This week, we had a rare example of a family-friendly policy coming into effect: working parents of children aged 9 months or over will now have access to 30 hours of free childcare a week during term time. I should be elated by this news: I went back to work part-time after 11 months of maternity leave on Monday. My son is now at a childminder 3 days a week, and so this policy is saving me roughly £360 a week (a full-time nursery place in Oxford, where I live, will easily set you back £2,000 a month without any funding).
Yet my feelings are mixed at best. Partly this is because I know that the government has promised the moon but has in reality only paid for a small asteroid. Nurseries claim that the scheme is financially unsustainable because the funding was set before significant rises in their costs as a result of Rachel Reeves’ budget. The shortfall means that two-thirds of nurseries are limiting the number of funded places, whilst only a third of nurseries are offering funded places for under-2s at all. Many nurseries are also now charging parents for ‘extras’ such as food, milk, nappies and suncream, whilst others are penalising parents using the funding by making them pay more for any ‘top-up’ hours.
Empowering women isn’t just about the freedom to go back to wor
There is another reason for my ambivalence, though. Yes, extending free childcare is good news for mothers who really, definitively want to go back to work. Yet what about those who don’t? For the vast majority of parents, including myself, returning to work is not so much a choice but a matter of financial necessity: there was never any question if I would return to work or not because our mortgage is dependent on two incomes.
I’m not alone: the think tank Civitas estimates that there are 2 million mothers of pre-school children who would like to reduce their hours but can’t afford to do so. Meanwhile, another survey found that 77 per cent of first-time mothers said that household cost was their main reason for returning to work. Soaring rents, increased mortgage rates and ever-inflating bills have only made these pressures worse (the average rent for a two-bed property in Oxford is £2,500 a month, without bills).
I don’t want to seem ungrateful: for many thousands of parents this policy will bring welcome relief. Yet I can’t help but feel that policymakers continue to overlook mothers who, given the choice and financial freedom, would rather stay at home, especially when their children are small. Having just endured an (at times pretty gruelling) year of nappy changes, feeding and entertaining, I have a newfound respect for stay-at-home mothers, who make huge sacrifices but are undervalued in society because their contribution can’t be measured in straightforward economic terms. Domestic and child-rearing work may not be paid, but it is still very much work.
There are two sides to this coin. We should financially help parents to get back in the workplace, if that is what they wish to do. Yet we should also financially help parents who want to stay at home too. On Tuesday, MP Miriam Cates tweeted:
Spending 30 hours a week in institutional childcare from the age of 9 months is categorically NOT the best start in life. For under twos there is strong evidence linking long hours in childcare with poor outcomes. Babies need their mothers. Use the money to make this possible.
Now I don’t agree with Cates’ assumption that childcare is not giving your child the best start in life: the evidence is mixed at best, it will be hugely context dependent, and the last thing we need is another stick to beat already-guilty working mothers with.
However, she is right to push for more inclusive family-friendly policies, rather than ones which solely benefit working parents. For example, Cates has called for tax reforms which would recognise families through ‘household taxation, rather than individual taxation’, such as is the case in France and Germany, where couples with young children pay proportionately less tax than their UK equivalents.
Alternatively, instead of dedicating all subsidies to professional childcare, the government could extend the effective benefit of 30 hours of free childcare to those who prefer to stay at home in the form of an equivalent income supplement.
There are lots of options we could explore, but we need to reframe our collective mindset here: empowering women isn’t just about the freedom to go back to work but also the freedom to stay at home and raise a family. Otherwise, we will just continue to perpetuate this falsehood that women can ‘have it all’ and should always want to: an expectation that means many women are burnt out or barely getting by.
More affordable childcare is one answer to the family versus career conundrum, but it is not the only one. First, we have to ensure that the question for mothers of whether or not to return to work is a genuine one.
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