Stay-at-home mothers have become the untouchables in our culture

Our grandparents assumed that a mother would automatically opt to stay at home to care for her children, and until the 1960s women were obliged to leave the public sector on marriage. Now the pendulum has swung to the extent that it is assumed a woman will opt to work outside the home and pay for childcare to enable her to do this.

That this view is as institutionalised as the laws relating to women and work of former years is evident from the report on childcare published yesterday. This report ought to have marked a watershed in supporting women's childcare choices, irrespective of whether they work inside or outside the home.

Instead, the ethos of this document is driven by aggressive market forces which require women to enter the expanding workforce and, by its silence, stigmatises stay-at-home mothers (or fathers).

They are second-class citizens, they have become the untouchables in our culture. Nowhere in this document are there any recommendations which are directed to them or which offer any concession. Indeed, those who choose to work in the home do not receive a mention.

If there is a consolation it is that this document is unworkable and the recommendation cumbersome. It is therefore likely to lie for some considerable time on a departmental desk obscured by the dust.

One of the stated goals of the report is "that childcare be brought out of the informal economy and developed as a legitimate business."

The likely result is that the care of future generations will be expropriated and overshadowed by business interests.

The means for achieving this objective is that all of those caring for one or more children, either in their own or the parents' home, should have to register formally, except for relatives. An inspectorate would then ensure that there is standardisation of implementation of childcare regulations.

In addition these child-carers would be given special tax concessions. This recommendation is likely to be greeted with contempt by those who are currently so dependent on this group of child-carers, e.g., women who turn to the friendly neighbour who loves children and who has one or two in her home most days.

Indeed, the cynicism which exists with regard to politicians would warn off any but the naive idealist who believes that Ireland will forever have a Celtic Tiger and that no government will ever be tempted in times of hardship to remove the special tax rates.

These proposals are therefore doomed to failure.

The nub of the recommendation is that tax credits will be awarded in respect of childcare provided by registered child-carers at the standard rate of tax up to £4,000, whilst those in receipt of social welfare would receive support through the social welfare system to "purchase childcare places".

Such a statement rings of collective, group childcare with all of its attendant flaws. The politically correct desire that 20 per cent of childcare workers should be male is to be achieved by measures yet to be decided, we are told.

What is the basis for this ideological statement, and could it be that we will see quotas and gender balancing in respect of childcare?

For most, the idea of tax credits seems remote and I have little doubt that, given the choice, most parents would rather receive cash in hand, to be utilised for whatever type of childcare they choose, including caring for the child themselves.

If this committee seriously cared about childcare, women and women's work choices, then it would have opted for a more straightforward route of increasing child benefit across the board in a fair and equitable manner.

If such a policy were in operation, then no group would be prioritised over another.

Underpinning this document is the ideological notion that what every woman wants is to work outside the home and give her baby to multiple strangers to be cared for. What is the evidence?

This document has focused exclusively on the needs of the market, and not on women's needs for flexible work practices. This document has failed miserably since it has been constructed in isolation from other aspects of work and childcare, and remote from the reality of most women's wishes.

If a camel is a horse created by a committee, then this is a hydra created by ideologues.

Patricia Casey of UCD is consultant psychiatrist at the Mater Hospital, Dublin