. Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College in London. That is the most prestigious study that's out there--the NICHD's.
The child rearing work of parents is currently undermined both by the fact that it is not even included in the GDP and by the negative impacts of many GDP-boosting activities. Perversely, although children who needlessly become adults who are unhealthy, immature, and unethical are very costly to society, providing them with compensatory goods and services is profitable and is counted as a source of growth to the GDP. As one example, the recent violence in Montreal will boost the GDP, with paid hours for police, doctors, and therapists. Devastation produces growth that is not socially sustainable.
Government policy has caused this. Families with dependent children have been massively de-funded over the last generation. The child rearing work of parents, the vast majority of which is done by women as mothers, is simply no longer considered work. A journalist calls parenting a sucker's game.
What did governments do? Direct financing to parents for their care work has been cut and transferred to services, academics, and bureaucrats in the family substitution sectors. This has been done under the OECD policy called post-maternalism and post-familialism. We call it McJobs for moms.
For example, single mothers used to be eligible for welfare until their youngest child was 16. It's age three in much of Canada, and six months in Alberta. Tax deductions for dependent children that used to go to age 17 have been eliminated.
This is the very money that once financed both the so-called unpaid work of child rearing and civil society work—the village it takes to raise a child. In short, in the past the parents who did most of the child care and much of the volunteer work of elder care and civil society volunteering were financed by the state, if not exactly paid. Now they are not. The result is increasing inequality for women as mothers, deterioration of children's well-being, an unsustainably low both rate, and an erosion of the civil society sector.
We know our children are in many ways worse off than were children in the recent past. There is a de-evolution in many respects. We hear about increased rates of child obesity, allergies, asthma, youth violent crimes, suicide, cheating. We know there are decreased rates of time with children and of literacy, and of course the birth rate is down 60% in 40 years. Optimal child rearing will improve the quality of life for all, it will improve our economy, and it will raise the birth rate.
It cannot be overstated that there is no evidence that shows that day care centres produce better long-term outcomes for children than other care forms. On the contrary, the majority of day cares have been repeatedly found to be of low quality. Day care centres especially have been repeatedly found to increase levels of illness, aggression, and stress in children. Staff-to-child ratios in these centres must be improved.
Thank you.