Putting a Price on Our Children

Ask

policy makers to sketch their dream family, and they might come up with one something like Susie's. She and her husband are young and work hard, and they have a toddler and plans for more. They've moved inland to a regional town, where Susie works as a midwife, a profession often badly short-staffed in rural areas. The community needs her, and she needs to work to help pay the mortgage. So everyone's happy, right? Not quite. The birth of Susie's first child almost forced her out of the workforce. Not only does her town have no child-care center, but she has spent nearly a year on a waiting list for the area's tiny family day-care scheme, in which groups of children are looked after in a carer's home. She has no relatives nearby to help her, and few options. "If I didn't work, God, we would be struggling." She's finally found someone to look after her child several days a week, but she's still angry. "I've had to rely on the goodwill of others," she says. "There's always talk about wanting women back at work, but how are we supposed to do it?"

What to do with a problem like child care? An estimated 175,000 children are waiting for places around Australia, and demand keeps growing - three-quarters of a million children attended some form of care in 2004, 10,000 more than the year before. Pregnant women are urged to enrol their unborn offspring for a day-care place a year or two ahead of time - often paying a fee to join a waiting list - only to be told by apologetic center staff, "We'll let you know." And it's getting more and more expensive: the price of child care rose almost 10% in the year to September 2005. At 35, Melbourne mother Simone is keenly aware that time's running out if she wants a second child. But she and her husband calculate that the cost of local child care means they won't be able to afford another baby until their three-year-old daughter starts school. Simone could leave her part-time job to look after both children, but she says that would not only hurt the family finances but deprive her daughter of friends and experiences she thrives on: "Even if I had family or friends to look after her during the day," she says, "I would still want to send her to child care instead."

It's true, of course, that no family's child-care worries last forever. But the kind of care on offer affects everyone, whether they're changing nappies or not. For one thing, over the next four years Australian taxpayers will fork out more than $A9 billion to subsidize child care. A shortage of places is keeping women - and their much-needed skills - out of a workforce in which they play an increasingly important role. There's ample international evidence, too, that the quality of a country's child care affects the way its kids grow up. And if - as many experts argue - children who receive inadequate care are more likely to grow up with learning difficulties and other developmental problems, then the community they live in will suffer as well.

Treasurer Peter Costello knows the issue isn't just on the minds of parents. Last week, on the Liberal-led government's 10th anniversary, and in the run-up to the May Budget, he raised many families' pulses by promising to make Australia "the most female-friendly environment in the world," and hinted at increased spending on child care and more flexible work practices. If he delivers, there'll be ovations from families whose frustrated calls for fresh approaches to the issue - such as making fees tax deductible and giving tax breaks to employers who help provide care - are rapidly becoming a chorus. Joining in is high-profile federal Liberal backbencher Jackie Kelly, who in January described child care as a "shambles" badly in need of attention. Kelly, who later announced she would refuse to vote on any further spending on Parliament House until it improved its own child-care facilities, says she's since received overwhelming support from party colleagues.