Canada does not have a national system of early child care and education for young children and provincial systems are woefully inadequate in providing either care or early childhood education. Canada has one of the least generous maternity and parental leave systems from the perspectives of proportion of women covered, size of benefit, and length of leave among industrialized nations - with the exception of the United States. The absence of strong family policies thus remains a major barrier to the social and economic equality of women. It is also a major reason for Canada's unacceptably high rates of child and family poverty. Raising children is increasingly seen as a private responsibility.
Children are, in many ways, treated as being no different than commodities or life-style choices.
While society pays lip service to the importance of children and parenting, this is not consistently reflected in public policy support to parents. The value of Canada's child benefit is one of the lowest among OECD countries for modest and middle income families. This country's child benefit is inadequate to bridge the gap between low wages and the living costs of working families. The federal government has never played a strong role in family policies and, in the 1990s, its role has been diminishing. Although Canada's commitment to families with children has never been exemplary, past generations of families received considerably more support from governments than young families of today.