Yep. And imagine doing that with two under two as a lone parent and being tax more on the same income the couple are earning.
As I said, the whole system is ridiculous but please when you think how hard it is to manage as a couple, with 48 hours per day to earn/ be with your children as you see fit, imagine what it is like for a lone parent trying to do all of that in 24 hours per day and being taxed more than you on the same earnings!
It really is a disgrace that any family has to struggle with childcare costs so ridiculously high. It isn't impossible to fix. Other countries manage heavily subsidised childcare just fine: it's the norm across most of Europe. Max cost per child is a two or three hundred pounds per month as a norm. It should be changed for everyone, and the state would then receive far more tax that more than funds the cost! So ironic.
I suspect the reason they don't is because instead of making rational policy based on evidence of what works and will make us all better off they make policy based on optics and focus groups and tabloid headlines. They fear that the whole "I don't understand economics and I'm furious my money is being used to fund this when I don't have children" cohort will be stirred up by it because they're too stupid to realise that funding childcare properly would make everyone better off.
Just like with Brexit, nobody seems to care about the actual economics and effects. There were apparently a lot of people who said they were quite happy to be poorer?! So here we are.
If people could stop fighting over crumbs and, as a PP said, support rational policies that have been proved to work elsewhere that benefit everyone, even those without children, then things could be fixed. But they don't. So that doesn't happen.
My points about single parents demonstrate exactly this: people who aren't single parents themselves will rarely engage with the issue. Aside from the basic unfairness of them being taxed more on the same household income, it would benefit everyone if this was rectified. Productivity would increase, tax revenues would actually rise and far fewer people would end up ultimately reliant on the state and losing their earning potential (future tax revenues for us all).
The short-sightedness is depressing, and the unwillingness of many people to support policies that immediately wouldn't benefit them personally, even if in the long-term they clearly would (aside from the fairness issue!).
Ultimately if we as constituents aren't pressuring politicians for the policies we want then that will not happen. MPs want to keep their jobs. There will be an election next year. If everybody wrote to their MPs about these issues then they absolutely would be addressed, because what fills their inbox scares them and they don't want to lose their seats.
But instead of supporting each other as women - women impacted far more than men! - people do nothing, and it all continues largely as before.