KEY POINTS:
I see that the Capital and Coast District Health Board has decided to scrap its proposed scheme of giving new mothers $100 supermarket vouchers to leave hospital six hours after giving birth.
Certainly it didn't strike me as much of an incentive when it comes to getting women
back up and at 'em after the arduous task of bringing new life into the world.
"Here's your baby, aren't you clever, now off you go and shop for tonight's dinner. Maybe pick up some cleaning products too. I notice you've let the dusting slide a bit in the last few months."
I'm not sure about certain health groups describing it as "a bribe" either, though. This is a fairly unimaginative attempt to deal with a real issue facing DHBs, namely a severe shortage of midwives, but it is at least practical and certainly not what I would call bribery.
Bribes are all about avarice and acquisition. Cash-for-questions, kickbacks, palm-greasers. They're naughty and alluring and enticing; that's why they're called bribes. $100 for groceries isn't insubstantial when you're struggling, but it's not a very juicy carrot for people on a decent wage.
I haven't given birth myself, but given the choice of a nice long sleep in a post-natal ward or a stroll around the frozen food aisle at New World after a 15-hour labour, I know which one I'd choose.
Although, in fairness, you can buy all sorts of things at the supermarket these days. I found this out on Tuesday night when the DVD player expired. We were staring down the barrel of a night in two-channel land when my companion suggested we go to the supermarket and buy another. DVD player that is. Yes, they sell them there!
Those of you who are used to seeing Woolworths floor to ceiling with the things will have to forgive my astonishment at discovering this only now. I don't take much notice of my surroundings when I go to supermarkets, usually being far too preoccupied with figuring out how to get the checkout staff to sell me wine and/or fags when I find myself once more attempting to procure said items without ID.
Being told I am not allowed to purchase alcohol in supermarkets, usually by officious teenagers, used to drive me into a rage, as anyone who was shopping at Whangarei Pak 'N Save on February 17, 2005, will attest. Lucky for for me (and for Whangerei) I was just passing through.
The drinking culture has its dark side, it's true, but I don't see how my not being able to buy a bottle of soave without my passport at 27 years old is going to solve the problem of half the 14-year-olds in the country falling out of their boob-tubes on RTDs every Saturday night.
I digress. But it irritates me in the same way that alcohol and tobacco were excluded from this short-lived maternity voucher scheme. I understand the principle, obviously. Given our disgraceful record of familial child abuse in this country, schemes like this one must needs be haunted by the spectre of new mothers rushing off to the supermarket to spend the state's money on gin and Winfields.
Not being able to use the vouchers for alcohol and tobacco makes sense in the context of the very real problems besetting our society, just as it makes sense to try to make it impossible for minors to buy alcohol in the same supermarkets. But ID'ing everyone who looks under 60 (seriously, a 55-year-old friend of mine got asked for his driver licence by a particularly zealous, and possibly blind checkout operator in Auckland last week - he was thrilled) hasn't stopped teenagers getting their hands on alcohol. And it won't either. Just as proscribing people from buying drink or cigarettes with whatever benefit the state gives them won't magically make them better parents.
This voucher scheme was, we're told, intended as an incentive for new mothers. A restriction, however well meant, on their personal grocery shopping is short sighted and patronising.
For every no-hope loser out there who would rather get drunk than look after her baby, there is a legion of decent women who manage to have children, rear them, look after them and enjoy the odd glass (or more) of wine.
After nine months of abstinence it seems churlish to tell them they can't use that money to buy a bottle of something fizzy to celebrate the new arrival with family and friends.
Why not go the whole hog and tell them what baby powder to use while you're at it? Impose a fiat on bottle milk because breast is best?
I am not saying we do not have a problem with parenting in this country. OECD figures would beg to differ.
But the terrible mothers and fathers, the pictures of whose murdered, neglected children reproach us every week on the news, will not simply become better parents if they can't spend their benefits on booze.
It's personal, rather than social responsibility that's still the issue here.
