Last week, a tweet from Guardian journalist Alexandra Topping went viral. The reason? It resonated with such a huge number of angry parents. It read: “I know a pregnant primary school teacher who is giving up her job for a flexible admin role because her wages won't cover childcare costs of 2 children under-3. Why do we just accept that in this country? Seriously - we can revolt for football, but we just shrug at this bullshit?”
We’ve reached a point, here in the UK, where childcare costs aren’t just an expensive but affordable outgoing. Now parents are being forced to give up jobs they love and careers they’ve trained for, because they just can’t afford to work.
As the parents of toddler twins, my husband and I know only too well how this feels. During my pregnancy, we did the maths and worked out that with me being the higher earner and self-employed without a nice maternity package from an employer, it made more sense for me to go back to work after the birth and for my husband to take a break from his job as a primary school teacher to look after our three kids.
It was only ever supposed to be a temporary arrangement, with a loose plan for him to go back to work around our twins’ first birthday. But when we looked into childcare costs, what we discovered was utterly staggering. Our local nursery (which our eldest – who’s now ten – went to) quoted us fees of £99 per day, per child (not even a whiff of a sibling discount). So if my husband was to go back to his teaching job, it would cost us (wait for it….) £52,000 a year to have our twins attend the nursery full-time. And spoiler alert: primary school teachers don’t earn £52,000 a year.
Yes, for most people with one baby that cost would be halved to £26,000 a year (still not affordable to us) and yes there are other childcare options available to us (childminders are usually more cost-effective, especially when there’s more than one pre-school child to be looked after) but the nursery environment appeals to us, knowing how much our eldest benefited from running around with loads of kids and having structured playing and learning sessions.
So two and a half years on, my husband is still at home looking after our twins because we can’t afford for him to go back to work.
Almost two thirds of those that return to work either work fewer hours, change jobs or stop working due to childcare costs, according to research by charity Pregnant Then Screwed.
But how on earth are we in the situation – here in the UK – where the cost of childcare is a barrier to working? Currently, there is a gap of up to two and a half years between the end of maternity pay or shared parental leave and the start of government subsidised childcare. In the school term after your child’s third birthday, they are eligible to receive up to 30 hours of free childcare a week. But until that point, there’s no government subsidy and parents have to either foot the whole childcare bill themselves or do the childcare themselves. As such, almost two thirds of those that return to work either work fewer hours, change jobs or stop working due to childcare costs, according to research by charity Pregnant Then Screwed.
We can clearly see, looking at how other countries support parents of young children, the benefits of properly subsidised childcare for under 5s. A 2019 UNICEF report praised Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Portugal for their family-friendly policies. “There is no time more critical to children’s brain development – and therefore their futures – than the earliest years of life,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “We need governments to help provide parents with the support they need to create a nurturing environment for their young children. And we need the support and influence of the private sector to make this happen.”
Childcare is an investment, not a cost.
But it’s not just the children who benefit from this support, the economy does too. Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, says that for every £1 our government invests in childcare, we get £3 back. “Childcare is an investment, not a cost,” she says. “Unfortunately, our Government is too focused on the initial cost and so they cut corners resulting in a childcare sector that is on the brink of collapse. And while countries including Canada and the US have realised the importance of a properly functioning and properly funded childcare sector and have recently pledge to invest large sums of money on improving it, our Government chose to further cut funding to the childcare sector in December 2020 (right in the middle of a pandemic) which, according to analysis by the Labour Party, will potentially result in the closure of around 30,000 childcare facilities before the end of this year.
"Ultimately, all of this means an increase in child poverty and an increase in the gender pay gap.” In other words, whether you are a parent or not, this problem is a feminist issue that’s likely to affect how much you earn.
So it’s a no-brainer, right? The government properly subsidising childcare would not only allow more parents to go back to work, help children’s development, and help the economy too. We should probably just sit back and wait for the government announcement that they’re investing heavily to improve the childcare sector. AS IF.
READ MORE: The Childcare Conundrum: What If You Can’t Afford To Work After Having Kids?
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