Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Valuing stay-at-home parents

The federal government should be applauded for at least asking a parliamentary committee to study proposals for eliminating the tax system's discrimination against single-earner families where one parent remains at home to raise the children. Likewise, the Alberta government's budget included tentative plans to increase personal and spousal exemptions beginning in 2002.

These moves follow recent reports issued by the C.D. Howe Institute. One report calls for ending the "clawback" of the child tax credit because it creates high marginal tax rates for families with modest incomes. Another calls for the restoration of child tax deductions and other measures to eliminate the discrimination against one-earner families.

Likely few couples make decisions on whether to have additional children or on whether both parents will work based on the tax implications of those decisions. But the current tax system is sending a message - by subsidizing the child care costs of two-earner families (and not those of single-earner families), it is giving a disincentive to be a stay-at-home parent. It is saying that a parent's contribution in the home is not as important to society as the same parent's contribution in the workforce.

This is the wrong message. Whether children with a parent at home turn out better in life than those where both parents work is not the issue. The issue is the government's willingness to discriminate against those who, at enormous financial cost, devote years of their lives to raising their children. This work ought to be treasured. No one expects the government to pay stay-at-home parents a just wage. But fair treatment by the tax system is only reasonable.

The Church's social teaching is clear on this point.

In his 1981 encyclical On Human Work, Pope John Paul called for "a social re-evaluation of the mother's role." He declared, "It will redound to the credit of society to make it possible for a mother . . . to devote herself to taking care of her children and educating them in accordance with their needs, which vary with age. Having to abandon these tasks in order to take up paid work outside the home is wrong . . . when it contradicts or hinders these primary goals of the mission of a mother" (n. 19).

In 1994, the pope went even further: "The toil of a woman who, having given birth to a child, nourishes and cares for that child and devotes herself to its upbringing, particularly in the early years, is so great as to be comparable to any professional work. . . . (Motherhood) should be recognized as giving the right to financial benefits at least equal to those of other kinds of work undertaken to support the family during such a delicate phase of its life" (Letter to Families, 17, emphasis added).

Talk that way in today's society and you're liable to be branded as trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant - which is what Status of Women Minister Hedy Fry did to her political opponents in the House of Commons March 10.

Such rhetoric only serves to inflame passions. In 1931, 32 per cent of Canadian families had four children or more; today, only four per cent of families have that many children. Pregnancy is rarely something forced on women by social pressure, the Church or other forces. It is an honourable phase of life, one deserving of great respect in itself and for what it contributes to a country with a low birthrate.

Proposed changes to the tax system are not part of a move to enslave women but to treat all parents fairly. It is only fair to reverse the discrimination which currently exists and to send a sign that our society does in fact value the efforts of parents who choose to devote years of their lives to raising their children.

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