Children: Undue Burden or Sacred Trust?

Children: Undue Burden or Sacred Trust?
by Sandra Griffin

“…communities can shape our sense of what we feel morally “pulled” to do and, integral to this, of what is and is not an “undue burden” or “too much to demand”. L.A. Blum (1994, p.145)

For many, many years, I have observed the slow and arduous progress we have been making in the early childhood education and care field. And we have made substantive progress. We have a much larger base of research that supports the critical nature of the early years of development and the positive long-term impacts of providing good quality early childhood care and education. We have a growing body of research that demonstrates a strong link between productivity and health in the workplace and services that support work-family balance, such as high quality, stable child care.

In a nutshell, we have research that clearly tells us that good quality early childhood care and education has a positive lifelong impact on children and on their families – and we have research that clearly shows that a significant majority of Canadian children and families do not have access to this. For the estimated 1.2 million children whose parents are currently in the paid labour force or in education/training programs, there are about 500,000 regulated spaces in centre-based and family child care settings.

So why is it that even with this overwhelming base of research—and let me note that there is no comparable body of research linking personal/business tax cuts to concrete positive results in our various provincial/territorial and national economies—why is it that we haven't moved ahead as a nation to solve the problem? As a nation, we moved very quickly to address the fallout from September 11, 2001 – with all the attending new “burdens” such as longer lineups for airport security, increased travel restrictions, etc.

I came across an interesting article recently that made me think that maybe this is the answer: we, as a nation, as a society, perceive overall caring for and about our children to be an “undue burden”—that parents ask for “too much” when they want support for the early care and education of their children; that having children is a “burden” or “sacrifice” that they knowingly take on and should shoulder without complaint. And what we ask for, as early childhood educators/caregivers in partnership with parents, in this most important task of all—ensuring that “young children can fulfill their potential to be healthy, safe and secure, ready to learn, and socially engaged and responsible”—is also “too much”. This concept of “undue burden” was in an article on virtue and community (Blum, 1994). An “undue burden” is one that is described as simply being an activity or characteristic that is perceived to be “too much to demand.”

To continue my tax cut analogy, we don't seem to think that such cuts – cuts that see a reduction in services that government can provide – are too much to ask.

In the advanced leadership institute materials we are currently developing here at CCCF, we are exploring this phenomenon. We believe it is essential that within all of our communities, the activities and characteristics within a community that provide children with the best of what we have to offer as a society must be seen as “worth-conferring” activities and characteristics. Blum (1994) describes “worth-conferring” as any particular quality or activity as that is seen as virtuous.

We can all contribute to making our communities “virtues sustaining communities” – expressing those virtues that we believe are essential to community health and well-being. In most of our communities there are some virtues – trust, civility, tolerance, for example – that are now an integral part of the community fabric and are particularly well-suited to sustaining communal life in general (p. 148). And children are at the very heart of communities. How we view our collective responsibility to our children should be seen as important a virtue as trust, civility or tolerance.

A recent paper by Bob Couchman (National Children's Alliance, March 2002) notes: “Of all the responsibilities entrusted to Canadian society, the rearing of our children is the most important. Children are thus due highest priority in our social, health, and educational programming, as well as in social policy consideration. They have no effective political voice to compete with demands from more aggressive sectors…If ever there was a “sacred trust” it's in the nurturing and rearing of Canada's children.”

I like that concept – sacred trust. We hear people speak in flowery terms about children – we often refer to children as “gifts”, gifts to their parents. But how do we make the case that a child is a gift to the larger community, that the children of a community are a sacred trust and not an undue burden? Glossop at the Vanier Institute of the Family (VIF) notes there are instrumental arguments to the effect that, whether or not we are parents, we shall all grow to depend on the children we and others bear and raise (correspondence, March 12, 2002). Many have described this fact as the reason we should all care more – enlightened self-interest! Glossop goes on to remind me that a former president of the VIF, Hans Mohr, said if we treated our children as well as we treat our possessions, we might do better by them. A sobering observation.

I trust that, as a sector, we will continue to make the case that as long as the “child care crisis” in Canada is not solved, as long as child care is seen as an undue burden, then our children are not receiving their just due from our society. I am excited about the content we are including in our upcoming Advanced Leadership training package. Content that will support you in your work of supporting governments and communities to move from a place of Undue Burden to one of Sacred Trust. Content that will assist you in matching the real needs of children with the flowery language. Content that confirms that awhat you do makes a difference in the world and what you need to do the job well is not “too much to demand”.

Sandra Griffin is executive director of the Canadian Child Care Federation.

Interaction, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 2002, p. 4-5.