What's the single biggest thing the government could do to help parents?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello Mumsnetters,
Can I pick your brians for a moment please? Were you to get the chance to sit around a table with Gordon Brown and he was to ask you what government should be doing to help mums and families, what would you say?

Do something to replace tax credits which are incomprehsible to many of us, and other people are too scared to apply for because of the history of cockups, adn people then being told to pay back thousands of pounds which they can't afford. I want tax deductible childcare.
Proper funding for special needs and really good specialist schools for children with special needs. Inclusion simply does not and cannot work for a lot of children with special needs.

Never said the gov. should be telling people what to do prufrock but that doesn't seem to stop them trying.
The q was about what gov could do to help parents and I still think more 'parents' would be helped by tax deductible childcare than by paying mothers who stay at home to do so.
In most of those cases there has been some calculation leading to the conclusion that it is affordable for them to stay at home whereas most mothers who work do so because there is some element of 'needing' to financially (am I right? not sure I'm expressing myself v.well) therefore the ones going out to work 'need' the taxpayers largesse more. Obv. gross generalisation.
Also I think the gov. aim is to get us out to work after first year therefore whatever they do has to fit in with that aim if they are ever going to do it.
Oh and I don't remotely think they will. Gordie didn't even increase the voucher sum this year.
Twinset on what was just about my one and only foray onto netmums they were being surveyed about 'what the gov. could do for them' so I think that was what she was referring to. I just thought huh they're asking the wrong people!! SO maybe now they are asking the right ones?
Maybe the answer should be pass tha law allowing breastfeeding has anyone said that yet?

BUt I'm not saying we should just pay SAHM - we should pay all parents. SAHP would be compensated for loss of earnings from having to give up work, and WOHP would be compensated for cost of childcare. And maybe those who don't have a choice about working because they need to finacially would be able to SAH.

Obv. govt shouldn't be telling people what to do, and obv. atm they kind of are, but rather than compounding the wrong by making it even more beneficial for parents to work and therefore less beneficial to SAH they shoudl reverse the original mistaken encouragement

Free Childcare, whatever option a parent may choose, nanny, childminder, nursery, after school clubs, holiday camps etc.