Mega survey of UK parents shows unaffordability of childcare

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Over the past month or so we've been assailing you all with links to a huge survey of parents in the UK asking about their experiences of using childcare. Now the results are in - 20,000 responses from parents on MN as well as Pregnant then Screwed, Gingerbread, the TUC, the Fawcett Society, the Women's Budget Group, the Fatherhood Institute, Black Mums Upfront, Mother Pukka and a few others - and they show:

96% of British parents say the government isn’t supporting them enough with childcare

97% said that UK childcare is too expensive (83% said that it is ‘much’ too expensive)

One third (33%) of parents using childcare say their childcare payments are bigger than their rent or mortgage

40% (and 53% of parents under 30) say childcare costs mean they don’t spend as much time together as a family as they’d like, because of the need to work longer hours or do shift work

28% (and 40% of single parents) say they’ve had to use credit cards or credit arrangements to pay for essential items, as a direct result of childcare costs, and 12% (34% of those with a household income of less than £20,000) say they’ve had to cut back on essential items, including food and housing

82% of mothers (and 56% of fathers) say ‘I think I would have attained more seniority in my work, or earned more, if I had not had childcare considerations’

16% of mothers, and 42% of fathers, say childcare responsibilities have not affected their seniority at work

Unsurprisingly, parents are willing to consider radical alternatives to the current mess:

94% of all parents believe that subsidised childcare should start from the end of paid maternity leave, and 90% think there should be taxpayer-funded subsidised childcare from when a child is 9 months old

90% of all parents support at least three months of ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ parental leave for fathers, paid at at least minimum wage level

84% support a duty on large employers to provide subsidised childcare

83% support universal free childcare (covering the full working day, for all pre-school children and all children with ongoing Health and Social Care needs), funded by the taxpayer

82% support tax-funded subsidised childcare covering the full working day, for all pre-school children, with subsidy levels dependent on household income

59% support a Universal Basic Income for all UK adults.

You can find out more here and read the Guardian's coverage today here.

Let us know what you think!

Thanks
MNHQ

I'm lucky to have help but I still pay £1,000 for 2 kids to go to nursery 2 days a week, I make a loss the days they're at nursery.

@Littleredyoshi when I return from mat leave I will be in the same position. Childcare will be more than my take home pay. The alternative is missing out on promotions and progression and maybe also risking shutting myself out of the professional world permanently (I've noticed lots of women struggle to come back at all, let alone where they left off). Yet I feel lucky this is a luxury we can afford because DH is a high earner. Another example of why poor people are screwed.

@eeyore228 I agree. the government already fund 20% through the tax free childcare too? we are not having children close together so that we can afford childcare, and also only having 2. I do think more help would be good but I dont know where it would come from.

We pay £4.25/hour for a childminder 3 days a week 8.30-5.45.

There was some discussion about childcare funding in Parliament today:

Childcare should be fully tax deductible without an income ceiling. To exclude women that can earn high salaries is contributing to the brain drain and frankly keeping us all in our place. Many high salaries jobs require excessive and often unpredictable hours. It's easier to leave altogether or take a lower status job than end up doing everything badly. A nanny can cost nearly £3k a month.

First page and no mention of tax free childcare. 20% paid for you. It is still expensive but helps a bit.

For 3.5 days per week I pay £780 per month! Double my rent.
If my son were to go full time it would be over £1k. Considering UC only covers up to £646.35 per month I couldn’t afford full time and am very lucky my mom is able to take care of my son.
Flexible working was rejected and wages are effectively going down with the NI increase and the cost of living.
When my son is entitled to 30 hours at 3 years old my bill will only be around £200, that’s a massive difference

The current situation with funded hours just doesn't work. It would be ideal if the government have a voucher to say here's the money for 50% of your childcare costs but you need to top it off. At present childcare provisions are earning less than their hourly rate and are expected to just absorb the costs. I'm paid over £1.50 less than my hourly rate for the funded hours. I'm still expected to pay the bills, pay my mortgage and give the kids an amazing experience while they're with me. All this whilst jumping through the unnecessary hoops the LA's put in our way to offer the hours in the first place.

I'm certainly not happy to have my taxes put up. I would be in a worse situation, on my knees financially and also paying extra tax so government can pay me less than my hourly rate in a bid to get votes. Go figure!

The au pair visa needs to be urgently re instated. There are 3 consultants in my local hospital who have resigned in the last 6m as unable to find an au pair post brexit and the astronmical cost of a nanny / unable to find a good nanny outweighs bemefits of earnings. What a joke.

Childcare is such a problem.. We pay 1300 for our 1 in nursery, and then another 120 a month for after school care for our second. Our biggest problem, my husbands employer doesn't understand why he has to be their to help with pick up /drop off when I have deadlines despite my husband reminding the directors that I earn mote than him despite only working 3 days a week. We also find holidays such a struggle. Most activities for children in the holidays is only 9-3 no later care and even then its 200 odd a week for one child. It becomes so difficult to cover and fund

I don't think the results of the survey are a surprise really - people paying a lot of money for childcare think other people should pay more tax to help them out.

I'd probably prefer to see more options for mothers / parents to stay at home when their children are small rather than subsidising childcare. And I did pay close to £3K/month at the peak with two at nursery.

Why can I buy a car at a heavily reduced cost via salary sacrifice, but my entire childcare bill comes out of taxed earnings? It makes zero sense.

Don't you use tax free childcare? Or do you earn over £100k? I'm always surprised to see so little discussion of it/childcare described as entirely unsubsidized. Every time we get our childcare bill and I do the mental calculation of how much money that actually costs us, knocking off the 20%, I do feel quite subsidized and very glad it exists!

This is never going to change!

Regarding the hospital example, it is ridiculous considering the cost of training and employing an NHS consultant, that their employer the hospital is not expected to take a leading role in helping find or provide childcare. Apart from providing or improving an onsite nursery, they must have to organise visas for HCP so could help with au pair situation, and then there's the fact that even part time consultants have hit the pension contributions ceiling, so they're over saving for retirement while being unable to pay for suitable childcare right now. That one is solvable with a little action.

I pay over £2000 a month in childcare, far more than my mortgage, it's insane.

Even more saddening that parents are being driven out of work or into financial difficulty, while we also pay our childcare workers a pittance, so get the worst of all worlds.

Subsidising childcare (not the rubbish 'free hours' which drive providers into worse financial hardship is an important investment if this country wants to keep women in work, more tax being paid in the long run and children (especially children of single mothers) out of poverty traps

I've never really understood why you get 15 hours free childcare from 2 if neither parent is working. Wouldn't that money be better spent supporting people in work who need the childcare? Or am I missing something obvious? Have only just put my first child in childcare so new to it all. I claim my 20% tax free but my childcare is still more than my mortgage.

I live in mainland Europe. My son was at state nursery with fees on a sliding scale. We paid top whack, 600 euros a month all in. The nursery had its own chef who made fresh organic food every day and baked cakes for the kids' birthdays 😍 absolutely no reason you can't have the same in the UK if you vote the right people in.

Like Forinborin I wish there were more choices for women after having children.

Housing costs are so ridiculously high that two incomes are a necessity for most families.

That creates a big problem as staying at home is unaffordable and childcare costs make work tricky too. Lose lose.

@Hardbackwriter

Why can I buy a car at a heavily reduced cost via salary sacrifice, but my entire childcare bill comes out of taxed earnings? It makes zero sense.

Don't you use tax free childcare? Or do you earn over £100k? I'm always surprised to see so little discussion of it/childcare described as entirely unsubsidized. Every time we get our childcare bill and I do the mental calculation of how much money that actually costs us, knocking off the 20%, I do feel quite subsidized and very glad it exists!

Exactly. Childcare vouchers (for those eligible) are also deducted from pre-tax income. We have tax free childcare, the 15/30 free hours, paid maternity leave. The problem is the gap between the end of paid maternity leave (9 months) and the start of the free hours (the term after the child turns 3, so nearly 3.5 in some cases). I am in London, and two children in three day per week nursery cost me £2,800 per month (even with the free hours for the older one) which nearly wiped out my take-home pay.

However, in my view childcare should be expensive - we are entrusting them with our precious children and I would rather have well paid, qualified, loyal staff looking after my children than teenagers on minimum wage. The question is who pays for it. In many countries excellent highly subsidised childcare is provided to all, paid for by higher taxes rather than parents directly. However, given the outcry over the NI increase, I just don’t see the appetite amongst taxpayers for further tax increases to properly fund nursery provision, even though good quality provision ought to benefit society more broadly (children being well educated; parents - who am I kidding, mothers - able to continue working and paying tax rather than staying at home due to childcare costs and then unable to get back into the workforce). PPs have already said things like “why should those who don’t have children pay higher taxes to subsidise those who do”; “I chose to stop at 2 children due to cost - I don’t want to pay for others to have three or four”, and I have some sympathy with those points of view, as I do with the minimum wage worker who doesn’t want to pay more tax so high-earning professionals get free childcare. I am not sure the Government would be brave enough to raise taxes again to give more money to subsidised childcare. It’s a really tricky issue.

@KeflavikAirport

I live in mainland Europe. My son was at state nursery with fees on a sliding scale. We paid top whack, 600 euros a month all in. The nursery had its own chef who made fresh organic food every day and baked cakes for the kids' birthdays 😍 absolutely no reason you can't have the same in the UK if you vote the right people in.

Our nursery does this too - but the cost for a full-time place for an under 2 is north of £2K per month 😱.

I dont think anyone disagrees that nursery workers shouldnt be paid a decent salary. It's an important and demanding job. The problem is that the government seem to think that it's not an issue that they should budget for, that its each parents problem. Which in my opinion is ridiculous. This is a democracy and the people in power should act on behalf of the people who have elected them. A democracy should represent and provide for it's people, not create massive divides and groups and creating a society where when people have children it's very difficult to go back to work🤨

@WineInTheBlood

I've never really understood why you get 15 hours free childcare from 2 if neither parent is working. Wouldn't that money be better spent supporting people in work who need the childcare? Or am I missing something obvious? Have only just put my first child in childcare so new to it all. I claim my 20% tax free but my childcare is still more than my mortgage.

Because (a) it helps people not in work to get back into it without having to sort childcare first and (b) there's lots of evidence that quality childcare at 3 vastly improves outcomes for children from disadvantaged homes. It also helps flag children at risk whether due to home circumstances or underlying conditions, and when possible start on early intervention. Many of those wouldn't send children unless it was free.

The alternative to funding care is having a load of children show up at school at 5, not able to do basic self care, or having ever read a book, or with zero English, little socialisation, or with problems that will be much more severe than if they'd shown up for 15 hours at 3.

WineInTheBlood

I've never really understood why you get 15 hours free childcare from 2 if neither parent is working. Wouldn't that money be better spent supporting people in work who need the childcare? Or am I missing something obvious? Have only just put my first child in childcare so new to it all. I claim my 20% tax free but my childcare is still more than my mortgage.“

Because it benefits the children in many ways. Parents’ employment status is irrelevant.
Some people can only consider returning to work once they have the free hours.

The alternative to funding care is having a load of children show up at school at 5, not able to do basic self care, or having ever read a book, or with zero English, little socialisation, or with problems that will be much more severe than if they'd shown up for 15 hours at 3.
This is such a patronising attitude.
I am from a country where it is quite rare for the mother to return to work when the children are young, and definitely not before they are 3 - there's no organised childcare for children that age at all. So unless there are grandparents nearby willing to provide a full time reliable cover, the mother usually stays at home for years and years. And all children, SEN aside, start school able to read and write - it is actually an official requirement.