You may have heard that the Australian Government in all its wisdom, provides a non-means-tested baby bonus payment of about $4000 for a newborn. They even go so far as to ensure 16-year-old mothers get the payment in a form of pension rather than a lump sum to make sure it's spent on the baby and not on booze or drugs or stolen by non-well-meaning relatives. Personally, I think it's a way for the Government to assuage its guilt over not creating better industrial relations provisions for parental leave.
It's a very sad thing that Australia's population growth from birth is so low. A sociologist I heard on the radio once said you can directly correlate the declining population growth with the rise in female education. It makes sense too, as potential mums are spending more time getting educated and starting careers, than starting families. But what's not being acknowledged by the Government is that those potential mothers are sticking to their careers for longer before having children because they need to save up money to be able to raise said kids, because once they leave to have the baby they are suddenly bereft of income. Then the Government wails about cost of childcare, and how they can't provide enough subsidised places for all the kids we're having, but mums have little choice but to go back to work so they can pay for the mortgage and all the bills as well as paying for childcare. It's rotten.
Some more enlightened nations have legislated parental benefits. Like, up to 2 years' paid leave from work - you can have your children, and still cover your mortgage repayments, and what's more you can choose when to go back to work, with the benefit that your child has had the chance to grow up a bit with at least one parent at home all the time, you're not entirely broke, and you can still go back to the same job you had before. Don't get me wrong, some employers here do offer a period of paid parental leave, in fact there are some very good places in that regard, but most only offer the minimum required by law. Which is, 12 months' leave. Unpaid. 12 months in total, that is, so if you happen to have some annual leave available and you choose to take that instead of unpaid leave, you still can't have more than 12 months away from your job. So in our case, I've had 1 month annual leave - before Peanut arrived - and I get 11 months with her before I lose my entitlement to go back to the same job. 11 months with no income, that is. Just to be clear, I wouldn't give up Peanut for anything, and I definitely wouldn't want to be back at work right now with her only 11 weeks old.
Oh, and the baby bonus? That went towards our private medical bills - we avoided the public hospital system for a reason.
I think it's time to face facts and realise that buter's blog has to refocus. Since the arrival of the peanut (above) I realise I've spent very little time surfing the net for "fun geekery stuff" and loads of time surfing for "fun geeky baby stuff" ... so let this serve as the announcement of buter's baby blog.
The first post should of course set the tone for future stuff, and so you know I'm still the same person, albeit with a slightly different set of priorities now, we'll begin with some social commentary.
Since becoming parents, D™ and I have talked about all the new things we have to worry about. Schooling. Immunisations. Stranger Danger. Childhood Obesity. And not to forget, OMGWTFBBQ!!!1!!1!! ... that is, Netiquette.
We have found ourselves agreeing that DVDs aren't good babysitters, that the ABC is the only TV station that the peanut will need, and that computers don't belong in bedrooms. And we really really don't want to go down the path of censoring the internet. Instead, we agree it's better to educate our offspring in how to think for oneself: make decisions about what to see and what not to look for, based on reasoned decision making rather than because it's been removed from sight for you.
Actually this ties in with our perspective on alcohol as well. We don't think it works to ban all alcohol. Rather, educate the child, if they want to drink, then at home under parental supervision is much better than a Southern Comfort experience at 16.
So hopefully the peanut will grow up to be a healthy well-adjusted technosavvy moderate drinker who finds the internet as amusing as we do !
Ok, more, and probably cooler, baby posts to follow ...
I"ve visited my blog this many times:
