Saturday, January 05, 2008

Key advisor supports mothercare

Is mothercare best for children? Professor Jay Belsky, Britain's childcare research chief, thinks so. He has examined US and British research and found "disconcerting" effects of centre-based care, including aggression and disobedience at school and less harmonious relationships between mother and child.

Professor Belsky wants parents to be given tax breaks to help them bring up children at home.

Apparently, the British Government has pressed parents to choose centre-based care:

Mr Brown has attracted criticism ... for Labour's insistence that all mothers should work ...

It [Labour] has been heavily criticised for pressing mothers back into the workforce by giving out large sums through the tax credit system for them to spend on nurseries.

Ministers have insisted that the only way for two-parent families to ensure that they stay out of poverty is for both parents to work.


Professor Belsky wants, in contrast, parents to be put in the position in which they can at least choose to bring up children at home:

"Tax policies should support families rearing infants and young children in ways that afford parents the freedom to make child-rearing arrangements that they deem best for their child." The system should "reduce the economic coercion that necessitates many, at least in the USA and the UK, to leave the care of their children to others when they would rather not."

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for bringing this article to our attention. It's good that this sort of research is being published and circulated but I'm not holding my breath for action.

    The rulers of Britain (and elsewhere) are so convinced of the notion that women should be equal (i.e. the same) as men, that any suggestion that women should give up any financial autonomy for motherhood will be rejected or, if the research is too solid to be dismissed, ignored.

    If the family is truly to be defended the whole mechanism of state intervention in family life will have to be swept away. Those who administer this system (welfare workers, social workers, family courts) are unlikely to permit legislative tinkering with incentives to disrupt their "progressive" agenda.

    Sack the lot of them!

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