When it comes to assumptions about primary caregivers, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) may be guilty of being socially backwards.
Case in point: Jason Beaudoin, a father who has to ask his common-law wife's permission to have the benefits made out to him... and she is not his children's biological mother.
The Child Care Benefit, and who is supposed to get it, has been accused of having many problems before, especially in the cases of shared custody. But now, they're under fire for making assumptions about the gender of the primary caregiver.
Canada Revenue Agency fully admits on their own website that they are predisposed to assuming that it's a woman.
Primarily responsible for the care and upbringing of a child – means that you are responsible for such things as supervising the child's daily activities and needs, making sure the child's medical needs are met, and arranging for child care when necessary. If there is a female parent who lives with the child, we usually consider her to be this person.
It is true that, historically, females have been the primary caregivers. But times aren't just a-changin'; they flat-out have changed. There are more separated couples and more men being assigned primary custody, more stay-at-home parents who are men, more blended families, and more same sex couples than there were in the baby-boom era.
While Canada Revenue Agency has never denied a different parent the child care benefits (at least as far as I've been able to research), it appears that at the very least, the CRA are forcing some people to jump through extra hoops because they Ass-U-Me, even when there's some fairly clear-cut circumstances and little ambiguity. Beaudoin, for instance, is the only one with legal custody of the two children.
I strongly believe in advocating for women's rights and equality. But this I believe is unfair to the dad. As we grow into the 21st century and past the antiquated beliefs of our parents and grandparents, we need to ensure that we maintain balance, too. Our "social adolescence" will be a phase awkward enough to grow up through without causing extra strife by diminishing or neglecting to acknowledge men's roles as caregivers and nurturers. The fact is that there's every possibility that we don't know what the job economy will look like in 10 years. Millennials are already having difficulty finding a place in the workforce, and there are many murmurs about giving people basic living incomes.
Who knows? We might return to that 1950's "golden age" of a one-worker household after all - but we might find that a lot of the people staying at home to raise the kids are the dads. And if that's what works in that home?
I think we should celebrate that.
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