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"Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children;

now I have six children, and no theories.  ~John Wilmot

There are two alarming trends coming out of government. 

One trend is that we are developing a deep concern for children's wellbeing while at the same time ignoring the importance of skilled parents to children's wellbeing.  In the often heralded Ministry of Social Development's document, "Agenda for Children", parent education gets a vague mention in appendix 3 section 6.  This is a reflection of some unsafe assumptions underpinning  government policy.  If we ask the question how do we improve business productivity one of the first things identified would be the need for superior skills, training and new ideas.  That is because training is now associated with success in the business environment and government encourages this by making business training tax deductible.  In the parenting environment, however, education is often a requirement by the Family Courts or Child Youth and Family's as a criteria for retaining custody of children.  parenting skills has become associated with failure.  Parents rejecting that assumption and wanting new skills and techniques pay for that training out of the family budget.  There are no incentives (such as tax deductions) for parent education so government see it as having no value.  It has the same value as any hobby education such as knitting lessons.  A simple mechanism to move towards a success focused parenting environment would be for government to encourage parents to seek new skills and ideas, and gain a firm understanding of child development.  Failing completely funding this, a simple mechanism to promote it as something valuable would be to make it tax deductible - in the same way donations to charity is.

We can wrap as many of these artificial layers around children to ensure that have safe and fulfilling childhoods but the only thing we really need to do to achieve the same thing is ensure that children have motivated, skilled parents.  When parents feel good about themselves and confident in their skills not only will outcomes for their children improve, but for the whole community.  We have heard the story of one woman.  She raised her first two children in a void of knowledge.  They became disruptive in school and didn't do well.  When her third child was born she became involved in a comprehensive parent education program.  Not only did her third child excel at school but the woman joined the school's Board of Trustees and took on other roles in her community. 

The other trend is that parenting is a mild inconvenience to government.  This can be seen in the pivotal Ministry of Social Development study, Population and Sustainable Development, which acknowledges our birthrate is dropping alarmingly but doesn't view encouraging young adults to start families as a resolution to this.  The report identifies six key issues in response to our population crisis.

• ensuring our emerging workers are well skilled
• Keeping the elderly in work for longer
• Attracting, retaining and regaining skills that have left New Zealand
• Infrastructure issues
• Creating sustainable paid employment for all
• Catering for diverse needs and creating shared values amongst different groups

Oddly enough, encouraging people to have children, and reducing barriers to starting families is not seen as a solution to our population crisis.  Odes this strike anyone as a tad...strange.   Parent.org could offer a few key population problem solvers of our own.

• As Australia does, pay for children.  People are not stupid.  They know that to have a child means buying a vast array of equipment, toys, food, nappies and so forth.  Help them, or at least give people a message that they are valued for more than their ability to generate taxes.
• As France does, put in place a comprehensive child care infrastructure, to enable people to continue their career and have children.
• As Britain does, have a tax free allowance for partners who full time parent, and for children. Our income tax regime is violently anti child, as it implies that children cost nothing - therefore government should give no consideration to the number of people an income is supporting - they are safe in assuming that there is no difference between an income supporting one person or a family of five.
• Make parenting important. the reason fewer people are having families is because we have had several decades of messages from
• Fully acknowledge the needs of children.  It has been understood for some time that boys (particularly) need one on one care for the first two years. Holding jobs open for a year might suit business but does it suit children? 
• "Park" student loans while people step out of the workforce to parent.  For women particularly, having invested heavily in their career makes the choice of having families very difficult.

being everything from integrating migrants to sorting out Auckland's infrastructure but doesn't seem to notice that the key thing to a falling birthrate is that fewer people are having fewer children and the main reason for that is that everyone has noticed that parenting is a low value low esteem vocation.  The commonest sense suggests if we are facing a population crisis due to a falling birthrate the key question is why? and the obvious solution is to encourage people to start families, and the simplest way to do that is to make it affordable and valuable.

Trevor Mallard has been very proud of his moves to upskill and expand the early childhood education sector.  While this is commendable it highlights a completely insular thinking.  Why should childcare workers need to be more skilled but parents not?  There has been no serious moves to disseminate any child development knowledge or parenting technique outside of the worthy but rather slender Wellchild program and even that is targeted more at early identification of failure, rather than promoting success.