Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Cameron government insults stay at home mothers

More evidence of just how far away the Cameron government in the UK is from a genuine conservatism.

The latest government scheme aims to help families - but families with a stay at home mother will miss out.

Single parent families or dual income families will get vouchers to subsidise the cost of child care. A dual income family earning up to $437,000 (AUD) will qualify for up to $1750 per child, whereas much poorer single income families will get nothing.

And how did a government spokesman justify this? With this:
Asked whether the Prime Minister was “concerned” that the vouchers scheme was penalising stay-at-home mothers, his official spokesman simply said the measures were “very important as part of supporting those who want to work hard and to get on”. When asked if Mr Cameron believed that stay-at-home parents were less in need of state help than working parents, the spokesman would only say that the Prime Minister wanted to support “aspiration”.

In comments that will anger many mothers, the spokesman added: “The announcement is very specifically focusing on helping those who want to work hard and face the very high child care costs.”

The Prime Minister stressed that the Coalition wants to direct its help at parents “who want to go out to work”.
 
Well, good-bye to the value of women staying home to look after their children. It seems that is not "aspirational" enough for Mr Cameron, who prefers women who want to "get on".

I've discussed in recent posts at this site the liberal assumption that what matters in life is a professional career. It just seems to be assumed by liberals like Cameron that this is the ultimate end or purpose of human existence.

It's an attitude that makes market values dominant. It's also an impractical attitude as most people in society cannot have the kind of creative or high earning professional career that marks what Cameron would define as a successful and completed life.

It even has economic drawbacks. Previous generations of men were raised to be hard-working in part because motherhood was esteemed and a man's labours had the value of creating a space for motherhood and home life to be sustained.

Take away an esteem for motherhood and you undermine some of men's motivation to work beyond the need to provide a minimally comfortable life for themselves alone.

10 comments:

  1. Cameron is just a front for the neo-liberal ecconomic ponzi system.

    This system can only continue by increasing the amount of people paying tax in order to pay the usury on the national debt.

    This central banking system run by the Rothschilds, is the reason why society has been liberalised. The other way of sustaining it is to import new bodies and load them up with debt.

    These are the people behind feminism, mass immigration, multi-culturism and atheism.

    They won't stop until their usury financial system is pulled down or blows up.

    Anon

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  3. "Previous generations of men were raised to be hard-working in part because motherhood was esteemed and a man's labours had the value of creating a space for motherhood and home life to be sustained."

    Yes, that's how it was. That pattern is increasingly uncommon these days. Today, men compete against women in terms of academic and career success.

    If you're a Cultural Marxist, that will sound just great. If you're a Guardian reader, that will be 'liberation from patriarchy', and thus to be applauded and approved of.

    Feminism not only devalues the family and creates unhappy people, it leads to a below replacement birth rate which means justifying more non-white immigration. All of this is 'social progress' to a Cultural Marxist of course.

    ReplyDelete
  4. On top of what I've just said, the jobs that working men did in the past just don't exist to the same extent anymore. Whether it's mining, shipbuilding, factories, fishing or whatever... a lot of the jobs done in days gone by are gone forever, which (in the UK at least) means de-industrialised towns where many people live on benefits because there's no jobs. Which leads to drugs, drink, crime, family breakup, and general misery.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A few weeks ago Clegg called the traditional family 'absurd'.

    Conservatives have to stop voting for parties that are only concerned about greed and wealth - we need a party that takes the best from both left and right, and leaves the ultra rich, feminists and social engineers to fend for themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Incentives enhance behaviour, the devil is in the detail.

    Single working mothers will receive the benefit.

    So who pays? Once again bachelors will pay for single mothers and working women.

    Independence my arse.

    ReplyDelete
  7. To be fair on Cameron, I don't think he had an anti-motherhood or anti-family agenda in mind in drawing up that provision. The British Conservative Party is going through a major identity-crisis at the moment, on top of consistently low poll ratings. They've obviously decided that siding with "the strivers" (i.e. like "Howard's battlers" in Australia) is the way to go in defining a Tory political narrative that has the support of the public.

    E.g. this poster: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451b31c69e2017ee996d835970d-pi

    I agree that sidelinig stay-at-home mothers in the Budget was a poor decision, but I'd say it's a product of poor judgement rather than any socio-political agenda, though.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Alcestis Eshtemoa (Formely Elizabeth Smith)Saturday 23 March 2013 at 03:59:00 GMT+11

    Here's a post I did a while ago --->http://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/gender-roles-industrial-model-vs-modern-model-neither/Sex Roles: Industrial Model vs. Modern Model? Neither

    ReplyDelete
  9. Alcestis Eshtemoa (Formely Elizabeth Smith)Saturday 23 March 2013 at 04:00:00 GMT+11

    Please delete the post above I did. That one was hideous and incorrect.

    ReplyDelete