Calls for more childcare regulation miss the obvious point

The cliche used to be that a predictable response would come “like clockwork”. Surely it’s time to update that in the age of artificial intelligence “large language” models. Calls for more regulation in the childcare sector following the horrific allegations against alleged childcare rapist Joshua Dale Brown, who has caused 1200 tiny children to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, are as predictable as ChatGPT.

Illustration by Marija ErcegovacCredit:

AI rows up everything that has been before and confidently asserts more of the same to be ideal. Similarly, childcare advocates, who too often seem to advocate for childcare rather than children or care, are suggesting that the best response to these distressing revelations is to do even more of the same, but samier.

Will there ever come a point at which these advocates admit that it is not regulation which is the problem, but the system itself? Apparently not. You see, centre-based childcare is, as many of these advocates and numerous commentators have noted, at the heart of society as we have structured it. Women depend on it to be able to return to work after having babies. Families depend on it to be able to afford their mortgage or rent. Our economy depends on it because getting parents back to work increases the government’s tax take. All fabulous outcomes, which have absolutely no connection whatsoever with the provision of the best possible care for young children.

But say as much and the advocates will trot out another trope which is as predictable as AI: you’re “mother-shaming”, blaming women for choosing to work, or making them feel bad if they can’t or don’t want to stop working after having children.

This emotive rubbish is part of the reason we never have a proper discussion over whether the policy choices successive governments have made (centre-based childcare has been supported both financially and rhetorically by both Coalition and Labor governments) are the best for anyone forced into the system.

It is the reason why reports tend to find pleasing benefits from childcare, usually by rolling together studies of children from the ages of zero to five years old, so the benefits of preschool socialisation conceal concerning findings about the negative effects of rotating care by unfamiliar strangers on younger babies.

That, or they roll together the benefits of a childcare environment for children from “disadvantaged” home environments, with the effects on children without disadvantaged backgrounds, to create a homogenised result. Which inevitably fails to reflect reality.

They have to be separated and they should be separated by policy. It’s worth bringing in a longish quote from a literature review conducted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2015 to make this point.

“The evidence on childcare in the first 3 years indicates that, for children who are not disadvantaged in their home environment, high-quality childcare has no strong effects on cognitive and language development,” the AIHW found, correcting the idea that early childcare is educationally beneficial for the majority of children.

But, “in contrast, poor quality childcare can produce deficits in language or cognitive development”.

Would younger children be better off being looked after at home by family members? Credit: Getty Images

“There is also evidence,” the AIHW paper continues, “that high levels of attendance at childcare, particularly group care in the first 2 years, could elevate the risk for developing antisocial behaviour (Melhuish, 2004). In the United Kingdom it was reported, however, that informal childcare by relatives at a young age is associated with improved social development.”

And yet this paper has been used to argue that children who attend childcare academically outperform their peers as teenagers. That seems to be the conclusion because the AIHW notes an OECD study that found that “reading assessment results of 15-year-old students in most countries who had attended pre-primary or preschool for more than a year outperformed those who had not attended”.

Of course, an adult reader who has attended preschool or pre-primary might be expected to have the reading comprehension to understand that the age groups clustered within the years from zero to five respond very differently to the “early childhood education” environment. Advocates and policymakers, those closest to the levers of power, could take from these studies that while pre-primary may be beneficial, centre-based care for younger ages might need to be reconsidered and other alternatives sought. There’s no mother-shaming here, but a good whack of shame for lazy policy.

On cue, even in the face of “systemic” physical and sexual abuse, and another especially shocking childcare scandal, the advocates and policymakers are locking in behind the existing model instead of questioning its structure. Instead, the tepid AI-like solution is “more regulation”. And more, and more.

The response is an understandable lifeline for parents. We are deeply invested in the system as it stands because it is the only model of childcare which government has shown itself prepared to make financially viable for parents. It may be a misery for babies, the long hours apart may not be the family life the parents dream of, care by strangers may not even be inherently safe. But it’s ours. It’s the only system we have. Yes, I’ve used it too.

But we have to recognise that it is flawed. And that it may never be unflawed. To the point that more regulation – which is the easy, catch-all way of saying that we’ve got no idea what to do about this mess – might never improve things enough to protect helpless infants. Perhaps no amount of staffing ratios, CCTV, personal device bans, training and layers of oversight will make centres a safer environment, let alone a more nurturing one for small babies.

It’s time to go back to the drawing board and give parents more direct control over the people they choose to care for their infants in the years before they start preschool.

Don’t bother asking AI what it thinks about that.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.