London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

The state will pay anyone to look after your children — except you

The state will pay anyone to look after your children — except you

Am I a better or worse mother because I work? That is a question never far from any working mother’s mind.

Now that my children are both at school (they are four and 10) I would say it’s better that I’m working. I have always wanted and needed to work. But if I could have looked after my children full-time before they started school, would that have been a wonderful thing for them? I think it would.

Which is why I’ve always felt slightly adrift from the metropolitan weltanschauung that wrap-around nursery childcare should be a right for parents as soon as they want to go to work.

Successive governments over the past 30 years have been hysterical and unremitting in their drive to get women back into the workplace after having children, separating mothers from their children at an ever-younger age for ever-increasing hours, the gist being that they will offer women all sorts of benefits and subsidies for childcare, as long as they pay someone else to do it.

This is clearly attractive to the Treasury — these women, and the people employed to look after their children, all pay tax. But ONS figures show that 77 per cent of mothers who are staying at home to look after children don’t want to find paid work, which should make us question the constant drive to get mothers into the workplace.

Frank Young’s excellent report for Civitas argues that we have been getting childcare policy the wrong way round in this country for some time. His report calls on ministers to allow parents to front-load their child benefit entitlement — enabling parents to squeeze 18 years of payments into three or four. Adding in other tax incentives and subsidies and parents could receive £8,000 a year and spend it how they choose.

And this is not just about the parents.

No political party is prepared to acknowledge it but there is a lot of research that shows that very young children benefit from secure attachment to a primary care giver and there are potential harms associated with long-term institutional care.

While there is little evidence that this benefits children’s development, there is substantial evidence that children in nurseries, particularly in poor-quality ones, have persistently higher levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) than children at home. A recent assessment of scientific evidence found that long periods spent in a formal childcare setting before the age of three provides few cognitive advantages for most children and makes children “more likely to misbehave and be angry once they reach school.”

The motherhood and career conundrum isn’t easy for women. The UK has the second most expensive childcare in the OECD, and it’s rising.

In many cases, during those early years, it doesn’t pay to work, while mothers who don’t, pay a heavy price in terms of career progression, salary and pension.

There are no easy choices, but the current system doesn’t seem to be working for anyone.

Crowning glory
Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in The Crown


The fifth series of the Crown starts tomorrow night and I for one could not be more excited. It has also been so enjoyable to witness all the luvvies clutching their pearls about the show as it melds fact and fiction, with Judi Dench calling it ‘cruelly unjust’ and ‘crude sensationalism’. I don’t remember any of them complaining when a similar dose of artistic licence was given to the real-life Fred West victims in the gripping dramas Responsible Adult or the The Moorside about Shannon Matthews.

Adding to the difficult ethical gymnastics in condemning the Crown is the fact that Mike Tindall is currently (why, and who signed that off?) parading himself on I’m a Celebrity and Harry is of course on the Netflix payroll.

From Princess Margaret’s acerbic one-liners and self-destructive carousing to the Queen’s hilarious asides and Prince Philip’s laconic wit, the show has actually made me more of a fan of the royals.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
×