Maybe mums want to look after their children?
The picture says it all. A new narrative is needed!
PRESS RELEASE
The Sunday Times printed an article on 5th June 2022 stating that some women were struggling to afford to go back to work after having children. It used the term ‘economically inactive.’
The picture says it all. A new narrative is needed!
The Sunday Times published an article ‘Held Back…childcare costs are forcing an increasing number of young women to go missing from the workforce.’ “More alarmingly”, Tom Calver writes, “the number of women not working to look after home or family has risen 5% in the past year, the first sustained increase in at least 30 years”. Perhaps, I may suggest, there is another narrative. Is it really such an alarming idea that a young mother may harbour a desire to care for her own infant or young child? Is this really a reverse of progress as Tom suggests? Or is it an awakening that despite years of negative downplaying of the role of caring at home, mothers have discovered as Germaine Greer found, the ‘best kept secret in the western world’ – ‘the immense rewardingness of children’.
For decades we have devalued caring at home both in the language we use and in financially penalising those who do so through an unjust tax system which does not recognise the family. So-called ‘family-friendly policies’ have focussed on getting mothers back into work which in effect separates mother from child at an increasingly young age. The mother at home is ‘sepia tinted’, ‘idle’, has ‘wasted her education’ and as stressed several times in the article is an ‘uneconomic unit’ and therefore of no value to the economy. The childcare narrative is of a ‘burden’ to parents and raising children is an ‘obstacle’ to a woman’s career.
But what could happen if we believed raising children was not an obstacle or burden but a worthy end in itself? What difference would that make both to those doing the caring and to those being cared for?
What if we could measure a person’s worth to society in another measurement than Gross Domestic Product which categorises mothers at home as ‘uneconomic units’, or expanded it to include the unpaid work of young women, which the ONS estimates at £140 billion in the UK? What if we believed that gender equality could be achieved not through a narrow income measurement but by valuing the role of caregiving and paying those in the caring professions a decent wage and supporting family care properly.
Childcare costs are prohibitive but subsidised childcare is not necessarily the answer to relief from poverty. Once families were supported through allowances in the tax system. Today the tax system does not even recognise the ‘family unit’ and allowances were removed. Tax credits were devised by Gordon Brown to make up for this loss, but it comes at a price. Unfortunately, families are finding out all too late that both parents are working very hard for very little extra disposable income. For those stuck in Universal Credit (almost half of all families) for every extra £1 earned 70p gets taken back by the Treasury in a reduction in Universal credit, NI and Income tax.
Once a family could survive on one income. Now the reality is two incomes are needed to survive. Mothers are needed to plug the income gap but even if childcare were fully subsidised, under UC she will bring home at most 55p of every £1 earned and if she earns over £12k she will bring home 30p for every extra £1 earned. Perhaps mothers are realising that they are working near to capacity for a rate of reward for effort amounting to exploitation as bad as anywhere in the world and passing largely unnoticed. And what has she lost? Time with her children, time which cannot be recovered. Perhaps realisation is dawning that there is nothing to lose but her chains!*
And what about the children? Is it ideal for babies and toddlers to spend hours away from home and their primary carer when we now know so much about the importance of attachment and consistent care? Families have reached a crisis point. Mothers cannot afford nursery fees but they cannot afford to stay at home either. A much wider debate is needed about how to support families with more flexible approaches putting the needs of the child at the centre and valuing the work that goes into raising our next generation.
Mothers At Home Matter
*The system affects families differently depending on whether they are renting or have a mortgage.
For more information please see www.mothersathomematter.com/economic-justice