To think the pandemic has raised a real issue around school/childcare

[SomewhereNow]

It's become apparent over the past weeks, and more so now that going back to some kind of normal may be on the cards, that most parents (or in many cases mums) cannot work without their children being in school. I completely agree with the 'school isn't childcare' argument, however in reality it appears it has to be for many people.

Having juggled kids/work myself (albeit a few years ago) I recognise the challenges but now I can also see it from the point of view of employers or employees without kids/with older kids - even without a crisis like the current one there are the inevitable sick days, school holidays etc which require a hefty dose of flexibility that isn't always practical for a business.

With most households needing 2 salaries for even a relatively modest standard of living these days, and with both parents often choosing to work for the sake of their own careers (and sanity!) having kids in school plus some other form of childcare seems to be the only option but it doesn't seem to actually suit anyone very well - parents (again often mums) feel like they're failing at both being a parent and an employee, businesses have to work round the needs of the staff and kids have to fit in with it all.

It feels as though something needs to change but I've no idea what.

I think it has thrown up the following:

If people were paid decent salaries and had flexible working, most people could manage childcare. If both parents earn a good enough wage, then they can both go part time, if the flexibility is in the system to allow it.

Proper wages and flexibility would solve most if it

Bees, what about the 13 weeks holiday a year and inset days ? It's not always easy for people to work when the children are at school as the hours are not work friendly.
Not everyone has family to help out.
Teenagers need parents about even more than when they are small sometimes and some children have SEN or they don't want to go to after school clubs. Or they can't as the school doesn't have one!
It does annoy me when people think they are at school so that makes it all ok to go back to work : sometimes kids being at school can make things worse with regards to work. Most people I knew who worked full time had family on hand to do the childcare and sick days etc nearly 24/7 ! They were the lucky ones.
I didn't and really struggled. We got round it but it's not easy.

Lockdown has revealed how few waking hours parents spend with their children normally. It has also revealed even on this thread that some parents seems to be gobsmacked by the idea that they may need to give up something in terms of career if they have children. Unfortunately society has conspired to give the impression that anyone can have children and the state will do the heavy lifting for them in terms of finances and a lot of parenting. Any notion that parents should be able to fund, supervise and support their own offspring is met by howls of eugenics and accusations that you only want the rich to reproduce. It seems odd that parents are happy to bang out the idea that parenting is 'the hardest job you'll ever do' and a 24/7 commitment and in the same breath plan to have children whilst still holding down 2 full time jobs between them. If supervising and raising children is a full time job and you have another fulltime job, then somebody else is doing the parenting job for you.

Really so much of society is based around the assumption that women will provide childcare, do the housework, get food on the table while men are free to further their careers. I think we have encouraged women back into the workforce without at all considering that working hours and expectations need to change for everyone. Too often flexible working arrangements are seen as a concession for women which should not be the case.

I’m paid a very decent wage and I can’t afford childcare outside school hours. There’s no after school club beyond 5pm, no childminders that pick up from the school and I have no relatives nearby. The only option is paying a nanny to sit around doing nothing while DC is at school - which would cost about £40k pa of taxed income.

The idea that universal basic income would fix this is cloud cuckoo land - it would not pay anywhere like enough to live on in most parts of the country. It would be nice pin money for SAHPs with a working partner, perhaps, and might mean that people who don’t qualify for UC would not starve, but it would not be enough to replace a working income or pay for proper childcare.

I think the only solution is for men to start pulling their weight properly. How many men are doing home schooling alongside their jobs, I wonder? How many are cleaning bathrooms and worrying about the weekly shop? How many genuinely see their partners job as as valuable as their own? If men did more outside the home they would value it more. If men took more time off for this stuff, it wouldn’t be career suicide when women do.

Well, it is a form of childcare and I say this as a teacher myself. Your children are being looked after for six hours which enables you to work, just common sense really.

We hired someone full time so when the oldest went to school and toddler and new baby had that same person looking after them. When the 3rd was at big school that person then brought her new baby to work and looked after all 5 after school and in school holidays. Later we had a person from 3 - 6pm paid each day and that kind of thing.

Women need to be paid the same as men for the same roles.

And childcare needs to be subsidised so that it’s more easily affordable.

Until those two things change nothing will change.

@The80sweregreat
DH and I both work FT and have zero support. We have 2 kids, one in primary and one with a childminder 9-3 M-F. We are lucky that we both have flexible employers who allow us to work shorter days and longer days so we can drop-off and pick up between us and we use holiday clubs for some school hols and CM isn't TT only. I like to hope that other employers will be as flexible going forward and for us maybe allow us to switch hours a bit and WFH to allow us a bit more time with our youngest.

It is very possible for women to have careers and be very present parents and it would be the norm if more employers were flexible. Same goes for Dads.

Society tells us as young women to work hard, achieve, get good careers and then when we've had children. Work PT or not at all or you are screwing them up, rely on your husband. The guilt I feel for working full time plays on my mind pretty much constantly and I get many passive aggressive comments. I earn twice as much as my husband and he feels no guilt working full time and no one suggests to him that he won't get this time back or he will regret missing their best years.

Both DH and I work FT through choice and despite 4 children it's never been an issue as we can afford to pay for childcare. Even during the pandemic we are still both able to work FT and pay for childcare so it hasn't been a blanket issue for all familiesm I don't doubt having a SAHP works for many families, but not having one certainly hasn't been an issue for us.

A living wage and flexibility are the key. I’m a teacher so holidays etc. have been fine. My parents have had the children when I have staff meetings to attend etc. However now my parents won’t be able to have them. My dad is very high risk. I am genuinely worried what I will do with the children if only certain yr groups will go back. Looking ahead, if this continues I may have to give up work to ensure my children are cared for. DH earns more than I do.

In pre-industrial society far more people worked close to home and it was far more normal for children to be part of the mix of everyday life. Someone who worked in a shop might well have their kid(s) with them for part of the day, or young kids went to work in agriculture. That's partly why the early industrial years had so many kids working in factories. It looks obvious to us that it was too dangerous for kids, but people were used to kids being around much of the time. It was only wealthy people who could afford nannies and nurseries to keep kids out of the way.

I do think that employers will have to be more flexible. Flexible about start/end times, flexible about someone WFH with kids in the background etc. Flexible about kids doing half days at school and having to be collected/dropped off, and even coming into the workplace and being told to stay out the way and do some homework. It could be a couple of years before there's sufficient herd immunity for life to resume how it was, and children won't magically evaporate during that time.

Childhood, as a life stage, is a very modern western world concept.

The pandemic has also shown that far more people can work from home or work flexibly. That’s the thing to learn. Not that we have to return to the days where all women could reasonably expect was to raise children and take on work in an admin job.

I'm lowest of the low on MN - a sahp whose youngest child is in secondary school, but I have to say I'm really glad I am at the moment.
Women have been sold a lie - having 2 working parents in full on jobs is hard. Yes it can be done but for people who don't have outside support it's bloody stressful. Life is much easier for all if there's a sahp. Men do benefit from it, even though it's often talked about as a luxury for women. Women might well choose it but it comes with some major downsides - vulnerability in case of divorce, loss of career progression, pension loss, confidence in the workplace etc. We accept that but women shouldn't have to take all the risk for something that men often actively want for their DC too.
The problem is that men are allowed to opt out of their families if they want to, which leaves divorced women screwed over because men dump the kids and keep all the money. Imo society should force them to share their income and the childcare. If a mum refused to look after her kids, that would be neglect, but dads are allowed to just leave and they never get prosecuted for abandoning their children.
If men knew that having a sahw had a social and legal value, it might change some of their attitudes.

This isn't a new problem for low income families. My grandmother had her three children in the 30's and always worked. My dad aged 11 worked for the grocer as well as attending school (and his mother condoned the theft of a sausage here or slice of bacon there from the orders he was delivering to the affluent side of town). People were really poor. There is of course much handwringing now this affects the middle classes too.

The cost of childcare is fundamentally a feminist issue. Saying it's a joint responsibility (which it is) as though that is the answer just undermines that message. I think all childcare should be fully tax deductible if you are working regardless of means - I suspect that would lead to a more quality provision too some currently is woeful. Not a vote winner though and too late for me.

1. Full wrap around hours at every school.
2. Child support taken through tax system. Harsh penalties for evasion.
3. A proper living wage level for NMW
4. Tax breaks for each job that is offered on fully flexible/WFH basis

Things have changed so much in my life over the last few years. I used to do nights while my ex did days and we were very comfortable but now I have a school hours job and so I can't fit around my children's school by using wrap around care. I haven't been able to go to my work due to my children's school not having wrap around care anymore. My ex has no contact with them as he's a child abuser.

The question really is do we want to go back to the days where women stopped working either when they got married or had children? It isn't that long ago where women who worked for the Civil Service or BT had to give up work when they got married, either got their pension contributions back as a marriage gratuity or didn't qualify for a works pension at all. Do we really want to go back to that? I was lucky that when I was a Civil servant I was able to return to work part time once I had ds & when he started school I was able to work term time only. When I was a child, my dad worked full time during the day & as he walked in at night, my mum went to work on the twilight shift at a local factory, all the local mums worked twilight shifts either at the same factory as my mum or at Thornton's chocolate factory which at the time was 5 minutes walk away, dads were in charge of homework, baths & bed until the mums came home at 10.00, they didn't need childcare during school holidays as they were at home during the day, able to do the shopping & housework before they went to work at teatime, no problems with school runs because they were at home.

We paid for childcare before school age and I’d pay for it again (if it was available and of course if my business wasn’t down to half capacity due to lockdown). We pay for holiday club too.

This isn’t all so I (we) can work. We have one child for a combination of reasons and we feel he thrives better when with other children. We choose childcare carefully to suit him and he’s always loved the settings he’s been in. My business is very flexible and I don’t often work long hours do we get lots of 1:1 and family time but I don’t think absolutely maximising time spent at home with a primary parent works for only children (at least not mine, he needs other children around).

Do we really want those women that have been financially independent until now to give up their careers and be fully dependent on their husbands ? You just have to read few threads on mn where people have agreed when having children that mum will stay at home and dad will support it and find few years down the line where they’re being financially abused. Sorry but that wasn’t my choice when I had my son to give up my career and it shouldn’t be because of this neither and I presume many that decided to continue working after having a child would struggle if they had to stop working now and be dependent on a person that might not have the same attitude re: money in a few years time

I teach Economics and have been researching the gender pay gap with my year 13 this week (they are girls and we thought it would be a practical thing to do now exams are cancelled). Some of them researched the situation in Norway, where childcare is subsidised from 1 yo and the view is that if women are in high paid jobs with good childcare they can contribute more to tax and thus help fund better public services. I'm sure Norway has its down side (and of course its oil wealth) but I found it a much more encouraging narrative than what you hear here.

@lemonsandlimes123 I fully agree with your opinion there.

Growing up my dad worked full time in engineering, earned good money but my mum still wanted to go out to work. She became a dinner lady so she always had school holidays off with us. She chose to have less disposable income to spend more time with us, we never once went to a childminder. It depends what type of lifestyle you want to live.

I suppose if you have a substantial mortgage, cars on finance, credit card debt, holiday abroad (well, used to), eat out a lot and have the kids in this and that club or activity, plus one of you paying maintenance on other dc elsewhere then you both may need to work. It’s the system we buy into, a never ending hamster wheel of paying out.

It’s not a lie, though, is it? Millions of parents do it every day, all around the world. It’s not working right now for a lot of them because there’s a global pandemic, the like of which we haven’t seen for 100 years.

in Norway, where childcare is subsidised from 1 yo and the view is that if women are in high paid jobs with good childcare they can contribute more to tax and thus help fund better public services.

We're pretty short sighted and selfish here. The widespread misapprehension that an economy is the same as a household budget probably doesn't help people's inability to see why childcare provision is a good investment by the state - for all of us.