Had a nice argumentative (if in this climate purely hypothetical) discussion last night about whether carers should be paid for looking after their children. Three arguments ran thus:
- Familial childcare is, even if not done by mothers, predominantly women's work. It is time consuming, skilled and exhausting, contributes enormously in both the short and long term to the economy, yet the women doing it receive no monetary recognition, and indeed risk their security to do so. Financial recognition of the work was a long-standing, although now underplayed, aim of the women's movement.
- That, until men are equally represented in caring roles, the payment would represent further legal incentive for women to stay at home, which may not necessarily be about their choice. If set at a level that altered decisions it would act as a state scheme to force women back into the home, if too low simply be a drain on resources which creates the same ideological pressure.
- (where I got bogged down as the wine took effect
) Payment would have to be set against standards because the justification would be value to society. It would seem unfair to pay fulltime carers and not their employed counterparts unless we were willing for the state to say that in all circumstances SAHPs were 'best'. It would also seem unfair to pay 'poor' parents (at the far end of the scale, say abusive ones) money, but monitoring this would involve the state in childcare in a way hitherto unthought of. The whole thing would be a mechanism for enforcing standards of childcare (HE who pays the piper) which reflected neither women's choices nor a feminist outlook.
Conversation drifts off onto CBeebies crushes, this writer feeling 
but 
.
Basically, just wondered what others thought. Posted here because don't want this to be the SAHM vs WOHM women-hating discussion it might become elsewhere.