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Response to ‘Family Income Versus Parenting Time: The Crux of the Total Fertility Rate Problem’ (2003)

Sex Discrimination

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Response to ‘Family Income Versus Parenting Time: The Crux of the Total Fertility Rate Problem’

Opinion piece by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward.
Published in The Australian, 3 December 2003

I would to draw your attention to a recent paper released by Lucy Sullivan at the Menzies Research Centre titled 'Family Income Versus Parenting Time: The Crux of the Total Fertility Rate Problem'. The paper is a useful contribution to our understanding of fertility and the causes for its collapse, however I would like to clarify some of the arguments made in the paper so the issues can be even better understood.

The author is correct in arguing that women want to choose from a range of work and family options. There is the option of not having children and being totally career focused; to do both; to work part-time for a few years but still be in a career holding pattern while the children are the primary focus; to just have a job to supplement family income, or; to not wish to be in paid work at all when rearing children.

On the other hand, some of the paper's characterizations of other countries, and indeed of some work and family measures are inaccurate.

For example, Sweden did not introduce a family-equity model of support in order to increase its birth rate; rather it was to increase the participation of women in the workforce, which has been achieved. That it has enabled Sweden to enjoy a fertility rate higher than those in traditional countries such as Italy and Spain does not mean that was its purpose.

In addition, paid maternity leave is not a measure only for career-oriented women. The scheme which I have proposed explicitly states that government-funded paid maternity leave should be available to part-time and casual female workers - the greatest percentage of whom are already mothers. By persisting with industry provided paid maternity leave we are maintaining a terrible social inequity for women and families, as only career women primarily in full-time jobs (also more likely to be high income earners) are presently able to enjoy income replacement when they stop work to give birth.

The author refers to France as an example of a country which has sought to increase its fertility rate by providing home maker allowances. However, it should be made clear in this case that it is only for the third or subsequent child that a period of 26 weeks is available, and certainly not paid at the 'cost of the child' level, but at full income replacement level. In other words, it is an extended form of paid maternity leave to encourage larger families. I am sure many Australians would be delighted if the Government were to see its way to providing mothers with six months of income replacement, despite its undoubted inequities!

I would like to highlight several other issues related to paid maternity leave in this paper. Firstly, although this paper is concerned primarily with fertility, as is the fashion, it remains a fact that paid maternity leave is primarily a health and wellbeing measure for Australian women and their babies. Certainly this is the case for a period as short as 14 weeks. With extremely high numbers of mothers returning to work, even part-time, within a few months of the birth of their babies, it is a health and wellbeing imperative that we enable them to stay home full time for the first three months.

International evidence suggests infant mortality and morbidity rates would be improved by mothers staying at home with their children in the first few months of infancy, so would breast-feeding rates, and arguably, early infant development. It also enables women to properly recover from birth, in particular from caesarian sections, and to cope with the incredible tiredness associated with feeding babies around the clock. It seems extraordinary that anyone who has actually had a baby would want anything less for other babies and mothers.

It is also an issue of equity, aimed at compensating women, at least in part, for the financial disadvantage they face due to their reproductive role.

Secondly, the author also supports a return to the 'male breadwinner' family model. The impact of this on fertility some thirty years on from its cultural hey day is unclear, but more significantly, there is no evidence that this return will actually happen, unless of course enormous disincentives are imposed on working motherhood (for example high effective marginal tax rates). With 55 per cent of all graduates now female and almost half of all post-secondary students female, this new generation of young women has simply invested too much in their ongoing training and education (as have taxpayers) to see this as a desirable model for very long. Certainly many of us want those early years to be child-centred, but increasingly this is being recognised as a joint responsibility rather than a mother's duty.

Young couples enjoy a range of family arrangements, of which the male breadwinner model may be one for a few years, but fewer and fewer see it as a long term option. Any government that proposed a family income support system based on this model alone would receive very little support from the under-forties! In addition to being reactionary, it would also be unacceptably discriminatory.

Finally, a single payment to all women for the first five years of a child's life, irrespective of their circumstances and income, suggests that despite the range of choices young families make, they can all be accommodated in the 'one-size fits all maternity gown'. This is not the case in the United Kingdom, where they have three kinds of payments for three kinds of families, nor in France, where the extent of paid leave provided depends on the existing number of children.

It need not be the case here either. For example, the Family Tax Benefit Part B and Baby Bonus provide $3.1 billion in un means-tested benefits to families with one stay at home parent, while paid maternity leave would provide $213 million in un means-tested benefits to mothers who had been in some paid work before the child's birth. To provide the same benefit to all at a level based on the cost of the child rather than income replacement, just ignores the different needs of families and their reasons for working or not.

Mortgages, for example, are a compelling reason for women to return to work and have nothing to do with child costs. Unless the flat amount paid to all mothers were extremely generous, it would inevitably mean some losers (who have longer memories than winners). Integration of such an extensive scheme with Australian taxation arrangements would make the controversy over Family Tax Benefit Part A look like a storm in a tea-cup.

Lucy Sullivan's paper recommends a scheme which replaces all other family supports and would, in a very basic way, avert the need for paid maternity leave. It certainly leaves women intending to return to work within a year of childbirth and with high incomes better off than the existing array of measures, even with the payment of income tax. However, unless the mothering benefit was paid at a very high rate, there would also be many losers.

If we are truly concerned with the health and happiness of families, as well as with fertility, then the accompanying public policy will need to be a great deal more sophisticated than a flat rate of payment to all mothers to keep them home.

It's a long time since life has been that simple.