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Bo Petterson, Director of Children's Right to their Parents, Sweden, is Webmaster of an excellent, family-friendly website which covers child care issues: http://www.barnensratt.se/news-en.htm#091028-1.

In a recent posting Bo commented on a report by Britain's Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) entitled "What Women Want - and how they can get it". The report concludes childcare money should be paid directly to parents.

Author of the report, Cristina Odone, comes to the conclusion that the British Government should abandon its hugely expensive Sure Start childcare programme and stop penalising stay-at-home parents (mothers) financially while unduly rewarding working parents. She advocates that the government (a) to pay out its childcare funds directly to parents for them either to stay at home or buy childcare services, and (b) to introduce joint taxation of married and co-habiting parents (also called "income splitting").

Bo says that Children's Right to their parents, Sweden, like what they have read so far, in particular Odone's conclusions and policy recommendations. CPS is a classic liberal/ conservative think tank which Britain's previous Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher co-founded in the 1970s. Cristina Odone is a British writer and broadcaster.

Health Dangers

Another news report from Britain highlighted the health dangers of leaving children in child care. Mothers who work outside the home raise unhealthier children than those who stay at home, says new scientific research. Children whose mothers are employed are more likely to be driven to school, watch TV, consume fizzy drinks and not eat enough fruit and vegetables, a study found.

The research, on more than 12,000 schoolchildren, was published in the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Mothers who worked full time had the unhealthiest children, followed by those who worked part time. These mothers typically worked 21 hours per week (with a range of 16 to 30 hours) and for 45 months (with a range of 25 to 55 months).

Overall, many children had habits that could make them overweight. For example, 37 percent of children mostly ate crisps or sweets between meals and 41 percent mostly drank sweetened drinks. A total of 61 percent watched TV or used the computer for at least two hours a day.

But when the researchers took away factors that might’ve influenced the results, such as socio-economic background, they still found a definite link between a mother working and the child’s health. The researchers, from the Institute of Child Health in London, commented, “Programmes are needed to support parents and create a health-promoting environment”.

These two reports are in contrast to comments by Australian Treasury Secretary, Dr. Ken Henry, who has suggested cut-backs in family tax benefits (see next column).

Australian Treasury Boffin

Dr. Henry, has suggested that family payments for school aged children should be scaled back as an incentive for their mothers to enter the paid workforce. His comments are based on several skewed assumptions:

(a) that what mothers do in the home is of no value i.e. if a mother looks after her children when they come home from school, it is not counted in the GDP, but if those children are cared for in some after-school care programme, then the wages of the carers is included in the GDP. These wages are of course subsidized by taxpayers.

(b) Dr. Henry treats family tax benefits as if they are welfare payments, but they are not welfare. Family tax benefits were implemented to replace income tax deductions by which the state recognized the cost of supporting multiple dependents. Without family tax benefits, a married man with four dependent children (and a wife who cared for them) would have to pay the same tax as a single man with no dependents.

Dr. Henry, who is currently conducting a major tax review, would be better to recognize the family unit as a small business partnership and allow income splitting between the Directors, i.e. Mum and Dad.

Babies learn in the womb

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb. The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German. The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them. The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.

It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive ato the contour of the melody in both music and human voices. Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.

Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: "The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life. Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development."

NB: Perhaps we should not expose babies to Dr.Ken Henry’s voice or views or they might learn “Treasury-speak”!