The Childcare Industry and the De-Fathering of Society Part 1

Prime Minister John Howard has stated that no previous government has done as much as the present one in helping families. If the degree of help can be measured by the level of government spending on assistance programmes, then this is undeniably true.

Mr Howard is clearly genuine in his concern for families and in his compassion for children. His government is continually looking at new policies to keep families together and to protect children when families fall apart.

The support of sole parents through the family benefits system greatly surpasses any benefits provided by any Labor government. This includes the Hawke government, which had declared itself the champion of children and pledged that ‘by the year 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty’. In fact, the legacy of the Whitlam and Hawke governments is that by the year 2000, one million Australian children were living without their fathers.

The purpose of the generous assistance provided by the present government is to bring relief to the hardships families experience. Of particular concern is easing the financial costs of having children.

Yet families remain in crisis. In fact it appears that the more help the government provides, the greater the problems become. The solutions seem to feed the problems rather than extinguish them.

Why is this so? Any non-resident parent with personal experience of the Child Support Agency and the Family Court doesn’t even bother asking the question. The answer is as obvious as the ground under their feet.

However, there are also other contributing factors that are less obvious. For example, the nature of government funding for childcare has created an industry which unwittingly promotes and facilitates the de-fathering of society. How and why this is happening will be revealed in this series of articles in the following weeks.

(to be continued)