Child Care Is Stressful For Everyone! But What Are The Alternatives?

As usual Mia Freedom exploded the internet when she had a rant about her stress and overwhelm as a working mum during the loooong school holidays. Whilst she rightly received some criticism she also had some valid points.

Here's one of the things she said, that clearly hit a nerve for thousands of mothers:

"Most of us are forced to cobble together a bespoke, complex and prohibitively expensive system of our own held together with a prayer and some blu tak. It’s usually some combination of grandparents (if they’re able and willing), babysitters (if you can find/afford one), before and after school care (if you can nab a rare spot) and holiday camps (all of the above). With the exception of grandparents, all of these options are expensive; some of them shockingly so.

And the only guarantee of this cobbled-together-system is that it will collapse repeatedly and you will be forced to scramble to repair, rebuild and reinvent it, a state of anxiety with which you will become excruciatingly familiar if never in any way comfortable."

The most important aspect of this discussion from my perspective is the cultural view that childcare is an individual choice of a mother, not a social responsibility of the whole village. This is very much a gendered problem, working dads rarely consider childcare. It just happens, like the cleaning fairy.

We also need to acknowledge that childcare, in our culture, is not a privilege afforded to all evenly. For example, childcare is not as safe, accessible and affordable for people who live in remote Australia, Indigenous Australians or people who speak a language other than English at home.

Whilst I truly believe childcare should be a social responsibility, it's really hard to picture it working well for children in our patriarchal, industrialised society. Childcare centres are big businesses. Whilst I love and adore and appreciate many individual carers, even some of them would admit that the system is preventing them from doing that caring job to the best of their ability. And certainly, we can all agree caring professionals are not being paid or supported well enough.

But who should pay this cost? This is another question frequently asked by people conditioned by the patriarchy to think that there can only be one winner. That if a mother's burden is reduced because they have access to better, cheaper childcare, then another vulnerable person will be paying the price, ie. already overworked and underpaid childcare workers and teachers.

But what if we can do this in a way where everyone wins? Why not make childcare more accessible and affordable for parents AND more loving, safe and healthy for children AND better resourced and supported for staff?

How on earth do we balance all these needs, that appear to be in competition with one another? How do we allow mums to CHOOSE if they'd like to work or stay home, enable fathers and other parents to more actively participate in parenting, make access equal and fair to all different Australians, and ensure our caring professionals are well paid and trained and supported in their roles?

At first, this might seem impossible, but I have a suggestion. It's pretty radical, but I think you might like it!!

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income is a sort of social security system, where a periodic payment is unconditionally delivered to all people, without means-test or work requirement.

Basic Income acknowledges the inherent value of all humans equally, no matter their age, income, colour, gender or ability.

If you've never heard of basic income, it probably sounds pretty crazy to just give people free money and let them choose how to spend it! But it is a serious and growing discussion, especially as we face a future of robotisation and Artificial Intelligence leading to a drastic decline in jobs for humans. The inability of conventional programs to make any dent in unemployment rates is one of the main reason this discussion has been gathering speed for around the last decade.

Basic Income pilot programs and studies have been conducted in Brazil, Namibia, Uganda, Finland, the United States and more. Basic Income has been debated in even more countries and has the support of some prominent economists and futurists including Economics Nobel Prize winners Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides and entrepreneur Elon Musk.

One of the benefits of basic income is that there is little to no cost to deliver it. For comparison, the cashless welfare card trial recently conducted in Australia served less than 2000 people and cost $18.9m to implement! That's nearly $10,000 per person, just to administer the program.

What if we just gave those people $10,000 per year directly instead? It would greatly reduce the cost and time of accessing welfare, and greatly increase the recipients’ options to really get on with a healthy and meaningful life. This could be easily be funded by ensuring that multinationals and billionaires pay their taxes. Universal Basic Income could also be opt-in so that everyone is eligible, but wealthier and more privileged people may choose not to apply.

Many worries that if we just hand out cash it will get spent on drugs, but here is the truth. A 2014 World Bank review of 30 scientific studies concludes: "concerns about the use of cash transfers for alcohol and tobacco consumption are unfounded"

Another argument against basic income is the idea that if we just gave people free money they would get lazy and not work enough and without taxes, our economy would collapse. But the pilot programs simply don't show this.

Minimum Income is set at an amount that is barely enough to live on, so there is still an incentive to work to get ahead. Current welfare systems create a disincentive to work because people to lose their benefits when their income increases, so there is no incentive to work.

This is not true for a minimum income.

One of the reasons employment doesn't tend to drop in basic income experiments is thought to be that people have more disposable income, therefore creating more economic growth and more employment opportunities overall.

In fact, the only people who worked less in many basic income programs were young people who chose to spend more time on their education and parents who chose to spend more time with their children.

Which brings me back to childcare.

Basic Income And Childcare

The magic of minimum income in relation to childcare is that it allows parents to use their money in the best way for their family.

For some parents, this would enable them to stay home and look after their children themselves, if this is what they preferred. Because it is a fixed cash payment for all adults, there is no preferencing one gender over another when deciding who returns to work and who stays home.

For some families, it would enable them to choose to pay family members, neighbours or friends for childcare. Currently, there are no childcare rebates available for nannies or informal family care arrangements so minimum income would give families more options. For example, some grandparents need to continue working for money later in life but would love to be able to spend more time with their grandchildren. Minimum income would give grandparents more flexibility with their work choices, and give parents the opportunity to financially assist grandparents who choose to take the time off work to care for children.

For other families, minimum income would allow them to overcome whatever barriers are stopping them accessing mainstream childcare, whether that's transport, excursion fees, stationary fees or the cost of the actual childcare itself. It would also make it more financially viable to offer smaller, niche childcare arrangements in regional areas and in languages other than English.

Basic Income also allows vulnerable workers to be more picky about which jobs they take. This reduces exploitation in the workforce because people have more of a buffer between themselves and poverty. Basic Income allows people (like childcare workers) to refuse jobs with poor pay and poor conditions, raising the quality of jobs available for everyone.

So that's one suggestion for how we overcome the stress of childcare, and how it unequally affects women. It’s obviously not a stand-alone solution, but as part of broader policy shifts that close the pay gap at work and ensure gender-neutral paid parental leave, I think it’s well worth considering.

If you want to learn more about the concept of Universal Basic Income there are many articles over at The Conversation, that weigh up some of the pros and cons of the idea in detail and from different perspectives. There are also really interesting benefits of Universal Minimum Income relating the health outcomes and climate change! Read more here.