The agenda of child well-being policies

As far as child-care goes, the common practice of state subsidies for both child care and stay-at-home parents seems odd to me. If one child-raising stategy is best, the state should be funding it exclusively. And if it all depends on the individual circumstances, why have subsidies at all?

Ingrid, this seems like a good start to a fantastic discussion. In the meantime, I’d like to point out that one concern I have, as father of two-year-old daughter, with a lot of discussions around child welfare/parenting: and that has to do with distribution of positional goods. As it happens, my wife and I are in a fair position w/r/t to passing a significant positional advantage off to our daughter (who will be an only child). Should we?

That is, how should upper-middle-class, well-educated people w/sense of social justice raise their children? Should we deprive our children of certain advantages (hide books? move to lesser neighborhoods with poorer schools? not teach languages we know? sell our piano? or…what)? It seems inhuman to think that we wouldn’t pass on every advantage possible. And yet, if we did so, what would be the point of most social programs, since there’s no conceivable advantage the state could provide to which we couldn’t raise the ante?

Whenever I see discussions that abjure distributive justice for systematic changes to the meritocracy, I’m reminded of the old joke my grandfather, an economist, once told me to illustrate the idea of marginal utility: “Two guys were getting chased by a bear. One stops to change into running shoes and the other says, ‘Hey, you can’t outrun a bear!’ The man wearing freshly donned joggers shouts, ‘I don’t have to–I only need to outrun YOU!'” As my grandmother and I reminisced the other day about my recently-deceased grandfather: “So few people had the advantage of knowing him, much less spending their lives around him.”

For those of us (the vast majority of CT readers, I’m sure) who make up the upper crust of the meritocracy, isn’t there a little bit of two-facedness going on when we stump for better daycares, longer maternal leaves, ECFE, etcetera? Surely our kids won’t require those things–much less cede advantage to those who do. If so: what’s the point again, absent large-scale restructuring of our wage/tax system?

My wife and I are Swedish citizens living in the U.K. and I can say that we would never raise a child here. The points raised in that open letter in the Torygraph I find mainly silly (what, you say it’s not good for kids to sit in front of the telly too much?), but there are several other issues. Junk food is a problem, not only because brits live on a diet of greasy chips and sugary fizzy drinks, but because so much of the food on the supermarket shelves in this country is processed and has added sugar. The schools are, unless you can afford to put your child in a private one, substandard (bullying in school is a big problem in most areas), and the approach to parenting and children so backward that there was enormous controversy when the new law was passed saying you cannot strike your child so hard that it leaves a mark. Listen, if you need to use force you’ve already failed. Maybe it’s just the lower middle class area where we live, maybe there are british kids that aren’t sugar fuelled asbo rockets. I’m just saying I haven’t seen them. This said, the urge to raise a child in Sweden also decreases for every year, but there is no way we would ever consider having children here, however much we as adults love living in the U.K.

And the more I think about it…
With Swedish eyes it seemed like a laughing matter with overbearing parents who insist that their children only be fed organic produce – we could laugh, because we had Swedish food standards to compare with. Since moving here we have realized that you actually _have_ to look for the organic section, merely to avoid heapfuls of harmful chemicals and additives. Despite trying to keep our diet similar to that we had in Sweden, we have realized that everything not found in the organic section is so packed with these posions that organic is the only way to avoid them. We have noticed some distinct changes in our bodies since we started eating british – non organic – produce that scare us quite a lot. We are grown ups, and have a choice, but children have no choice and no instruments to make healthy choices, unless their parents start out making them for them. We gained ridiculous amounts of weight despite not eating more or changing our habits, from a size 8 to a size 14 and from a large to a an XXL in six months, despite decreasing the intake when we noticed the change. Increased body and facial hair, lower resistance to infections and in my wifes case, increasingly difficult menstruations and PMT-discomfort paired with bad skin problems.

In Sweden we were able to go to a shop and buy our food without having to worry about harmful ingredients or hidden sugar – as long as we stayed away from “bad” food, we knew we had good nourishment in our basket. Here, you have to be so vigilant that shopping has turned into an irksome task.

So, to be even remotely on topic, britons should probably get their food industry regulated a bit, and then go on from there in order to raise their kids as well as possible.

To follow up and to strongly disagree with cirkux without trolling, upper-middle class children should be free from their parents health-fads (which some psychologists have linked to eating disorders). If you want to eat a vegan, organic, wheat free gluten free, atkins diet then fine, but don’t force it on your children. The rise in modern allergies is thought be some to come, not just from pollution and car fumes, but from the lack of exposure to allergens at an early age.

So I don’t sound like a mouthpiece of Spiked! I’ll conceded that children probably need to eat better on the whole, but that can be acheived without health fads and ‘organic’ food (the term ‘organic’ is pure PR, petrol is organic for crying out loud).

I am a Canadian living in Sweden and would like to note what I found to be the main benefits of the Swedish model; generous state financed parental leave and generous day-care subsidisation. Both of these policies encourage couples to have children and greatly improve women’s career options and positions in the labour market. Paid parental leave is something between 12-14 months, and is sharable between the parents. When I read debates on these issues from other countries I find that people WILDLY under estimate the effect such policies can have on gender equality. Growing up in more gender equal families were the core of child rearing work is shared more between parents and in a less patriarchal society must certainly have enormously positive effects on children (note that the claim is not that Sweden has achieved gender equality, the claim is only a relative one based on my experiences from other countries).

Spanking children is illegal in Sweden and I found this a little difficult to fully support at first, but kids are not running wild and parents are observably able to deal with there children (of course there are bad parents with out of control kids, but lack of spanking is hardly the problem in such circumstances). Given the empirical reality I can think of no argument for sanctioning parental violence against children.

I would, however, be surprised if differences between raw produce sold in the UK and Sweden is causing major increases in body hair. In general I have found Swedes to be bit naïve about how much better and safer their own food is. I have seen my Swedish friends eating raw ground beef claiming that there is no risk of salmonella with Swedish ground beef. Nuts and not true (I looked it up).

I was involved in a series of seminars on The Good Childhood that the Children’s Society ran a few years ago, and I can say that if that was any guide that their main focus will not be on upper and middle class children. Most of their work is with children who are in or near poverty, and that will inevitably influence hwo they go about their inquiry. And quite right too.

I’d put planning issues very high on the agenda, in those countries with high levels of child poverty (the UK, the US, not the Scandanavian countries), because economically integrated neighbourhoods are a key issue for poor children. I’d also, however, put labour market flexibility on the table. It has some great effects on the economy, but frequent moving from house to house and neighbourhood to neighbourhood is unsettling, makes it harder for kids to engage with the academic and social sides of school, and, of course, means that kids are much less likely to have adults other than their parents in their lives throughout their childhoods. Perhaps nothing much can be done about this, or perhaps the economic benefits are so wonderful that they outwiegh the costs to children, but that’s something it would be worth finding out, as opposed to assuming.

Should people pay the costs of their preferences? Or should they be reimbursed for their contributions? In so far as you have the first thoguht (and you agree with leederick’s assumption about the gendered nature of preferences for kids, about which I’m secptical) you’ll want to penalise women; in so far as you think the latter you’ll want to reward them.

Dave — I have one reservation, which is about testing under-11s. I like the sentiment. but I think there’s a case for testing that is actually hard to get around (but I could only make it by being very longwinded, and my wife is having a kid tomorrow, so I need to get other things done. Later, I promise). Otherwise I thought it was just about spot on, and it avoids class war by being suficiently general in the places where class matters that what she says applies across classes. I plan a submission myself, and she has just set the bar that little bit higher…

Chris, they understand all that, I promise you! Apart from the bombsites bit (was that a joke? I loved running around in the pill boxes etc in Lowestoft as a kid)

Harry, can I ask why you’re sceptical about the existence of gender differences in unwanted parenthood and preferences for kids?

People have tended to take that view when I’ve talked about this before. And I’ve found it hard to get past. To me it seems strange. If I talk about gendered preferences regarding doing maths degrees, or becoming nurses, or playing rugby, or wearing high heels, people aren’t at all sceptical as to whether these differences exist and they propose lots of social reasons why they do. But when talk shifts to babies people’s preferences suddenly become impervious to those sorts of influences, we enter a patriachy free zone, and everyone agrees that men and women both want babies just as much.

Every survey I’ve seen on the subject says otherwise. I’m bewildered why people who’d be receptive to that sort of idea in any other context suddenly become sceptics.

Ingrid, your post is the kind of even-handed, judicious, level-headed sentiment that has no place on the Internet. Please replace with something more inflammatory.

Leederick may well be right about gender differences in preferences, I don’t know. My hunch is that _on average_ women want children earlier in life than men, which weakens their bargaining position in terms of the distribution of burdens of childrearing in the couple. In addition, in hetero couples women are generally a few years younger than men, which doesn’t help in this respect. But I have not (yet) gathered any systematic evidence on reproductive preferences, so I don’t know (I guess it would be quite hard to get reliable evidence, though; this is more something for etnographers, not for quantitative social scientists).

I am not claiming that women and men should always bear equal costs of their procreative decisions; I am only saying that at the moment women bear already a very large cost of childrearing, if child policies increase the burdens of childrearing on parents, we should not shift all these additional burdens onto women, _precisely because they already are carying an unequal burden_. There is a real risk of _increasing_ gender inequality if we discuss child well-being policies in a gender neutral way; and that I wish to avoid. Of course, this leaves many things open, such as what gender inequality is, but the main point is to have it as part of the debate.

Qualification: the only case of parenting were you might argue that all things considered, men systematically lose out, in my view, is upon divorce (again, this depends on the legal practice in the different countries, but there are a number of countries where motherhood ideologies not only give mothers disproportionate shares of costs of raising children, but also give them whatever they ask in terms of custody when they divorce. But this surely needs another post, some other day).

Leederik — just to second ingrid, I mispoke when I said I was sceptical of the phenomenon — what I meant was I’m sceptical f the evidence I’ve seen (unrepresentative surveys) and am open to the idea that there’s an inequality one way or the other. I also think that the tednency to want to have children is highly sensitive to social context (for both men and women), so whatever inequality you observe would be manipulable, but of course may not be eradicable (at least by legitimate means). I’m not sure its so different for high heels, btw.

I am a bit confused by Joel’s point, but maybe I’m missing something. Doesn’t the ultimate rationale for social action include the possible benefits to society as a whole as well as to each individual? So can’t we argue that the relative position of upper-middle kids who have access to free daycare and working-class kids who have the same access, (but not the other advantages conferred upon the upper-middles) is irrelevant, since the goal is to benefit society by making life better for the working-class kids?

On another tack, isn’t it possible to argue that there are certain thresholds (not developing rickets, being literate, having shoes etc.) which we should, as a society, attempt to make possible for as many individual children as possible to reach? Furthermore, mightn’t other individual and societal benefits be dependent on as many children as possible reaching those thresholds? (E.g. the fewer illiterate, malnourished, angry children there are, the fewer anti-social, violent, Republican-voting adults there will be in the future.)

Of course, I support leveling actions too, but in the context of a discussion about social reforms rather than social revolution, I don’t think it is essential that all proposals result in some kind of objective class leveling.

“Rich parents may neglect their children too, but poor parents are forced to.”

Yes, but poor parents have big families, vertically and horizontally; care is shared, or at least it was in my corner of the gutter back in the early 50s. And then neglect was no big deal. We’ve lost that.

Ummm nope. I don’t think that Ingrid is at all unaware of the issues of class and poverty involved here – we’ve had extensive discussion in previous CT posts. And to say that breastfeeding is an “upper class” issue is quite silly. It’s a serious class issue – the New York Times had an excellent “article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/health/01nurse.html?ex=1314763200&en=ed01e1dd900324e2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss a few weeks ago about the ways in which class and ability of women to breastfeed at work intersect. Some professional women can breastfeed at work. Very few working class women can. And this has substantial impact on the children’s later health. To quote the article:

But as pressure to breast-feed increases, a two-class system is emerging for working mothers. For those with autonomy in their jobs — generally, well-paid professionals — breast-feeding, and the pumping it requires, is a matter of choice. It is usually an inconvenience, and it may be an embarrassing comedy of manners, involving leaky bottles tucked into briefcases and brown paper bags in the office refrigerator. But for lower-income mothers — including many who work in restaurants, factories, call centers and the military — pumping at work is close to impossible, causing many women to decline to breast-feed at all, and others to quit after a short time.

It is a particularly literal case of how well-being tends to beget further well-being, and disadvantage tends to create disadvantage — passed down in a mother’s milk, or lack thereof.

I’m rather surprised that you should come into this thread swinging accusations of cluelessness around as you have – these aren’t “academic” policies but serious issues for working class women (and more so than for middle class or professional women, because the former don’t have as much bargaining power). They intersect with class and poverty in some very important and complicated ways.

I do think the class aspect is important and is shot through this whole debate (at least from a UK perspective) too. But not from the child’s perspective. The child lives in the day and her environment should keep her healthy and happy and lively. This can be organised irrespective of class, and this is why I love VG’s points – they’re genuinely child-centred.

As well as the simple and basic [i]address poverty[/i] point made by Rebecca Allen, I’d like to make a serious case for the return of the village.

That is to say, the eradication of “pro-family” policies geared towards encouraging the conception of the two-parent family as the ideal. Which is not to say we want to encourage people to raise children on their own. Quite the opposite, we want to realise that children require a strong network of adults around them apart from the two hypothetical adults in the family. We also need to realise that, for myriad reasons, probably the majority of children will have the hypothetical “ideal” nuclear family disrupted at some stage of their upbringing. (right wingers push “pro family” policies emphasising marriage and frowning on divorce, but also push wars which create widows and orphans, because it’s apparently better to have your father killed in a foreign land than to be able to see him every weekend, for example).

What I’m talking about isn’t any specific economic policy, but rather a complete rethinking of the way we view childrearing in the 20th century, and an eradication of the conservative-religious inspired moralising which pushes policy down narrow and often disastrous pathways, as well as helping to keep the tone of our society set to “disapproval” for every woman who has a child out of wedlock. If we could get parents of young mothers to consider what’s best for the child, rather than some outdated conception of shame and sinfulness that the poor girl has brought on the family, we’d be doing almost infinite good in the working-class areas in Britain and America.

Of course, such a move, being sensible, pro-woman, pro-child, workable and plain common sense will never happen, because “pro-family” interest groups aren’t pro-family at all. If they were, they’d recognise that “it takes a village to raise a child” is more than just idle words, and is far more effective than their own policies even though they don’t support the idea that the final word on what is absolutely right was decided in a desert four thousand years ago by a man with a long beard talking to God up a mountain. Those are the ideas that we have to support in our society, therefore moving away from the emphasis on marriage and towards actually looking after children whatever the circumstances of the parents is hardly likely to happen.

So, sure, let’s talk about breast-feeding and paternal leave.