To wonder what working parents are meant to do in school holidays?

[StepAwayFromGoogle]

DD1 starts school in September. DP and I both work because we can't afford for either one of us to be off. I have applied for part time but my work have been spectacularly backward and refused point blank, which is a whole other thread. I am looking for another job but work in a very specific field in a very specific industry so it's not looking likely that I'll get something, much less part time.
DD1 school have a before and after school club which is over subscribed so she won't get in for the first year. We have scrabbled around and managed to cover the week with GPs and a childminder.
So on to the holidays. DD1 will have 13 weeks off school a year. Between us, me and DP will have just under 10 weeks holiday. AIBU to think that if the govt wants parents (particularly mothers) to work then there needs to be better holiday provision? I'm not blindingly sure what working parents are expected to do after 3pm every day and for the 13 weeks children are off in the year. At the moment all our holiday days will be spent covering time off school and we won't be able to have a holiday together as a family.

The solution is not work tbh, that’s literally it. Look at entitledto, see if you’re actually better off with one income or both part time and go from there. I’ve a friend who’s husband earns £20,000, she earns £20,000 they would be better off on the dole.

It's also worth adding that pension payments in the future are likely to be greatly reduced (see changes for people reaching state pension age from from 2016 onwards) as emphasis switches away from state pensions and towards individual pensions and employer contributions, which means that proportionately people will likely also be receiving less in pension income relative to their lifetime contributions than current pensioners too.

Holiday clubs (some are reasonably priced), childminders, grandparents, swapping play dates, annual leave. Loads of parents work f/t and there’s a massive industry behind it.
Once they’re teens you can leave home alone! It’s only for about 10 years!!!

It’s so much easier for parents now to find childcare. My DT’s are 20 - when they started school there was much less choice of childminders, nurseries and holiday clubs. Then many schools didn’t have breakfast and after school clubs.

We don’t have family in the UK so relied on holiday clubs which we booked as soon as the dates were released. The rest of the holidays, DH and I covered between us. If you want a family you have to make sacrifices- sorting out childcare is a parental responsibility rather than anything to do with government.

Still stuck in transmit mode,@hayf. Try a bit of receive.

Round here holiday clubs are £10-£15 a day 9-3 but you can pay a bit extra for 8-6.

That's much cheaper than nursery.

Your employer is being very shitty. Do continue to look for a new job but unfortunately your best chance of getting a part-time opp is at your current employer.

What about your dh? Can he go part time or work flexibly?

What we do- husband works from home has a bit of flexibility so can do some drop offs and pick ups. Grandparents help a bit despite not being local (most of the kids at our kids' school seem to have very local grandparents that help out several times a week). I gave up my well paid job to start a business, not ideal as I end up working a lot once kids in bed but I do most of it in school hours and much less in holidays.

I agree it’s very hard. On the other hand all families have to work around it but it’s harder/easier depending on your circumstances.

I found it easier when the children were small then I became a single parent, my dc were in different schools (different start and finish times,) my dc became needier and couldn’t do holiday clubs, grandparents became ill. Add to that illness, inset days, childminder holidays, health appointments, it just became impossible.

I think if you have one child or two close in age or average children who don’t need extra support it’s doable.

Which one alsohuman?

And yes when people make incorrect and sweeping generalisations with an air of assumed authority I think it's important to clarify factual inaccuracy. The deflection that people find that patronising is surprisingly more common than people admitting they were wrong.

Sorry @FamilyOfAliens I thought maybe that would be common sense. Didn't think anyone would struggle with that.

Champagne less important than children
Nuclear weapons less important than children
Brexit less important than children.
New York apartments for schmoozing rich Saudis who kill gay folk less important than children

Etc.

@hayf, the one where I pointed out that my tax bill amounts to more than my state pension. The old adage that it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it applies here, perhaps if people tend to tell you you’re patronising it’s for a reason. As you can see, actually I wasn’t wrong.

I'm not sure it's a central government problem. Where there's demand, a market economy will create supply. But if that supply is hard to quantify then the demand is not obvious.

Simplest thing i can think is a question to parents just after offer time of whether they'd need wraparound care. This would give a demand/school number which could be used to plan capacity at in school provisions, and to inform any local childcare businesses.

Big problem is it's parents problem to handle, wonder if PTAs could work with schools to gather this data in areas where childcare is hard to come by? And make it available to providers for capacity planning?

It's easier to wave angry fists at government policy than actually do something locally to help though.

YABVU if you think govt gives a shit about parents, children or any other kind of plebeian.
The only reason govt wants you to work is to keep you distracted from how very deeply you are being shafted by them and their cohorts.

alsohuman You said you've paid for your state pension through 47 years of contributions and that today's workers are not paying it. That's wrong.

You're also wrong about the implications of your tax bill being higher than your state pension is today. Your tax bill has nothing to do with how much you are receiving in your state pension, that's not how redistribution works. Your income tax is put towards all public services, whereas a portion of your NI payment goes towards pensions. Given that NI is only a portion of your total taxes and pensions are a portion of NI, albeit these won't always be equal, saying that you pay more income tax than you receive in state pension so therefore you're paying more into the pension system than you're taking out also very likely to be inaccurate. You'd have to be paying more than your state pension in the proportion of your NI / tax that covers pension payments for that to be true. Here's an example.

On a 50k salary (you say you're a higher rate earner), NI contributions are about £95.52 per week. Let's assume half of NI payments go to pensions because that's the proportion of the welfare state that is spent on retirement income (ex housing / disability benefits for older people), then your contribution towards your state pension is approximately £47.76 per week. Do say if you think this assumption should be different.

If you've been paying NI for 47 years and also took advantage of the top up options that were available until recently your state pension is likely to be in the region of £150-200 a week or more (again, correct me if I'm wrong). By this rough calculation you'd need to be earning a minimum of an extra £260,000 a year to pay more in pension contributions than receiving £150 a week pension (because NI drops to 2% for everything earned over £962 a week which is when the higher tax rate really kicks in). Obviously if your pension is more than that you can increase by the appropriate multiple.

You can't expect the government to be responsible!
I think that it is a government problem. If they want to pay less benefits and slow the need to having to import people for vital roles, they need to make it possible for people to work and be able to get jobs in line with their abilities.

How does it help anyone if someone goes to uni to train for a much needed role, only to have to give up said role due to the lack and/or unaffordable child care so that they then go onto a minimum wage job or be unemployed and need to be topped up by benefits? They then cannot go back into the role when the children are old enough as they have been out of the loop too long and cannot afford to pay for training to become up to date.

Where there's demand, a market economy will create supply. But if that supply is hard to quantify then the demand is not obvious.
I don't believe in supply and demand. So many times there is a massive demand for something and there is never a supply to cater for it. Only a loss of things if there isn't a demand exists.

For anyone interested, that's actually why National Insurance has the name it does, it's a collective scheme based upon the redistribution of wealth to protect individuals against income deficiencies at any stage in their life. Lines and budgets have undoubtedly blurred over time, but the principle remains the same and it's about ensuring everyone in the country has access to the same basic quality of life, not about looking after ourselves.

I think Hayf that people are well aware of that already, we aren't all a load of ignoramouses waiting for you to edicate us. But as you say Lines and budgets have undoubtedly blurred over time so as a point it has limited relevance to anything at all.

Educate

Champagne less important than children
Nuclear weapons less important than children
Brexit less important than children
New York apartments for schmoozing rich Saudis who kill gay folk less important than children

You think those are the competing priorities from the same budget? Not sure it’s me lacking common sense here.

Small flaw in your argument @hayf - pensioners don’t pay NI. My net contribution to the system NOW is more than I take out. Perhaps that’s a little too simple for you. Now DFOD.

I use childminder for after school and holidays, I pay a set amount per month so no holiday shockers, only holiday I need to cover is cm. If you have paid Pre school childcare then wrap a round will be a big price cut. I did look forward to school problems and took ds out of private nursery to a cm and state nursery (I paid cm when ds was at state nursery) for his pre-school year. Ds now has only one more year in childcare thankfully. It is doable I am a lone parent, all GP and dc dad dead and I do it with no government help bar childcare vouchers. I do accept that the problem isn't also cost but availability.

Teateaandmoretea like I said, it's amazing how many people don't understand the system yet think they do. For example, you also said that alsohuman paying higher income tax than she receives in state pension means she's paying more into the pension system than she receives. If you understood redistribution and national insurance then you would understand that's not correct. People do need to understand the system better in order to make more informed choices, it's one of the most important things we can all do

You think those are the competing priorities from the same budget? Not sure it’s me lacking common sense here.

Omfg

I think you're lacking any sense whatsoever.

I'm going to assume you're joking.

I'll leave you to ponder the implications of that, DFOD.

Funny - I thought you must have been joking too, when you said governments were using taxpayers money inappropriately because children are more important than all the things on your list.

Please tell me you were. Actually, don’t. This has become tedious.

Your mindset, even after your second post is very odd: your resentment towards the system / the government is very strange. Errrr hello ? didn't you think about this before you had kids? surely you knew this and that's why you have to work around it.