By Jessica Asato / @Jessica_Asato
The Jesuit saying “give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man” has much basis in truth - what happens in the early years of a child’s life determines their later outcomes. Research shows that even by the age of 22 months, a child born to professional parents will have a higher cognitive ability than a child born to working class parents from a poorer background. By the second year in primary school, a bright poor child will be overtaken by a less talented child from a middle class family. A child’s physical, emotional and cognitive development depends crucially on the support they receive from family and society in the early years. This led Labour to introduce subsidised nursery places for 3 and 4 year olds and Sure Start centres in disadvantaged neighbourhoods while free childcare places for 15% of the most disadvantaged two-year olds was announced earlier this year in the ‘New Opportunities’ White Paper.
But this will not be enough if we genuinely wish to see a break between parental inheritance and a child’s future life course. The UK still invests three times as much per child in higher education as it does for children under five, yet investment in the early years reaps financial rewards too by reducing child poverty costs, remedial education costs and even the costs of crime, which can often be linked to neglect in the early years.
One major policy shift to remedy this would be to introduce high quality free universal pre-school childcare.
There are three reasons why this is desirable: current provision is often patchy and low quality which impacts on child development; lack of affordable childcare restricts particularly mothers’ choices to go back to work; and Labour’s welfare to work plans depend on there being affordable childcare which parents trust to look after their child.
So why is current provision not adequate for the needs of parents in the UK? Most studies show that there is a failure in market provision because of high fees, which many parents – not just those from very poor backgrounds – cannot afford. For example, in a recent Daycare Trust report, over half of the parents interviewed said they struggled with childcare costs and 21% said that upfront fees affected their decision to go back to work. There is also a lack of flexibility in the availability of care and poor information for parents about provision. By making childcare available to all, the government would reduce the need for means-testing which, as most research shows, will lead to a take-up of childcare amongst the poorest parents. It would also engender a sense of solidarity among parents of all classes.
The second reason why it would be a desirable policy is so that women are given a genuine choice about whether they can return to work or not after their child turns one or two. Given that women are still the main carers for children, the lack of affordable childcare hits them more unequally and damages their earning potential leading to both an income and pension pay gap. This is exacerbated for lone parents where being out of work often spells high rates of child poverty.
Finally, Labour’s welfare to work plans rely on encouraging mostly single mothers to find work when their child reaches the age of two. The major stumbling block to this is that most mothers would be hard pressed to find 8 hours provision of affordable childcare to be able to take up offers of work. Universal childcare would remedy this problem and allow mothers to get off benefits and into work which is not only better for the household income, but often for a mum’s mental health too.
While it is true that the introduction of free pre-school childcare would be highly costly, another report for the Daycare Trust predicted that in the best case scenario, the "value of the benefits generated by enabling more parents to work and boosting the long-term productivity of children would exceed the costs of the additional childcare provision by around £40 billion over a 65-year period."
It may not be the best time to introduce universal provision of childcare given the recession, but as a medium-term aim, the Labour party couldn’t do better if ending child poverty, female empowerment and greater equality of outcomes are its goals.
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I totally agree with Charlie when he said:
"There's a class issue here too, for every Hoxton-dwelling human rights lawyer who can't wait to get back to work and put the world to rights, there are a hundred thousand ordinary people slogging away at a crap job on MW to make ends meet and would much rather be down the park with their kids. But no, its all about work, work, work."
I also know working class families who work all the hours the Lord sends - not out of choice but out of duty - to provide for their family. My boss, on the other hand, is a Partner in a Magic Circle Law firm and has 3 children under 8. Because she has a 7 figure salary to play with, she has the economic freedom to work as many or as few hours as she chooses. I've had other colleagues quite their careers as Corporate Lawyers to become fulltime mums. This is a choice they can make because they can afford to - not because some patriarchal society is forcing their hand.
Working class families may not pass on an IQ of 160 to their children, but they can and do pass on values that aren't too prominent in middle class communities: a work ethic that enables them to hold down a dull job year after year; courage to face hardship and adversity; an aversion to debt that enables them to live within their meagre means; a strong sense of solidarity with family and community. These values can - and do enable people to lead happy and fulfilling lives even if there's no way of measuring that by statistics.
(regarding childminders, there may be more of them and be more easily accessible if the government changed its mind on enforcing OFSTED inspections and all the other recently imposed targets and quotas)
However why should the taxpayer pick up the bill - people make there own choices in life, having children is one of them...
I am not anti childcare, or children, nor am I anti some form of subsidised/free childcare for those who would really benefit - but universal childcare?
I dont want to be acussed of being a tory ( i am not voted 2005 iraq protest) but if the poor ( i hate that word ) family has less resources then that will disadvantage them , the only utopia answer is to tax everyone 100% and give everyone the same each week ? and also take into the public sector the private schools , would the standerds rise ?
I dont no the answer
ricki
I completey concur with your final point. We really do need a long term policy plan for the development and education of our children that is notwithstanding the childs financial background.
Good article Jessica. I shall look in more detail into this as I continue to knock on doors this weekend.
The electron microscope I used at uni cost a hell of a lot more than the wax crayons I used at playgroup.
Of course in the real one, we can ignore the comments about savings as they are totally made up.
As the study referenced was written in 2003, before childcare for younger children started, nothing should be implemented until a proper audit of successes and failures in the poresent system has been done.
After all , avoiding mistakes is essential to maximise results.
The study has major caveats as anyone who reads the first page can see. In a recession, those savings which rely on mothers going back to full time work will be unachievable.
Given the obvious issues, that report has to be updated.
To rely on it is asking for trouble.
That's a pretty broadbrush statement. Actually, the research on savings through the life cycle if you invest in early years are pretty much accepted in the social policy community. If you look on page 46 of this paper researched by the Social Market Foundation with help from PricewaterhouseCoopers, you will see more evidence. http://www.smf.co.uk/assets/files/publications/Too_much_Too_late.pdf
Yes, the recession does mean that finding the extra money to do this is not going to happen any time soon (maybe if you had read my final paragraph you would have seen I conceded that), but it doesn't invalidate the argument that there are cost savings to investing in the early years. It just means that the returns take longer to see.
And there has been a proper audit of the successes of Sure Start which took six years: http://www.ness.bbk.ac.uk/impact/documents/41.pdf
Although used o reading reports, teh writings style and frequent use of abbreviations make it appear very badly written. In my prior life, I would have told the authors o go away and put bit in English!
The conclusion is that Sure Start MAY be improving and giving positive results.
I would NOT under any circumstances spend an extra £100 million based on its conclusions let alone £1 billion or £10 billion. Modest improvements is not a recipe for spending more money.
It's a fail. No mention of VFM in the Executive Summary so I assume it's a costly failure then.
And anyone who predicts anything over a 65 year period is an idiot.
And the tax that 'needs paying' just happens to be what creates our high standards of living - books in schools, high tech equipment for GP's surgeries, street lighting, public parks and everything else which helps our lives work better.
I'm less interested in the rights of men and women as I am in the needs of the child. Look at any other animal and you'll find that the species that form long term partnerships are those for whom raising offspring to breeding age requires more energy than one parent can provide. Just look at single mums - they have worse mental/physical health and they die earlier than those who have a partner to support them.
That's why a family should be able to get by on a single salary, because when someone (man or woman) can devote themselves solely to the care of the children we get better outcomes.
Raising children is not a one-'man' job - those who have to do it sacrifice their health and life expectancy to provide the same quality of parenting as the couples.
I think that the rights of men and women are very closely linked to the rights of the child. After the first year, actually there isn't huge evidence that high quality childcare is worse than if children are cared for at home. In fact the socialisation that childcare settings can provide can be very good for developing children's social and emotional skills. Yes, of course it's true that bringing up a child on your own can be harmful for your health, particularly when you have no childcare options to allow you to work, even if it's part time. Given that rewarding marriage is on a hiding to nothing, it makes sense to take action to help lone parents rather than simply wishing that their partners would stay with them.
Many people find that they have a happier home life if they can combine work with caring for their children - I agree that it's difficult for families to get by at the moment, but surely making childcare universal would make that situation better not worse?
There's a class issue here too, for every Hoxton-dwelling human rights lawyer who can't wait to get back to work and put the world to rights, there are a hundred thousand ordinary people slogging away at a crap job on MW to make ends meet and would much rather be down the park with their kids. But no, its all about work, work, work.
"I was trying to make the point that most people who think you should be able to get by on a single salary are hiding the fact that they actually think women who have children should stay at home to look after children."
I'm not so sure. OK, maybe that's me misreading your reply to misreading my reply etc etc...
The benefits of children socialising don't require that both parents work for a wage, the economics of our society do. Back when the standard was male breadwinner and female homemaker, children still played together. I'm all for it, but I don't think it is necessarily better for it to be done by the state or a private company.
I've got nothing against providing more childcare facilities - other than I don't have children and I can see this being something that pushes up my taxes instead of coming from the money wasted on ID cards and Trident. I have an issue with the idea that there's something wrong with expecting a family to be able to get by on a single salary. A group of buildings only become a community when there are people there. If we all go to work, come home, eat dinner and then go to bed, it makes it harder to build bonds within a community, because nobody ever meets. Being able to live on a single salary - or two part-time salaries - means that people are at home more of the time. A generalisation, I know, but I don't think the idea of a single salary family should be written off.
I'm not saying it's your motivation, but the drive to "help" second parents to work often seems to be more about producing for the economy than improving society.
I don't mind tax, I'm not a tory, just finding it hard to pay the bills in a recession like most people.
(a) productivity gains of the last 40 years have largely gone to capital ie to unproductive rentier shareholders; and
(b) the combination of compounding debt and private property in land, coupled with insane levels of leverage, have concentrated wealth in ever fewer hands, and led to an increasing proportion of income being allocated to property debt service.
The only solution is systemic fiscal reform.
Supply rises slowly, demand rockets. Hardly rocket science.