\”The revolution in gender roles is unfinished business,\” said Nick Pearce, director of IPPR. \”Women still shoulder the overwhelming burden of household tasks, particularly after they have had children. When they earn more, their bargaining power with their partners increases, so closing the gender pay gap would help. Universal childcare, rather than tax relief for nannies or cleaners, is also the best way forward for a family-friendly, more equal Britain.
The gender pay gap is entirely the result of the different choices about childcare etc that men and women take after marriage/parturition.
You cannot therefore change those decisions by changing the pay gap, it all works entirely the other way around.
And what is this thing about universal child care? We already have that….all children are cared for. What is meant is that there should be some state provision of child care to all children. Which is an interesting sort of thing for a lefty to argue for.
We\’ve got something that is normally done by parents for their own children and now we\’re going to force it out of the household economy and into the wider one. In Marxist terms this is the commodification of childcare: commodification normally being thought a bad thing.
But there\’s more to it than this as well. We have no magic box that says \”free childcare\”. All we have is the ability of young women to care for their own children or young women to care for other peoples\’ children (it really won\’t be young men: the paedophile scare will see to that). At which point we\’ll end up with a class issue. For it will be the high flying career women in the middle and upper classes who get to palm their kids off onto the working class birds who will be staffing the child care centres.
The end result will actually be not dissimilar to the Upstairs Downstairs world of nannies. The working class woman will be looking after the kids of the upper. About the only real difference is that the sex life of that working class girl will not be monitored quite so obsessively (nor, to be fair, at quite so much risk from hubby or footman).
It\’s entirely possible that this will be a better world even so. It\’s just a very odd thing for a lefty to be arguing for.
Universal childcare. “It’s just a very odd thing for a lefty to be arguing for.”
Really?
This is the lefty’s wet dream isn’t it?
Kids are already being indoctrinated in left wing philosophy from their first day at infant school. This would push the opportunity to work on their receptive little minds right back to birth. A cuddly Che Guevara in every cot. Romper suits patterned with the Labour rose.
It’d be the last generation of middle & upper class mums, ever.
“The working class woman will be looking after the kids of the upper.”
As you pointed out in a recent post, the bureaucratic complexities surrounding starting businesses in Portugal & Greece are a conspiracy of the upper middle classes against the rest. Here’s another example.
Universal child care. Provided by the state. Implemented by women.
So they very thing that they want to close the gender pay gap will actually create a gender pay gap because the women working in child care won’t be paid the same as the high flying executive women.
Progressives and intelligence don’t necessarily go to together when their ideas are so wound up in idealogy.
Not convinced that universal (state) child care would be particularly “family-friendly” . The Left isn’t known for its support of the family.
Still, this is the IPPR, home of ID cards and other statist nightmares.
The idea that people might actually want to stay at home and spend time with kids isn’t so inconceivable, is it? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people being given the opportunity to dash back into employment but I can’t believe that anyone who’s seen the inside of an office can be blind to the fact that some people might be unbothered about staying at home.
Kids are already being indoctrinated in left wing philosophy from their first day at infant school.
Oh, yes, I remember colouring in The Red Banner, and gathering in a circle to sing The Internationale. Christ.
Does having children and then handing them over to strangers, while having to earn money to pay the strangers to look fter said children , benefit anyone beside the government.
BenSix – “The idea that people might actually want to stay at home and spend time with kids isn’t so inconceivable, is it?”
Well obviously. But as Simone de Beauvoir famously said, women should not be given the choice because too many would choose to stay at home.
“Oh, yes, I remember colouring in The Red Banner, and gathering in a circle to sing The Internationale.”
Good for you. But if you were not so far to the Left you might notice the ideological nature of much British teaching. And Children’s TV.