I want to offer a practical solution to two interrelated problems that are usually treated separately. One concerns how to keep one's skills from becoming out-of-date while on parental leave, the other is how to support younger people who would like to have children early but see this as an obstacle to attaining their goals in education or at work.
Our traditional view of schooling is that one finishes the secondary stage and then either gets a job or goes into higher education. In higher ed nowadays it is increasingly common that learners obtain one or two master's degrees, and many even a PhD or other professional qualifications. I think all in all this is a good trend: it is linked to higher GDP levels, higher satisfaction levels of learners and workers, more skilled labour force on the job market, and in general a more educated society.
This phenomena of longer learning time is linked to the facts that people start working and settle later, and as a consequence also have children later. That people start working later is not in itself a problem, but it is surely true that people start contributing to their countries' GDP later, thus affecting the viability of the social, education, healthcare, pension and defense systems as well.
Late childbirth has two obvious effects: couples who have kids later are more likely to have fewer kids, and since grandparents and other relatives might be in their seventies or eighties, they can help less both with child-raising, financial support, and in general they require more support themselves too. Not to mention the fact that they have less time to spend with their grandchildren, which might be a significant emotional loss to the whole family. (I'm not saying that people used to be able to spend more time with their grandchildren in earlier times - that could be false since not only has the average age of having kids gone up in the countries with the largest per capita income, but also the average life expectancy is much higher. But there probably isn't a proportionate growth of time one gets to spend with one's grandchildren.) Of course I'm not arguing that we should all have kids early. But there are people who would like to but feel that they cannot. My suggestions are supposed to be helpful for them.
Another problem that the phenomenon of starting to work later is linked to is that people who want to have a career and start working in the second half of their twenties or even in their early thirties will be even less likely to have kids soon. Spending 1-3 years out of work seems to be a big loss for many individuals as well as many employers. Woman are especially often - implicitly - threatened not to have kids if they want to advance on the career ladder.
In light of this, the suggestion I want to make could help with three issues:
1) They could enable people to keep their skills and even acquire new skills while at home with their young children,
2) Being able to keep their skills up to date could in turn make it easier for them to choose to go on parental leave, as well as making this a more attractive possibility for employers, and
3) This could in turn lead to people being more likely to go into a job after a BA/BSc and pursue advanced studies at later stages, thus starting to contribute to production sooner and spending time later to upgrade their skills and abilities.
The suggestion is basically this:
Many universities are offering now distance learning options. There are excellent websites where one can enroll into academic courses for free, or enroll for a small fee and if completing all assessment successfully get a certificate testifying that one has acquired credits in that universities system for the course after having been assessed by uni stuff.
Most such courses not only require people to listen to presentations and talks, but also to solve exercises and tasks, sometimes even to work in groups, and they almost always provide forums to talk with fellow learners and teachers.
Thus, such an experience has many benefits:
- It can help learners to acquire new skills, or keep their knowledge up-to-date,
- It can help parents who spend an increased amount of time at home alone without much adult company by enabling to be part of a community working towards the same goal, to make friends, and to experience something different from work,
- It can offer benefits to employers: parents on parental leave might get new skills and abilities, in any field - one might think of genetics, statistics, programming, computer literacy, marketing related knowledge, and so on,
- It can enable younger people who went into a job after completing their secondary education or their undergraduate education to pursue further studies that they are interested in, to keep their CV more competitive, and to recharge after a period in work without losing the opportunity to advance their career further,
and
- It can benefit the state by helping couples to have children at an age when they want to and see it fit for themselves, and they can at the same time become more skilled future employees.
Such programmes could be fostered by the state and employers. Higher education institutions (and probably also secondary education institutions in cases where needed) would be more than happy to offer such courses. Distance learning could be tailored to the time and needs of stay-home parents. In fact, one of the big advantages of distance learning is that many courses don't actually require that the learner always does things at set times. Videos uploaded to secured university sites can be viewed and reviewed at any time, exercises and tasks can be practiced and completed whenever most convenient, and so on.
Promoting such programmes could in the long run also be a tool for gender equality: parents - whether male or female - wouldn't have to worry that much about their career and could undertake parenting in any way that they can agree on. Mixed stay-at-home programmes could be encouraged, where for a certain amount of time one parent is at home and for another amount of time the other parent.
Of course the legal framework would be very important: such programmes should not become a tool for systematically requiring women to stay at home, nor be a tool by employers to force parents at home with their small children and newborn babies to put in long hours into acquiring complex new skills and mastering large materials. This should be an opportunity, not a requirement.
In financial terms, the state could support families who want to participate in this programme in buying computers and enrolling into online courses, as well as offering initiatives and funds to universities that participate in such schemes.
A brief disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this topic, so, if my suggestions are outdated or very obviously flawed please let me know in the comments or in an email.
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