Community Child Care Association suggests childcare centres move away from Christian holidays

Terms such as “mum” and “dad” should be replaced and Christmas and Easter celebrations ditched according to new inclusion guidelines for childcare.

Christmas and Easter will not be celebrated in some childcare centres under new inclusion guidelines that move away from an assumption of Christianity.

New advice from Community Child Care Association also suggests terms such as parent, mum and dad should be replaced with “guardian” and Mother’s and Father’s Day with Special Person’s Day.

Staff are also encouraged to ask about the preferred pronouns of both children and adults using the services and rewriting administrative forms to ensure they are inclusive. “Include an open-ended section in your forms for families to opt to share their preferred pronouns and the pronouns of their children,” inclusion experts suggest.

Julie Price, executive director of Community Child Care Association of Victoria, said the focus was on matching the celebrations, resources and language with the families using the service.

Christmas and Easter will not be celebrated in some childcare centres under new inclusion guidelines.

“If you have families who don’t celebrate Christmas, then maybe focusing on other celebrations is more inclusive,” she said.

“It’s about recognising the diversity of families.”

Inclusion professionals Samantha Williams and Lara Speirs from the association based their December advice on the growing diversity of family types.

“Children may have two parents at home, one parent, queer parents, parents who speak English as a second language, may not live with their parents at all, or have a family structure or home life you’ve never seen before,” they said.

It comes as one in three Victorians are now born overseas and the 2021 Census counted 27,000 same-sex families across Australia. Less than half of all Victorians say they are Christian.

Ms Williams and Ms Speirs suggest educators consider how events “might be welcoming or excluding these diverse family types”. They suggest “addressing communication to ‘families’, ‘guardians’ or ‘adults’, rather than ‘parents’ or ‘mums and dads’. This is a very easy way to include the broad family types that may attend your service”.

Ms Williams and Ms Speirs also suggest asking family members to provide feedback. “For example, this may be as simple as reframing ‘Father’s Day’ to ‘special persons’ day’.”

This included asking families about cultural events or meaningful awareness days they recognise. “Ramadan? Diwali? Pride?” they suggest.

Growing diversity of family types have some groups calling for terms such as “parent”, “mum” and “dad” should be replaced with “guardian”.

Assessing the inclusivity of books, toys, posters and games is also suggested. “Who are the ‘heroes’ and who are the ‘villains’ of the stories? Are the stories representative of the wider community? What do the families represented look like? Do your resources query or reinforce stereotypes?” Ms Williams and Ms Speirs said.

Ms Price said educators could replace over time materials that did not reflect the families in the service.

Dr Bella d’Abrera, director of the IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, said:

“Every year, like clockwork, the progressive left use the excuse of diversity and inclusion to cancel Christmas.”

“The 2021 Census told us that nearly 45% of Australians identify as Christian yet calls to ban Christmas grow louder. It seems ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ includes everyone except Christians.”