Who Wants Universal Day Care?

Brigitte Pelerin, over at ProWoman Prolife summarizes an article in the Daily Mail on a study of what women really want with regard to work and family. (Her comments are in green.)

Ha!

More than a third of working mothers want to quit their jobs to look after their children, research suggests.

A further six in ten would like to reduce their hours to spend more time with their young ones, the Government-backed study found.

Less than a fifth said they would choose to increase their hours if there was good affordable childcare available.

The findings fly in the face of Government claims that women would want to go back to work if they could find decent childcare.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Mothers disagree with politicians and child-care activists. How annoying for the child-care activists. I am positively loving it.

Here in Ontario, the government wants to integrate full-day care into the school system so children can be in "school" all day (from as early as 7 am) from age four onward. It is portrayed as a women's issue even though the horrendus cost will come out of the pockets of those trying to raise their children as stay-at-home moms. This is "choice" all right, just not the choice most women would make. It is someone else's choice being imposed on them.

Why will the government not try to support, rather than penalize (through the income tax code), the choice of women to stay at home with young children? Why are big corporations in search of cheap labour so supportive of universal, government-sponsored day care? Could it be capitalism destroying families in search of cheaper labour costs and higher profits? Could it be that talk of day care prevents any need to talk about the moral imperative for employers to pay a "living wage" for men supporting families?

Who gets to make these choices?