Our recent conference
on women, home and work is still causing a reaction. One of our speakers, Jonas
Himmelstrand, had an article in The Irish Times on Friday responding to Ursula
Kilkelly and Dympna Devine who insisted that the ‘Nordic’ daycare model
(meaning in practice the Swedish one) is what we need to copy here in Ireland.

Jonas is a
critic of the Swedish daycare model which is semi-compulsory because taxes in
Sweden are so high that it is extremely difficult for a family to get by on one
income.

Jonas’s
article can be found here and speaks for itself.

The
comments posted by readers in response to it are interesting. Quite a few are
supportive. Most of the critical ones descend  into ad hominem attacks against Jonas (e.g. ‘Jonas
is a man, so what would he know?’) or else focus on The Iona Institute itself
as though the fact that Jonas spoke at our conference has anything to do with
the truth or otherwise of what he had to say.

Still
others point out that Jonas’s criticisms have not as yet sparked a mass
rebellion against the Swedish daycare system which, they argue, must indicate
that Swedish parents can’t have too much of an objection to it.

On this
score, a number of things can be said. First, even if daycare is popular with
Swedish parents, that still doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Its often detrimental
effects on Swedish children is surely far more relevant a consideration than
whether or not it is popular with Swedish parents?

Second, the
fact that there hasn’t been a widespread rebellion against daycare could be due
to the fact that not enough Swedish parents are aware yet of the case against it.
 We should keep in mind that most people
in Sweden receive their information about the daycare system from the State or
from the media which are both very pro-daycare.

Third,
Swedish people appear to be deferential towards the State in the same way Irish
people were once deferential towards the Church. That is, they tend to trust
the State and just as was sometimes the case with the Church here, that trust
might be misplaced.

Finally,
some respondents queried the relevance of Jonas’s article to the debate about women,
home and work in Ireland. But surely the article by Kilkelly and Devine proved
its relevance? Kilkelly and Devine are both academics and their rosy view of
Swedish daycare is common among Irish academics and policy-makers. That is why
the critique of the Swedish daycare model needs to be heard in Ireland.