Childcare: the Service Capitalism Won't Offer

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Nursery campaigner Ann McKinley explodes the myth that even the most "progressive' capitalist societies provide adequate childcare facilities.

Germany.

In Germany maternity leave for the mother only is 30 weeks on full pay. In 1979 women represented 36.7% of the workforce and there were 48.4% of women working.

Provision for under 6's is 41.3%-but in reality this is worse,, since German children attend school for only half a day Some of Hitler's policies-of keeping women at home in an attempt to create the super race and to conceal the embarrassingly high unemployment figures remain in the minds of many today.

The official figure for women unemployed is 51% although the real figure is thought to be nearer 66%.

It's amazing that reforms as late as the 1970s removed laws which meant that a wife no longer had to have her husband's permission to work!

• As the economic recession bites in Germany, the Christian Democrats are attempting to make motherhood more attractive by proposing an upbringing wage so that women will stav at home. TTHOM HT Holland.:

Maternity leave for the mother only is 14 weeks full pay. In 1977 women represented 25.3% of the workforce and there were 27% of women working.

There is no tradition of married women working in Holland and this is hardly surprising where no pre-school provision is provided by the LETTER AROMA ToMM state.

There are 115 subsidised centres catering for 5,914 children for a population of about 14 million.

A two-year waiting list is normal. Care is provided for children over five between 8.45 and 3.30 with 1½ hours for lunch and no school meals. This would make a full time job for a working mother very difficult.

No one seems to know how many working mothers there are in Ireland. Approximate figures from the Department of Internal Revenue have 330,000 married couples paying tax, 120,000 of which have wife and husband both working.

Out of the 330,000 married couples liable to taxation 100,000 have no children. But it isn't known what the overlap is, how many of the families have children where both parents work.

There are approximately 15,000 unmarried mothers.

Straying between these figures are unguessed numbers of children minded by unregistered people with no set legal status.

The going rate for private minding is £3 a half day, but since most childminders don't want the taxman to know, that £15 a week has to come out of the mothers taxable income.

If a mother wishes to declare payment for tax relief she will have to be responsible for the minder's PAYE forms.

The Department of Health attitude to childminding is that they don't see themselves as providing substitute care for children whose mothers just want to work, but they do provide facilities for unmarried mothers or women whose husbands have left them.

The 80 day care centres that are funded by the Department of Health are run by the eight Health Boards. A final report is being prepared which will advise "radical' changes in all aspects of child care. These radical changes may not be all that women in Ireland desire:

"The board couldn't see itself as funding day care in order that the mother could work, in fact they'd be more ukely, to give money in order 191-.1.. that she wouldn't work.' There are only 17 nursery schools around Dublin but gradually private facilities are being set up and coming out in the open.

• Various groups have been trying to start creche facilities in their workplaces. RTE management have agreed in principle to a creche and a company in Athlone has already set one up after they found they We invite further discussion We invite further discussion on this important issue. on this important issue. were losing lot of trained people.

There's also a knitwear factory in Roscommon-whose managing director is a woman and feels she doesn't want to train new machinists.

She has seven women with babies and says it is cheaper to run a creche for them than to train seven new machinists.

The demand for adequate childcare facilities is part of the current campaign to implement the Workings Women's Charter launched by the Women's Advisory Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. However the ICTU's comprehensive policy urges the government and its agencies to 'enter into immediate discussions with trade unions on workplace nurseries" instead of demanding facilities from the state itself. Italy Maternity leave for mother only is 12 weeks on 80% pay, but there is an option of 24 weeks at 30% pay for either parent.

Women represent 29.6% of the workforce and 37.1% of women were working. Women's unemployment is 13.3% compared with 4.9% for men.

Italy's high unemployment rate creates extremely difficult conditions for women who wish enter the labour force.

Employers who can afford to pick and choose generally choose not to hire women. Therefore many women are forced to engage in home workingr monotonous piecework which companies contract out at meagre pay to women who perform the tasks at home.

This decentralised, isolated and unorganised labour force is easily manipulated and exploited.

There are about 1½ million home workers, of whom 85% are women. There is no preschool provision provided in Italy, 82% of nurseries are private.

United States The USA is the only major industrial nation • without a national health insurance plan. Though the 1964 Civil Rights Act did give women job security this means little without adequate childcare provision.

In 1960 only 18.6% of mothers of pre-school age children were employed and this had only risen to 30.1% in 1972.

In 1972 tax allowances for child care costs were introduced whereby the American state sees its role as helping parents to buy child care rather than setting up adequate state provision.