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self-employed. The establishment of pro
rata wages and conditions, moreover, has
been limited largely to the public sector,
and even there the incidence isn't widespread.
And because part-time employment
is often dead-end, even with pro rata
entitlements in place, back in the seventies
our preference was for a shorter working
week.
Needless to say, we were pushing
against the tide. As a consequence of economic
rationalism and the anti-human
policies that Manne quite rightly deplores,
those in full-time work are working longer
hours than ever, with the rest condemned
to casualisation, to which non-professionals
particularly are at risk. Yet Manne
doesn't state just what she means by parttime
work, or allude to the difficulties
attached to it.
This is odd, given Motherhood's
scope. Indeed, that scope is one of its
real strengths. Just when you think, ah,
but what about this, a discussion of that
very topic will appear. But perhaps it's a
weakness too. In covering all the angles,
she's not as rigorous in some places as she
is in others. The place where she's most
exacting is in her review of recent studies
into stress levels in very young children
attending child-care centres. The findings
of these studies are disturbing, and more
disturbing still is how they've been
rejected out of hand. Yet even here there
are interpretations of the data other than
the one put forward. The aggressiveness
and lack of social skills at school linked
with early child-care attendance, for
instance, can be attributed as much to poor
infant-school teaching as it can to early
child care, especially when the advanced
cognitive development reported in these
kids is taken into account. Often the most
obstreperous child, in my experience, is a
child who is bored.
So while Manne acknowledges that
high-quality group care should be available
to those who need it (and there will
always be those who will), the overwhelming
thrust of her thesis supports
other options. Obviously a range of
options is needed, but in the hard world
of policymaking it's too often either-or.
The funds directed to one option will be
siphoned off another, and that is exactly
what has occurred.
These points are raised not because
I don't attach weight to Manne's ideas
but because I do. A decade ago I wrote a
book myself to express the love I had for
a baby and the wonderful life I had when
he was young; how through his companionship,
as other women have written,
I harnessed my own creativity. It was
a novel, but was based, as novels often
are, on an incident that happened in real
life, when my youngest child, the baby
I had after I left the Public Service, contracted
giardia in part-time care. It was
an awful business, and I learned from the
experience that there's a world of difference
between the rarefied atmosphere of
policymaking and what happens on the
ground. Manne is right when she says
that the love we have for our children is
something to be enjoyed and treasured.
But what is equally true is that it's one
thing to have an idea, quite another to
make it work.
•
Sara Dowse is a novelist and essayist.
Under her leadership the first women's
affairs section of the Prime Minister's
Department, established in 1974, became
the Office of Women's Affairs, now the
Office of the Status of Women. She lives
in Sydney.
The Hesburgh Sabbatical and the Institute of Religious Formation offer you quality time and superb tools to refocus
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