“We know that we've stolen a year of childhood right around the Western world, the year of five, when our little ones are still supposed to be largely running around outside building sandcastles, and pretending they're unicorns or dragons.” Australian author Maggie Dent spoke these words on Janet Lansbury’s parenting podcast Unruffled. “We stole that year and when we did that, the pressure for you to get your kid ready for school has intensified and yet the capacity for our children to accelerate their development on any level hasn't changed at all.” 

Here in Ontario, our kids have lost age four and we are well on our way to offering kids three and younger to the gods of government daycare schemes. The incremental loss of childhood has been steady. It’s not limited to education or daycare policy; the pace, type and pervasiveness of media and social media, the commercialization of family life, and the ubiquity of smart phones—there are abundant ways in which we are chipping away at childhood. 

The encroachment of school to younger ages for more hours is merely one, additional way. 

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My point is to highlight that changes in education policy do not offer more choice to parents. They offer trade-offs, and that translates into gains, and—oh, how often we forget—losses. The gains are largely economic, and the losses, all too often, are at the expense of permitting healthy child development to unfold. 

Take the arrival of full-day kindergarten in Ontario in 2010 as one clear example. Initially, parents would get to decide if their kids went full or half day. But pretty quickly, those parents who pulled their kids “early” (wait, wasn’t it a choice?) needed to either explain or otherwise fight against the current. Their kids would “fall behind.” 

Anyone born before 2010 had the opportunity of an easier entry into school life. Nowadays, “school preparedness” includes full days for four-year-olds, and many three-year-olds, too. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you can bet kids are coming home with their underwear soiled and their lunches uneaten, tired and gritty at the end of a full day. These young ages cannot universally manage all life skills alone, and a classroom with 30 kids doesn’t permit staff to help.  

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Another trade off was, in short order, the loss of half-day programs everywhere, private and public. Finding half-day kindergarten in Ontario is a fool’s errand. Pre-schools, which are by definition part-time, still exist, but their purpose has changed. One friend who sent her four-year-old to a local preschool recounts that “it appeared to attract kids who perhaps were somewhat delayed academically and would have had difficulty with a jump to the regular public system.” This combined with the fact that mainly much younger children attend means a four-year-old will not necessarily find friends with whom to play unicorn or dragon at pre-school. 

A further loss of the government’s shift to full-day kindergarten began to be reflected in summer camps in Ontario too, which, again, starting at age five, often are not merely full day but also include before and after care.  

And so I wonder: why can’t we - why can’t I - Slow. Life. Down? We need to arrange work lives so they work toward child development and not against it. How many parents would prefer part-time work and part-time care, only to find neither is accessible? 

Of course, it’s easier for a workplace to find one great full-time employee. So much the better if that employee is unhindered by family demands at all, right? But the unholy alliance between the business world and many a childcare activist solidified a myth that 70 percent of mothers of young children were working – the implication was that this work was full time. In fact, labour stats in Canada include part-time work. And surveys further show part-time work is the preference of most mothers of young children. 

All I can say is this: your choices affect mine and vice versa. There is no government policy that comes without tradeoffs. We’ve lost five and now we’ve lost four. If this incursion into childhood makes you sad—do stand up and make your voice heard about the so-called Canada-Wide System of Early Learning and Child Care—it’s the culmination of these other policies. 

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We’ve given them five and four--don’t let them take three, while pretending they are simply giving you another choice. 

Andrea Mrozek is Senior Fellow at Cardus Family.