Stay-at-home parents feel left out of lolly scramble

Peter Sluyter, with son Luke (right) and Tane Cullen, feels the Government is discouraging parental involvement in childcare. Picture / Paul Estcourt

In the lolly scramble of next week's election, stay-at-home parents feel they are missing out.

Labour is offering an "in-work payment" next April that will pay $60 a week to every family with up to three children and $15 a week for each extra child - provided that a couple work at least 30 hours a week between them, or at least 20 hours a week for sole parents.

The party also promises 20 hours a week of free childcare for children aged 3 and 4 at licensed "teacher-led" childcare centres from 2007.

National offers tax cuts and a rebate for childcare, also aimed at encouraging parents into paid work.

But parents who stay at home and look after their own children at parent-run places such as the playcentre in Auburn St, Takapuna, will get no benefit from free childcare or rebates because they provide the childcare themselves. The fee at the Auburn St centre is only $35 a term for each family.

"We get nothing," says the centre's co-president Christine Cullen. "I would like to see more support for stay-at-home mums. We are doing the country a great service by looking after our children. We are saving the Government millions by running our own centres. We are training parents. We are giving them support."

Peter Sluyter, pushing children on the centre's swings in his holidays, says the parents of the 15,000 toddlers in playcentres make a deliberate decision not to put their children into someone else's care until they are old enough to go to school.

"The Government seems to be trying to encourage both parents to be working. They are trying to take away that opportunity of parents to get involved with their children at a young age."

In all developed countries, societies face difficult choices between promoting economic growth, measured largely in hours of paid work, and supporting parenting - unpaid, unmeasured, but crucial to our future quality of life.

A report on Babies and Bosses by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last year found that many modern Westerners find it hard to take time out from their careers to have babies, while others who have babies find it hard to get work that ties in with family duties.

It cited surveys showing women in New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland would all, on average, prefer about half a child more than the number of children actually being born to the average woman in each country.

But it also found both New Zealand and Switzerland could increase their gross domestic product (GDP) by 15 to 20 per cent over the next 50 years if they raised female participation in paid work to match male rates.

Subsidised childcare offered a possible solution to both problems.

"Generally, policies that focus on reducing the indirect costs for mothers to work by offering affordable quality childcare and career-embedded part-time career opportunities seem to be the most promising avenue towards improving birth rates," the report said. Obviously they would also expand the paid workforce.

Prime Minister Helen Clark picked up the theme in her speech at February's opening of Parliament.

She said that in Britain, an important source of skilled migrants, proposals were being considered for a year's paid parental leave and dawn to dusk out of school childcare.

"These kinds of policies will be increasingly important in influencing the decisions of people considering whether to come to New Zealand."

Last month, National's finance spokesman, John Key, sounded a similar note in a radio interview, saying New Zealanders needed to give up some family time if they were to catch up with Australian living standards.

"You are not going to make any sacrifices if there is no incentive for you to get ahead," he said. "The tax system whacking them 60c in the dollar is holding them back from doing that."

The combination of taxes, benefit clawbacks and childcare costs can add up to even more than 60c in the dollar. An Auckland family with two preschoolers where one parent earns just over $700 a week before tax now get about $752 in the hand after family support and accommodation supplement.

If the other parent gets a half-time job paying around $350 a week, but has to pay $90 a week for 20 hours of childcare for each child, the family will be just $5 a week better off.

National's tax cuts and childcare rebate would widen that incentive to about $50 a week. Labour's 20 hours of free childcare and other changes would widen the gap to about $70 by 2008.

Playcentre Federation president Robynn Kopua, however, is concerned.

"We don't believe nobody should go back to work - for some people, they have to. But it should be a positive option for parents to stay home and parent their own children."