THE Government invests nearly £5billion a year in separating babies and young children from their mothers. Damaging to both children and mothers, this iniquity is all but forced on families by the once pro-family Conservative Party. Challenging this heartless and uneconomic policy was a key motivation for starting this website nearly ten years ago. The anti-family, anti-maternal socialist revolution was already in full swing when the Conservative Party took over. Far from respecting families’ freedom of choice to look after their children themselves, they backed the option mothers are most uncomfortable about – institutional child care. Today the consequences of this for child misery, poor mental health, identity addiction and herd mentality are all too visible.
We are republishing a series of articles on this broad topic from 2014 onwards to remind ourselves of what, as a society, we signed up to, paying so little heed to the consequences of depriving infants of their mother’s care.
This article by Laura Perrins was first published on December 3, 2014.
JUNIOR childcare minister Sam Gyimah has shamelessly trumpeted the spectacular leftist social engineering engaged in by the party formerly known as the Conservatives. Mr Gyimah does not do irony, as evidenced by close reading of this Marxist clap-trap.
Ahead of the Autumn Statement, this piece by him has been produced perhaps as an attempt to remind us all how much ‘help’ the government is giving to make dual-earning families a necessity, thus making it nearly impossible for families to care for their children at home. Many may not think this is something to be proud of, but Mr Gyimah does.
He leaves us in no doubt as to the aim of the so-called Conservative Party, namely to force mothers away from their children and back to work whether they like it or not: ‘Our long-term economic plan is delivering unprecedented opportunities for mothers in the workplace, with 14.4million women in work today – up 60 per cent since the early 1970s. Around two-thirds of mothers in the UK now work, meaning that dual-income couples are now the norm.’
This flies in the face of yet another survey that reveals the reason why many mothers return to work after having a child is not because they want to (all things being equal) but because they have to for financial reasons. In a survey by the National Childbirth Trust, 77 per cent of mothers said that household finance was their main concern when deciding to return to work.
Yes, dual-income couples are the norm, Mr Gyimah, but it might be worth asking yourself if this is what families want, or is it what they have to do, despite their better judgment? Nor is this in the long-term interests of the children themselves.
In my book, the fact that families must have both parents working is not something to boast about. It just means the economy is not strong enough to sustain a family on a single wage, or even a wage and a half. So, the Childcare Minister and his ilk should really check their smugness.
As I said, Mr Gyimah does not do irony, or indeed shame. At a time of ‘savage austerity’ and mounting debt, he tells us what we at TCW have been saying for the last year – that the Government has been pouring billions into the childcare industry.
‘This government is spending £5billion, rising to £6billion, a year on childcare over the course of this Parliament. And our commitment doesn’t end there: we’ve also put in almost another £1.5billion to make sure that the families that need it most benefit from the Government’s help to support their children. These numbers are huge. We’re pumping billions into the sector.’ Let’s hear that again from the Conservative mouth – they are pumping billions into the childcare sector. They are doing this, dear voter, with your buck – and they have removed child benefit from the middle classes.
Child benefit was, in effect, a tax allowance given to all families, and did not discriminate against single or double income families. The Tories decided to take sides.
What impact are the billions having? Apart from subsidising the industry, not much. The 15 hours early years education provision costs the taxpayer £66,000 for every mother who returns to work. In addition it provides no long-term educational benefit for poorer children. This ‘it is best for the children’ lark has been exposed for the big fat lie it is.
So the childcare industry subsidy is not very small state, costs the taxpayer a fortune for every mother who returns to work (even though she does not much want to) and helps children not a jot. Ministers like Mr Gyimah just do not get it.
