The childcare conspiracy
Bettina Arndt

Robert Manne is no stranger to controversy. The La Trobe politics professor has long been in the hot seat socking it to the Howard Government over the stolen generations, refugees, and the history wars.

But when his wife, Anne, proposed writing a book on childcare he told her not to touch it. It was asking for trouble.

Anne Manne went ahead. She spent the next 10 years producing a book that lifts the lid on one of our society's nasty secrets.

Her new book, Motherhood: How should we care for our children?, is a brave, powerful expose of the price children may be paying for women's liberation.

Manne argues that while childcare is constantly promoted as the best means of reducing barriers to women's progress, there's been a conspiracy of silence about the risks this poses for young children.

She exposes the efforts of Australia's child development experts to deliberately play down the solid body of evidence showing young children, and particularly infants, may be damaged by long hours in group care.

Conclusive results from huge international studies recently led the British Government to make a dramatic about-face and shift from promoting childcare for infants and toddlers to paid parental leave.

The less time children spend in group care before three years the better, concludes British child expert Penelope Leach.

Similarly, the Scandinavian countries have given up trying to provide quality infant childcare and are now promoting parental leave.

But in Australia, most of our child experts are pretending none of this is happening.

A few years ago there was an astonishing seminar organised by former minister for children Larry Anthony that brought together most of Australia's child development experts to discuss this worrying evidence.

Anne Manne and I watched as the bunch of professors ducked and weaved, determined to dismiss unpalatable facts about childcare.

WHENEVER these experts are publicly questioned about this research, they dismiss it as irrelevant, claiming it doesn't apply here because we have such quality care.

Quality care? What a joke. Last year 600 childcare workers took to the streets in protest at the New South Wales Government's decision to stick to current rules that allow one carer for every five babies.

"One to four for quality care," demanded the banners.

Right around Australia, our recommended ratios mean four or five babies must compete for the attention of one underpaid, often poorly trained worker.

As Manne's book points out, these ratios aren't quality care: they are a licence for neglect. And that neglect has serious consequences.

Manne details incontrovertible international research that shows the more time infants spend in such care, the more likely they are to show aggressive behaviour, such as bullying or meanness to others. They are more likely to have conflict with teachers and mothers and poorer work habits.

Plus there is critical new Australian research showing many young children in childcare exhibit increases in the stress hormone cortisol, linked to learning and emotional problems.

Newcastle University pediatrics professor Graham Vimpani is one of few prepared to speak out.

"There's a huge level of denial based on fear," he says, suggesting that having long promoted childcare, many of his colleagues are now nervous and guilty about the prospect that group care for children under two years old carries real risks.

Vimpani, who is a key figure behind the Federal Government's push into early intervention, believes group childcare of young children may be one factor in the worrying escalation we are seeing in children's disruptive behaviour.

Few Australian children are exposed to such care -- 93 per cent of infants under one are never placed in childcare centres and more than a quarter are there for 10 hours or less a week, according to the 2002 Child Care Survey.

THE main exceptions are children of women working full time, including the newspaper editors and journalists, academics and bureaucrats who promote childcare policy that justifies their own decisions.

Anne Manne's book is not just about child care -- it provides a lively, intelligent discussion of maternal feminism, the economics of "affluenza" and new discoveries about child development.

But its central attack nails the professionals charged with ensuring proper development for Australia's children. It should make them squirm.