Parents are stressed enough without the childcare burden!

There’s enough stress on parents, without the childcare burden
Life with children is brilliant; but ultimately stressful. However, it is stress we put upon ourselves, constantly questioning our life choices, what we are teaching our children and above all, are we getting it right?
Now, I already have a big enough beef with society. If I stay at home, I’m a scrounger, or I have no ambition. If I go to work, I am a bad mum who doesn’t care about her child and is happy to just pass her onto any old person to bring them up. So don’t even get me started on that no-win situation. Next on my society hating hit list; the price of childcare.  Also, the fact that the less ambition and motivation you have to get a job and provide for your family, the more support you gets from the government, which I believe to be beyond ridiculous.
Mainly what upsets me is the lack of consideration from the government before deciding on how to share out the little childcare help available. They do not consider what families actually have to pay for; they just look at income. If they took away the cost of things that hardworking people have to pay for, i.e full price rent/mortgage, the cost of one car between two adults, council tax and utilities (the things that non-politicians cannot fiddle to make someone else pay for) I imagine they will be seriously startled when they realise just how little families are left with at the end of the month.
The startling truth is that full-time childcare costs minimum of £600, ranging up to well over a grand. This cost should certainly not outweigh the cost of rent or a mortgage, but in many households it taking over. Even part-time childcare can render working pointless. If we are rendering working pointless, all we are going to be left with is a country full of people staying at home and claiming benefits, because if you can get the same amount of money, or in some cases EVEN MORE by staying at home and doing nothing, why wouldn’t you? The problem is that this mindset has become far more widespread in recent years and is costing the government millions.
I am not saying that staying home with your children is a bad thing, in fact I think it is a wonderful thing if you can afford it. I just think it is a bad example to do it at the expense of someone else; it is setting a bad example. What I am saying is that parents who do work and want to work, deserve the help that other European parents are getting, because it is the only way we will get back on our feet as a country as the current system is holding parents back and facilitating laziness.

The Parent Trap!

If you managed to see The Tonight Programme last week on ITV ‘The Parent Trap’ you will have seen yet another report on the overwhelming cost of childcare.

You can’t seem to turn on the TV or radio these days without hearing more about the growing issues around childcare and the effect it is having upon families up and down the country.

The Parent Trap report again referred back to the Swedish system where families only spend 6% of their income on childcare compared to 27% in the UK. In Sweden they pay higher taxes in order to subsidise such things as their childcare system, but could that really work here in the UK especially in the current climate of cut backs and austerity?

The government though did this week announce plans to extend the 15 free hours nursery care to 2 year olds in some of Britain’s most deprived areas to ‘increase social mobility for children and adults’. It is definitely a step in the right direction but with the new changes to working tax credits and the hours you need to work to be eligible will it really benefit people?

The report also highlighted that it is not just the parents are suffering but the nurseries and childcare providers are too. Even when a child is entitled to the 15 free hours of funding it doesn’t actually cover the ‘real’ cost to the nursery or setting. It means that nurseries have to include the difference from what they receive in funding to the ‘real’ cost into their overall prices, therefore increasing the cost for people who require more than 15hrs a week or whose children are under 3.

It is so hard to put a price on childcare as what price do you put on leaving your child in the care of someone else? So, this isn’t a debate about whether childcare is right or wrong, or whether parents should stay home, as that just isn’t feasible for some people but more about what can be done to make it more flexible and affordable.

For anyone who did not see the programme this is a link to the report http://www.itv.com/news/2012-05-31/the-parent-trap-uk-pays-some-of-the-highest-childcare-costs-in-the-world/