It Takes More Than Money to Raise a Child

Reflections on the Baby Bonus
By Jason Harris

For those who aren’t familiar with the “Baby Bonus,” it’s a $4,000 (soon to be $5,000) lump sum currently paid out to women by the Australian government when they have a baby. According to a recent article in the Cairns Post, some are saying that the Baby Bonus may be causing problems which is kind of like saying World War III could cause disunity.

People aren’t stupid. You have kids. You get money. So they’re having kids. Who could blame them. The logic was that we need to get our population moving in the right direction so we need women to have kids. Of course since sacrificing for a family is not likely to happen in our culture, we’ve got to find a way to pay for these kids without making parents sacrifice. Of course that’s easy. We’ll pay parents to raise their own kids. Makes sense.

The problem is, it takes more than money to raise a child. It takes a family. Yes. Family. Remember that thing in the old movies where you have a dad and a mum and maybe a few children? Yes, that thing. It’s called a family and it’s the only way to raise a child without significantly harming the child. I’ll go farther. To intentionally bring a child into the world in a situation where he or she will not have a stable family is selfish, it’s wrong, and it’s child abuse.

Whatever we do as a nation, we cannot afford to lose that endangered species known as the family. Happy, healthy families are the pattern for turning out happy, healthy children. That’s not to say that a happy, healthy child can’t come out of a non-typical (or is it typical now?) situation, but in general, society is dependent on dads and mums being dads and mums. How can we help our kids grow up healthy when we haven’t even grown up yet?