"It may be better news for women... to look after their own children and fit jobs into the child's day"

[SleepWhenImDead]

So says Jill Kirby, director of the Conservative think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies in this BBC article.

Seriously, what planet is this lady on? She makes out like it's a NEW idea for women to either not to work or to work hours to limit the amount of childcare that's needed. Well done Jill, we'd never thought of that before you suggested it!

I'm going to be hard hit from these cuts to public sector, I'm currently on maternity leave but due to be made redundant anyway. The public sector is the place I'd need to get a job, and get child-friendly hours. DOes this Jill think we get to CHOOSE these things, like a job is something you do for fun to avoid looking after your own children?! Think I might as well give up even hoping for a job and soon we'll lose our child benefit as well. I'm attacked on all directions!

My simplistic understanding of this is that revenue was generated, in the main, by exports.. manufacturing etc.

Yet the country doesn't really make anything as it used to.

So.... what happens then?

I haven't read the whole thread. Just looking in before bed. Open the schools! Do it like they do in Belgium. You have the buildings. Employ people to do the wrap round care. Here school is open 7.30 til 6. The cost to parents is minimal, but the facility is limited to parents who work. Ditto the holidays.

I know in the UK some schools have done this, or tried to, but it needs to become an LEA policy rather than individual schools doing it by themselves. Stop this model that anyone with a child has to restrict themselves to working between 9 and 2.30m with the limited opportunities on offer.

This might well already have been said (haven't read whole thread) but this crap about jobs that don't generate revenue is just another demonstration that the Tories still don't understand that the UK is not a business (don't get me started on the 'UK plc' crap) but a country, FFS. It's simply the Thatcher 'there's no such thing as society' idea for a new generation.

nhs staff are revenue generating for individual trusts.Each contact/consultation is costed

Simbacat - you hit the economic nail on the head way back up the thread.

"To go back to a world where only one parent works would need radical changes across every aspect of society.

What she suggests would cause another recession, collapse in housing market and the economy."

Setting aside the arguent about 'women in non-jobs' the last 15 years have seen a economic boom that was in large part built on the back of more and more women going out to work. If that reverses then there wil be a severe slump.

Just today, I notice that there was a 'surprise 3.5% drop in retail sales. I am sure that part if not all of that drop was due to second wage earners losing their jobs. Many of whom will be women. Second age earners hae often earned the money to pay for the extras in a household budget and also contributed a lot to hosue price inflation.

I read a study about the USA in the 1950s that showed how resiliant it was to economic slow downs as families only had one person working, usually the man, if he lost his job the woman typically was able to get a part time job to tide them over. Same in the UK but now so many families have both parents working they absolutely depend on a second wage coming in. If women (typically the second wage earner) lose their job that wil create a disproportionate impact on the economy. More so for single parent families.

From the point of view of the economy this is not about 'nice little pin money jobs for women' its about what pays the bills at the end of the month.

The economy is in a fragile state and we need far stronger thinking about this issue. I agree with Bonsir in many ways but if house prices were to halve so families could survive on one wage the banks would be bust.

TYPOS: Second wage earners have often earned the money to pay for the extras in a household budget and also contributed a lot to house price inflation.

I'm a stay at home mother by choice. Never had a single penny of maternity pay. Child benefit about to be history. But then I've got lots of children and I wouldn't dream of letting someone else have all the joy (and the non-joy bits) of bringing them up, even if it does mean clothes are hand me downs and holidays involve flapping, wet canvas. I always thought the world was heavily tilted in favour of "hard working families" with maternity leave and pay and tax breaks for child care etc, and if there is any input into policy from women then they are by definition "working women". Since reading the views on this thread (well the first bit and the last bit anyway) it seems that "hard working families" don't see they are being favoured. Does anyone think about what is best for the children here? Wrap around childcare? Why have children in the first place? Minimal cost childcare! - there is no such thing as a free lunch - tax rise anyone? The reality is that Britain is broke.

Have been reading this thread and am completely speechless.

But honestly, as another poster said, from the Tories, this cannot be a major surprise to anyone. It's just a huge reality check that big changes are actually going to affect every single person in this country.

At the moment, I'm not sure whether I'm more angry or worried about these developments.

From what I can work out, Belgium is more Broke than the UK. There have been strikes already, but no talk of cuts. We pay LOADS more tax. so msybe that is why.

"Wrap around childcare? Why have children in the first place? " This is ridiculous. Families with school age children should be able to work!

I had complicated personal reasons for having four kids, as my life hasn't gone all that smoothly.

But it's not a completely bonkers number of children to have and part of the problem was that they had to spread out over 22 years.

Unless you have a convenient designer family that fits a Gvt model you are fairly doomed, I think.

Britain was broke in the blardy war as well, but there was free childcare on practically every street, and the women were told to get out there and make munitions, run the country in the absence of men, etc etc.

Then told to get back home when the blokes came back from the war.

It's like 1945. Except this time instead of getting social reforms like free higher education and free dental and healthcare it all seems to be going in reverse.

The only think I can think of is that this woman has had a bit of a transplant somewhere along the line.

What a ridculous thing to say and it leaves me (almost lol) speechless that this can be said by an 'influential policy maker' in this day and age. The woman needs a slap or two.

Actually I am just shuffling off to rechain myself to the sink and am going to check ebay later for any rags that I can fashion my new clothes out of. I renounce my footwear and will go barefoot from now on and will not look another directly in the eye.

Dittany on here talks much about the Patriarchy. I often suspect that WOMEN are their own worse enemy a lot of times. This is one of those times.

I have thought that myself whilst reading threads over the last few days. All the judgiepants nastiness coming out of the woodwork. Number and type of children and relationships. Relative disability of children. Unemployment as a career path for the feckless. Do people on here really think like this?????

It's time we all pledged every day to do at least one thing that will help another struggling parent through these difficult times. Who is with me?

I think I would like to ask mumsnet for a new smiley

you type

[don't blame me, I didn't vote for this bunch of bastards]

and a little pair of shrugged shoulders appears

Boffin, I am with you on that one!

I'm skint this month, but I still want to send another poster some knickers..,

harpsichordcarrier, the only problem I see with that is that the last lot are hardly blameless in the whole mess.

Next time I'm voting monster raving loony party www.loonyparty.com/index.php?page=manifestoproposals-1. They can't do any worse.

Jill Kirkby, for example, is a twat.

As with many others, I am rendered speechless (a -fucking- gain).

Just wonder how long it took her to 'think' that one up.

And shouldn't she be at home raising the children ?

what socialsciencetastic woolly blah blah is this "It's time we all pledged every day to do at least one thing that will help another struggling parent through these difficult times. Who is with me?2

define struggling parent?
what one thing?
what pledge?

no im not with a poorly defined loose association of emotive terms.

Porto (etc), you make a very important point. This country has never supported working parents even before this government. Having to have one parent physically at the school gates at 9 and back there by 3 in the afternoon ensures that primarily women are kept in jobs which underutilize their education and play into the hands of those who think certain types of work are not 'necessary'. There's no school bus, child-care is astronomically expensive. There never has never been a commitment, at a structural level, or indeed at any other level, to supporting women to work full-time, or men to have a work-life balance. Other countries have (Scandanavia, much of Eastern Europe); there's just a fundamental understanding there that women are human beings who should be able to utilize their skills to the fullest.

I'm so glad I do work full-time. I actually agree with Xenia that until large numbers of men work part-time, working part-time, often in lower paid and lower qualification jobs, has been massively problematic for women in the UK as they are not seen as 'essential' to the economy and are demeaned within workplaces which have continued in the most part to remain family-unfriendly, and for child-care and parental leave to remain 'women's issues'.

The Tories are just the icing on the cake, but how easy it would be to roll all that 'equality' back in this particular society which never really embraced it in the first place.

Scottishmummy

I pledge if you turn up in my office telling me about your efforts on an access course to get into university, I will spend at least half an hour with you in my lunch break talking through the various options, ringing people to help you get advice about finance, and send you off with some free study materials to get you started and inspire you.

That kind of sociobollox. You know what I mean really.

so in that case be specific, outcomes,vocational/social interventions that can be tracked not just some widdle general plea

so your access course needs demonstrable outcomes,pass and placement rate not just because.academia like all public sector has targets,goals,best practice

I do not run access courses. But if you come on my UG course the teaching is excellent, and from past results, you stand double the chance of getting a first or 2:1 than on similar courses elsewhere, not because we are soft, but because we teach properly.

If I see you stressed in another life context, SM, I will offer to get you a coffee. That is my second vague, sociobollox pledge.

Cannot decide what I'm more astonished by: how removed she must be from the vast majority of women's lives or how someone so spectacularly stupid is on a bloody THINK tank.

Where are the Tories getting these appalling women from? Kirby, 'latte-woman' etc...