Ed Miliband's childcare proposals - is wraparound care really the solution?

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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.

it also makes sense on a business level. school sites get maximum use. if you have a nursery on site yes you do 'pre-school' but you also get to be a private nursery with paying customers bringing in revenue, likewise with after school club and they should also be hiring out their facilities over the summer to clubs/groups that want to do summer school stuff or doing it themselves.

pitches could be rented out, they could have gyms onsite that are for community use etc.

it's the idea that has been bandied with community schools etc but never pushed through.

teachers panic that they're being expected to change but it's really management of facilities that need to change and joining up services - it would be different staff doing things but sharing and maximising use of facilities and resources and providing needed services whilst generating income.

and it's not equality that has bitten us on the bum but the still prevailing LACK of it.

equality would not see the responsibility falling upon women to care for children or a system of work and education that doesn't fit with modern work and economics unless the woman stops working or cuts her hours and is financially supported by a man in exchange for domestic labour and general wife duties. nor would it see a situation where single mothers have to fight so hard to get any token of financial support from absent fathers and are demonised for being the parent who stuck around rather than pissed off with no consequences.

Equality bitten us on bum what's that mean it v much smacks of women know yer place
Shall we revoke hard fought for legislation,is that what you're suggesting
Frankly were not even scratching the surface of assisting parents access good childcare

we talk about 'parents' as if they were some kind of special interest group we're doing favours to ffs.

we're a species - we reproduce - we have highly dependent young who take a long time to mature and a society that requires them to be very skilled and require long educations - it's a fact of life and the way we organise our economics and systems has to accommodate the facts of life otherwise they are failing us.

it is inequality that has meant our systems have developed in ways that don't accommodate these simple facts of life because instead of dealing with the facts of life we created a servant class (women) who'd deal with all of that in exchange for room and board and respectability. progress in women's rights and financial independence means that NO we don't find it acceptable to assume that all women must be owned by men and have no other access to survival and women can work, divorce, be single etc. yet we're still stuck with the system built upon women being the servant class who did all the messy facts of life labour for free and allowed the rest of the world to rotate as if children and eating and cleaning and caretaking didn't exist because the house elves took care of it.

it is purely common sense that the system needs to change but unsurprisingly those who are benefiting from it just fine thanks aren't that much interested.

basically a FUCK load of labour that used to be done for free under what was essentially a slavery system STILL needs to be done. the assumption thus far is we'll do all that AND work but the reality is there aren't enough hours in the day and we can't do both.

it doesn't mean we need to get women out of the workplace and back in their place it means we need as a species to work out better ways of dealing with all the work and caring that needs doing.

women who still volunteer and have the ability to volunteer (via aligning themselves with a high enough earning male) to do that labour in exchange for being financially cared for and getting to be respectable have the right to do so, it's their choice but i don't think they have the right to try to block decent childcare and changes to the system for those of us living in the new world and making our own way.

Thanks Numpty. Brilliant post. I may have that laminated and put on my wall.

Good posts, NNC.