To think new parents are complaining more these days about nursery costs

[NameChangedOct24]

….even though they get the funding much earlier?

previously it was 15 or 30 hours from 3 years old. Parents would be grateful of the discount, with sometimes confusion about why the hours were not ‘free’ in private nurseries, top up fees and term time only stretched etc. I remember my monthly fee dropping from £1900 to £1400 from the 30hr funding and being happy with the saving.

recently though, working parents get some funding much earlier, which is great but they think it’s shocking that they still have to pay for childcare, on here and in real life. Eg colleague complains about it being only 15 hours, can’t afford to put them in 3+ days a week so need to wfh with toddler at feet. Aibu my colleagues don’t appreciate the better deal they have compared to a few years ago!?

What we need is State nurseries, an extension of state schools and preschools. Open 6 days a week, 7-7 (with a maximum number of hours per day/week, this is just to cover varying shifts) with a sensible fee structure and trained staff. Not sticking plasters like "funded hours" and tax childcare. (And wrap around care for primary children, and safe spaces for Secondary children.

I have to agree that some people seem to expect completely free childcare.
our daughter attends nursery three days a week but even with her 15 hours (her hours are slightly reduced as the nursery is open all year round so they spread the hours evenly) we still have a bill of sale £500pm.
My SIL has recently sent her son and moaned that she has to pay £1.80 PER DAY (2 days a week) because her nursery have said she has to pay for consumables on top of the free hours….I actually burst out laughing and said did she realise how ridiculous she sounds that she is complaining she has to pay £14.40 a month when we pay £500! 😂

Free hours don’t really work out as free as the amount the government gives the nurseries doesn’t fully fund the cover and so you have to pay “top ups” or they just increase their hourly rate of the non funded hours. Do I care…not particularly because we have chosen a fantastic nursery where I know the care is brilliant and I trust them looking after my child so would rather pay them than look for a cheaper nursery

I'm paying £915 for 3 days a week with funded hours. Just goes to show the discrepancy across the country.

But it was much cheaper. DS is 19 I used to pay 26 pounds a day to a brilliant child minder. We had no free child care but it costs around 600 pounds a month to have two of them in part-time.

Other countries manage full subsidised or largely subsidies childcare, and we can’t even get “30 hours funded” right. It’s a scandal. And the government need to stop pretending that they’re funding 15 to 30 hours and be honest about it or find the money to fully fund them.

My childcare for my 18 month old is the same monthly now with 15 free hours as it was for my 6 year old 5 years ago.

So....... yeah.

Only because those needing more than 2 days pay more per hour for the rest of their time. The only people who benefit from the funded hours are those who can get away with only 2 days a week childcare. Full time working parents subsidise the part time “free” places.

In my opinion, whilst nursery fees are expensive they are reasonable. The nursery we use charges £58 a day for 8-6 including all meals. We get the tax free funding on top of this. For someone to provide care to my child all day I think this is a small price to pay.

The real issue is how life has changed and given rising cost of everything, both parents now often have to work. 30 years ago, my dad earned £40,000 and my mum was a SAHM. We had numerous long haul holidays, never wanted for anything and generally a very comfortable life. It just cannot work like that anymore and parents today feel that struggle far far more.

The price can't really be a surprise to people if people looked into it before having children it might not be a shock

Price of nurseries locally have increased by 20-30% in 3 years.

Absolutely this. 5 years ago we were paying £600 a month for 2 days a week with no funding. Now two days ago I was quoted £600 a month for 2 days WITH funding. Full time is £2000 for us, including funding. It was £1500 a month for us without funding when I went back FT in 2020. We were eligible for the funded hours from age 2 and didn't get them because the council wouldn't approve our childminder for the right number of places to receive the funding, no other childcare was available in our area.

My career is a bin fire at this point and I'm resigned to having to quit work and be a SAHM until DD is actually in full time school because we can only get 15 hours at nursery (the places just don't exist).

Women need to stop tearing down other women when motherhood-related solutions didn't work the way they should have, and just support us getting an actual fair deal instead of a plate of shit that we're supposed to be grateful for. The next thing that will get trotted out is "well you chose to have kids". 🙄

Better deal? You do realise that nurseries have just increased the fees in order to offer these “free hours” because the government doesn’t fund them properly and then you now pay for food/arts and crafts etc in fees on top too. Our nice but very normal nursery in the south east costs £107 a day! It went up by £10 a day when the new “free hours” con was introduced.

Yes, similar here.

We had 15 free hours which were free as I used a preschool.
If I had worked more hours we would have been entitled to 30, which would have been great. So nothing to complain about here.

If I had used the private nursery down the road the free hours were actually going to cost me about £300 a month.

I have said yanbu, simply because I ALWAYS understood that I would make a small loss when DC were little and unfunded in nursery, so that I could keep a foothold on my career ladder.

I budgeted hard and I had to I work full time so I could benefit from the “full time discount” at my nursery.

I didn’t complain because that was the price of having kids.

I left an 8 year age gap between kids so my finances could recover and I’d have a savings buffer in case things were tough when dc2 arrived (eg i lost my job and didn’t get company maternity pay).

So I do think things are still hard, but i think that’s “normal”. Buying a house, student loan, COL crisis - that’s probably worse than ever, but you make the financial sacrifices and if you can’t afford kids, you don’t have them.

I must admit I hear some people moaning about their lot far more these days, people generally are a lot more entitled. There are exceptions and of course I'm generalising but life has always been harder financially when you are young, having to take 2 jobs, one of you working whilst the other is home with the kids, relying on relatives and not being able to afford to buy a house, go on expensive holidays or run a car were all completely normal 50 years ago. I'm not saying things aren't harder financially today than in the mid 90's - they are but because we had just had a housing crash, people were in negative equity and parts of the country had no jobs due to large industrial changes, this meant if you were in work you could pick up a property at an affordable price (5 x my London starters wage) but plenty of my graduate friends were unemployed living with parents if they weren't fortunate to have been living in London (employers weren't keen to wait for you because there was plenty of people out of work, certainly not enough time to find a new place to live)

Our dd pays £100 per day for nursery. We look after our dgs for 2 days/1 night per week otherwise it wouldn’t be worth her working. We’re lucky that we are still young enough to care for a toddler. I feel for families coping with childcare costs.

@mitogoshigg the problem is that putting a child in childcare might cost 100% of a take home wage.

Two incomes are typically needed for a mortgage. And that again might cost 100% of a take home wage for a modest property.

What are people expected to do? The brith rate has dropped by 20% in recent years - people can’t afford families.

I think lots of nurseries have always been expensive though - £103 was the daily rate when my DS2 left 3 years ago, that was the price, less people seemed to complain about it. They were fine to be ‘working for a loss / just breaking even’ to stay in employment. It was shit bit more accepted. Obviously there is inflation everywhere. I dispute that the free hours have made the ‘todays money’ cost worse overall. It may be only slightly better but people are more entitled and moaning so much more.

Or two kids cost more than a full time wage - this is nothing new. We are paying for full time childcare - it does cost money, a nanny would charge the same or more.

Other countries recognise that and have state funded childcare though. Actually funded. It's better for the economy. The UK is an outlier in Europe in that respect.

@NameChangedOct24 Then it’s not ‘entitled’ to complain about is it, it’s very reasonable to complain about as it’s unaffordable to have a child and work, or have a child and not work.

Nurseries (childcare) has always been expensive but it has increased above inflation every year for about 10 years.

Is it really so surprising people are complaining that the cost of nursery is crippling them when even for one child (and even including some free hours) it might be more than their mortgage?

For some reason in the UK (and particularly on mumsnet) there seems to be a belief if you have a child it should be desperate financial struggle with everyone living on the breadline, even if you’re both working full time - and hoping for anything better than this is enormously unreasonable.

You were fine working for a loss but many might not be (aside from net prices have risen even with the free hours).
i worked at a loss and used my savings. I’m a single parent with no other parental input so no one covered the balance. It’s affected us long term.
without savings we’d have been struggling!

I didn’t realise how much it would cost me - as the prices rose from 75 to 110 a day in a couple of years and the full-time discount disappeared. I’m not in London either.

Speaking as a much despised and derided boomer, childcare costs are horrendously high, out of all proportion to how they used to be and to how they should be. It’s hardly worth working in many cases and I don’t know how young parents manage.