Can UK childcare be fixed? | FT Women In Business

FT public policy reporter Bethan Staton on why childcare is rising fast up the agenda in Westminster and for businesses. UK parents pay more, struggle to find places for their children... and want employers and policymakers to help sort it out
#childcare
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[@richjoyal]

Governments should have made raising the next generation of citizens as top national priority.

[@keyboarddancers7751]

Scandinavian countries and Hungary all offer extremely high/generous levels of social and financial support to parents and yet the birth rate in those countries remains below the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per mother. The social and economic implications of the industrialised world's increasing aversion to larger families will provide huge amounts of material for demographers for many years to come.

[@koenigkorczak]

Increasing the number of children one educator is allowed to take care of is literally the worst possible idea to solve this problem. The only thing that that's going to accomplish is severly diminish the quality of the care and I speak from first hand experience here. Science says that in order to provide adequate care for 3-6 year-olds, it can't be more than 5 kids per educator and not more than 3 kids under 3 years.

[@dashdash_peacecampaign]

If we keep stating daycare as a women’s issue, men and male politicians would care less about the issue. Besides, the Conservatives love the image of women staying behind with children, such that they see no issue with the current arrangement and lack of funding.

[@ghostcuffs5816]

why the hell should the government pay for YOUR kids??? If you want to work full time DONT HAVE KIDS when do you be a mother?

[@yaolu3701]

Because regenerate is human (or all living matters) nature. Also down to individual level, if not enough people can afford having children, then we would never be able to retire 😂

[@oc2538]

Do you think a family of four can survive on one income? Nope not anymore. I stay home but my husband cannot afford it, my father essentially helps us 🙏 thank goodness but if he didn't we wouldn't have bothered having children at all.

[@JwayT]

If only we had a system where one parent went out to work and the other raised the children.

[@elfinlewis1373]

Nah, once known, can't be unknown. That's how civilization is able to make progress. You can't stop women from breaking confinement. It's only going to get more common. But you can certainly make the argument, that parents should take turns to take care of children.

[@yofinance1777]

@@elfinlewis1373 We’re on our way to a generation of women from Uni I’m careers doing well but lonely and sad living in their own. What are we trying to achieve ?

[@MrMarkhall1]

What's going wrong these days? When I was young my Dad went out to work and my Mum stayed at home and looked after us.

[@verifiedmama]

More than a third of wave? I don’t think so, it’s more like THE WHOLE MINIMUM WAGE. And many women are under that pay!!! The majority actually

[@contemplatinggod2791]

⁠exactly there is something the government isn’t telling us. If early years is so wxpensive and tge rest of education is free, it just not adding up

[@drifty_grifty]

What is wrong with spending time with your children? Why even have them if you'd rather make powerpoints all day? If nursery costs are so high then it makes sense to look after your own child, rather than having strangers do a (worse) job. Is GDP the only thing that's valuable in this rotten society?

[@Garner84]

You are forced to stay at home, it is not a choice. Not an obsession with GDP but this policy makes economical and social sense, mothers and fathers can choose whether they want to do that or want to go and work, currently that's not possible.

[@drifty_grifty]

Why is spending quality time with your child a punishment?

[@GodFormHermet]

the entire family depending on a single income isn't good. You still have to pay for all expenses, plus having no money left to spend on quality of life, service, or travel. This means the economy will not thrive if more women stay at home because of childcare costs. No value or money can be made by a stay-at-home mom, which in turn makes the economy stagnate.

[@GodFormHermet]

@@drifty_grifty spending time with your child 24/7 without the opportunity to pursue your dream job, work or hobby is a punishment

[@drifty_grifty]

@@GodFormHermet Families used to depend on a single income and live a very good quality of life. And not everything is measurable in a price or a money cost. Having quality time with you children/parents is priceless, as anyone who has lost one can tell you. No one is going to regret making a few less PowerPoints.

[@MrMarkhall1]

Where does this obsession with getting rich at the cost of children's welfare come from?

[@CentralParkish]

Robot for childcare. Robot for elderly including me

[@fajamieh0]

You want childcare, YOU pay for it. I am child-free by design so why should I pay for yours??

[@awolf913]

I agree with you but to play devil’s advocate, if people just stopped being born because they don’t want others to pay for their choices then the population would go down and people would have to work for more years until they retire. This is assuming parents who are struggling to or can’t afford childcare which I would say is a large number of parents. It would also reduce labour in the job market and I don’t even want to get into how many problems this would cause.

[@fajamieh0]

@@awolf913 Socialism never works. If more workers are needed, let women have more kids and stay at home like the old days. Let their husbands take care of them

[@fajamieh0]

Also, everyone should save money for their own retirement. The state owes you nothing

[@awolf913]

@@fajamieh0 well that’s why you have National insurance, you pay in when you work which is fair.

[@fajamieh0]

@@awolf913 Which is a form of socialism, which never works. How did people use to live before the the welfare state which was only introduced after WWII? European socialism has no place in the US

[@YaBoiJeff24]

Why should the government (tax payers) or corporations pay for your decision to have a child? You should be there for your child during the early formative years. If you can't afford it you should make a choice whether you can afford it.

[@laurapatterson9761]

Multiple reasons: A very strong reason simply being the economic implications. A system where the majority, or even a large portion, of people can't afford to have kids creates a future demographic squeeze- i.e. a much smaller proportion of young workers to people who are either retired or no longer able to work due to age related illness. This would obviously massively impact the available government funding while creating a average higher demand per person for those very things the govt funds (e.g. state pension, NHS, social care etc). But you don't have to look to the future to make an argument based on economics, it has very real present implications.The cost of childcare means many working parents are forced to leave their careers to raise the child. This then reduces the workforce available, and thus also the amount of tax the govt can collect. You're also then further reducing the labour pool in an already tight labour market, making it harder for economic growth (which is already dismal in the UK), and making it harder to deal with inflation. There's also other strong reasons beside economics ones. For example, you might think that the key measure of a society's success is whether the people within it have the freedom (and the means) to build a life for themselves. For many a key part of that life is having a family. By putting having children out of reach for an increasingly large section of society, you're making living in that country less appealing. At the end of the day the cost of childcare (like quite a lot of things) is a real issue which needs a thoughtful solution. It can't be solved by ideologically using the "It's their decision, not my problem" blanket approach.

[@GodFormHermet]

then don't complain when your country is full of Muslim children and no white

[@MissExquizit]

94% of parents in the uk can’t afford it so I guess immigration is the answer which I don’t mind as I am an immigrant- open the floodgates I say!