What women want out of childcare - The Centre for Independent Studies

Labor has made cheaper childcare a centrepiece of its response to the federal budget, saying that women’s workforce participation is crucial to Australia’s economic recovery and lifting the child care subsidy by 15 per cent as the best way of facilitating this.

But what problem Labor is trying to solve?

The Productivity Commission’s 2020 Report on Government Services (Early Childhood and Care) points to nearly $10 billion already spent in financial year 2019 by federal and state/territory governments in this area.

Yet the inquiry concluded that on women’s participation, childcare is only part of a “broad range of work, family and financial factors which influence parent work decisions.”

Moreover, the decades of policy emphasis on supporting mothers in the workforce has also shifted over time to an expensive focus on ‘early learning’. The National Quality Framework’s strict regulations around the qualifications of staff and the operational accountability of childcare centres. All of those things have raised the cost of childcare but without making it more accessible or flexible.

If governments genuinely want childcare to be more affordable, and open to more parents, the first thing it needs to do is cut out the quality framework, which research shows is ineffective once children reach the age of seven, in any case.

Half of all mothers surveyed would not choose formal childcare in the first instance.

The clear disconnect between government policy goals and what families want from childcare was also revealed in a Centre for Independent Studies survey of working mothers.

It showed they want more flexible options for care. Half of all mothers surveyed would not choose formal childcare in the first instance and two-thirds would accept smaller subsidies if they could make more flexible arrangements, for example with a relative, nanny or friend. Their top three concerns were the ‘warmth’ of the childcare environment, followed by location and cost.

Only 9 percent said that staff qualifications were the most important factor, with only 32 percent mentioning it among their top three concerns, and only 34 percent saw the educational aspect as among the most important factors.

Almost half of all working mothers (46 percent) said they would work more hours if childcare were more affordable. However, a significant minority (25 percent) believed greater affordability would allow them to take less paid employment. Add on the fact that over 35 percent of mothers with a child aged up to five are not in the workforce (compared with about 6 percent of men in the same situation) – and there can be no simple assumption that all women would like to work more.

The 2020 Productivity Commission report on childcare services advocates lower costs for parents but points to ‘significant variation’ in fees associated with accreditation, wages, land values and rental costs.

The federal government now wants the Commission to canvass new strategies for improving the system.

As with primary, secondary and tertiary education – also crucial to Australia’s economic and social progress – it makes no sense to simply throw more funding at childcare before developing better policy.

In Australia, the performance indicators for government-subsidised child care are equity, efficiency and effectiveness.

Clever policy will achieve these – not more dollars. Funding and regulation of childcare currently work at cross-purposes: quality regulations increase costs for parents while government subsidies attempt to reduce them.

If the first goal of Australian childcare is to deliver “high quality, affordable, flexible child care services [that] can be implemented across a range of settings”, then Labor — and the Coalition — could begin by ensuring that childcare policy proposals actually align with parents’ priorities.

When Australians aren’t in lockdown, about a million children aged between nought and 12 years are enrolled in some sort of formal care. Hundreds of thousands of others are looked after by grandparents or other relatives or carers.

Mums and dads in all kinds of households rely on a complex combination of care before and after school, and in day care and preschool programs.

The anxious wait for places to become available and day-by-day scheduling of care around work commitments are the lived experience of those who rely on casual, part-time and full-time jobs as well as those who relish working or volunteering in their community, or are caring for the elderly or disabled.

And the nation should respect those choices; by giving parents more choices.

With Australia’s population likely to grow more slowly because of limited immigration and a declining birth rate, any proposals to lift productivity during and beyond the new COVID-19 normal should focus on giving parents the childcare flexibility they have — repeatedly — said they need.

Getting people (back) into the workforce and giving every sound business idea a red hot go will be critical to Australia’s economic success and to the wellbeing of all Australian citizens.

Freeing parents to contribute to the nation’s recovery, and to take care of their families, must involve some serious rethinking of approaches to childcare policy.