“Cash for mothers in PM’s $4b Nats bribe to bind Coalition”
MUM’S THE WORD. Urgh. That’s the headline screamed across The Daily Telegraph today.
It relates to a $600 million deal that the new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reportedly struck with the Nationals which includes an extra $1,000 a year for 140,000 families with stay-at-home mums.
What is the issue here? The idea that this is a cash grab for ‘mums’. That ‘mothers’ will pocket the proceedings from this generous windfall.
In the main, parents – not mothers – share the cost, responsibility and privilege of raising their children. A growing number of fathers take a “stay-at-home” role in Australia but even Dads who work outside the home deserve, at the very least, to have their parenting acknowledged. To blithely dismiss the contribution fathers make to raising children is outdated at best, offensive at worst.
But, regardless of how two parents split their paid and unpaid work, I have a hot tip. Any money that a family saves on account of, or receives from, the government piggy bank will find its way into the household coffers. It will go towards paying the mortgage or rent, buying groceries, paying bills and covering the myriad of costs no household can avoid.
It is highly, highly, unlikely that the money will be stashed into a delicious fund a mum can uses to indulge her every luxe whim.
This package is less “cash for mums” as it is “cash for families”. You might consider that an innocuous point of difference or consider me a pedant for pointing it out. I’d ask you to reconsider.
Cast your mind back to the public discussion about paid parental leave that took place earlier this year. Do you remember if it was ‘parents’ who were accused of double-dipping? Was it ‘parents’ who were blamed for partaking in this outrageous – yet perfectly legal – rort? Was it ‘parents’ framed as audacious and selfish for seeking to combine financial security with raising children?
No. It wasn’t. It was mums. It was mothers who bore the brunt of the criticism for utilising a policy for the exact purpose it was intended.
And, again, nowhere in the conversation pegging paid parental leave as an illegitimate income source for mothers was the financial reality of being home with a baby referred to. The bit about household expenses continuing. The bit about having an additional mouth to feed, body to dress and little person to care for. The bit about almost every cent paid in parental leave being immediately distributed back into the economy.
On a quick glance of the conversations at the time, you could be forgiven for believing that no sooner had these mums pocketed the cash, they were queuing up for flights to Thailand to sip cocktails poolside on the government’s tab for six months. Not bloody likely.
Is it too much to expect recognition that in the vast majority of households, any government assistance provided is not going to be stashed away by greedy mums? That it will go toward household expenses?
Is it too much to expect some consensus around the fact that where money is provided to a family, a mother will very rarely be the sole beneficiary of those funds? That an entire family will benefit? Too much to expect us to not use ‘mum’ as shorthand for ‘parent’.
Please, for the love of mothers, can we stop singling out mums?
What do you think about the extra payment for “mums”?
Top Comments
Whilst I agree with the sentiments that (a) it should always be stay-at-home parent not just singling out "mums" and (b) the money almost inevitably goes to household expenses, I think we should also acknowledge the reality that many stay-at-home parents used to have jobs with their own money that they contributed to the household.
Back in the olden days, before Howard's family tax benefit payments that were made directly to the stay-at-home parent, stay-at-home parents would be called a "dependent spouse" and their partner could claim a deduction for them on their tax which would then go into his/her bank account. The bank account may be shared as a household account. Or it might not be, if the power differential was great and one partner liked to control all the money.
Now, if we accept the reality that it is often the father that works and the mother who stays at home, then we can see the benefit of (a) the stay at home parent directly receiving the money (so they can potentially leave if their partner is an asshole) and (b) newspapers and governments saying that spouse's need and deserve their own money even if they choose to pour it back into the household budget instead of using it to buy clothes, haircuts and hygiene products. Economic violence is a potential reality for stay at home parents: they are effectively living off their partner's charity.
This is just my opinion. My own experience as a stay-at-home parent is that all income, regardless of how it arrives, goes into the household budget with both adults having an equal say in how it is spent and neither partner worrying if the other buys discretionary items as long as it is affordable.
Did i read that right? $1000 extra a year? That works out to under $20 extra a week. Surely that's a very weird joke? Don't live in Aus, so maybe i'm missing something?