PARENTS, RESPONSIBILITIES AND CHILD CARE

Child care is over the top in Australia. Children need to be brought up by their parents. It is altogether too much for people to give birth, them thrusting their children at agencies, including child care, early learning centres and schools to bring up.

Parents should do their job and be primary caregivers and developers of their children. There is far too much ‘passing the buck’ and abrogating parental responsibilities.

Neither should parents and community expect government to spend billions of dollars subsidising their child care costs. During the 1970’s and 1980’s, a small amount of child endowment or family benefit was available to help offset the costs of children – and that was it! Fast forewords to 2017 and paid childcare is available, even to parents who do not work, for at least 12 hours per week.

Too many childen get born, then ‘outsourced’ to agencies to bring them up. That is not good enough. Neither does it work as well for children as the nurture and care offered by parents.

Maybe, people needs to make a choice between having children or a career. You often cannot have both, other than in the context of doing a mediocre job at work and home. Too many children are parked with organisations from before school care, to school, to after school care. When picked up, they are taken home by tired parents who park them in front of TV or with an iPad, because they are not in the mood to engage with their children.

And sometimes some parents feel that socialisation has a higher priority than being with their children.

And how many parents when taking holidays, leave their children with relatives or friends so they can enjoy themselves without being encumbered by offspring.

Children can quickly come to perceive, accurately or otherwise, that they are unloved and unwanted. If that is the case, it become inordinately difficult to change this perception and concept in their thinking. That can be a factor that places their attitude to school and schooling behind the eight ball.