I wrote this a couple of years ago, and for some reason it never got posted. It is still relevant, so today seemed like a good time to share it.

Canada introduced a new budget a week ago, first one in two years. Needless to say there have been some changes.

A massive deficit unlike anything ever seen before, with the government trying to spend its way to post-pandemic prosperity has quite naturally upset fiscal conservatives. The government theory apparently is that water does indeed run downhill, but never reaches the bottom – but we aren’t talking theory today but people.

The budget throws billions of dollars at a new child day care program, something the left has been calling for for decades. Women can’t reach their full potential, they say, if they have to stay at home and raise their children. The state should step in and provide places for those children to stay while the mothers work (and generate tax revenue for the government).

As someone who chose to stay-at-home with the children for nine years, I am not an unprejudiced commentator. I think my children benefited from that – though I realize such a choice isn’t always a viable economical option, especially for single parents.

My wife and I chose to accept a lower standard of living by sacrificing some income. I understand not everyone is willing or able to do that. There are complexities in each family, and no two are exactly alike.

The government action is being hailed by women’s rights advocates, even as they are saying more funding is needed for day care. I am though left wondering about two questions that I suspect were not asked in making the decision to spend these billions.

The first is: did anyone ask any children about it? Do children prefer to be in day care five days a week, rather then being at home?

I know there are studies that show day care is bad for kids, and others that say it is beneficial. But what do children think? If they had a choice, would they stay at home with a mother or father rather than being packed up in the (usually) early morning, and dropped off at a caregiver’s, to be picked up nine hours later?

What do you think children would do if they had a choice? Would school-age kids prefer to head straight home, or go to whatever day care option their parents have chosen? I don’t know – does the government?

Or are they so caught up in the concept of “women’s rights” that children are ignored?

My second question is, what would the outcry have been like if the money had been allocated not to day care but instead as a subsidy for women who choose not to re-enter the workforce after their children are born but to instead stay at home with the kids?

I doubt such a program would even have been considered – it flies in the face of feminist logic which apparently believes women should be able to have children if they so desire, but that they shouldn’t allow motherhood to alter their lifestyle choices.

Maybe I meet the wrong people, but I have met many women who would have preferred a few years staying at home with their children to working outside the home – but economically they had no choice. I don’t see the government offering them an alternative.

Two questions. Does anyone in government know the answer?