Ending the childcare arms race

These "New Conservative" MPs generally drive me mad by acting as if they are nothing to do with the status quo and have no ability or influence to change things (see also Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman). If Cates felt that strongly she would be campaigning directly for better tax support for couples and stay at home parents. She isn’t, she's just writing articles to position herself for a leadership contest and pretending the current government is nothing to do with her.....

Yes I agree. The fact society runs on unpaid caring provides by women, then demeans women for doing this is a feminist issue.
Cates has not specified what tangible changes she would suggest to address this. Because she's in the conservatives, my suspicion is it will be about shaming and pressuring women to continue to feel its their duty, rather than by supporting women to have an actual choice (or even supporting men to be more involved dad's)

But women tended to be in the home. We now have a drive to treat women at home with children as if they are unemployed, that the work they do is worthless because it is unpaid. The Wages for Housework campaign addressed this problem but was never taken seriously in the UK. Other European countries provide for a parent staying at home with young children, and the money can be spent as the parent(s) choose, e.g. on grandparent care etc. The UK's solution devalues what women do and their contribution to society, making having children a problem, and one which is self-inflicted, too.

Haven't read the article but from your OP this sounds ridiculous my bet is that babies would not vote to be taken from their mothers and put in the care of strangers for hours and hours every day.”

What about the mums that need and want to work? My bet is that if kids were given the vote they'd want to eat sweets for every meal and stay up all night gaming and watching TV.

What a load of nonsense. It's given me the rage! Just more guilt to pile on to mums who want to or need to work!

Aside from the headline, which i don’t think accurately reflects anything that Labour have actually announced to date, I think that Times article is really interesting & nuanced about who and what early years provision is for.

I agree. She's very right wing and very religious. She is anti abortion access and doesn't just think that childcare generally isn't ideal. She doesn't want children home with a parent, she wants them home with their mother specifically because "nothing is better than mummy" and "most women have jobs, not careers". This also means she blames working mothers (not working parents) for things like children being potty trained later.
She's also said that spending so much time on education makes it hard for women to decide when to have children. Again, focusing on women here, maybe we should all just not bother with being educated and having careers, we should just have children instead (not that she's done that, she has a degree from Cambridge, and a PGCE).

So I don't particularly set much store by her views on childcare, because I think she doesn't care about women and equality, she thinks we should all be at home.

(She was also criticised by the government's antisemitism advisor for a speech where she said cultural Marxism is destroying children's souls)

Nurseries have to comply to the teaching of the named British Values which are covered by OFSTED inspections.

Regardless, I find Miriam Cates a hugely worrying person. She wants to roll back on a lot of women's rights issues, such as abortion, and is very open about this. She espouses a lot of 'tradwife' despite having a high powered job herself. She is at the extreme right of a very right wing party.

She's (and I'm not being hyperbolic) a dangerous individual.

Yes exactly. This was the article that prompted her original tweet

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8aff5ff4-9a73-42fa-894f-2ab5c0280581?shareToken=98f5662ac903eabe26c97b4277a36508

Experts say the declines have been unevenly distributed across the country and in some areas parents can find it impossible to get the childcare hours they need to work full-time.
In parts of Sunderland, for example, there are now only 12 childcare places per 100 children under the age of five, a 16 per cent decline since 2018. In Doncaster, where there are 18 places per 100 children, there has been a 25 per cent drop in places since 2018.
In contrast, there has been an increase in provision in more affluent areas, where parents can afford to pay higher rates for childcare. In Twickenham there are 57 places per 100 children, an increase of 15 per cent over the last five years, while in Wokingham the number of places has risen by 23 per cent.

I imagine most would only want to look after their own household needs.

my point was statistically it’s a pointless post. Nearly everyone would like to worse less if they could afford it. It’s not a wish that’s unique to mothers.

I would imagine that the housing crisis means a lot of people are living in homes that would not be Ofsted approved for Childminding (nor does parenthood automatically equip one with the skills to become a registered childminder capable of providing professional early years care).

Similar situation for families who would be open to fostering but don’t have the bedrooms required.

The housing situation is causing a lot of knock-on problems elsewhere.

I don't know, do you think they would be keen to stay home from work and do in home childcare? There's quite a need for more childcare spaces if that appeals to them.

Cates points out it's all very well stating that there will be 'free' to parents places from 7 months but if it's not affordable for providers to do this, then those places just won't exist.

Providers haven't been told yet how much they'll be paid for the funding either. How are they expected to make business plans for it?

I'm a provider and I'm fully booked until 2026. Children already doing just 1 or 2 days will not be able to increase their hours to get all their new funding as I just don't have the space; and everywhere locally is full.

did they compare mums who would like to work less if they could afford to against the general population? Because I’m pretty sure at least 4 out of 10 people would also say that.

id like to work one day a week for my current full time pay please!

It's the only way that..

Other possibilities get discussed, that should say.

Maybe fewer women would return to work if they could afford to stay at home, but surely that needs to be considered individualistically by families when they are making their reproduction plans.

This same argument can be used the opposite way. "Maybe more women would like to return to work if they could afford childcare, but surely that needs to be considered individualistically by families when they are making their childcare plans."

If it's going to be an individualistic family decision, then that suggests no special incentives be given by the state to any particular set of choices . As soon as the state starts subsidizing one, every family will be reacting to the various incentives created by that. And sometimes it goes well beyond incentives, in those countries with free childcare women (or men, but this inevitably affects women more) choosing not to work and stay at home becomes the prerogative of the wealthy.

The nature of capitalism is such that it wants to bring more and more of human life into the formal market. Typically states are preoccupied with economics rather than less quantifiable values, even when in the long run the financial trade-offs are unclear. So their tendency is always to support the idea that getting more people into paid work is the goal - it's all about increasing measurable productivity. So it's nice to have someone in a government position who might be inclined to think in another direction. It's the only way that

As for the argument that it's good for women for them all to be incentivized into paid work, that is surely something women can decide for themselves, they don't need anyone else telling them that, be it other women or the state. Or that it's best to have all kids in care because it's better for those who have neglectful or abusive parents - I'm sorry, that does not mean the default for all kids should be paid care settings.

I also really hate this insistence we agree with everything or discard everything as, I don't know, 'hyperbolic'.

I agree with parts of this article, disagree with others and surely we WANT MPs who are willing to challenge the status quo in their party as Cates is clearly doing through this article? Isn't that part of her job in a democracy?

She's not been a Minister, so her ability to change Tory policy is extremely limited. You can see that across several areas. She's also been challenging Ministers over safeguarding in schools.

I wish more MPs would step away from the groupthink and whipped opinions of their party, I think it's healthy in a democracy that they be allowed to do so and to challenge what their party is doing. Otherwise you end up with the inability to discuss ideas and, ultimately, change things.

One other factor here is how flexible employers are for women who wish to also do caring for their children and sometimes elderly relatives too which as Cates points out saves the government vast amounts of money. Obviously there are some jobs with limited flexibility but I do think a lack of flexibility where there could be more does hold many women back and keep them in low paid work which fits around the kids/ elder care when they could be contributing to the economy in a way which is better for them and for employers.

And for all the claims from politicians that they want women to work - as someone who had a SAHM stint, there was virtually zero support for getting back to work in a job using my (government paid for) degree and previous experience. There were women returner schemes in some very limited industries (and not the one I worked in). Every resource I accessed to help people get back to work was for the very young starting out or jobs like caring or call centres or retraining as a programmer and that was basically it.

There are a lot of good points in this article - the child benefit system where a family earning 45k loses child benefit but one earning 80k does not is clearly unfair. I do think it's worth having a discussion whether a system that forces a mother on benefits return to stacking shelves in a supermarket rather than staying home and looking after her child prior to school age (which would be her preference) is really the best one, and that's the current situation.

These conversations always end up discussing people who are well off and I think that's a real shame, but perhaps not surprising. Someone working in zero hours contracts with no pension doesn't really benefit from things like 'career progression' in the early years for their children, they also won't be using the best nurseries..

The biggest issue raised in this article is the quality and reality of childcare provision. In theory, yes, a good quality nursery with consistent caregivers may well be better for a family and a child than the mother staying at home but that's not the reality for a hell of a lot of the population.

When I was looking at nurseries for my child, only the more expensive ones had staff that had been there more than a year. The turnover was horrendous. There were a lot of people working there clearly 'travelling through'. Childcare staff do not earn sufficient money to guarantee a quality environment or to encourage consistent staff in many cases and as Cates points out it's all very well stating that there will be 'free' to parents places from 7 months but if it's not affordable for providers to do this, then those places just won't exist.

That said, I do think there's some interesting thinking in Cates' views. The UK's insistence on taxing people as individuals without allowing for their number of dependents is very unusual globally, and I think it's unfair.

And a lot of the social and financial problems we find ourself in are the result of an untrammelled free market in housing, which distorts the entire UK economy in so many ways, and has funnelled a lot of benefit and government money into the hands of private landlords. So her suggestion of a far more socialised housing system is onto something - I can't see the Tories going for it though, and the current Labour Party are unlikely to go for anything radical enough to make a difference.

2/3 of women would choose to work fewer hours yet 4/10, so less than half, would want to give up work altogether. Therefore, 1/3 of women are working the right level for them but most women want to continue working after they’ve had a child. Therefore, childcare needs to be affordable, accessible and well funded to ensure stability for families and children using that setting.

The poll only asks mothers what they want, not fathers. So the obvious question is, these mothers who want to work work less or stop work altogether, is the burden of care equal in their homes? Or are they running themselves ragged trying to work and do most of the care for their children? If care was equal in their households, would these women still want to reduce their hours?

Women on lower incomes naturally leave the job market because the cost of childcare is more than their wage. As a society we look at it as the woman’s job to cover childcare expenses and if her wage doesn’t cover childcare, what’s the point in working. This article reinforces that it’s a woman’s job to stay home and look after the children, lest her working causes irreparable damage to their child but obviously the father working has no impact. The women polled are middle to high income earners, therefore their outgoings are naturally higher and would probably be excluded from other incentives for housing and tax.

It’s a flawed and simplistic view to just blame the Government. It’s much deeper than that. What is happening to encourage men to do more? Shared parental was brought in and that’s a great incentive but it ignores the fact that on average men significantly outward women and that most employers don’t do enhanced maternity leave, let alone enhanced paternity leave. What is being done to encourage employers to be more flexible for male and female employees (and open to everyone not just parents)? What can be done to help those working in sectors that don’t have flexibility such as healthcare, social work, education?

Misrepresenting a statistic to say most women would stay home with their children is lazy and damaging to those women who didn’t enjoy staying home with their children and were desperate to get back to work after maternity leave.

Childcare is not always a bad thing. I've cared for children (from rich backgrounds too) who've arrived aged 2 not being able to stand, aged 3 not being able to talk (no SEN). Being at home is not always best. There can be a middle ground.

But I think we need an overhaul of everything - not just living costs, but people's expectations of life eg do you need a 4 bed with an acre land as your first house and two holidays abroad each year? Yes costs have increased, but so have expectations...

Working class families shared childcare out, but families are no longer all located in the same village so we’re shit out of luck on that front nowadays.

When I had my first child it was 3 months paid and 3 months additional mat leave, I went back to work when he was 6 months
By the time I had my third that had gone up to a year. It was a lot more traumatic for both of us leaving him at 1 year because that is peak age for separation anxiety.
I think this preoccupation with children needing to be with their mothers intensively is quite a modern thing and quite middle class. Historically children would have been looked after by a range of people who weren't their mother. It's most important the child knows the caregiver, not that it's their mother.

Clearly the million mothers who say they would like to work more hours but can't because of lack of access to childcare are irrelevant.

Bear in mind that enabling two-parent families with children to live on a single income so one parent can be a SAHP is all very well if they stay together but rapidly falls to pieces if the single income earner buggers off or becomes incapacitated. There's much more pressure to stay together if the SAHP hasn't worked at all for six years (assuming a 2 year gap between 2 children).

Arming the CSA would help of course, but I don't think that's part of Cates' plan, and it's no use if the earner is incapacitated.

I wanted to stay home with my children in the early years, this was helped by the government in my country because they pay a child home care benefit to families that keep their children under 3 years old home rather than put them in municipal childcare. This helps free up more spaces for the children that need childcare, and helps families afford to have a parent stay home for those first few years (its not a big amount though, it only helps, it certainly doesn't replace a salary but if a few hundred euros a month makes the difference between being able to afford to stay home or not then its a big help). It can also be used to pay grandparents to look after your child so you can work part time or whatever but not need to send your child to nursery.

That's a way the UK government could help parents (most likely mums) who want to stay home, stay home.