Work and Dignity discounting unpaid care work

1
Work and Dignity - discounting unpaid care work

• Jac Taylor
• National Council of Single Mothers and Their
  Children

2

• Unpaid care work is not economically productive
  and therefore is not recognised as a legitimate
  job
• Childrens loss of care and parental time is not
  recognised as economically significant and so
  does not count
• Thus contemporary society is oblivious of the
  consequences of reducing and preventing unpaid
  care provision in families
• Instead of social recognition and support for
  valuable and necessary work of child rearing and
  nurturing, single parents face increased poverty,
  coercion, stigma and punishment

3

• The dominant discourse portrays a story of the
  lazy single mum who has forgotten how to work
  and the story of the virtuous taxpayer who
  graciously doles out dollars to indigent
  dependents
• This becomes the marketing slogan to convince the
  population that punitive measures against poor
  families are both necessary and justified.

4

• Current system is based on a deficit model
  underpinned by economic behaviourism, granting
  power to the State to control and punish
  vulnerable families
• Single parents are forced into low paid, insecure
  paid work with practically no financial return,
  and forced to place their children into
  childcare, or suffer the consequences of a
  punitive compliance regime
• US research shows increased levels of stress and
  paid and unpaid care work but negligible changes
  in income support status

5

• The cuts to payment levels, forced paid work
  activity, increased claw back on earnings and
  exposure to loss of payment creates a new
  atmosphere of coercion, stress and punishment for
  families often already dealing with multiple
  crises and disadvantage.
• This changes will result in compounding costs to
  families, most of which will not be readily
  visible
• The social fall-out of stressing vulnerable
  families will be distributed to crisis services
  at even greater cost

6

• What we need
• A system that recognises that paid workforce
  withdrawal and re-entry are normal, common events
  over the life course and that unpaid care work
  provides society with a net benefit
• It would recognise and value not only the
  significant social contribution of unpaid care
  work but that this comes at a personal cost of
  loss of income, skills erosion and opportunity
  costs, warranting recompense
• It would provide structured and supported
  pathways for unpaid carers to re-skill, including
  access to funding for training / education and
  ancillary costs

7

• It would provide financial and social support to
  unpaid carers and their families while not in the
  labour market, without stigma, blame and
  punishment
• It would acknowledge childrens need for parental
  care and time
• It would acknowledge sole parents are in the best
  position to determine their familys needs
• It would be a system based on respecting the
  fundamental dignity of every human being living
  in our society