SAHM numbers lowest for 15 years - we need your views for Sky interview tomorrow am

[carriemumsnet]

The headlines for the report say:

• Number of stay at home parents in the UK drops 21% from 2.8 million in 1993 to 2.2 million today

• Parents say their household would need an average income of £31,731 for one parent to stay at home, yet the average annual income for a male is £28,464 (10% less) and a female is £18,047 (43% less)

• Over a third (36%) of families with children under 2 have both parents at work, and 1 in 3 (38%) working parents spend less than 4 waking hours a day with their children

• If money was no object, 7 out of 10 (71%) working parents would have stayed at home to raise their children[9]

I guess the first question they'll ask is does this reflect Mumsnetters' experienec? Are Mumsnetters feeling the pinch financially and is this making folks who might have considered staying at home - go back to work?

What would be your ideal?
The Gov giving you money to either :
Pay for childcare
Pay grandparents/extended family

Or do you think it should be left as is - personal choice but dependent on financial circumstance?

Any other pithy thoughts and insights gratefully accepted. Will only have about 3 or 4 mins so won't be able to completely set the world to rights, but be good to know what you think.

Thanks in advance

The same support should be allocated whether the child is in childcare or not.

Since starting up as a WAHM, even though I have earned nothing (first year business etc) I am better off with tax credits Where is the logic in that?? Ok that may all change when they re-add up, but still. I am self employed so they give me help towards putting DS in nursery one morning a week. Giving that same money to a SAHM would make it a hell of a lot easier to stay home with your children.

We struggle a lot of the time. I plan to return to outside work when DS starts school, but it dawned on me last night the logistics of getting a job that will help clear our debts etc will be 9-5. My children will have to be in breakfast club and after school club every day. I would go insane staying at home with them at school full time but the thought of only seeing them to feed them dinner (and not even breakfast!) fills me with dread.

Maybe more flexible working is the answer

Gah, I have no idea. I admire anyone who works full time because they have to rather than because they want to.

My thought is, that employers are to blame for low incomes. Why does someone that reads the news earn £1m a year?.

I was a SAHM in 1999 when ds1 was born. I can;t afford to be anymore. It's so expensive. It's hard to work with a severely disabled child so perhaps whilst they're scrapping the tax credits fiasco they could look at paying carers something sensible too.

Flexible working is important I agree Flame. The work I'm doing now is a funded PhD chosen for its flexibility. It's full time but flexible. Like you we have debts we need to clear- run up over the SAHM years.

We're not massive spenders. We don't go on holiday, we've had to spend a lot on ds1's disability that should have been state provided.

There's so much that makes it difficult to be a SAHM. Ideally I'd like to work part-time whilst my children are small, and be able to take school holidays off when they're older (I have to as there's no child care in this city for ds1 despite all the every disabled child matters stuff).

"If I had stayed at work there is no way we could have afforded two sets of childcare fees plus the wrap around care which would be needed for me to stay in my career job."

That forces a lot of women out of work IME

im a sahm to three children and cant afford to go back to work with childcare costs so much..i wul dhave to have before and after school care plus school hols and all day care fo rmy baby..i was offered a job a couple of years ago back in a school but had to turn it down last minute as when i worked out the figures id actually be worse of financially...so im a childminder to bring in a bit of extra cash but only have one child as like i said ive already got three myself..i would prefer the gov pays sahm for a period of time while the abies are little , its an investment in the future of this country anyway as they ar ethe future generation..

i dont see why the government or tax payer should pay so mums can stay at home. limit your family size to what you can afford.

"i dont see why the government or tax payer should pay so mums can stay at home. limit your family size to what you can afford. "

IME it is the other way around, those families like us who have very little money but no childcare costs as one parent stays at home CAN afford more children.

Where as working parents CAN'T afford to have a second child due to child care costs.

Oh fgs hifi

that is the whole point, if you cant afford them then dont compound your situation by having more children. most families i know have problems with outgoings because they have overstretched themselves.

I have two little girls. My eldest was 6months when went back to work. I went back part time and she was cared for by extended family. Im currently on Mateirty leave but once the pay stops I have no choice but to go back to work.
I would love to stay at home and care for my children but in no way is this possible if we want a roof over our heads and food in tummies.
I work as few hours as possible.

I think the goverment put to much money inot gwtting parents back to work, with extended schools, working tax credits and child care vouchers. I would like to see more money into helping those that want to stay at home, if their children are under 5 years. I would not suggest that both parents stay at home but atleast one.

Nonsense.

Plenty of parents plan to have children; plenty of children are conceived unexpectedly for all manner of reasons.

Adults get made redundant, get ill and god knows what. Life isn't straightforward and can't be planned for the most part.

Shall I give you an example or two?

In order to afford decent accomodation, many people need 2 incomes, or 1.5 any way.

We are lucky - where we live it is still possible to buy a reasonable home on one medium income, so I am able to stay at home until ds and any future siblings are older.

I have never had a job that paid much over minimum wage, so what I could earn would be lost in expenditure. That might be worthwhile if there was potential for any kind of financial or personal fulfillment in my job, but tbh there isn'.

People should just stop having children altogether. It's too expensive and a nuisance for employers. If we all stopped having them we wouldn't need all these CTCs and whatnot. And as for schools and those scum overpaid over-holidayed teachers, that would stop them moaning as well.

Isn't this just a natural consequence of Governmental policy to persuade more women back to the workplace?

If there hadn't been significant reductions in the numbers of SAHPs wouldn't all of the policies aimed at getting parents back to work failed?

Is it a bad thing for SAHMs to be reducing in number?

Or is WOTH bad?

It looks about right to me - 7/10 parents would have preferred to stay at home and there are 64% of those with children under 2 in work. So that looks like an unhappy 6% who are WOTH because they have to financially rather than because they want to.

There are no percentages given for the 1993 SAH figures - but looking at proportions it would seem that in 1993 there would have been a fair number of parents who wanted to work but were SAHPs.

LOL hullygully!

There is an element of lifestyle choice in this. I was a SAHM for 4 years when I had my eldest DD (in 1986) but the only way we could do it was for my DH to work 80 hours a week as a delivery driver.

I went back to work with a 4.5, 3 and 1yo at home and we worked shifts around them. They got to spend time with both parents but we got no time together or time off. It's only a short time, but it seems a lot of families expect "someone else" to provide rather than father change his job.

The tax allowance idea will not work. The govt is cutting the clerical staff in the tax offices by 25,000. To swap allowances like this is a very labour-intensive task that would take a lot of time/ money and staff that no longer exist. It will not happen.

The easiest and cheapest idea would be to increase the personal tax allowance for everybody to a realistic level (£10k-15k) so that lower paid people keep more of their own money, giving them more choice.

hullygully

@ hullygully

as a single parent i am very against the transference of the working partners tax allowance to the non working partner - where does that leave me? by all means increase the head of household allowance to reflect a non working or absent partner, but don't discriminate against my children because their dad did a runner and doesn't contribute. how do single parents factor into the SAH argument or can women only SAH when they are supported by a partner?

money should be directed to children regardless of the marital status of their parents, or whether they can afford (almost!)to have a parent care for them at home.

Surely the point is that we should organise society (via the elected representatives)to enable people to raise their own children (or why have them? Really?)and still have the occasional egg or glass of Rioja.

And as for nurseries..have you spent any serious amount of time in them? If you were a bored 17 year old faced with babies and toddlers, how loving and stimulating do you think you'd be? You hear people talk about how wonderful their nursery is, well what else are they going to do? Say my nursery sucks but I have to put up with it? No one tells the truth about this because it's just too grim.

I managed 5 years SAHM on a very very tight budget and was glad I had done - the benefits to my children's emotional and social wellbeing were priceless

However, I naively thought our troubles would be over when ds2 went to school and I could get a job.

What I didn't bank on was 5 years' later my job prospects had dwindled massively; we had used up all our savings and have no safety net; my school after-school club is full so cannot use it as childcare so can only work part time and have nightmares in the school hols....

I do hope that this comment meant enable and not compel?

"Surely the point is that we should organise society (via the elected representatives)to enable people to raise their own children (or why have them? Really?)and still have the occasional egg or glass of Rioja."

You are frightening me with the prospect of having to look after my DCs all day. I would go mad. Or get very depressed and anxious. Isn't this what happened to our mothers?

"The fact is that, in this country, anything that doesn't generate revenue is deemed worthless and a drain on resources. Children and their care are a (necessary?) evil, unless they can somehow be made to generate revenue through nurseries, etc."

And therein lies the problem. At what point did the government stop serving us and it got around to us serving the government?

The purpose of life is for living not to generate bloody revenue. Tax/government etc is supposed to serve us as a community/country by providing things we couldn't provide for ourselves - hospitals, schooling, policing, etc. Instead we're getting bled dry with insane levels of taxation to help fund massive wars and fat cat politicians.

And don't even get me started on "green" taxes which are just going to line the coffers further without being invested into any solution that might help us get out of the shit we got ourselves into .