Ed Miliband has announced that a Labour government would improve access to affordable childcare by introducing a "legal guarantee" of 8am - 6pm provision for primary-aged children, through breakfast and after-school clubs. On the face of it this sounds great. Access to affordable childcare is a major issue for so many mothers, distorting whatever semblance of choice we have in how we raise our families and pay our bills. Surely by increasing access we're moving one step closer to supporting our families in the way we would all wish?
I'm a little unsure. I like what this proposal would do in practice but the broader message makes me uneasy. According to Miliband:
Parents who want to work should be able to do so. We need to use the talents of everyone if we are to succeed as an economy and keep social security bills down. Seven out of 10 stay at home mums tell surveys that the cost of childcare has deterred them from looking for a job.
There's something about the wording of this - the pro-business rhetoric - that unsettles me. Labour will help you ensure that your family isn't a drain on the state. Is this really what passes for pro-family politics? Are we moving towards a social model which is more supportive of family life or merely more controlling?
I'll be honest: I already benefit from sending my children to a school that has wraparound childcare. I choose my words carefully; I'm not sure how much they benefit, other than by the obvious fact that as our family's main earner I need to pay the mortgage and my children need a home. My kids prefer it when I'm able to pick them up straight from school, expressing excitement if any day is a "home" day. I can torture myself with guilt over this but what is the point? I don't have any extended family nearby and Daddy has a one-hour commute. That's life, eh? But does it really have to be this way?
It often feels to me that between my mother's generation and my own, there's been a cultural shift that hasn't been wholly to our benefit. We've gone from prioritising family values in a way that limited women's ability to earn towards prioritising the needs of employers in a way that diminishes family life. Instead of taking a step back and overhauling our whole understanding of pay, value and reward - something which the Wages For Housework campaign wished to achieve - we've allowed politicians and employers who are not primary carers to make the odd modification to their prized, protected system. "See? You have the right to ask - to ask! - for flexible working! And to pick your children up after ten hours in school! Why aren't you happy yet? What is your problem?"
My problem is this: family life and caring work aren't to be slotted in around the needs of perennially grudging employers. They're central to who we all are and how we shape our future. By this, I don't mean that ideally, all women should be angels of the hearth instead of ball-breaking career women. Such stereotypes have only made us blame ourselves for not having made "better" choices about our lives when really, we can only make do with what's available. Other options - career sabbaticals, job shares, increased wages to allow for more part-time work, decreased wage inequality, the outrageous idea that actually, even those who "don't work" (ha!) deserve a political voice - haven't been on the table. There's been no creativity. We've accepted the lie that this is the only way things can ever be and at times we've even allowed it to make us turn on each other.
I think we are afraid of engaging with this debate fully in case it damages our status as women, casting us either as bad mothers who need to spend more time in the home or unreliable workers who let down their employers and colleagues by doing just that. It's not fair that these feel like our only choices. I'm not against Miliband's proposal; if it gives other families the basic support required to earn a wage, something from which I've benefited myself, how could I be? But I think we need to ask for something even more radical, something that really turns things upside down. The problem isn't that we're failing our families or employers, but that the weak, commercialised concept of work-life balance is still failing us and our kids.