Nordic countries spend more on services to families than cash benefits... and that is the way forward.

They are internationally referred to as the ‘Mommy wars the perennial debate for and against stay-at-home mothers and working mothers. This week the argument was revived by Fr Charles Attard, director of the Cana Movement, who told the parliamentary committee for the family that stay-at-home mothers should receive a payment.

“I think that women who choose to remain at home should be compensated. The work they carry out is as valuable as mothers who choose to work,” he said.

The concept is not new: in Germany it’s called Betreuungsgeld. A few years ago Angela Merkel tried to implement a €150 monthly payment to parents who do not put their children into nurseries and stay at home to take care of the children till they are three years old. The idea was met with strong resistance: it was generally felt that it went against the idea of boosting the female workforce.

Fr Attard, however, did not speak of ‘parents’. He was very specific about who should get this benefit: mothers. “Statistics showed that the mother remains the parent most responsible from the upbringing of a couple’s children,” he said.

I’ll be to the point here: I hope his advice is not to be heeded by the parliamentary committee, for it is quaint and out of touch with reality, which is a bit ironic given that the Pope himself encouraged a greater understanding of modern families, in a key document released last Friday.

In this day and age we should be encouraging both parents to be involved in the raising of children and not just the mother. If statistics show otherwise, then we have to challenge and improve those figures. The Director of Cana was wrong: he should have presented his argument for ‘parents who stay-at-home’.

Do we really want to stick to the model of families where the children see the father only on Sunday because during the rest of the week they are asleep when he comes home from his 11-hour work days? Will fathers work less because the mother is earning a benefit to take care of the children? More importantly, will they be more hands on with children? The answer is no. And Cana’s suggestion will only keep promoting a culture where many children are raised with the father as a distant figure.

What was the inspiration for Cana’s recommendation? “Mothers who work carry out an important job, but mothers who remain at home are sometimes treated as mothers of ‘second division’. I think this should be a priority,” Fr Attard told MPs.

Staying-at-home is most often a choice, a decision by the couple. If it is decided that the mother stays at home then, the couple ought have the self-confidence to ward off any stupid judgemental comments from others.

Instead, Fr Attard should have studied carefully the successful family-friendly Nordic policies. Rather than paying stay-at-home mothers he would have done us all a major favour by encouraging less working hours, more flexibility and more paid parental leave.

Here’s how it works in Sweden: parents are entitled to a year and four months of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted. For the first 13 months of that, parents are entitled to nearly 80 per cent of their normal pay.

Moreover, if they need to pick the children up early from preschool or take a few days off work when a child is sick, most Swedish companies are very open to parental duties and employees still get 80 per cent of their pay when they have to stay home with sick children. Talk to parents and you will find that this is a huge problem here, more so now that the new generation of grandparents also work.

Fr Charles could have also looked at the Netherlands’ model where a four-day workweek is nearly standard. The Dutch work an average of around 29 hours a week, the lowest of any industrialised nation. Workers also have the right to reduce their hours to part-time, while keeping their job, hourly pay and healthcare benefits. This is another problem in Malta: part-time career work is frowned upon.

There’s also Denmark. Maybe the parliamentary committee for family and Cana should look at the way the Danes organise their maternity and paternity leave, childcare and family policy closely. Danish workers average 33 hours a week and have a right to at least five weeks of paid vacation each year. Flexi-working is very common there too. And of course they have low cost childcare. (Our system is still faulty on this. Free childcare is not really working when your child gets sick you’re faced with a Hobson’s choice: either send your kid to nursery sick or end up paying ridiculous amounts),

All this shows how Nordic countries spend more on services to families than cash benefits. And that is the way forward. Generous parental leave, flexible hours and the absence of a long-hours culture means that juggling a work-family balance – for mothers and fathers – is doable.

This is what makes both parents share the raising of children and this in turn will promote a healthier, more equal - and less macho – society.

It is a couple’s choice to decide what to do when they have a child. If they can afford for one parent not to work, then that’s excellent. However, for most of us working is a need and we have no choice but to do so. And if we are paying taxes, I’d much rather we all benefit from it.