For the past three and a half years I’ve been, as Jeremy Hunt would have it, “economically inactive”. Which is to say, I birthed two babies in relatively quick succession, looked at the cost of childcare (£42.5k a year for a baby and a two-year-old in my part of London, towards which the government will contribute up to £2k a child under the tax-free childcare scheme), and decided that staying home made more sense than putting them in nursery and desperately trying to earn enough to break even.
I’m far from alone in that calculation. Current data suggests there’s roughly 1.34 million stay-at-home parents in the UK. Although the percentage of dads is increasing, the vast majority are mothers. According to the Department for Education’s childcare and early years survey of parents, about half would prefer to do some paid work if childcare were more affordable. On the flip side, the thinktank Civitas has estimated there are more than 2 million mums of young children who’d prefer to reduce their hours, but work out of financial necessity. What could better exemplify the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” vibe that seems to characterise every aspect of modern parenting?
Personally, I’d like to work. Ideally just evenings and weekends to begin with, to avoid my entire income disappearing on childcare costs, and potentially full-time once my oldest starts school. Since the term after she turned three, she’s been eligible for some funded nursery hours, but the subsidy doesn’t stretch as far as you may think. The much-touted “30 hours of free childcare” for working parents is term-time only, so over a full year it averages out at 22 hours a week. Factor in travel, and that’s less than half of what you need to hold down a full-time job.
I want to work because the extra income would be helpful, because evening work feels more realistic now my youngest is sleeping better and, if I’m honest, because I’m aware of the prevailing belief that the way I currently spend my days is basically valueless.
As my household is not in receipt of universal credit, I’ll be spared a chiding letter from Hunt urging me to put down the wet wipes and do something more useful. It seems unlikely those letters will do much to achieve their official goal usefully deflects blame for the catastrophe that is the British economy from themselves. Say what you want about Nadhim Zahawi, but the man is undeniably economically active.
Though middle-class stay-at-home mums are excluded from the official government shaming campaign, cultural stereotypes of non-working mothers are pretty similar across the board. From the glossy, gym-bunny wives of CEOs and bankers to young, single mums in social housing, in the eyes of many we’re just different varieties of parasite. And if anything, attitudes towards stay-at-home dads may be even more negative, due to lingering, gendered assumptions.
I could try to persuade you that, actually, looking after small children seven days a week is quite full-on. I could talk about the social isolation, about the intensity of always, always being needed, about the guilt at feeling touched out, and not being able to divide myself in two when they’re vying for my attention.
What’s the point, though? I’d effectively be begging you to consider childrearing a valuable activity when all evidence suggests that, as a society, we simply don’t. Just look at how the professionals are treated. Full-time nursery care for two under-threes doesn’t cost more than median take-home earnings because childcare workers are living high on the hog. Early years provision is expensive because, to provide safe, quality care, you need a high ratio of staff to kids. The only way to make it affordable, while compensating workers fairly, is to massively expand government subsidies. Labour’s proposal to expand the “30 hours” funding to under-threes is a step in the right direction, but it won’t help all families. Even with that extra support, it would still cost £23,800 to send two kids to my local nursery full time – about three-quarters of take-home pay if you earn the national median salary (£33k) and have a student loan on repayment plan one.
Childcare struggles aside, another issue for parents hoping to return to work is that our confidence tends to be at rock bottom. I basically don’t believe that anyone will want to hire me. When friends send me job listings, or suggest possible career pivots, I suspect them of humouring me. Some days, I doubt that I have any marketable skills whatsoever. Of course, you could argue that’s an unusually healthy level of self-awareness for someone with a background mainly in opinion writing – but I know far more accomplished women who’ve taken a few years away from the workplace to raise children and suffer similar self-doubt.
To some extent, it’s unavoidably going to be daunting, searching for work after a significant break, but widespread cultural disdain for stay-at-home parents does not help. When research suggests that even women who might have children are discriminated against in job interviews, what chance does someone who has demonstrably prioritised childrearing have? I know that many people do successfully return to work after a stint at home, albeit often in a more junior and lower-paid role, but I’m struggling to believe I’ll pull it off myself. Instead of targeting partners of universal credit recipients with nagging letters, perhaps Hunt could send all stay-at-home parents a good luck card.
Abi Wilkinson is a London-based journalist
