the times | Saturday September 5 2020 1GM 29
Comment
Britain can’t go back to work without childcare
Ministers underestimate how much the pandemic has played havoc with the complex web of support families rely on
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their poor children. Only when
David Cameron softened the Tory
image with his school-run photocalls
did the party at last acknowledge the
need for work-life balance.
Now a Conservative government
seems impervious to parents who
cannot return to work. A report
from the Institute for Fiscal Studies
warns that private nurseries, many
of which remained open during
lockdown to care for key workers’
children, are in debt: 71 per cent
expect to make a loss this year.
While their capacity has been
lowered for social distancing reasons,
they must invest in adapting their
premises with handwashing stationsand partitions. Nurseries will close
and, without nursery places, many
workers must leave the economy.
Post-pandemic planning has
focused more on pubs than on
parental needs. Companies trying
to lure workers back into offices
need to factor in their childcare
responsibilities; head teachers
should see breakfast and after-school
clubs not as added extras, but as an
essential service.
Above all, government ministers
need to appreciate the messiness
of family life, that simply having no
one to care for a child between
3.30pm and 5.30pm can throw you
onto benefits. A few more mothers
around the cabinet table might help.family-work battle too expensive or
exhausting, and resign from jobs
they loved. This childcare crisis
means that for many dual-income
couples something must give, and it
is likely to be women’s careers.
Whenever parents moan about
their working day being mucked up
by an unscheduled “inset day”,
teachers say indignantly that they’re
“not here to provide childcare”. But
until the pandemic, supermarket
shelf-stackers didn’t realise they were
key workers. Lockdown has revealed
how interconnected we are, that
many jobs have auxiliary
importance. And providing childcare
is not some inferior role to teachingmaths, just because it is historically
unpaid women’s work. Childcare
keeps the economy going.
In 1982, the newly-elected Harriet
Harman’s first question to the prime
minister was about lack of provision
for working parents during the long
school holidays. There were jeers
from both sides of the house, and Mrs
Thatcher replied: “No, I do not
believe that it is up to the government
to provide care for schoolchildren
during the school holidays.”
The idea that childcare was a
national political issue was absurd, a
view that did not shift among
Conservatives who would ask female
candidates at constituency selection
meetings how they justified leavingmultiple years, have not reopened.
Childminders, who bridge the tricky
after-school hours, have restricted
numbers too. For parents who
cannot remote-work, like drivers or
medics, this means reducing hours
or even losing a job. In some
households, anxious parents may
rely on children to stay safe in front
of the TV until they get home.
This week the TUC revealed in an
ICM poll that 41 per cent of working
mothers with under-tens have
insufficient or insecure childcare.
Almost half could no longer rely onfriends or family. Is it safe for the
elderly to help with grandchildren
now they’re mixing, asymptomatically,
with others? Do rules permit every
mother’s saviour, your school-gate
mates, to give your kids tea?
Feminist progress is forever
trumpeted, yet during lockdown the
old division of labour re-emerged:
women did the majority of home-
schooling and were twice as likely as
men to work while caring for kids.
Raising young children, I watched
fellow mothers, usually after the
second or third child, find theI
only once needed the after-school
club at my sons’ state primary. I
was fortunate, able to work
flexibly from home and afford
private childcare. Even so, chaos
happens... Signing up with me in the
assembly hall were parents I never
saw at the school gate. Coats pulledover supermarket tabards and
security guard uniforms, they had
rushed there desperate to bag a place.
That their kids got a snack, played
football, had help with homework
and didn’t need to be collected until
5.30pm meant both parents could
work. Or that a single mother could
take a full-time job. This sliver of
extra time at after-school club kept
countless low-wage families afloat.
As the government harries workers
to return to city centre offices,
childcare is seldom mentioned. It is
the Cinderella service compared
with schools. I wonder how many
cabinet ministers have had to patch
together that untidy mix of pick-ups
and car-pools, made apologies tonurseries when their train is late,
deployed Granny, begged favours
from friends.
Rishi Sunak’s wife is the daughter
of an Indian billionaire. Priti Patel
once told me she disapproved of
working mothers, but excused herself
because her parents cared for her
kids. Boris... well, maybe he’ll be
different with Wilf. We are governed
mainly by rich men with families
who can afford hired help. Childcare
worries are for the little people and,
disproportionately, women.
Yet without resolving them the
economy cannot fully revive. Schools
are back, yet with staggered starts: a
logistical pain if you have severalkids in different years or, worse,
different schools. And hours are
reduced: try achieving a full day’s
work if pick-up on Friday, when they
deep-clean the school, is 2pm,
especially with a commute. No
wonder parents haven’t rushed back.
Whisper it, but home-working is
actually easier than in lockdown now
that kids aren’t constantly underfoot,
crashing your Zoom calls. Then you
can walk your kids home and share
their day, maybe re-open your laptop
when they’re in bed. But many
parents desperately need breakfast
and after-school clubs, which provide
wraparound care. Now they have far
fewer places or, since they involve
“bubbling” together kids fromSomething must give
and it is likely to be
the woman’s careers
Janice
Turner
@victoriapeckham