Population Research Expert Criticizes Dutch Proposal to Penalize Stay-At-Home Moms
by Mary Rettig
April 19, 2006
(AgapePress) - - An official with the Population Research Institute says a proposed law in the Parliament of the Netherlands discriminates against educated women who choose not to work outside the home. The Institute's vice president of communications, Joseph D'Agostino, says a prominent female Dutch Parliament member has proposed fining college-educated women for opting to stay at home and take care of their children rather than to get jobs. Apparently, Member of Parliament Sharon Dijksma considers that choice a waste of a government-sponsored education.
According to Expatica news reports, Dijksma calls the decision by any eligible, college-educated woman not to seek a job in the paid workforce a "destruction of capital." The lawmaker recently explained her position, declaring to women across the Netherlands, "If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished."
But D'Agostino feels the Dutch legislature would be sending the wrong message by approving the MP's proposal. He says the Dutch government should be rewarding women -- not punishing them -- for choosing to stay home with their children because, for one thing, those women are more likely to have more than child.
Currently, the Institute spokesman notes, the birthrate of the Netherlands is plummeting. At the moment, he points out, that statistic is not even high enough to replace the country's current population. Since housewives are more likely to have larger families than career-oriented women, he believes a better policy for the Dutch government would be to encourage women who choose stay-at-home parenting.
Also, D'Agostino contends, the government should realize there is nothing wasteful about women with college educations staying home with their kids. "I think that children can very much benefit from having an educated person with them all day every day," he says, "and if that person is their mother, all the better. I don't really understand how that would be a waste."
That is especially true at the present time, "when home schooling has become so common and so popular because our schools are so awful," the population research official notes. "And so it's really important that whoever is taking care of the children should really have that kind of education, because the schools themselves are so bad that people just can't send their kids there."
D'Agostino believes MP Dijksma's proposal emerges from a socialistic, big government mentality. "In the Netherlands people are very heavily taxed," he explains, "and then people get some of their money back in the form of certain benefits, like free college tuition."
However, the Population Research Institute's vice president of communications points out, this kind of socialist system that the Netherlands employs, with its offers of "free" services and benefits, unfortunately allows the government and its agents "to then try to take over your life."
MP Dijksma "wants to do that by penalizing women who choose to take care of their children rather than work full time," D'Agostino asserts. He maintains that her proposal to charge college-educated Dutchwomen for "wasting" their schooling by not getting jobs outside the home is not only ludicrous but bad for the nation as well.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
