|
Book |
Quote/Comment |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 286 |
...the crèche decided to film the activities of
the children over a day, and then speed up the film for the parents'
entertainment. As the daily routine of the children unfolded on film, the
initial amusement of the parents was replaced by a deathly silence.
...it was a shock to view the stark evidence of the regimentation, rigid
conformity and institutionalized nature of their children's childcare
experience.
Category = Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 287 |
Childcare provided by the marketplace is an
organisational system with an inbuilt economic logic. Rather than
seventy-five or so mothers looking after one, two or three children each, McChildcare depends on a very much reduced core of adults taking care of
fifty or a hundred children. Instead of one mother looking after one baby
(humans are not usually born in litters), one caregiver looks after five.
Similar economies of scale occur as children move through toddler and
preschool years. The amount of time and energy, the number of adults it
takes to raise a child, childhood itself, is being rationalised*.
*rationalised - Here this could mean,
"rationed"
Category = Economics, Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 287 |
McChildcare is more efficient and cost-effective,
its economy of scale replacing costly, time-inefficient parental care by a
commodity service. Just as the continued existence of McDonald's* as a
profitable enterprise requires a large quantity of hamburgers to be produced
at the lowest possible cost, so too McChildcare takes on the largest number
of children it can get away with--a veritable production line of early
childhoods at the lowest possible cost.
*McDonalds = the famous
fast food restaurant chain
Category = Economics, Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 287 |
(Noted British child expert) Penelope Leach has
pointed out:
The more economy of scale a daycare institution offers, the worse the care
will be for the children...childcare is so labour-intensive that any
increase in salaries has a marked effect on total costs--and rapidly
reverses economies of scale. Daycare centres are always expensive to run and
the better they are the more they cost.
Category =
Economics, Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 288 |
While the impersonality of mass institutional
care is not restricted to the large for-profit childcare chains, it is most
vividly seen there. Queensland (Australia) businessman Eddy Groves presides over 'an
aggressively expanding empire of childcare centres'. Groves's personal
wealth, estimated in October 2004 at $175 million, was primarily made from
childcare. Around 50 per cent of ABC Learning's income comes from
taxpayer-provided funds via the Child Care Benefit.
Category =
Economics, Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 288-289 |
Moreover one article which quoted Groves noted
that if there is one threat to profitability
(of his ABC Learning daycare
business empire) it is the prospect of improving wages and conditions for
staff!
In some instances, industry representatives explicitly opposed paid
maternity leave. With almost entirely female labour, such paid leave was
something to fear.
Category = Economics, Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 290 |
In one survey of New South Wales (Australia)
childcare students, every single trainee said they would never place their
own child in childcare after what they had seen.
Category = Danger, Quality |
|
Motherhood - how should we care for our
children? by Anne Manne,
©2005, p. 291 |
The principle of efficiency at the centre of the
McDonaldisation of childcare leaves other fingerprints. Some US childcare
centres have drive-by windows so that busy parents, as at McDonalds, don't
have to get out of the car to drop off children or pick them up.
Category = Quality |
