She's done it again.

[velvetpage]

Lydia Lovric, a columnist in our local newspaper, has written another article that got my ire up. The last time she did this was about this time last year, when she said that ten minutes a day in increased prep time was a laughable thing to ask for. That comment inspired one of my best letters to the editor.

Today's article was about subsidized daycare. Basically, she touted the Conservative party line that a tax rebate to allow parents to make choices about their families is preferable to subsidized daycare spots. Here's my response. I haven't sent it off yet, so if you have suggestions (anidada, I'm looking at YOU) please comment and I'll make changes.



Childcare letter

Once again, Lydia Lovric has made a few huge leaps in logic to postulate that Canadians would rather have a tax cut than improved subsidized childcare.

The first leap is in the actual finances of it. “Making it easier for one parent to stay home” is a lovely goal. Please, tell me how you’ll manage it. My family has a modestly priced home, one car only, and is careful about purchases. If the government would give us a $20 000 rebate on our taxes, we could probably afford to have one of us not work. Oh, hold on a sec. We wouldn’t be paying any taxes at all, if that were to happen.

The Conservative party line in the last federal election was to give each family a $1000 tax rebate to put towards childcare. That would cover about two months of my childcare costs. I know families in Toronto for whom it would cover one month. That’s not including all the other expenses that these families pay for with their two incomes. In short, it’s not about funding a lavish lifestyle. It’s about putting food on the table and paying the mortgage.

The second leap is from a statistic to a general statement of preference. The ideal situation may well be to have a parent at home. Frankly, ideal situations are not what count. The real question is, how many of those families would arrange for one parent to quit their job in order to stay home if it were financially feasible? The fact is, many parents are simply not interested in giving up their careers to stay home full-time with their children. They are happy being parents in part because they have the option to work while their children are young, and they would not be happy fulfilling this ideal in their own families.

The last leap is the actual statement itself. Apparently, 90% of those surveyed thought that one parent staying home would be the best thing for all children. I am not convinced of this at all. Certainly it is often true, but to claim it is universally true is to ignore some of the facts. Are teenage parents with no high school education necessarily able to raise a child to school readiness better than a trained daycare worker? Mrs. Lovric is lucky. She has the education and the opportunity to give her children a good start in life. For those with fewer resources, a helping hand before age four might make the difference that will lead to success in school and elsewhere. Denying underprivileged children the chance to go to a good preschool has the side effect of continuing the cycle of poverty and lack of education that many of their families are in to begin with. Children need to be school-ready when they go to junior kindergarten. They need to have some basic concepts of literacy, numeracy, and social skills. If their parents can’t provide them with that education, by all means send them to a preschool that will.

Comments

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

Consider mentioning, in the third paragraph, that you only have one child. This will emphasize that children are far more expensive than a tax break is likely to pay for.

Also, I'm not fond of your second point (fourth paragraph). It is valid, but there is a quick counter to it, which is: if you aren't willing to stay home with your children when it *isn't* a financial burden, you probably shouldn't have any children, because it means you aren't willing to do what's best for the child, and isn't that what being a good parent is all about?

I'm not saying you should strike that paragraph out, but consider my point and think about how you might reword the paragraph, since it does sound like you're talking about people who aren't willing to be good parents. (By the way, the most glaring sentence that implies this is: 'Many parents are simply not interested in giving up their careers...' The immediate interpretation is, 'many parents are not interested enough in their kids to do what's right for them,' which is probably not what you meant.) The emphasis should be on the fact that the tax break will not change the way parents raise their children, since that is essentially the point of your letter.

Try something like this:

"The second leap is from a statistic to a general statement of preference. The ideal situation may well be to have a parent at home. The real question here is, of those few families that might, with the help of the tax break, be able to leave one parent at home, how many would actually do that? Many people like being able to raise children and pursue a career at the same time."

My second sentence is extremely awkward, but that's an example of what I'm talking about.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

My third sentence. Not the second. Heh.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

My counter to your counter is: I can be a good parent, and fulfilled person, if I work outside the home. I could not be both if I stayed home full-time.

But I see your point, and adopted your changes. :)

[anidada.livejournal.com]

One caveat about the last paragraph: teenage parents (let's be specific and say teenage single moms) not living with their own parents would in fact qualify for heavily-subsidized daycare. Or, would have their parents to look after the child, or, would be on mother's allowance and would stay home until said child was school age (like the girl across the street from us, who had another baby so that she wouldn't have to go to work -- I'm not speculating on this, either, sadly).

The fact of the matter is, there is a gap into which middle class families fall. Bottom line, if you're rich, you can either afford daycare/a nanny/whatever, or to stay home, and tax breaks put money in your pocket. If you're poor, you can get subsidized daycare (all you have to do is prove it), or, in some cases, get paid to stay home, and tax cuts are a moot point because you don't pay enough, anyway. If you're in the middle, tough luck -- you get no subsidy, and what little tax cut you might get wouldn't make any kind of dent in your cost of living. A thousand bucks? Gimme a break. That's one month of daycare -- and not even one month's mortgage payment. It's insulting.

I'm guessing that Ms. Lovric falls into the rich category, because I can tell you that every middle class family I know in Toronto is in the same boat as we are. And we earn almost exactly the GTA median household income. Can we afford to stay home? No. Can we afford daycare? No. We have to compromise on everything, which I suppose you get used to after a while. But it keeps us in our place, and that, I'm betting, would be just fine with people like Ms. Lovric. Gotta uphold the class system, eh?

You know, I wouldn't even bother responding to this stuff (though I respect your willingness to get in the thick of things, and from where I sit, it's fun to watch *grin*). The local free paper's editor (judging by his editorials) is a neocon bonehead. Right beside his rants appears the local "watchdog" column by a lovely guy who lives on our street, who I've met at the traffic committee meetings. I ignore the editorial screeds and go straight to the guy who actually makes sense. I'd like to think that allowing the watchdog column to exist proves that the editor isn't a complete knob, but that's probably wishful thinking. :P In any event, I've been trying to see people like that as being, at best, not worth the time and effort, and at worst, so ludicrous that everyone's already composed their own scathing response in their own mind. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Can I clean up the second paragraph of what you wrote and include it in my letter? It's exactly what i need to say.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I added a few sentences already, anticipating your response. :) But I'm going to leave in the last paragraph, because it answers a different question. There are plenty of kids for whom parental care is NOT the best thing, because their parents don't have the education or the will to give them what they need. A more accessible daycare system might encourage a few of those parents - in particular the ones who are just barely out of the eligibility range for subsidies - to put their kids in daycare or preschool, if only part-time, and thereby give them the best shot they'll get at breaking the poverty cycle.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

I don't really have anything extra to add, especially as I'm not a parent yet. I can only give you the viewpoint from this side of the fence; if they'd like hard working, financially responsible, intelligent people to create the next generation in this country, perhaps they should make it a little less daunting.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'd love for them to find a way to give the tax rebates and still provide the services, because it's true Canadians are overtaxed. I've heard a few models that would do this - for example, lifetime income tax rather than annual. According to this model, you'd pay no taxes at all until you'd earned your first $150 000 - which, for most people, would be four or five years into their full-time working lives, longer if you earned less per year. After that you'd pay 10% on the next $150 k, then 20%, and so on, with the cap at something like two million. It has a lot of advantages, the biggest one being the opportunity for young people to get established with a home and other investments before they're asked to pay taxes.

In any case - make it easier and more feasible to raise our families without impoverishing ourselves, and we'll reward you with kids who have good work ethics and good educations to run the country.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

I love the lifetime income tax idea.
One area where this does not work would be people who once earned a great deal, but have fallen on hard times, perhaps a recession etc. These people would be paying far too much of their income to taxes, and end up with practically nothing (can you tell I've lived through a recession? :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

There would have to be special provisions for that situation - if your income drops by a certain percentage, your taxes is rebated, for example.

Still - it was one of the first new, interesting ideas I've ever heard from the Conservative party.

[mizheekay.livejournal.com]

You go!

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I did. I sent it off earlier today. They know me so well by now that they may not bother to call to tell me they'll be printing it. Or they may not print it until Tuesday, since it was fairly late in the day when they received it. Either way, with a well-written letter of mine, it will probably get in at some point. :)

Good to see you back, and I hope now that the storm is over, the cleanup from it will be easy by comparison.