When did wraparound care become commonplace?

[daysonmybicycle]

I was born in 1980 and don’t think there was anything like that in place when I was at school. I think my granny used to collect me from school until I was about eight and then I let myself home. Not sure what others did or in school holidays. I think childminders were a ‘thing’ but not very well regulated or checked.

Our wraparound care in the 60s was my DFs mum who cared for us when my mum worked pt, but for our DC in the early 00s we lived too far from DPs (and they were older anyway) so we used care.

My kids were born late 80s and early 90s. As the youngest started school, after school care was started followed by pre school option. None of it was there in 1990 when my first started school, but I was living out in the sticks, so I imagine we were late to that party.

At that time, lots of what had been playgroups run by parents started closing and all day care in the school holidays started too. In the 1980s, I'd registered and worked as a childminder - half hour chat, police check and visit from fire officer. When I used a childminder in the 1990s, there was more regulation, but no Ofsted or anything like that. As all that came in, childminders became all or nothing because they had to run as small businesses rather than a neighbour picking your kids up with theirs and giving them a meal for cash.

For mums who did work, it wasn’t unusual to pay a neighbour a bit to childmind. But now people seem to get really funny about that! So wrap around care at schools filled a hole

Run by your state school? Or with a childminder?

Breakfast clubs/afterschool clubs definitely didn’t exist in my primary schools, and I went to 4 different school areas (we moved around a lot).

My mum was a supply teacher and just took me to work with her from about age 3.. I remember sitting at a desk in many schools colouring whilst she taught and then all the kids played with me at break time. Couldn't do that now. This was very early 80s

This reminds me that my school in the 1980s had "latchkey club" after school. I never went as my mum was home but it sounded fun to me!

I'm 60 and DSis (younger) and I definitely walked home from primary school in the last few years before secondary by ourselves, to an empty house.
Sometimes we used to go to a friend's house on the way.
Both parents worked.

I'm in my 40's and there was an after-school club in my village in the 80's. It was shared between the two primary schools, so much smaller provision than usual today. I didn't go but a couple of my friends did. Staff from the other school would walk after school club kids from our school to theirs (5 mins walk or so, the schools were pretty close together).

Also my aunt was a childminder when I was little so again, they did exist, just maybe fewer of them? She has little ones all day and some after school kids.

I was born in the mid-80s, and where we were there weren’t nurseries or wrap-around care, so my mum had to give up work. The only mums I remember working worked either school hours, in a school, or evenings.
I ended up having to go to a fee-paying school (state primary couldn’t cope with me) and that had wrap-around care. Mum ended up retraining as a teacher and got a job at the school I was at - so reduced fees + no need for wraparound/holiday care.
Once I hit secondary age, mum left teaching and went back into industry, and I just let myself in in the afternoon.

That’s true. Must’ve been this, I’m 52. No TAs though just playing in yard before school with teachers watching or just ourselves. The after school activities though probably lasted approx up to after an hour after school maybe more if sports matches like Netball.

I’m 52 and DM restrained as a teacher when I was 4/5 so she could pick us up.

My friends all had mums who were SAHM or worked part time. My best friend’s mum worked full time but if she didn’t pick up her DD then much older brother and sisters would or she went home by herself later so latch key kid.

Had a key from the age of 9. Before then, if my Mum worked, used to go to Auntie Marge, Vi, Joan, not an aunt but a neighbour, for an hour or so. School holidays, used to hang out with other kids at the factory where my Mum worked, climbing on machinery outside, and doing all sorts of health and safety nightmare things.

Both my DP worked FT (I was born in 1980). We had a live in nanny. DM and I were comparing costs and this cost substantially less (inflation adjusted) than I paid for my DC’s childminder. My friends either had nannnies or au pairs or a SAHM.

It wasn’t in place in the past, largely because a lot more women were SAHMs - because housing was relatively a lot cheaper and you didn’t need two salaries to afford to live anywhere halfway decent.

When there was no such thing as wraparound childcare, when nurseries were few and far between, and if you didn’t have family or friends willing to help (certainly the case for my DM and many others) you couldn’t go to work until children were a lot older anyway. I was 14 before my DM went back to work - considered old enough to mind after-school siblings who were 4 and 6 years younger.

Though having said that, my Gdcs love after-school club. Gds was once annoyed with dh for mistakenly going to fetch him half an hour early - and asked him to come back later!

They definitely did. I went to one when my Mum went back to work, in 1985

Where on earth does this idea come from that women had to give up work when they got married so late in the 20th century?
Maybe it was more common in the 20s/30s when my grandmother was young, and probably only for more ‘respectable’ jobs like secretaries, but my mum and all my friends mum’s went to university and worked all the way through getting married and having children. I was born in the mid 60s.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_bar

It didn't become illegal until 1975, and was still in practice in several jobs in the 1970s.

I was a key latch kid so presumably when people got more paranoid about kids being on their own / just playing with other kids.

Because many jobs still had a ban on married women working until the 70's, sadly. It wasn't that common but it was definitely a "thing".

The local (rural area) kids may be half a dozen of us ages 5 to about 11 walked to the bus stop together caught the bus to school, then after school caught the bus back together and walked home from the bus stop. Both my parents worked so often no one home when we left for school or came home, we let ourselves in or played outside. 60s - 70s. Never even thought about child care.

Very similar here - including ‘The young Doctors ‘ and ‘Take the high road’ 😄

I do remember being the last one to be picked up from school on occasions, standing outside whilst everyone had long gone and an hour later DM would turn up in her little fiat! Nobody seemed to care and I remember watching all the teachers leave - I can honestly say that it didn’t do me any harm, I dont remember feeling anxious or unsafe but then life was very different back then.

The last official marriage bars in the UK were I 1973, but the fact they had been in existence meant there was still an expectation that many women would stop working when they married, and if not then, when they got married.

When we were clearing my father's stuff after hus desk, there was an unfilled tax return form from 1973, which had a section for dependent adult daughters. The '70s was also when you could start getting credit cards and mortgages without needing a MSN to sign off on it. And equal pay came in by law, and that's still not a reality everywhere.

It depends who you're looking at for care - some people always had nannies or au pairs, but that wasn't an option for most. In rural areas, the school bus could mean some children would have to leave early/get back late, depending where they were on the route (I was last on/first off for our bus, but for others their journey could be over an hour.) School finished later, too - our last lesson finished around 4pm, whereas these days, they all seem to be out by 3:15.

If Mum wouldn't be at home, she would often arrange for us to have tea in town with one of our friends, and then would collect us later - this was a massive treat for us, but was probably more about practicalities. And we sometimes had people come to tea with us, too. When we were primary age, Mum was part of a baby-sitting circle, so they could use that. There was one family we were particularly close to, and the four of us children were often all together at one house or the other. (This always had to be arranged, because we lived out of town, so we couldn't just walk there.)

I think there was a lot of support going in which we weren't aware of - a few months ago, I caught up with friends of my parents and she was talking about how helpful my mum had been to her at one point when they had housing problems and trying to sort all that with the children at school and work as well - I had no memory of it, and I don't know if it was because I just didn't remember or because I didn't know at the time. So I think there was a lot of informal stuff with friends and neighbours.

Born in the mid-60s, I knew one mum who was a childminder.
Other mums worked part-time to generally fit around children. I was looked after by DGM. She often walked other children home, we played at each other's until their parents got home.
When my kids were little, there was 1 village playgroup, 3 mornings a week. There was a montessori in one of the neighbouring villages, but that was for richer families. One parent had to give up work, and you claimed FIS. It was normal and accepted.

This is quite interesting on the history of childcare.

https://www.historyandpolicy.org/docs/patthaneeearlyyears.pdf

In particular the pre-war suggestion is that most children spent significant time being cared for by people not their parents - either servants for the wealthiest and middle classes or relatives/childminders.

During the Second World War lots of nurseries were set up - some at workplaces such as munitions factories so that women with children could work there but also by local councils.

This push to get women into the workforce ended with the war but some women (like my grandma) always worked and my mum was looked after (for free) by my aunt.

Many women went back to work after their child(ren) were older - my other grandma who had to leave the civil service due to the marriage bar went back to work when my dad was in secondary school.

The marriage bar generally only applied to the more middle class professions - civil service, teaching, etc. teaching in particular was so short of people that after the war some local authorities lifted the marriage bar and gave places in nurseries if the women had small children.

My Granny was a teacher, but her own children went to boarding school, so childcare wasn't an issue.