Should women / carers be paid for caring for their 'own' kids?

[AdelaofBlois]

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:

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. (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.

Like Orm said. Most people are parents. People who don't have children are the exception to the rule.

I find it endlessly odd that so many people think they deserve some special recognition just for being a parent, when it's the most normal and average thing in the world.

No, absolutely not. Even being theoretical rather than practical, I don't think we should be encouraging more babies being born. Overpopulated world and all that. I would only support this in a society that was facing a population fall and needed to find a way to encourage population growth.

In practical terms, I agree with Strix's objection.

I am also concerned at putting "home with kids" on a pedestal. I'd much rather focus on creating the option of shorter working hours for everyone who wants this option - and if people want to spend their non-working time at home with children or yachting around the world, either is fine with me.

And as for housework, if you don't want to do the dishes, don't. Get someone else to do them, or live in squalor, I genuinely don't care. ("You" not aimed at anyone in particular).

I heart Strix's post. Its basically what ive been trying to say over lines and lines of clumsiness

Population pyramid for Britain. There will be more oaps than wage earners in approximately 30 to 50 years unless massive immigration or a continued trend of increasing births fills out the productive section of the population.

Far better to have a selective immigration policy to pick the best qualified of immigrants than to incentivise people of (undetermined) parenting skills to reproduce.

I suspect that some people who have the most incentive to reproduce for pay would be the ones who would make the poorest parents.

On a moral basis much better to encourage young working age people from under resourced parts of the world to come to the UK. Immigrants in general come with lots of energy (takes a lot to up sticks and move) and contrary to the Daily Mail type rubbish countries with higher levels of immigration benefit economically (even when most immigrants are family of those here already, which is the case for most of the West).

I think that if the State had lots of money to spare it could choose to pay a higher level of child benefit to families, so that parents can make could have more choice about working, working part time or not working, but not to be automatically paid to mothers, and not to only go to stay at home parents. On the population front it could be capped so that there might be a certain amount for one child, more for two and then no more after that, although I think that you'd need to pay considerably larger sums to encourage larger families (if that was felt to be a good idea) given the associated costs.

I'd prefer subsidized childacare personally, but then I've never felt the desire to stay at home, and am getting to the point where I'd really like dh to get back into the workforce.

I would also prefer immigration to population growth. You can't have a population pyramid that just keeps getting infinitely wider at the base.