Promoting a market for childcare would be ‘gravely wrong’ says the Australian Family Association.
By Anthony Barich
AUSTRALIA’S bishops would be participating in in the cultural trend that promotes the workplace over the care of children by parents and families if they allowed Catholic education to provide childcare for 0-4 year-olds, the Australian Family Association says.
The warning came in an April 18 letter from AFA national vice-president Mary-Louise Fowler to Bunbury Bishop Gerard Holohan, then-chair of the Bishops Commission for Catholic Education, written after the National Catholic Education Commission recommended to the bishops that Catholic education be involved in the provision of childcare for 0-4 year-olds.
In November 2008, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference left the question to each diocesan bishop and education authority.
The AFA ceded that high quality early childcare for 3-5 year-olds can provide valuable support and back-up for families where extended family networks are weak and where child welfare is an issue.
“It would be gravely wrong, however, for a Catholic agency to seek to promote and cultivate a market for non-familial child care, as this would perpetuate the illusion that such child care is beneficial for young children, infants and families,” Mrs Fowler told Bishop Holohan in the letter.
Mrs Fowler, an occupational therapist, told The Record last week that in being conned by the popular notion that their child is missing out on key social and educational benefits by not attending childcare, mothers are increasingly lacking confidence in their own skills.
In her letter, Mrs Fowler cited research that shows even the best institutional childcare disrupts the bonding mechanism between a mother and baby that is heightened when a mother breastfeeds.
“It is also clear that maternal love and affection which flows from early bonding is essential for each child’s well-being and development” she said, adding that early institutional childcare contributes to aggressive and disobedient behaviour in children and weakens family life.
She recommended that the bishops investigate the provision of early childhood education for 3-5 year-olds and parenting education via Catholic education offices, but warned that the childcare industry is in direct conflict with the Catholic notion of the family being the image of the Blessed Trinity – “an intimate community of life and love, where the Faith is nurtured and the virtues are fostered by the parents and passed on to the children”.
She said that early childhood centres incorporating parenting education programs would “support the unbroken bond between mother and child, foster positive family life and provide the reassurance and guidance that young parents need in raising their children”.
This process would not usurp the role of parents nor weaken family bonds, as childcare often does. The AFA has also long argued that taxpayer funding of childcare agencies should be paid directly to families, allowing families to “make real choices” about the care of their infants.
“Instead, as it stands, government funds can be paid to almost anyone else who cares for children except the mother”, the sole exception being the token payment in Family tax Benefit B.
She cited Tasmanian psychologist Steve Biddulph, voted Australian Father of the Year in 2000 for his work encouraging the role of fathers, who changed his position from supporting early childcare after finding studies on brain development that showed harmful effects on the under three age group’s brain development and the development of empathy and trust.
Biddulph argues that brain research now gives a much clearer understanding of infant and early childhood neurobiological effects of having secure and responsive attachment relationships between a child and its parent or other loving attachment figure.