On Sunday after church, Kal and I went out for coffee. Usually when we do this I flip through the Herald Sun and Kal enjoys her coffee and listens to me rant about stupid people writing opinion pieces / letters to the editor. The papers are usually from sometime in the past week.
Turns out, last Thursday (18th March) had a particularly interesting piece. It's here if you want to read it. If you want a quick summary, here is mine.
- Women are meanies, especially to other women.
- The fact that some women are against 26 weeks of paid maternity leave makes them meanies.
- Australia is a mean, patricarchal country
- Bosses are big meanies
- 26 weeks of paid maternity leave would have made things so much easier for me
- The only reason women are against this is because they are jealous
- Tony Abbott has finally come out of his right-wing haze and done something decent for the country.
Here's my thoughts.
This bill is STUPID. Rebecca Wilson is STUPID for liking it.
Sorry. Mean and judgemental. I'm working on it. It would be easier if there wasn't so much STUPIDITY in the world.
Aside from her massive generalisations that the only women who are against this are old women who are jealous because they had to suffer (and her crack at Tony Abbott), which are annoying to say the least, the piece clearly hadn't thought things through.
Businesses are in business. They make money or they shut. If they are paying for a person to not work for 6 months, as well as paying someone to cover their job for 6 months, plus paying for the training involved, what exactly does Wilson think this will do for business? Especially SMALL businesses. That's right. They will close. Not much job to be coming back to there.
My mum runs her own (small) business. If this legislation goes through, she won't hire any females of child-bearing age unless they are single and relgious. Because she knows they won't get pregnant. Hmm. Less jobs even available for women. Not so great for the sisterhood.
Then there is the fact that not having that extra money "meant no big clothing buys, no restaurant meals and very little spare cash for leisure time." That it restricted her plans to have a "big" family (of four children).
How epically tragic. She couldn't eat out. Basically, she didn't like making sacrifices for her kids. No one likes sacrifices. But seriously, if this is as hard as it gets, then Wilson has issues.
Also, Wilson implies in that statement that such a plan would encourage women to have more children. In her live blogging event she mentions how many countries in Europe have similar plans in place. I'd like to point out that many countries in Europe have drastically declining birth rates - which have only gotten substantially worse with such government intervention.
She also points out that the government educates our children, so "they can help to make it better brining them into the world as well."
Sorry, I don't think it is the government's job to make my children's lives nice. It's my job. But then, I don't think it is the govenment's job to educate them either.
Perhaps that is what this is about. Government raising our children for us. After all, who wants to be around the little blighters. She states "Don't start me on childcare! When I returned to work after two kids, I couldn't afford a nanny (who can!), so they went to two separate daycare centres. I earned a total of $20 in teh hand after paying my fees for more than a year. That is a disgrace. (That's not to mention the race to pick them up at night, the getting them there in the morning and the sad state of affairs when one of them got sick.)"
For $20? Because she liked her "sanity". I wonder how much her kids liked childcare. I wonder how many days they screamed for before they gave up and decided to make the best of things. And yes, I work in child care. I've seen full timers scream all day (except sleep time, when they fall asleep exhausted) for three weeks. I've seen one-dayers who still cry all day - after a year and a half in care. Wilson might have had her sanity, but I doubt her kids had theirs.
Being a parent (mum or dad) is about making sacrifices. It is a sacrifice of our time, our money, and about all, ourselves. The issue is, we don't want to sacrifice for others. We want everything nice for us.
This is not the way Christians should live. (I don't think Wilson is a Christian, so she is excluded there.) We are called to take up our cross daily. And a large part of that involves doing the work with our own children, and not expecting free money for doing what is basically our jobs, and is essentially our priviledge.
So in one sense, I agree with Rebecca Wilson. Women ARE their own worst enemy. Especially when they support legislation like this.
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