Bridging the gender gap across numerous sections of society isn’t proving an easy task. Even if you’re of the opinion that ‘feminism’ is a dirty word and equates to a foul conglomeration of misandric banshees hell-bent on destroying decent life as we know it, you’d still agree that male and female roles and positions in society tend to differ considerably. And even if you take the stance that this imbalance is the natural and right order of things, you’d still have to agree that in a relationship with one partner being the breadwinner, and the other the childcare provider, the latter partner loses out: in social recognition stakes, in remuneration, in decision making capacity, in effective voice in government. As it happens, the child-rearing party tends to be female, but were we to entirely swap positions and have predominantly stay-at-home dads, this imbalance would still be there. It would simply be the men being disadvantaged instead.
So we have a few choices.
So what is this Option 5 Model?
Currently, the most progressive systems enabling both child-producing partners to be active members of society in the work sector focus on providing childcare within or adjacent to the workplace, and getting females back into circulation as quickly as possible, with support from the state for the infant. Even this is a bit of a Nirvana.
But what is the reason for the inability of many to return to work? (Again, let’s forget about which gender it is. Just that someone has to look after the young kids.) Even today, if there’s an extended family, the grandparents can look after the toddlers, the school takes care of the somewhat older kids, and both Mum and Dad can get to work earning taxes and contributing to the economy like crazy. But guess what, the extended family has broken down in many places, for a host of reasons. It’s often just a nucleus of One Adult, with however many kids. That is butter spread very, very thin on toast.
Secondly, consider the disparity between the social recognition ‘homemakers’ receive, and the importance of their service to society. Without infants, life would quite literally come to a very solid full stop. Whatever lip-service might be paid about gratitude and respect, at the end of the day ‘homemaker’ is the lowest of the low. But. We. Really. Do. Need. Kids.
Now consider another aspect of life we consider essential. Been in the news quite a lot recently. Homeland security. When the political situation is unstable and homeland security is threatened, or it is expected that a large army might be needed at short notice, what do we do? We conscript. The drawbacks of conscription are obvious: unsuitable people being drafted and losing valuable years of their life, and wasting the resources of the government in the meantime. The benefits are not only that a large army is available for mobilization, but more importantly, the whole populace (or usually in the past, half the populace) is trained in some sort of self-defence. They gain skills, which at that time at least, are considered valuable enough to be mandatory. Interestingly, Israel, which has one of the highest GDP spends on defence in the world, also has one of the highest female inclusion rates in the military. No-one would disagree that Israel’s home defence is formidable and effective, particularly given the size of the country.
Now. Parenting skills. Boy, do we need help with that. The average person is arguably already slightly better at self-defence than they are at parenting. But do we get training? No. You need a license in Australia to take care of a lizard, but nothing for a child. Our societies are ageing, our generation gaps are groaning under the strain of increased change and technological advances, our education systems have been chopped about and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator until they sometimes barely resemble anything useful, partly because parents cannot or will not give the home support that’s required. (Yes, I know there are a lot of wonderful schools and teachers out there but Western illiteracy and innumeracy levels speak for themselves.) We need help.
So, how about this. Small, community based, professionally monitored infant caring centres, staffed by members of the community, to whom parents can safely and freely entrust their children for the duration of their work day. At a ratio of 1.2 children per person, every working adult putting in one day a week, physically looking after the children, would entirely take care of the childcare issue.
10 adults: 12 kids. At a 1 to 6 adult to child ratio (plus the professional supervisors), these random 10 adults could care for ALL the children. This is taking the ultimate situation that all the children are in the crèche at the same time, and that workers ONLY contribute for the duration they are using the crèche. This would of course not be the case at all – with 1.2 children each you’d use about 8 or 9 years’ worth of crèche facility, and would potentially be available to contribute 30 years or so. The immediate pros and cons are:
Cons:
So that’s the outline. If someone wants to pay me to suggest more details, I will. But the point is, whether it’s something along these lines or a different structure that truly allows parents to make their absolutely essential contribution to society in the form of children, without being punished for it, something has to change. Without such a system, there will never, ever be equality between child carers and providers of other services. There cannot be. In our interpretation, that often works out as ‘equality for women’, but in fact, it’s the child carers that’s the pertinent point. There’s no use scrubbing the decks of a ship if there’s a hole in the hull. You have to address the structural soundness first. With a sound childcare system that enabled participation from all, issues with female equality would simply evaporate. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
So we have a few choices.
- Continue as is. The party that takes over childcare duties loses out. That’s life. They can take pride in some kind of supposed domestic superiority. We continue to tax, renumerate and recognise as normal.
- Swap gender roles round. Females have done it for a long time – why not? The physical onus of carrying the child need only inconvenience the average female worker for about three months total per child. This is nothing compared to sick-leave taken by men for major surgery, sports and occupational injuries due to increased risk-taking propensities, and so on. At an average of 2.4 kids per female we’re looking at almost no palpable interruption to services or career.
- Share and divide as appropriate in individual circumstances. This is actually the supposed current ‘modern’ model but as traditional bias is so lop-sided it’s impossible to achieve any kind of real balance. Besides, we all know that under just about any taxation system, part time employees get shafted of benefits, holidays, privileges, promotions and everything else. And were all external and domestic work allocated equally, that’s what everyone would be. A part time ‘worker’ externally.
- Take model 3) above and restructure taxation and job sharing, so that part time workers will qualify for the same benefits as full time. This may seem sensible, but the burden on employers is already so great, and the tax levied on small businesses so prohibitive, that most Western societies are currently looking to decrease this as much as possible, in order to increase employment levels in real terms. It would be very hard, and be a drag on the economy, particularly as governments have notoriously sticky fingers and like to withhold much more tax than they re-invest in schemes or funds that benefit either the employers or employees.
- Create a new community-based system of child raising.
So what is this Option 5 Model?
Currently, the most progressive systems enabling both child-producing partners to be active members of society in the work sector focus on providing childcare within or adjacent to the workplace, and getting females back into circulation as quickly as possible, with support from the state for the infant. Even this is a bit of a Nirvana.
But what is the reason for the inability of many to return to work? (Again, let’s forget about which gender it is. Just that someone has to look after the young kids.) Even today, if there’s an extended family, the grandparents can look after the toddlers, the school takes care of the somewhat older kids, and both Mum and Dad can get to work earning taxes and contributing to the economy like crazy. But guess what, the extended family has broken down in many places, for a host of reasons. It’s often just a nucleus of One Adult, with however many kids. That is butter spread very, very thin on toast.
Secondly, consider the disparity between the social recognition ‘homemakers’ receive, and the importance of their service to society. Without infants, life would quite literally come to a very solid full stop. Whatever lip-service might be paid about gratitude and respect, at the end of the day ‘homemaker’ is the lowest of the low. But. We. Really. Do. Need. Kids.
Now consider another aspect of life we consider essential. Been in the news quite a lot recently. Homeland security. When the political situation is unstable and homeland security is threatened, or it is expected that a large army might be needed at short notice, what do we do? We conscript. The drawbacks of conscription are obvious: unsuitable people being drafted and losing valuable years of their life, and wasting the resources of the government in the meantime. The benefits are not only that a large army is available for mobilization, but more importantly, the whole populace (or usually in the past, half the populace) is trained in some sort of self-defence. They gain skills, which at that time at least, are considered valuable enough to be mandatory. Interestingly, Israel, which has one of the highest GDP spends on defence in the world, also has one of the highest female inclusion rates in the military. No-one would disagree that Israel’s home defence is formidable and effective, particularly given the size of the country.
Now. Parenting skills. Boy, do we need help with that. The average person is arguably already slightly better at self-defence than they are at parenting. But do we get training? No. You need a license in Australia to take care of a lizard, but nothing for a child. Our societies are ageing, our generation gaps are groaning under the strain of increased change and technological advances, our education systems have been chopped about and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator until they sometimes barely resemble anything useful, partly because parents cannot or will not give the home support that’s required. (Yes, I know there are a lot of wonderful schools and teachers out there but Western illiteracy and innumeracy levels speak for themselves.) We need help.
So, how about this. Small, community based, professionally monitored infant caring centres, staffed by members of the community, to whom parents can safely and freely entrust their children for the duration of their work day. At a ratio of 1.2 children per person, every working adult putting in one day a week, physically looking after the children, would entirely take care of the childcare issue.
10 adults: 12 kids. At a 1 to 6 adult to child ratio (plus the professional supervisors), these random 10 adults could care for ALL the children. This is taking the ultimate situation that all the children are in the crèche at the same time, and that workers ONLY contribute for the duration they are using the crèche. This would of course not be the case at all – with 1.2 children each you’d use about 8 or 9 years’ worth of crèche facility, and would potentially be available to contribute 30 years or so. The immediate pros and cons are:
Cons:
- The adults lose one day a week out of (a hypothetical) five. Remuneration would have to fall as a result.
- Everyone would have to be screened, and there would be some unsuitables. Some would slip through the screening, and some harm will be done somewhere. You could however argue that had this not come to light, they would simply have done harm to children away from the public eye and continued for longer.
- It’s a lot of administration and change to set up. Tricky.
- You’d have to look after a bunch of kids who were not necessarily yours. Some people may baulk at this. Or we may be surprised at how easily the caring instinct is spread to any infant.
- Everyone would have supervised training in looking after infants, hopefully, before they have any of their own. Bloody hell would some parents welcome that.
- Children would have exposure to multiple people, styles, and personalities. Peers as well as adults. This will have a de-fragmenting effect on society at large.
- Differences in personal circumstances, such as family structure, would be irrelevant because it wouldn’t matter whether you had kids, were attached, were gay, how old you were: your kids would all be cared for communally.
- Older members of the community might welcome the opportunity to participate again. Examples of crèches combining with nursing homes are already in place, and are roaring successes. Their participation would bring down the adult-to-child ratio even further, very plausibly to the extent of reducing working adult contributions to a couple of days per month.
- We gain a VAST number of working adults. They are now able to provide huge assets for the economy, taxes, and productivity, more than wiping out the losses from the sacrificed (maximum) one day in five.
- Productivity for the working adults ‘conscripted’ may well be increased on the days they are engaged in their normal work. Studies show that ‘all work and no play’ does indeed make Jack a dull boy, and while childcare is no child’s play, diversification and a change of pace is well documented to increase concentration and satisfaction levels, and diminish burn-out.
- Males get an immensely increased opportunity to be with children. It is a lament heard so frequent across the board that people barely even take notice of it. The perennial cry of ‘no father figure’ for the children is also wiped out with a stroke. Because it doesn’t matter if the mother and father has split or indeed never even been together: the population of the adults in the crèche will simply be 50/50.
- The discrepancy of respect and remuneration allocated to ‘workers’ and ‘child carers’ would vanish. With everyone a carer, there is no-one to discriminate against.
So that’s the outline. If someone wants to pay me to suggest more details, I will. But the point is, whether it’s something along these lines or a different structure that truly allows parents to make their absolutely essential contribution to society in the form of children, without being punished for it, something has to change. Without such a system, there will never, ever be equality between child carers and providers of other services. There cannot be. In our interpretation, that often works out as ‘equality for women’, but in fact, it’s the child carers that’s the pertinent point. There’s no use scrubbing the decks of a ship if there’s a hole in the hull. You have to address the structural soundness first. With a sound childcare system that enabled participation from all, issues with female equality would simply evaporate. Now wouldn’t that be nice?