22 November 2008
Warnings about TV, divorce and welfare reform
28 March 2007
Te Waha Nui Online
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TV watching – one of the most benign forms of escapism available – should now come with a health warning it seems, according to Dr Aric Sigman by way of Finlay Macdonald’s book review in the weekend.
Drat it.
It’s that brain stuff. And it’s particularly bad for children, when their brains are developing – before the age of three, and then during adolescence.
It’s not TV per se – the content, the technology involved, but how we present it – “the fast flicker rate of modern TV – the zooms, pans, quick edits and hyperactive camera work” designed to keep our hands off the remote by promoting a longer stare time. It has a correlation with mental and physical disorders. Drat drat drat.
For little people it’s huge. For us bigger folk it’s pretty big if you think the only lifestyle activity between the ages of 20 and 60 found to have any relationship with the development of Alzheimer’s is watching TV for four or more hours a day.
There goes hours of joy with box sets of Six Feet Under and Absolutely Fabulous.
It is in this depressed state I shall read Remotely Controlled by Dr Sigman. (Another one of the associations with too much TV watching. I won’t comment on the lowered adult libido.)
Moving on to current affairs: “Good news for divorcing women and their children”emblazoned the Sunday Star-Times in the weekend. An article by Ruth Laugesen outlines a ‘stay-at-home mum’ winning a $4 million matrimonial property case. “Legal experts say it clarifies the rights of stay-at-home partners to be compensated” and a woman-positive opening paragraph. The fact box asks: who could be affected? 146,000 NZ households with children with one partner at home. And, the implication, any women, and their children, whose relationships break up.
The hardcopy headline actually read: “Divorce warning for men”. Interesting. (Warnings are usually reserved for bad stuff.)
We don’t always seem to agree, as a society, on how mothers and children should be supported. If not even very wealthy fathers should share their resources equitably with their families (or at least should be warned about it), then who should?
The current welfare system (for more humble folk than the millionaires of the article), is a work-focussed welfare delivery model on trial since June 2005, and does not fully support children let alone their caregivers (if you count feeding children, and ensuring adequate housing as helping support them).
Inadequate provision acts as a disincentive, apparently, for being in that situation in the first place. (Do not confuse humans with logical creatures.) Our present system is not actively involved in removing barriers to employment, or to actively redressing pay inequity.
Put simply, there isn’t comprehensive access to free or largely subsidised childcare. There are minimal regulations for work and pay conditions that would foster folk as caregivers as well as workers earning a living wage, no model of care in welfare ensuring caregivers of children and vulnerable members of society are able to survive.
In positive form the above is the Swedish model. It actually exists in the world! And functions rather nicely, according to Professor Salonen at the Welfare Reform Forum last week. Women actually have a pretty good lot there. And Sweden as a society cherishes children. More than dogs. (I’m serious!)
How wonderful if we decided children are important to New Zealand. At the moment we have a rapidly aging and very large babyboomer population, and a society that doesn’t seem to care enough about the upcoming generation. (Can it really be true three quarters of NZ supports parents’ right to reasonably assault children? Really?)
The Social Security Amendment Bill is coming up in September, and has huge implications for what our country is to be, and what we want for all of our children.
There are alternatives to the welfare principles of the “workfare” Wisconsin model, a la Pita Sharples of the Maori Party (what is he thinking?), and Judith Collins of the National Party (what exactly are they planning?). And Labour now.
Give me the TV Guide someone, and where’s the remote?
