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.

What is the Swedish family being replaced by?

If you want to be a self-defining, autonomous individual then you won't like the set character of the traditional family. It will be thought of as restrictive, as not offering enough choice. So the trend in liberal societies is to leave the family undefined.

It's the same old story - whatever is predetermined is thought to be oppressive and in need of deconstructing.

I was reminded of this by an article in the Herald Sun on the way family has been taught here in Victoria. As long ago as the 1980s it was decided that it was better to leave the family only vaguely defined:

"What I've found is that in the 1970s and early-'80s, the curriculum authors tried to hang on to that very traditional notion of the nuclear family," Ms Farrelly said.

"By the time they got to the '80s, they conceded this wasn't going to wash, and they got quite anxious."

Instead of then exploring different types of family units, Ms Farrelly said the educators came up with really quite weird definitions such as "groups of people who share things".

"Then family just disappeared. The course (now) focuses very much on the individual," she said.

So there's another liberal definition of the family to add to the list: "groups of people who share things".

That's a bit like a recent definition of the family by the director of Family Relationship Services Australia who said,

The definition I like now is whoever you share your toothpaste with, that’s your family.

So is this vaguely defined family really going to catch on? Are we going to see all sorts of permutations and combinations of people choosing to share things together?

The indications right now are that that's not what's happening. If we take a look at Sweden, which has pioneered the changes to family life, something else is emerging:

What you can see is that 47% of Swedish households are comprised of only one person. That's such a striking statistic. Next highest is Norway on 40% and then Germany on 39%. The UK is 34% and the US is 27% (low compared to the Europeans, but in 1950 the figure for America was only 9%).

So liberalism is moving us not so much toward the new undefined family as toward solo living.