Undoubtedly, there is a labour shortage in Canada. Should the federal government be encouraging more women into the workforce to make up for the shortage, or should more efforts be put into encouraging women to stay home to raise families in hopes of combating social ills?
Stay at home mums or more workers?
Combat social ills, definitely. Why put women in the work force to artificially stimulate the economy? If there’s a shortage of workers then I would raise the question of whether or not the industry is needed– no, I can’t say that. Medical professionals are in great demand an no one can say we don’t need them. Perhaps then instead of saying “let’s just take the mother out of the home and plug her in elsewhere” we can start looking at more flexible working solutions for professional women. Something like two days of work a week worked in rotation with other professional women and mothers so that the necessary services are available but children aren’t left to be fitted into the cracks of time available to two-career families.
As PDoE said.
Wouldn’t a better solution be to import cheap labor by relaxing immigration laws?
Define Labour Shortage. Not enough available workers for quick food restaurants? No one to cut your grass or fix your dinner?
Our problem is clearly one of lack of population. How to solve that problem without creating more is somewhat of a mystery to me.
What criteria would one use in this day and age? It’s not the good old days anymore.
This is the first I’d heard of the labor shortage. so I went here in my research:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/05/13/BCsLoomingSkilledLabourShortage/
From which I gather the shortage is in skilled trade labor. Jobs you apprentice into.
It wouldn’t hurt to encourage more women to apprentice into these fields. It seems to me that once a level of competence is achieved, part-time or flexible work would be very possible as an electrician, plumber, and heating/cooling.
but the real problem is that the apprentice system is screwed up in various ways. Bringing women or immigrants in in won’t solve that.
In the Edmonton there is a shortage in every aspect of employement. Every store is hiring, every construction company, oil company, bank, health field…you name it. You can pretty much demand whatever hours you want and they’ll take it.
RE: this post…The government certainly has never encouraged me to stay home and raise my family. There has been no financial benefit to this in the slightest. There has been no pat on the back telling me I’m helping society.
President Hinckley’s counsel comes to mind: Weigh carefully that which you do. You do not need some of the extravagances that working outside the home might bring. Weigh carefully the importance of your being in the home when your children come from school. (To the Women of the Church Nov 2003)
I don’t know about the rest of the country but here in the Vancouver area there is a shortage of workers in every field not just in the grass cutting one. My husband is a construction supervisor supposedly just supervising the work but for the last 2 years has had to put the tool belt back on as there is no one available to hire.
Everyone coming out of school/university/college is going into anything computers thinking that is where the real money is. Sit at a desk all day, don’t have to break a sweat, 9-5 poof you are all done.
I had to go to the ER a couple of months ago and our hospital is one of the largest in the province. There was ONE doctor on for the whole night. Not one and 6 interns or one doctor and a couple of residents etc. Just one period for that entire ER.
Our grand children’s school has to combine classes because there aren’t enough teachers to fill all the spots. On the news the other day the leader of the something or other that deal with importing laborers etc (how’s that for grammar?) said that all the countries want to do is bring in labourers to do our grunt work for little money, work they don’t want to do themselves. I wanted to reach through the screen and smack his head.
I’m not denying that there are some companies that do that but there is too great a shortage in all fields to warrant that comment. I can’t see the government doing anything to assist women to go back into the work force or to help them stay home to raise their children.
Ironically my husband just came home after supposedly having to work all day today stating that the 4 men he had hired from Temp Help never showed up or call this morning. Yup there is a real shortage.
“You do not need some of the extravagances that working outside the home might bring.”
Which is fine and good so long as these “extravagances” don’t include food and rent…
Unfortunately the cost of living in some areas combined with a lack of earning potential on the working parent’s end can make it a requirement for both parents to work.
I’m all for choice. Choose to stay at home ro choose to work. That’s your deal, but when you have no choice in order to make ends meet, then we have problems.
I’m not against women at all working in the workforce, however i do strongly feel that after a women gets married and has kids, she should stay at home while the husbund is working. A wife who stays at home to cook and clean while the husbund is at work, shows she is a respectable women and is honored. Married women need to stay at home to be housewives to take care of the house and dress there kids for school as a sign of love and good motherhood
Do you think she should still stay at home if they have no children?
“A wife who stays at home to cook and clean while the husbund is at work, shows she is a respectable women and is honored”
While those women who choose to have a career are dishonourable and disrespectful, right?
“Married women need to stay at home to be housewives to take care of the house and dress there [sic] kids for school as a sign of love and good motherhood”
While those who have the fathers do those duties do NOT love their children and are NOT good mothers, right?
Sean, are you sure you are not some sort of transplant from the fifties?
Perhaps you were frozen and thawed out when the millenium came. It might explain the poor spelling and sentence structure…
rick said: “A wife who stays at home to cook and clean while the husbund is at work, shows she is a respectable women and is honoredâ€
While those women who choose to have a career are dishonourable and disrespectful, right?
“Married women need to stay at home to be housewives to take care of the house and dress there [sic] kids for school as a sign of love and good motherhoodâ€
While those who have the fathers do those duties do NOT love their children and are NOT good mothers, right?
Sean, are you sure you are not some sort of transplant from the fifties?
Perhaps you were frozen and thawed out when the millenium came. It might explain the poor spelling and sentence structure…”
Rick…i’m saying that if a married women for example who has children to raise, but chooses to have a career like going to college and having a job, it shows she is a discrace and dishonerable. Plus it shows that they are selfish to just let there career like college and jobs come first before raising there children. You cannot put your children on hold just so you can enter the workforce and go to college. When a women becomes pregnant, she needs to take responsibilitys for her own actions to take care of those kids, love those kids and be right there everyminute with those kids. Its really not so much of an issue that women want to work because i can think of so much work that stay-at-home housewives can do. What this all really boils down to is that women want to be the same as men which to me is down right wacky and bull****.
“When a women becomes pregnant”
…and that happens in a vacuum? Where’s the Dad?
What about homes where child-care is shared between the two parents? How do you reconile that with your “discrace and dishonerable” woman theory?
As far as the capability of women to work outside the home is concerned, there IS no difference between men and women, sean. It’s the year 2007, my word.
So Sean, you are going to go out and support your family and your wife is going to cater to all your little whims and be your doormat? You might want to make sure you can support your family properly.
I am all in support of staying at home (I do so myself). But I would never consider myelf or any woman “dishonourable” (please start checking your spelling and grammar. Again, “there” and ” their” are two different terms entirely) or a disgrace if she chooses to, or needs to work outside the home.
Women do NOT want to be men. Good grief what an inane accusation. I am quite happy being a woman THANK YOU VERY MUCH. And as you are continually reminded, we are not in the dark ages. Get with the programme. Move into the future and leave your archaic notions in the past where they belong. My only consolation is that in this day and age you are unlikely to find a woman who will share your beliefs and thus, the likelihood of you perpetuating these ridiculous notions will hopefully stop with you.
No one is talking about putting their children on hold or not loving their children. Grow up and stop judging and please follow my advice…”It’s better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt”.
Oh yeah, and another thing, you seem to think men are just sperm donors, well, get rid of that thought too because modern day husbands and fathers are not like you (thank goodness) they, for the most part believe in being fully involved in the home and family. There is only one thing my husband can’t do in the home and with our family, and that is breastfeed our babies. He does every other thing and in fact, is a WAY better cook than I am and if I had my way he would do all the cooking. As it is, he does about half. Oh he also does “housewifely things” such as vacuuming, changing diapers, laundry, other sorts of cleaning, etc etc. And he doesn’t expect me to be a Fascinating Womanhood clone when he gets home from work, either.
“he doesn’t expect me to be a Fascinating Womanhood clone when he gets home from work”
Well, I don’t expect it, but…
LOL, don’t even GO there!
rick said: “When a women becomes pregnantâ€
…and that happens in a vacuum? Where’s the Dad?
What about homes where child-care is shared between the two parents? How do you reconile that with your “discrace and dishonerable†woman theory?
As far as the capability of women to work outside the home is concerned, there IS no difference between men and women, sean. It’s the year 2007, my word.
I’m just saying Rick, that its the mans job to go to work and to bring home the money. If the husbund chooses to stay at home while the wife goes to work, then it shows the husbund is not there to take care of his own wife. Classy upscale people with kids dont send there kids to daycare, child daycare services is a waste of money, and not only that, why would you wanna leave your kids in the hands of strangers??. These child daycare providers dont really love those abandoned kids, they are in it for the money to watch those kids but not to love them
Mary Siever said: So Sean, you are going to go out and support your family and your wife is going to cater to all your little whims and be your doormat? You might want to make sure you can support your family properly.
I am all in support of staying at home (I do so myself). But I would never consider myelf or any woman “dishonourable†(please start checking your spelling and grammar. Again, “there†and †their†are two different terms entirely) or a disgrace if she chooses to, or needs to work outside the home.
Women do NOT want to be men. Good grief what an inane accusation. I am quite happy being a woman THANK YOU VERY MUCH. And as you are continually reminded, we are not in the dark ages. Get with the programme. Move into the future and leave your archaic notions in the past where they belong. My only consolation is that in this day and age you are unlikely to find a woman who will share your beliefs and thus, the likelihood of you perpetuating these ridiculous notions will hopefully stop with you.
No one is talking about putting their children on hold or not loving their children. Grow up and stop judging and please follow my advice…â€It’s better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubtâ€.
Oh yeah, and another thing, you seem to think men are just sperm donors, well, get rid of that thought too because modern day husbands and fathers are not like you (thank goodness) they, for the most part believe in being fully involved in the home and family. There is only one thing my husband can’t do in the home and with our family, and that is breastfeed our babies. He does every other thing and in fact, is a WAY better cook than I am and if I had my way he would do all the cooking. As it is, he does about half. Oh he also does “housewifely things†such as vacuuming, changing diapers, laundry, other sorts of cleaning, etc etc. And he doesn’t expect me to be a Fascinating Womanhood clone when he gets home from work, either.
This is why women have lost all there respect and power for 37 years now. They demand more rights than they should, which brought them down to the same level as men. Women have it already made to have people bow down to them and respect them alot. Since 1970, they have derailed all that power and respect among themselves to just leave there kids left alone by going to work just the same as the husbund. Go back to the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s ok…when a women entered the room as a guest, everyone would standup and bow down to her as a sign of good respects being the lady she was to stay at home and wear an apron. Its not like that anymore if you take one good look around you, noone standsup for women anymore than they used to when a women enters the room. Back in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s society knew all about good family values, women back then knew where there places was which decends back to the puritans. America was broughtup under good Christian moral values, if the pilgrims and purirtans were around today to see how women have changed there standards, they would be rolling over there graves. The Catholic church believes that a married women with kids who enters the workworld is the devils work and should not be accepted. This kind of thing has degraded all women who chose to leave there responsibilitys behind just so they can have there freedom and be like others. When your raising kids, there mother should be right by them to dress them for school, prepare them breakfast and drive them to school. Kids nowadays come home to either an empty house with no mother and father around or come home to an institution full of unloving strangers, and thats whats wrong with our upside down civilization
For me – as long as someone is looking out for the moral fiber of our children, then I don’t mind if it’s the man or the woman.
As long as there’s focus on the long-term wellbeing of the kids.