Totalitarian leaders both hate and fear the family.  This is because totalitarians want to vest all power in themselves and the family is a threat to this objective.  This is made apparent, for example, by the fact that one of the major policies of Marxism was to destroy the family.  Its policy is based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who partnered the book, The Origin of the Family in 1884.  This book outlined how the family could be abolished.  Some of their key points included:

  • Eliminate all religion, which they described as “the opiate of the masses”.
  • Dissolve monogamy in marriage.
  • Encourage pre and extra marital sex and other unconstrained sexual activity, including homosexuality.
  • Separate children from their natural parents by sending women to work in the factories.
  • Establish daycares and nurseries so that children will be influenced and trained by the state from their earliest years.
  • Provide free education for every child in public schools, since children are the property of the state and the state must, therefore, assume total responsibility for education.
  • Require equal obligation for all persons to work. Ironically, Karl Marx, himself, refused to be employed during his lifetime and was supported by his well-off family, friends, and donors. He spent his days reading and writing in the British Museum.
  • The state must control and centralize all means of communication.

Do these provisions sound familiar? Nearly one hundred and fifty years later, these once radical proposals have become part of our mainstream culture.  What Marx and Engels proposed in 1884, has become normal and acceptable.

Totalitarian Governments Destroy Families

Simply put, the family is built on the foundation of marriage between a man and a woman.  This reality is regarded as dangerous by totalitarian states because the family, while raising its children, also passes on tradition, culture, and faith – all of which confront the state when it wishes to impose its own will on the populace.

The family is important because it teaches the hard truths of moral values.  It forms character and gives the young the ability to grow up to become independent, stable, functioning, and compassionate individuals.  Such individuals are much more difficult to control.  As a result, such individuals and their families are regarded as a threat to totalitarian governments.

It is not surprising, therefore, that every totalitarian government has tried to destroy the family unit, including Marx, Engels, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin.  They all wanted to destroy the family by taking away the rights, responsibilities, and authority of the family.

A Daycare System is Necessary for a Totalitarian Government

Consequently, once a totalitarian government gains power, one of its first decisions is to establish a universal daycare program.  This is because totalitarians believe that children are the property of the state. Therefore, the state has the right to compel parents to turn over their offspring to the daycare system so that children will be trained to adopt the state’s values and perspectives so as to become future tools of the state.

However, realists know that babies and toddlers are better cared for at home with their mothers.  We also know that the one-size-fits-all institutional daycare programs are detrimental to children, parents, and society.  Parents, not the state, should decide how children are raised.  Most parents prefer their children to be cared for in family settings, with a relative, friend, or neighbour. Under a national daycare system, families must pay the costs of private care, themselves, while also paying for the government daycare system, by way of their taxes.  A national daycare program, therefore, is discriminatory policy.

Quebec Daycare System

The daycare system in Quebec, established in 1997, is the basis on which the federal Liberal government has modelled its national daycare plan.  The Quebec model has, however, provided evidence of the failure of the daycare system.  According to a study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2015, which was based on their prior analysis in 2005, researchers Baker, Gruber, and Milligan, found that the Quebec model falls short of quality day care. Specifically, the researchers found more hyperactivity, inattention, aggressiveness, issues with motor and social skills, plus a reduction of the child/parent relationship.  That is, alarmingly, the study indicates that placing children in the daycare system may lead to a breakdown between the child and his/her parents. When the children are cared for by others, some cease to have confidence in their own parenting skills.

This also has occurred in Sweden, which provides only one choice – a government subsidized daycare system.  A full 92% of children in Sweden, aged 18 months to five years, are in institutional daycare, which costs the government $20,000 annually per child.  Swedish taxes are among the highest in the world and the tax system is designed to encourage both parents to seek employment in the paid workforce.  Studies indicate that not only have academic performances plummeted in Sweden, but parents there do not have the necessary confidence to raise their children because their parental instincts have decreased.  Parents began to lose the ability to set limits for their children and they failed to sense their children’s needs, since the children did not develop a strong psychological attachment to their parents.  Instead, because they are being raised in large groups of their peers, they look to their peers for approval.

This Marxist experiment, to eliminate the traditional family, ended in disaster for the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. The collapse was due to a number of reasons, but one of the major causes was the breakdown of Russian society under Communism.  Mikhail Gorbachev stated in his book, Perestroika; New Thinking for our Country and the World (1988):

Perhaps the breakdown in Russian society with its prevalence of alcoholism,   divorce, abortion, etc., may be due to the separation of young children from their mothers in day care at too early an age.

However, some women are required to be the family breadwinner or must contribute to the family income.  If there is no family or place available to assist them, then they are obliged to place their children in government licensed daycare.  It is not the best situation for either the child or the parents. However, at least, we now know the problems that arise with such government operated, licensed daycare and the parents can do the best they can to offset those problems.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s National Daycare Plan

Prime Minister Trudeau and his Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, have aggressively pushed a national daycare plan in Canada.

Although they insist that the daycare policy is to assist families and children, in reality, its actual objective is quite different.  It assists the Trudeau government by encouraging women to return to the paid workforce resulting in the government receiving increased tax money to distribute, as is its custom, to acquire more political leverage with the voters.

The Trudeau government based its policy on a national daycare program on the argument that women experienced greater job losses during the pandemic.  It relied on a study, developed by a feminist economist, Armine Yalnizyan, who invented the notion of what she called, “she-session”.  Yalnizyan, however, has been associated, since 1993, with the leftist organization, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.  Her proposition was a fabrication, not supported by competent economists.  According to www.countryeconomy.com, from January 2019 to October 2021, Canada’s monthly male unemployment was consistently higher than female’s, except for eight pandemic months out of these thirty-four months.  However, female unemployment was higher by less than one percentage point in seven out of these eight pandemic months.  The highest unemployment rate was in May 2020 at 13.5% for males and 13.9% for females, a 0.4 point gender differential.

In October 2021, female unemployment in Canada was 6.2% and male unemployment was higher at 7.0%, a 0.8 percentage point advantage for women.  Women are already “back at work”.  Senior women and men, have the highest rates of unemployment in October, at 7.8% and 8.5% respectively.  They do not require daycare to return to work!

Withdrawing children from the control of their parents ensures the children are receptive to the progressive, left-wing ideology, which Trudeau and Freeland ardently promote.

The family, consisting of mother, father, and children is a fortress against the pressures being imposed on today’s parents.  It is our only defence to safeguard society.