I recently heard Hugh Mackay give a talk on his forthcoming book, Advance Australia…Where?. Amongst his many claims was the idea those thirstysomethings and fortysomethings without children are becoming increasingly separated from those with them. To paraphrase, the child-free find the child-inflicted’s endless stories about their children’s bowel movements incredibly dull, the child-blessed find their child-deprived peers’ endless jaunts rather self-indulgent.
But it was not until Melbourne Business School economics professor and econoblogger Joshua Gans sent me his latest book Parentonomics to review that this point really sank home. Intellectually, I can imagine myself in his shoes. But the issues about which he writes are ones I haven’t directly experienced since I went through them from the other end of the stick.
Parentonomics is a memoir of Joshua’s experiences as a parent, and his attempts to bring some of his professional expertise to his parenting techniques. He’s an effective storyteller, and I certainly chuckled at some of the anecdotes; his description of school concerts is particularly well-observed. Usefully, he brings a skeptical, analytical eye to some of the tenets of parenting. But, more than that, it’s a chance to see how an economist, and one for whom a major interest is game theory, views a part of the world that’s familiar to most people (if not me).
As the Wikipedia puts it, “game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others.” So Joshua’s approach to tasks such as toilet training, and getting his infant children to sleep through the night, is to insure the “game” is set up in such a way that his children have appropriate incentives to perform the desired task. Of course, it wouldn’t be a story of child-raising if things didn’t go wrong; sometimes his brood of prospective Homo Economicuses find ways to skew the incentives in perverse ways. And, on more than one occasion, his attempts rather neatly demonstrate that real live humans behave rather differently than Homo Economicus might.
As a computer scientist, I find this fascinating. My academic life revolves around trying to solve the problem of maximising the number of programming mistakes detected in a piece of software, given a certain amount of testing resources - a type of optimization problem. So it’s hard not to see the entire world as a series of interconnected problems, for which one is trying to find the optimal, precisely defined solution method (or algorithm, as we’d call it). The evolutionary psychology crowd - or at least its popularizers in the mass media boiling it down to caricature - seem to try and explain human behaviour in the context of what was useful for bands of hunter-gatherers. Even ignoring the hold which economics has on political debate, I think getting a good feel for how particular academic disciplines approach the world is incredibly illuminating, and I doubt you’d get a more digestable (incidentally, a topic which gets covered in some detail) introduction to this branch of the field than this book.
I should note that the book briefly references the baby bonus study that prompted quite a blogospheric stoush some months back. I didn’t follow that in all its glory, but Gans seems to have summarised the statistics (which, I gather, weren’t disputed) but has sensibly omitted the more controversial conclusions which caused the fuss.
While I suppose this might provoke some interesting ideas for parents, I wouldn’t take it as a parenting manual, and I don’t think that’s Joshua’s idea. But, as a light-hearted introduction to some of the ideas behind a particular area of economic thinking, it’s a highly diverting afternoon.
Parentonomics: An economist dad’s parenting experiences is published by New South.
I read a review of his book where he talked about toilet training (big issue at my house currently). His plan was to reward his daughter with a chocolate frog everytime she used the toilet successfully. It seemed to be working, until he discovered that she had worked out how to stretch one full bladder to get three chocolate frogs in total. It doesn’t matter what you try, kids will find some way to get around it.
Mindy - that’s still working. Better even, as she’s developing some pretty amazing bladder control if she can cut off the stream mid-wee.
Hey. Sorry to threadjack… but thought you Larvaters downunder might find this funny:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/09/30/rae-harper.html
Basically, there is a federal election going on in Canada at the moment (don’t worry if you hadn’t heard, even the Canadians are more interested in events below the border at the moment), and the big news story today was that PM Harper, when he was opposition leader, plagiarised a speech given two days earlier by Howard to Parliament… on the invasion of Iraq. I dunno if its interesting news for you guys… but when Australia turns up in the news for any reason up here I get giddy. This is only thing since a stiletto race in Sydney a couple of weeks ago.
Ja, but in twenty years time she’ll be registering for the dole under three names!
Forget the 30 and 40 somethings. As a 60 something who had deliberately and very thankfully chosen not to have children, I’m pewrlexed at the demand of the current generation that peopl without children pay for other people’s conscious decision to populate (a decision that seems increasingly irresponsible seeing how we’re not doing a lot about global warming). Education, health,disabilty, the dole, even single parents left in the lurch, okay, but baby bonuses, no way. If you can’t afford to have kids, no matter how warm and glowy you feel looking at other people’s kids, don’t have them. Same goes for maternity/paternity leave. If you can’t afford the time off work, don’t have the kid.
Probably not healthy to keep doing so though!
The chocolate frog story reminded me of a technique I heard that some parents used to keep their children in line during long road trips. They would start the trip with a big bag of chocolate frogs with the promise that the children would get what was remaining at the end. But every time one of them misbehaved they’d throw a frog out the window
I’m thinking though, Paul, that if you are still around in about 20 years you will be glad of my little tax payers then. Especially as those over 55 (and potentially retired) will be a much larger segment of the population.
I don’t smoke and yet my taxes pay for hospitals to treat people that have smoking related diseases. It’s just the way it is.
“every time one of them misbehaved they’d throw a frog out the window”
Apart from the littering, brilliant! I’d go for eating them myself, with theatrical glee and slurping noises. Though this may generate other ‘externalities’.
Hugh Mackay’s reported remarks amuse me - especially the general idea, that a lot of people like him seem to share, that one half (of the parenting divide in this case, but it’s said about other divides too) just can’t understand how the other half lives or what it’s like to be in different circumstances to oneself.
I often wonder if people making these sorts of claims ever read fiction. (We know Bernard Salt doesn’t.)
Nice review, Robert.
ps. plural is homines economici
“I don’t smoke and yet my taxes pay for hospitals to treat people that have smoking related diseases. It’s just the way it is.”
And smokers pay extra taxes for their choice. So maybe parents should be taxed extra for their lifestyle choice - afterall those children result in extra costs to other taxpayers for education, medical, child care etc etc that many other taxpayers don’t use.
Yes, Mindy, silly arguments deserve silly responses.
As for the ‘pension’ argument - I’ll be self-funding my retirement as will many more people with their superannuation, so whose pensions will your kids be supporting - your own perhaps?
My children are all as grown up as they are likely to be, but they were brought up in a far less childcentric world than we have today. And I have no doubt that they are better off for not believing that they were the centre of the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during their formative or any other years. Which is of course, not to say that they weren’t brought up in loving and supportive environment. Most of the time.
A by-product of our present obsession with our offspring is, as Paul Burns says, an increasing demand for middle class welfare to subsidise the choices that affluent people make. These subsidies go far beyond the subsidies provided to any other group in our society, with the exception of the corporate sector, and are problematic in light of our dire environmental problems.
Population control has always been an aspect of the climate change debate that few want to discuss.
Population control has always been an aspect of the climate change debate that few want to discuss.
It’s nowhere near as verboten as the idea that taking up vegitarianism is one excellent way to do something about climate change. If I was Kevin Rudd I would ban meat eating.
OK Huh,
I suppose you’ll be self funding the roads you use and the public hospital system.
Plus you’ll have your own security as you won’t be funding the police.
Your argument is total rubbish, as is Paul Burn’s.
Geez, grumpy old men alright.
Well, I’m sorry Laura, but if you cannot see the connection, then there’s not much I can say to you.
And eating kangaroo is probably an alternative to ‘vegitarianism’ that is likely to improve our environment, and reduce all those methane producing cattle and sheep so I hear.
My apologies Laura, I do believe that I misinterpreted your comment @13.
Jerry Seinfeld said it best, I think. Before he got married and had a family, he thought parents were boring and over-enthused about every small event in their children’s lives. Now that he’s got a family, he thinks singles are flippant and live essentially meaningless existences. “And I think I’m right on both counts”.
All right Adrian. And mea culpa, yes, I misspelt vegetaireanism. It’s what I get for going off topic.
“As for the ‘pension’ argument - I’ll be self-funding my retirement as will many more people with their superannuation”
- that was my plan until the events of 2008. Reckon I’ll now be retiring funded by what vegetables I can sell from back yard…
I’m not sure about the premise either, speaking as a newly minted fortysomething. I’ve got friends who have kids. I’m not either bored by what they have to say about them, or unable to understand their concerns, or whatever Hugh Mackay thinks.
The assumption that people are lacking in imagination and empathy about others who’ve made different choices has to be a gross over-generalisation, as Laura suggests.
And Mackay and Salt have an economic incentive to keep finding objects of social concern to keep them in the book and op/ed business!
lol, exactly. Not that the hammering taken by super funds is even remotely funny of course, especially for people retiring this year.
I see Costello has been running around saying it’s not his fault.
One excellent trick my grandmother had for obviating any arguments between my sister and me over who got the biggest slice or the longest drink was to have one of us cut the cake or pour the juice and the other have first dibs on which of the two serves we wanted. Perhaps after reading Joshua’s book I’ll be able to position this as a latency-period metaphor for some aspect of economic policy-making - or for arguments such as the one that Paul and Mindy are having, in which the weighing of ethical, economic or environmental considerations is arguably nullified by our more visceral preferences for choosing vs. dividing, or, um, whether we feel clucky or not! Is having children vs. not having them really a zero-sum game?
I wonder how much of the brouhaha over Virginia Hausegger’s remarks actually induced a lot of that angst amongst women who up until then were either going to have children or not but, at any rate, make meaning out of their lives in some way or another. If those with children are resented by those who don’t, this might partially be the result of those endless op-eds that, regardless of which ’side’ they took, continually brought into question the possibility of a childless life well lived.
We all recognise that our taxes paying for essential infrastructure is for the benefit and wealth generation/maintenance of the whole country. Cetainly workers are an essential human infrastructure whose efficiency we fund with spending on education and health. The continual flow of this essential human infrastructure/resource is a national issue as much as roads, power, water etc are and where there are capacity/resourcing constraints then tax incentives to encourage investment in those areas (ie having kids) is well founded.
You could if you did not wish to fund child production then go for accelerated immigration who when you get old may not be as interested having their taxes pay for health care, pensions and the like for the aged.
“I see Costello has been running around saying it’s not his fault.”
Gawd, Mark. I thought at first, given the topic of this post, you meant Cossie’s exhortation to have one for the country!
Some need to remember that it is unusual these days to have more than two children and two children is less than replacement level. I’m fiercely anti-the religion of “growth” but to oppose all childrearing on that basis is quite OTT.
As for “if you can’t afford the time off work, don’t have the kid”, that completely ignores the accidental nature of many pregnancies, as well as being a kind of pro-upper-middle class eugenics, as people on the basic wage will never have that much. I understand your health is quite poor - do you pay for 100% of your care out of your own pocket? and where do you think doctors, nurses, anaesthetists, physios and other hospital staff come from?
Ok, so if you get $100 in taxpayer support for children:
That is $100+$1.50 admin cost in sending the money out and admin.
That is $101.50+$1.52 admin in collecting the tax to pay the money out and admin.
Total $103.52 collected from taxpayers which then leaves $100 back to those same taxpayers.
Wouldn’t you rather have $103.52 less tax than $100 more childcare/parenting assistance?
Or would it not just be better to target those below the poverty line?
Sorry, the second para was for Paul Burns @ 5.
Heh!
“have one of us cut the cake or pour the juice and the other have first dibs on which of the two serves we wanted.”
Never had that in chilhood, but it was always handing for splitting up drug deals!
Maybe that’s where Nanna got the idea!
I don’t have kids, thanks mainly to years of very careful contraception, but I’m happy to fork out to support other people’s, right up to the point where said other people are making more money than I am.
But there are other forms of support besides financial. When I was an academic, I was — all in the name of walking the feminist walk — prepared to take on teaching the obligatory evening classes and doing the weekend Open Day gigs, year in and year bloody out, in tooth-gritted response to ‘Oh, Pav will do it, she doesn’t have kids!’ (The correct answer to which was of course ‘Go f*ck yourself’, but never mind, one must do one’s bit for sisterhood. Which I still believe, by the way. And this was as much to ensure the fathers spent a bit more time with the offspring as to relieve the mothers; there weren’t a lot of women in my department, shocking as that may seem. Unfortunately what the fathers actually did was spend that extra weekend time at home working on the research that would get them promoted. Over me. Ahem.)
And I don’t mind listening to poo stories and what not, which I regard as another form of support — in fact my observation of conversations between parents about their offspring is that it usually degenerates after about thirty seconds into a rather ugly game of My Kid is Smarter and Better Looking Than Yours. The child-free like myself are providing a valuable public service in listening to child tales without getting competitive.
No, kid conversations are fine with me. It’s conversations about home renovations that make me suddenly remember I left the iron on.
Well, clearly any future offspring of mine are going have to be be bundled off to whatever the Australian equivalent of a cram school is, because I don’t think I can assist with “Better Looking”
“No, kid conversations are fine with me. It’s conversations about home renovations that make me suddenly remember I left the iron on.”
Halleluhah PC.
Unless it’s Laura’s very tasteful notes on rare & wonderful materials, I’m doing the ironing as well.
Robert Merkel obviously hasn’t taken part in conversations about kiddies. “Smarter than, better looking than” is all in the eyes of the parent and apply to even the ugliest and dumbest of kiddies. Ain’t love grand.
Paul@5, says he’s perplexed at “the demand of the current generation” that peopl without children pay for other people’s conscious decision to populate. Why are you trying to pass it off as some new thing? It’s been happening in Australia since before World War II, when NSW brought in child endowment. And up until the late 1980s, the support was universal (albeit sometimes meagre). What marks the current generation is not the call for such support, but that such support be means tested. In the meantime my generation of parents are decried for wanting support often precisely by those people who were brought up under a regime of universal family support. It’s a bit like the graduates of free tertiary education trying to spruik the merits of HECS to the next generation.
Well this is all very pertinent to me, as I’ve got two young kids unlike many of my friends, and I’m also a regular reader of the Core economics blog and managed to read all of the Game Theorist posts that made it into the book as they were first posted.
It’s a fun book, lighthearted, I certainly don’t look to it for actual parenting advice and I don’t think Joshua intended it as anything remotely like that. There are a number of things I disagree with, or rather, he can bring up his kids as he wishes, I (we) will do it quite differently.
I don’t really hold with Hugh Mackay’s argument very much. What has changed since the past? Couples with children are still overwhelmingly the commonest relationship (over a lifetime) and there proportionally aren’t really that many more childless couples in the world than there have been in the past.
The reactions of my childless friends has been basically universally welcoming.
As for the welfare/justice arguments, don’t get me started. The political pandering to ‘working families’ under the current mob, and the disgusting largess handed out by the last mob was just sickening. We benefit, sure, I’ve just received a $5000 cheque from the government for my boy, but we didn’t ask for it and it doesn’t change the way we vote.
In the grand scheme of things, focusing on outcomes for children with early childhood intervention seems like very cost-effective, evidence-based good policy. Spending government money on better child care, health and education is an investment, not a handout.
Giving cash to parents just because, well that’s obviously bullshit.
On a different but related note, I reckon Sean at RTS was really onto something about how we treat children through the media these days: http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2008/09/25/children-of-the-corn-a-fisking/
My feetur worl… let me sho u it
Different thing altogether, obvs.
Pissing contests* most surely do exist, but they’re not impossible to avoid/negate/defuse. Actually they can be fun, if they’re all in the family and in good spirits.
*my first boy was toilet trained by 23 months, isn’t he a genius?
Ahem…. I, ah, know where that one came from.
http://inastrangeland.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/child-rearing-tips-the-chocolate-frog-technique/
Yes. To put this in a way that the high-dudgeon talkback mentality might appreciate, it helps stop teh yoofs from runnin’ wild on teh alcopops and knockin’ down teh For Sale signs and letterboxes*.
*Further examples from my mispent youth.
#34 and #39, phew…. Just on that, I’m considering forking out for the wallpaper in this photo, to put in the bathroom…. in green, naturally http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/specials/20000416mag-thatsitalian.html
the theory being that it will shock and stun the mind into not noticing the inevitably uncleaned shower, basin, floor etc
In all seriousness, if I ever have the bad luck to meet Hugh Mackay in some sort of socialising context I shall make a point of telling him, at wearying length, all about my renovations, I’m sure it’s what he wants to hear (more damning evidence of the the shallow self-centred materialism of the average Australian, I mean)
What are all those arrowy-looking things pointing at the zebras? Is someone trying to shoot them? Is that good feng shui for a bathroom*, do you think?
*Or any room, really
I’m not sure less people are having kids, but rather people are having less kids. The difference this makes to how much they talk about their kids could just as well be naught, judging by the steady decrease in alarums and handwaving that attends each subsequent birth in a given family.
Take a look at a family album - even parents you think are a model of fairness and loveliness, and observe the steady decline in portraiture from child #1 onwards.
They are arrows.
I like to think it’s a Cupid thing.
When this happens to me, I try (not very successfully) to invoke the broader argument for ‘work-life balance’, something to which I hope we’re all entitled. I’ll do the evening shift if I can get mornings off to go to school, that sort of thing. And I’ll punch above my weight in the meantime, on the assumption that one day my weekends will no longer be my own. But I do get offended on behalf of friends who are childless by circumstance rather than choice, who not only have to deal with their feelings about that, but all these insinuations that their after-hours time (and by extension their lives) is less important than that of others. Often, they already think like this, and have a drawer full of Prozac prescriptions to show for it.
In the higher education sector, I’ve been a reluctant party to recruitment drives where blokes with kids were offered slightly higher salaries than those without for that explicit reason, while women with kids weren’t. Regardless of the gender bias, I’m not sure that higher salaries are the right way to go about being ‘family friendly’.
Deborah @ 41 - Always hard to tell where these stories start, but I first heard it about a decade ago. I’m sure its been “independently invented” by many parents anyway
FDB @ 45 - I think its a bit of both. Its much more socially acceptable to decide not to have children these days. And people are deciding to have kids later in life where there is a higher probability of fertility problems meaning they end up not being able to have children or have less of them.
Na. So far as my health is concerned, I’m paid for 100% by the taxpayer, and I think everybody should be. Similarly education up to and including uni should be paid for by the taxpayer, as should unemployment benefits,single parents and other disadvantaged groups. But I see no reason why I should pay for middle class child-rearing. My parents did get child endowment, but wasn’t by any means the 100s paid to a working middle class today. I also think all pensions should be increased by at least $30 pw. But that won’t happen while business and the bougeoisie hog all the welfare, will it?
Me too, around about the time our first child was born…
Wot PC said.
And FDB, sorry but ‘fewer people’. One of my many pet hates unfortunately.
I should have made it clear that it wasn’t my idea, just one that I was passing on as industriously as I could.
We have actually done it, just the once ‘tho.
And I don’t think Emma’s gran invented “I cut you choose” either
)for more than two?
But have you heard how that can be done in principle (practice is harder not least because it would introduce game playing
The moving knife: All participants place their hand on the knife as it moves slowly across/around/along the item to be divided. At any point a participant may elect to stop and cut off their share if they are happy with it, else they must be happy that what is left can provide their share amongst the remaining participants. Either way, everyone should be happy.
Chris (a different one) wrote:
It’s much more expensive to have kids now, relatively, than ever before (not for things like clothes, which are cheaper, but for food). That’s one of the reasons why kids are deferred (along with the requirement for two working incomes in most households, which means two careers).
What’s socially unacceptable is making enough compromises to live on one income: you’re either pilloried for being a povvo driving an old car in a too small house or for being some kind of new-age misogynist with your pregnant/bare foot wife firmly under heel. If you ever want instant social ostracisation, pull your kids from private school to have another one.
If her indoors could earn what I earn, I’d be home right now and I suspect she’d be at work and we’d both be happier, but we make do. Pretending it’s some kind of overall burden on society to have kids I think should be left to the libertarians. Society needs future tax payers, they have to come from somewhere.
As for the chocolate frog out the window trick, it’s easier to tell kids to suck it up and sit it out. It worked for my parents in noisy, non-airconditioned death traps crawling slowly up the razorback in mid summer with nothing but Andy Williams on the f*cking radio.
“And FDB, sorry but ‘fewer people’. One of my many pet hates unfortunately.”
How do you know I wasn’t talking about midgets having midget children?
But with all the growth hormones in the methane producing cows and sheep, not to mention chickens, it is more likely that fewer midgets would have midget children not more. More or less.
I hate the phrase ‘family friendly workplace’. I’ve seen too many examples like Dr. Cat points out where it’s always the job of the childless people to do the unpaid overtime and work back late to make the sure the work gets done on time.
If you have kids, I reckon it behooves you to make sure that the work is shared out fairly and that your childfree/less colleagues get to nick off early as well.
Well I reckon that when I was working 0.8 last year with one day parenting I was doing just as much as my colleagues.
By the way, Rob, your reference to
is the best typo I’ve seen in ages, and how I think I’ll define myself in future debates of this sort. Thanks.
heh
thanks for the post Robert, i think that it illustrates that we all take to parenting the things that we know. After twenty odd years in the welfare sector, mostly in youth work, i am apparently madeningly calm in the face of all sorts of disaster fermented by the Hbomb and as i’ve generally expected the same behaviour from my collegues at work i’m perplexed and a little bothered when those around me lose it. exceptions to the calm are joy and exuberance, prefered states of being. i have also taken great delight in ticking off various developmental tasks etc, a happy day it was when she first walked out of view, demonstrating secure attachment.
after reading your post i’ve wondered if the diversification of our employed roles over the last century or so has been a contributing factor in the development of all those behaviours that get the “It wouldn’t have happed in my day” crowd frothing at the mouth.
With respect Paul, you don’t pay for anyone - you have mentioned quite a few times that your entire income is a pension. Therefore it is the tax system via the Govt. which is paying to support you, including despised middle class taxpayers and not the other way around.
Middle class taxpayers are only getting back a relatively small proportion of what they pay annually in income tax, if they receive a baby bonus for the birth of a child in that year. Paul, you might like to acquaint yourself with the very taxation system that supports you at some stage.
Contrary to many, I actually like middle-class welfare transfers including the baby bonus and parenting payments, childcare rebates and now hopefully maternity leave payments - rather than wholesale middle class income tax cuts.
In respect of middle class welfare - I believe it psychologically binds people into a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare mindset and therefore they are more likely to feel emotionally connected to the system and will therefore support the entire system, including OAP’s, disabled and carers pensions, unemployment benefits etc, of which they may never need, as others may never require child related payments. (Not sure if there is more support for Govt welfare schemes than in previous periods, & how would you account for the relentless top down neo-con conditioning over past decade or so.)
Obviously, there are matters of fairness in respect of overall tax burdens, thresholds, bracket creep etc - and there is also the matter of the current situation where some pension payments have dropped below cost of living etc - which needs to be rectified and hopefully will be soon, but the idea that idea that people on middle incomes paying their correct level of PAYE taxes are just ‘bludging on the system’ is not reasonable and pretty narrow-minded, frankly.
FTR: I didn’t receive the baby bonus and as a part-time working single mum, I’m not in any middle class income bracket……unfortunately!
Yeah, I think middle class welfare is great too. It’s just a fancy dog whistle way of denegrating universalism in welfare whilst most cross-country comparisons will show that countries with universalist welfare will overall spend more generously on welfare (ie. they might give earnings related benefits rather than poverty-line means tested benefits) and end up having lower levels of inequality. This is because, as per what Jo said, universalism consolidates the political demand for a decent welfare state and redistribution rather than let welfare debates degenerate into an us-and-them debate.
(Peter Whiteford can take issue with this, and having mentioned his name he might pop up soon. He would we welcomed)
Anyhoo, it’s not always the job of childless people to work the overtime. I’m sure statistics show that men with young children actually work longer hours than those men without. Sometimes this will be because the domestic unit has gone from dual income to single income on the birth of a kid and so the dad has to pick up the slack, but sometimes it will be the dad seeking escape from the trials of rearing an infant - the latter, anecdotely, common amongst male university academics. (Yeah, sure, they might have been writing research articles, but probably just avoiding going home and dealing with the kids).
So, I’d do the Open Day if it gave me a few hours away from domestic turmoil. just as in the same way my partner wanted to return to work so as to be able to go to the toilet on her own. In short, sometimes those with children have a fairly strong incentive to spend time at work.
FTR,
I used to work before I went on the pension. And I could have got the disability pension years before I did, but I waited till I was pretty much cactus.
My God, and people wonder why I didn’t make more of an effort to do my bit for the population. That’s right up there on a par with the fact that in a murder case the first suspect is always the spouse. Shows you what we really think about family life.
*runs away*
*comes back to sing a few bars of this*
*runs away again*
[starts shouting and pulling hair]
The whole point of Australian social welfare since the second World War has been the creation and maintenance of a middle class. It’s designed to create the maximum of security, well-being and discretionary income for that large group of people who have a decade or so of education, a healthy home life and a lick of commonsense, rather than to address disadvantage, end marginalisation, stop people falling through cracks or solve poverty. So the epithet “middle class welfare” misses the entire point in the Australian context.
Bah.
Now that that’s over, I invite you all to consider my effort thus far in failing to reproduce as an offset. Don’t forget kids, sexual selection is a zero-sum game.
I’m not replacing myself, so that you don’t not have to.
Paul @ 64. You really don’t have to justify anything, I’m sorry if you felt you had to do so, but I found your attitude to parents requiring maternity/paternity leave very harsh and patronising:
And at the same time, predictably unreasonable in respect of people who earn over the average wage. I personally would prefer an even more universal welfare system where everyone according to need and for the reasons that Anthony more clearly outlined @ 63 and in contrast somewhat to yourself it seems, who prefers to make value judgments about which groups in our society are deserving of support.
Liam, social security payments together make up 35% of the fed. budget and are by far the biggest outlay, dwarfing health and education and all other programs.
Aside from being down the lower end in all sorts of welfare payments compared to other OECD countries, which countries are addressing disadvantage, ending marginalisation, stopping people falling through cracks or solving poverty?
I’d really like to see pensions raised significantly, but the whole middle class shtick thing is a bit overdone, unless I’m misunderstanding you.
Are we there yet?
David @ 54 said:
Is it really much more expensive or is it just that expectations for required “things” are higher? Your following paragraph seems to imply the latter.
Fine @ 57 said:
Hey its even worse for single people who are expected to be even more flexible than coupled childless people. But in practice where you are in environment where pay and promotions are based on performance it can work out ok because you end up being rewarded in the end for the extra work you do.
I’m actually fairly sure David @ 54 is wrong wrt to food - food costs as a percentage of income are somewhat lower than they were, say, 20 years ago, even accepting that they’ve risen in the last few years.
AIUI, the two big costs that have risen considerably, that affect households with children more than those without, are mortgages and childcare.
I’ll confirm that we definitely decided to restrict ourselves to two kids, in good part due to the costs of it all. Bigger house, bigger car…
But kids aren’t really very expensive if you don’t want them to be - the killer cost for us and I understand for most people is time out of work for mum.
“we definitely decided to restrict ourselves to two kids, in good part due to the costs of it all”
Which is a good thing - and probably one of the reasons why birth rates are much lower in developed countries than they are in developing countries. In developed countries kids are essentially a cost - you get no economic benefit from having them. In developing countries, especially in rural areas, it’s often the other way around - kids are often a net economic benefit, so having lots makes sense.
Having said that, I would extremely wary of any revision to family-based welfare that would potentially leave thousands of kids insufficiently cared-for.
wizofaus said:
Ever go to Woolies and try shopping for a family?
Food trend has reversed
The percentage of food costs as part of household budgets decreased steadily since the great depression thanks to automation (the “green revolution”) but that’s now finished. We’re running out of arable land and oil and those facts are showing up in food prices.
David, I shop at Coles for our family regularly. And yes, I acknowledged that the trend has reversed in the last few years.
But you said it’s more expensive than “ever before”, which is patently untrue, even if what you really meant was “within the lifetime of most people here”.
I am shocked by the prices of vegies and meat at supermarkets. I can’t believe people can pay those prices, and have a better understanding of just why so much disgusting crap ends up getting eaten instead.
It’s good to live near a market. Family of 2.2 gets a whole week of fruit, vegies and meat for less than $40.
wizofaus, I can’t recall the stat and am too lazy to look it up, but I believe people with children live longer? Of course, that’s all at the wrong end of life, but presumably reflects some health benefits of children.
wilful, what concerns me is what pressures exist to help families naturally limit the size of their families. Nobody is going decide “two’s not enough, we should have one more” just because it might grant them an extra year of life in 50 years time.
I live near a market too, but I’d love to know how you do a weekly food shop for $40. I can only assume you don’t buy eye-fillet steak too often (my wife thinks nothing of spending $20 on meat for a single meal!).
A few years ago (in the 1990s) my sister left her position as an occasional photo lab-working pharmacy assistant when she went on an extended overseas trip. She was replaced by a man who a) asked for more money and b) asked for a different job title (I think it was Photo Lab Manager, or something similarly OTT). Amazingly, he got both those things, even though he was still just a basic pharmacy assistant who also processed photos.
When she returned from overseas a few years later, my sister went back to her old position, replacing the other guy who had originally replaced her. She was more than a little surprised to be offered the position at her old rate of pay and job title, even though she was doing the same work as this “Photo Lab Manager”. When questioned, the pharmacist (who owned the business as well)argued that the other guy needed to be paid more because he had a wife and children to support and as she was a single young woman, she didn’t need the money!
She was not a member of a union (there was no union for pharmacy assistants then; not sure if there is now apart from the SDA), and like many young workers was afraid to rock to boat. She decided to just wear it, which outraged me as I worked for a union myself at the time and I couldn’t believe that she would let him get away with that. Even now I can’t believe that anyone could seriously argue that it is okay for rates of pay to be based on your domestic situation, rather than on qualifications or experience.
It’s a pity she didn’t take him on, because it would have been entertaining to see him before both the Industrial Relations Commission and the Equal Opportunity Commission trying to justify that point of view…
chinda63 - I’m curious, if the pharmacist had replied “I couldn’t find anyone else prepared to work at the salary I was paying you, perhaps because all the qualified candidates have families to feed”, how would you respond?
It does seem your friend was a little naive to take back the position at her old rate of pay, when she knew for certain that the employer could afford more, and indeed wasn’t likely to be able to find anyone else who would work at her old rate (or they’d already be employing that person).
In NSW, chinda63, the retail pharmacists’ union was then and remains the SDA. I have my own views on that union but even they’re capable of mounting a sex discrimination case. I’d have been outraged too; that’s a disgraceful story.
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Jo, I think we agree. I was trying to say that Australia’s welfare system has always been designed to give non-damaged poor people as middle-class an existence as possible, and to keep non-poor recipients out of danger of becoming poor. Nothing wrong with that. I should have contrasted with the other options for social welfare in other places in the world, thinking especially of the food subsidies designed to keep the extremely poor from starvation. We have no bread rations or food stamp system in Australia—that’s all I meant.
I find some of the comments about people without children being ‘discriminated’ against in the workplace by having to take weekend shifts etc amusing. Either you guys work in exceptional workplaces or you are clutching at victim straws.
Most workplaces, despite laws and regulations proclaiming otherwise, are not parent friendly. Many parents are discriminated against. For every story on this thread of a childless person having to make a sacrifice for someone with children, there are many more of people with children having much worse happen to them.
I worked in a job (teaching) where the union had secured the right for parents to work part time, and our employed described themselves as a ‘child friendly workplace’. I wanted to work 0.9 FTE to enable me to have one afternoon a week where I could pick my children up from school and thus have a point of contact with their school, and to also have this time to make medical appointments for one of my children who had an ongoing medical condition. I had to fight, and the compromise was my teaching 1.0 (Full time) within 0.9 FTE hours and getting paid at 0.9 FTE. All perfectly legal due to a loop hole in the system. A colleague who frequently was telephoned by her child’s day care to collect him due to illness was told by our childless head of department to quit her job.
With three children to cover with my 10 days sick leave (one of whom was frequently sick) I always ran out of sick leave. When one of my children required surgery and I had no leave left, I delayed that surgery for two weeks so as not effect my Year 12s exam prep, was then required to take a week leave without pay (despite the fact I had no contact teaching when the 12s left), but the school still delivered their mock exams to my house for me to mark while on leave without pay and trying to care f