When Is Equality Not Equality?

I must express my disappointment at the quality of argument in the essay “When Is Equality Not Equality?” by Michael Adams and Amy Langstaff. First they state that “no one [in Canada] is calling the governing Liberals anti-family … (in public).” Well, I live in Alberta, and that view is widespread and publicly declared; during the recent election campaign, the media had several such expressions from across the country with respect both to Liberal daycare policy and the same-sex marriage issue, and such views also find expression on daytime television shows such as 100 Huntley Street. The authors presumably mean that no one in their circle of acquaintances has such views, but that is hardly a scientific survey. The comments on preschool funding in the article also seem ill considered. It may be true in Toronto that the National Early Learning and Child Care Strategy is “fairly uncontroversial,” but it has been roundly criticized in the places noted above. And the authors get the Conservative policy quite wrong: it is the Liberals who promoted tax credits, while the Tories promised $100 per month per child under the age of six.

Second, and more important, this case is an excellent example of how statistics can be used to reach a variety of conclusions, depending upon one’s underlying assumptions. The utterly flippant dismissal of well-educated American women who elect to stay home to raise children as simply open to “the Tammy Wynette school of life” would not pass for acceptable analysis in a first-year university class. The authors reach this conclusion in light of statistics showing that 19 percent of American women (versus 7 percent of Canadian women) think it “not right for a woman to outstrip her husband in earning power.” That, of course, presumably implies that 81 percent disagreed with the proposition.

I acknowledge that the preschool education and daycare systems in both Canada and the United States do not provide real options for many women (and some men). But this is not the group assailed by Adams and Langstaff. They seem to be addressing women who have a choice and actually decide to stay home with the kids. I cannot pretend to any sort of scientific survey, but I do know many cases that don’t seem to fit the Adams/Langstaff model. Two women of my close acquaintance who would have preferred to remain home with the children were forced after marriage breakdown into the workplace to support their children; their reasoning for pursuing a career was not feminist. A couple of women who had career opportunities made a principled decision to stay at home with their children because of their own experience with day care as children. Others have decided to stay home and home-school their children because of unhappiness with the public school system; this is a principled and highly demanding choice, and they believe it is much more challenging than a “career.” We are told that the upcoming generation must expect to change careers several times during their lives; why is it wrong to view staying at home with young children for a few years as one of those careers, deliberately chosen in full knowledge of the facts?

Finally, the matter of underlying assumptions. It is interesting that in the interwar years and the 1950s one symbol of middle-class life was the man who earned enough that his wife no longer had to work and was able to stay home. Women often stayed home because of social pressures, and were expected to be fulfilled in doing so. In the 1960s and later the assumption changed, so that women should have the opportunity, on an equal basis with men, to pursue paid employment and self-fulfillment outside the home. This became, over time, the social expectation or assumed “norm” for women. It seems to be confounding to some in the liberal establishment that some women who have both education and means elect to pursue a different pattern for their lives and their families. If the choice is made for religious reasons, even in part, secular liberal assumptions are again quite dismissive without serious investigation of how women and men actually experience religion.

My complaint is that this article provides only a simplistic and superficial analysis. It also implicitly mocks the religious views of many Americans, while not attempting at all seriously to find out why so many well-educated Americans have different views and experiences from many Canadians on matters of equality and family.

David J. Hall
Edmonton, Alberta