Out to lunch

The school lunch kōrero is a fascinating exercise in not recognising intergenerational privilege. Here are the arguments I'm seeing:

• Parents fed their kids back in the day.
• It's parents' job to feed their kids, not anyone else's - and if the parents can't, then tough. Kids just have to miss out.

Hmmm.

Back in the day, some parents fed their kids. Until the 80s, the welfare state helped people in ways it doesn't now - keeping wages high (at least for men), subsidising mortgages, intervening in the housing market to keep it affordable, and providing more generous benefits, including the Family Benefit (paid to families regardless of income).

But some people actually did struggle to feed their kids. We've always cheerfully tolerated gross inequity for Māori, Pasifika, and big families (who are more often Māori and Pasifika). After all, they were cheap labour. Worse than that, we punished these families for being poor - in some cases, taking their kids and putting them in state care. And yeah, those kids got lunches, but also beatings and rape and abuse. Let's not get too righteous, shall we?

And, it's parents' job to feed their kids? Ordinarily, that's how it works, sure. Our society has made that exponentially harder over generations, but let's set that aside for a moment.

There was a time there was no support for old age. Old people were the responsibility of their family. If they had no family, or their family couldn't help, then tough. Only, we decided as a nation early last century that this is bullshit, and a failure of values. Old people deserve dignity - lunch - whatever their circumstances. And so we created the old age pension.

Am I saying there's no poverty amongst old people? Of course not. I'm just saying that, on some level at least, we care about it. We think that whatever an old person's circumstances, they shouldn't be punished with a lack of the necessities to live.

A shame some of us can't extend that same care, that dignity - what was offered them, only they will not see it - to our kids.

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