We learned this week, once again, that being a parent is a very special thing in Canadian politics.

Being a parent has given Justice Minister Peter MacKay, father to a 1-year-old son, some particular insight into issues such as marijuana policy and the lack of women judges.

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, father of three young children, brandished his parenthood to proclaim Conservative attack ads against him “disgusting.”

And when MacKay took an “as a parent” swipe at Trudeau on Twitter, Canadian political types responded with a flurry of their own parental rebuttals, making the hashtag #AsAParent briefly popular in the Twitterverse late in the week.

One might wonder, with all this back and forth among political parents, who’s minding the kids?

More seriously though, perhaps we should be asking how parenthood has become some kind of blanket assurance of noble motives in politics. Or why we assume that the mere fact of having children — not exactly a unique condition in human experience — gives a person a heightened capacity for compassion.

For parents or non-parents, isn’t the true test of empathy your ability to see yourself in someone else’s shoes — someone who doesn’t look or act or live like you? On this score, we have no reason to believe that Canadian parents are more, or less, caring than any other kind of people in the population.

The decades-long debate over national child care is a case in point. Demand for such a program surges during baby booms in the population, and then dies away as children get older and parents have new concerns: affordable post-secondary education, or jobs for the kids they want to get out of the house.

We could see this as a simple case of supply and demand in the market of social policy, but it also may be a sad statement of parental selfishness — an inability to see needs beyond their own backyard (or basement, in the case of those stay-at-home adult kids).

Remember that eight years ago the current Conservative government calculated — correctly, it turns out — that Canadian parents would rather have $100 in their own pockets each month than pay for programs that would care for other people’s children too.

But are parents of any other political persuasion different?

It’s ironic that Trudeau has been weathering controversy over abortion the past month — standing firm on a woman’s right to not have children — since his new Liberal party has placed such a premium on young parents like him.

There have been regular boasts about how many young parents are in Trudeau’s inner circle of advisers; the dozens of children, collectively, under their care.

The big Liberal convention in Montreal earlier this year was punctuated with praise for moms and dads with babies and toddlers. A highlight for attendees was the video appearance of Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire, flanked by Xavier and Ella-Grace, sending regrets to the gathering because of the imminent birth of her third child. Fittingly, the prize of party president went to Anna Gainey, also mother of three young children and the first person to campaign for that job while expecting a baby.

Long-time Liberals joked in the corridors that they would have to adopt some kids to be taken seriously in the new Liberal Party of Young Parents.

If we glide into the assumption that only young parents care about the welfare of children in this country, the demographics show that we’re in for a bracing challenge in this still-pretty-new century.

Over the past two big census reports this past decade, Statistics Canada has reported that there are more couples living in households without children than there are couples living with children. The trend first surfaced in the 2006 census, but the gap widened in 2011, with 29.5 per cent of Canadian households composed of couples without children, compared to 26.5 per cent of couples living in households with children. As well, the 2011 census showed that more Canadians — 27.6 per cent — are living in one-person households.

In short, the childless households vastly outnumber the homes where two parents are living with kids.

There’s the peril of letting political rhetoric fall into the parent trap — many Canadians aren’t going about their daily lives taking care of young children.

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Luckily, Canada has a rich history of citizens caring about people who aren’t exactly like them — welcoming newcomers here, going off to fight in wars in faraway places for distant causes, sending children to learn languages other than their own.

Being a parent is without a doubt something to celebrate, but it shouldn’t be a stick to whack political opponents. Nor should it be the price of admission to a conversation about what’s best for Canadian families — with kids or without them.

Susan Delacourt is a member of the Star’s parliamentary bureau. She can be reached at sdelacourt@thestar.ca

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