Stay-at-home mums: Is the government hostile?

March 22, 2013, 4:38 PM GMT+0

John Humphrys asks: Are the government’s plans to help working mothers fair to those who stay at home to look after their children?

The government has laid out plans to help parents with childcare costs. The aim is clear: to make it easier for mothers to go out to work. But Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, was attacked on a radio phone-in programme by a mother who stays at home to look after her children. She accused the government of discriminating against women like her. Is that a fair charge?

It is widely acknowledged that the costs of childcare in Britain are among the highest in the world – so high, in fact, that many simply can’t afford it. The amount they’re able to earn barely covers the cost of the childcare, so they don’t bother. They stay at home. The government wants to encourage more women to work – partly because it’s good for the wider economy. The question is how. And it’s a very tricky question. It wants to help parents by subsidising the cost and it’s also trying to reduce those costs. Both approaches are getting it into hot water.

To cut the costs of childcare the government has announced a relaxation in the regulations governing the sector. In particular it proposes that the ratio between the number of carers and the number of children being looked after should be less stringent. At the moment, the ratio of carers to children aged one or under is one-to-three: the government wants to change this to one-to-four. For two year-olds the ratio will rise from one-to-four to one-to-six.

Obviously this will make child-caring cheaper. But the government also wants to use the change to raise the standards of childcare by requiring greater training and qualification for childcarers. It claims the new system will provide not only cheaper but better childcare.

This approach, however, has been attacked by one of its own advisers, Professor Cathy Nutbrown, who reviewed existing childcare policy for the government prior to its proposed changes. She concluded that the changes will “shake the foundations” of childcare. In particular she says that the relaxed ratios will “dilute” the effects of raising staff quality. She said: “The difference will be too few adults with too many little children; too few moments in the day for a toddler to have uninterrupted time with their key person and too few early years practitioners to talk and work with parents.”

As for subsidising childcare costs, the government’s new plan aims to give financial help to an estimated two and a half million parents. The plan involves providing online childcare vouchers through which parents can claim back 20% of their childcare costs up to a value of £1,200 per year for each child. This new system will come into effect in the autumn of 2015 and will initially be restricted to children under five before being extended to those under twelve. It will be available to families only where both parents are working at least sixteen hours a week and to single parents working similarly; and parents earning up to £150,000 a year will be eligible. Parents in receipt of tax credits can claim up to 70% of their childcare costs.

Those who won’t be able to claim any help with childcare are families in which one parent (usually the mother) stays at home to look after the children. And it is this that has caused some people to accuse the government of discriminating against traditional families and mothers who think their prime responsibility is to look after their kids.

One such mother (who did not give her name) attacked Nick Clegg on these grounds during his weekly phone-in programme on LBC this week. The woman, who stays at home to look after her two small children, told Mr Clegg: “You probably think what I do is a worthless job.” She contrasted the system of child benefit, which she regarded as “a fair way of recognising everybody’s legitimate choice” with the new childcare voucher system, which she saw as discriminatory because it went “only to mums who go out to work”.

In reply, Mr Clegg said: “Like everybody, I massively admire your choice. You should be entirely free and proud of the choices you make in your own life to look after your children in the way that you want. I hope no politician would ever seek to judge you for that. This is all about what we can do in government to give people the greatest choice that they want and need in their own lives.”

The logic of the caller’s position is that all parents, irrespective of whether they work or not, should have extra financial help from the government to look after their children (perhaps in the form of increased child benefit). But the government’s purpose is different: it is to get more people, especially women, into work. The question is: should it specifically be helping mothers to do so?

The case in favour is essentially twofold. First, many mothers want to be able to go out to work because they feel they have a lot to contribute, because they find their work more interesting than what can often seem like the boring drudgery of childcare and because they want their family to enjoy the higher standard of living that can come only through the increased income gained from going out to work. Secondly, the government takes the view that the economy and society in general can only gain if the talents and efforts of women are fully exploited by helping them go back to work after they have had children.

The case against is, unsurprisingly, often put by mothers who choose not to go out to work – not necessarily because the cost of childcare makes it prohibitive, but because they think it is bad for their children. It is very likely that some of these mothers will look wryly on Professor Nutbrown’s complaint that the government’s changes in childcare regulations will lead to “too few moments in the day for a toddler to have uninterrupted time with their key person.” That “key person”, they will argue, has to be the toddler’s mother and there can be no adequate substitute for her, no matter how generous the ratio of carer to child is required to be.

Those who take this view (not only mothers of small children) also believe that the economic argument is based on too narrow a calculation. It may well be, they say, that GDP will be higher and we’ll all be a bit richer, but will that necessarily produce a better society? Will we have happier, more balanced children or are we risking their welfare and the greater good of society by being so keen to help mothers to go out to work?

What's your view?

  • Do you support or oppose the government’s aim of reducing the costs of childcare and subsidising those who wish to make use of childcare?
  • Do you support the government’s plan to relax the regulations governing the ratio of carers to children, or do you agree with Professor Nutbrown that it will be harmful to childcare?
  • What do you make of the government’s new system to subsidise childcare?
  • Do you think it is right that it should be available only to parents who work or do you think it should be extended to mothers who stay at home to look after their children?
  • And what do you make of the fundamental argument about whether helping mothers to work is overall beneficial to the economy and society or whether it would be better if we encouraged mothers to stay at home to look after their children?

Let us know your views.