Childcare Policy and the Economy by Maria Lyons
Extended Version
The North East coast of Scotland is admittedly not known for its wonderful weather but we do have the occasional unexpectedly beautiful sunny day, even in the autumn months. On one such day a few weeks ago I took my daughter to the beach. The beach was deserted, save for a handful of older people walking their dogs. As we were digging and splashing in the breakers a woman came up to me to say she was so happy to see a child outside, playing in the sand like her children used to do. We chatted briefly about how one rarely sees (or hears!) children in public spaces anymore, because even the very young tend nowadays to be in nursery or some form of care during the day.
This strangely silent week-day world is of course a result of the fact that most parents of young children either want to work or must work. Whether a desire or an obligation on the part of parents, the gradual transfer of the care and raising of children from families to paid professionals is a socio-cultural phenomenon that is wholeheartedly encouraged by the present Government. Indeed, at a time dominated by political division and discord, there is one policy objective that is unanimously supported by all the political parties in the United Kingdom; that is the aim to increase provision of free childcare for three to four year olds from the current 15 hours a week to 30 hours per week. The impetus for this policy is economic. More affordable and flexible childcare, the rationale goes, will enable more mothers to enter the workforce thus boosting productivity as well as improving government finances through a combination of higher tax revenues and lower benefit costs.
In January 2018 it was announced that the Treasury Committee had launched an inquiry to investigate these claims about the relationship between childcare provision and the economy. The inquiry aimed to “examine the role high quality, accessible, flexible and affordable childcare can play in supporting labour productivity”.i As part of its evidence-gathering process, the committee invited submissions from members of the public and I took up the invitation to express my concerns.
My first comment was that the title of the enquiry is in itself very revealing about social attitudes toward children, parenting and work. Childcare policy is being looked at in the context of how it can best serve the economy. In my view we should be asking two entirely different questions: How can our policies best serve the needs of children and their families, and how can the economy best be aligned with those policies? In a liberal democratic society that claims to value individual freedom as well as take on social responsibility, the relentless focus on labour productivity and ‘getting mothers into the workforce’ is extremely disturbing. Not in the least because the argument that national wealth leads automatically to national wellbeing is increasingly unconvincing.
In the past the vast majority of mothers were denied the opportunity to earn their own living and participate meaningfully in the public realm. This was rightfully challenged and has, thankfully, changed. However, where once mothers were denied the opportunity to work, now many parents are denied the opportunity to raise their own children. They are denied the opportunity, that is, through the financial imperative to seek paid employment. This raises the important question of whether women, particularly mothers, are being offered greater freedom of choice or are merely being forced to make different ones.
Instead of pressuring mothers (through the tax system and other measures ii ) to return to the workforce, the Government should be exploring ways to enable mothers to make the choice not to. It should be asking if the funding available for subsidising childcare could not be made available to support parents to provide their own childcare if they so wish. This would not only ensure that women can make meaningful choices and thus would be a fundamentally progressive policy, but it would ensure children have the best possible chance of receiving high quality care.
For the evidence is quite clear on what sort of caring and environment helps children thrive. While it has been established that formal care settings, in very particular circumstances, can produce ‘better outcomes’ than a home environment, the fact is that these circumstances are far from the norm. Affordable childcare facilities are struggling, not at all surprisingly, to offer very young children the consistency, stability, attention, sensitivity, interest and affection that they need and deserve. At the same there is an army of mothers (or fathers or grandparents) willing to provide all of these things for up to 24 hours a day at a fraction of the cost of a formal care setting. It seems utterly ludicrous that so much effort is being spent on discouraging them from doing so.
Rather than pouring public resources toward the frankly unrealistic goal of making very high quality, affordable child care accessible for every child, why not invest public resources in high quality parenting? In other words, invest in the individuals, families and communities who produce the children and want to care for them; enhance their capacity to create richly stimulating, stable, healthy and supportive environments by easing their financial burden and increasing flexibility in their working lives.
Such a shift in policy could potentially benefit not only parents and children but the public purse and the wider economy. The Committee is examining how childcare policy is influencing the labour productivity and participation of today’s parents. The question that needs to be asked is what influence existing childcare policy is having on the day-to-day lives of a generation of children and how this might, in the long-term, affect the future prosperity of the nation. For today’s children are tomorrow’s labour force and any social policy that directly or indirectly affects their social, emotional, physical and intellectual development will also influence their capacities to contribute productively and creatively to their society.
I suggested that the scope of the enquiry should be much broader and more fundamentally questioning of prevailing policy and its underpinning ideology, since it has by no means been unequivocally established that the public interest is best served by the greatest number of citizens being employed for the greatest number of hours in the formal labour market. In fact, the nationally accounted economy could not function without the enormous contribution of unpaid labour and nothing is more valuable to the economy than the freely gifted time, effort and love parents offer their children. If we continue with current trends we will end up with a society where all caring is outsourced to private interests. In other words, all caring is for profit and no one has any time for any type of activity that is not measured in terms of GDP. I ended with a plea that we take a moment and think about what we are doing, lest we forget that the economy is supposed to serve the needs of the population and not the other way around.
Of course I was aware at the time of writing that this was far more an exercise in ‘getting it off my chest’ than it was a submission of evidence in the usual sense. However, upon reading the final report of the inquiry published in March I was surprised and extremely pleased to see that not only did the inquiry question the effectiveness of the Government’s policy on its own terms but it made two important acknowledgements. First of all, it noted that not all mothers want to pay someone else to look after their children. Secondly, it noted that labelling mothers who do look after their own children as economically unproductive is a matter of accounting, and accounting systems can be changed. This might not seem like much, but it does go a little way towards challenging the assumptions underpinning the political consensus described at the beginning of this piece.
Most interestingly, that these two points were given prominence in the final report is down to the number of submissions the inquiry received from individuals making much the same arguments I had attempted. In other words, submission after submission presents, either through facts and figures or personal experience, the case for moving beyond purely economic definitions of social value, of a purely contractual basis for caring relationships, of purely materialistic ways of understanding wealth and wellbeing and of purely cognitive criteria for measuring human development. Submission after submission emphasises the importance in childhood of love, freedom, personal connection, a sense of security, a sense of community and a connection to nature. What I found so striking, reading through the written evidence of the enquiry, is how much the experiences of people from all walks of life resonates with Rudolf Steiner’s teachings on education and social life.
Using the power of less
Although today’s policy-makers are unlikely to make any significant changes to their social programme in response to these submissions, there are signs that at long last parents and teachers are recognising that our social structures and cultural norms not only do little to encourage opportunities for outdoor play, they provide little or no protection for what ought to be totally sacred: childhood itself.
Kim John Payne argues in his book Simplicity Parentingiii that the wealthy industrialised West is an increasingly hostile place for children and young people, albeit in far subtler ways than in other parts of the world. The effects are not necessarily subtle. If you are familiar with educational debates you have probably heard a great deal in recent years about anxiety, stress levels, attention deficits, challenging behaviour, depression and even self-harming in young people. Payne expresses the underlying problem in a particularly striking way: many children in the United States and United Kingdom are suffering from a form of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Not as a result of a single traumatic event, but a gradual build up of stresses and strains as they are rushed through every aspect of learning and development, with no time to simply be, to rest, to process or to experience in their own natural ways. Education is entirely adult-driven, co-opted by commercial and political interests, and parents are literally buying into an approach to learning that is wholly dictated by people whose expertise lies in cultivating financial profits, not well-rounded human beings.
Building on his work with children in Asian refugee camps, Payne describes how youngsters are showing signs of a ‘cumulative stress reaction’ to immersion in the ‘media rich, multi-tasking, complex, information overloaded, time pressured’ existence we now call normal daily life. This is manifesting in all varieties of health problems. We have all experienced how periods of high tension can dramatically alter our physical or mental state. It can also alter our personality, morphing us in mere seconds from our ordinary selves to our worst selves, with sudden outbursts of negative emotion or behaviour. Thankfully these moments are usually short-lived and as we return to calm we regain a sense of self control. Payne asserts that in children if even moderate levels of excitement or stimulation become a permanent feature of daily life, never counterbalanced by interludes of peacefulness, predictability and even boredom, stress can act as the catalyst which turns what might have been only a quirk or tendency into one of the dreaded ‘disorders’.
Filtering out the adult world
Seen in this light, the solution becomes obvious. First and foremost we must reduce the stress in the daily life and environment of our children. This can be done by a process of ‘simplification’. He describes this process in terms of four areas that can be dealt with in turn: the environment, rhythm, schedules and filtering out the adult world. As with any transformation the first work is inner work. He advises parents to attempt to recover their dreams, to re-acquaint themselves with ideals of family life held dear before reality and its inevitable rush and clutter took over. This imaginative picture can be used as inspiration for change. From there, one can begin with what is do-able and capitalise on success in small steps to progress to the bigger, more important ones.
Modifying one’s physical environment is the most tangible and perhaps manageable step in the process of simplification. When it comes to stuff, the first order of business is quite simply to get rid of it. Or at least, as much of it as possible. While acknowledging the pressures that are pushing them in exactly the opposite direction, Payne urges parents to drastically reduce the amount of possessions their children have or have access to. Whether with toys, books, clothes or food, decreasing amount and variety in a child’s surroundings can help to instil the lifelong lesson that it is ‘relationships, not purchases, which sustain us emotionally’. After all, ‘nothing in the middle of a pile can be truly cherished’. With fewer choices and fewer distractions children have both physical and emotional space in which to develop their powers of attention, concentration and imagination, a greater depth of engagement with and an appreciation for what they have.
By gently turning our family’s attention away from the temptations of passive entertainment and instant gratification and toward more hard-won yet meaningful experiences, we encourage qualities and capacities that will be of both immediate and lasting benefit. These qualities can be further strengthened by increasing rhythm in daily life. Payne points out that any regular activity, event or chore can be made more rhythmical. The certainty of rhythms and rituals create ‘islands of consistency and security’ which punctuate the day and ground the child in space and time and within the family world. They are like the ‘place set at the table. An unquestioned invitation to participate, connect and belong’.
The same principles apply to how we organise and fill our children’s time. As with too many toys, too many scheduled activities, particularly ones with fixed rules, can stifle a child’s ability to be creative, independent and self-motivated. We have become so busy ‘enriching’ our children we have forgotten to allow them free, unstructured time in which to discover what they really love to do. Here again, balance is the key concept. It is not the particular activities themselves which cause problems, but pursuing too many at once, too intensely, or at an age which is not developmentally appropriate. Sports, for instance, can be a wonderful education in teamwork, cooperation, leadership, skill and self-discipline. But if imposed too early, organised sports can lead to burnout and young people can be robbed of pursuits that at a later stage would have been immensely rewarding. When it comes to our children’s schedules, then, we must pay attention to what, when and how much, remembering that as much as programmed events can be ‘enriching’ the spaces in between them can be equally so.
Worry, always a part of parenthood, seems in the last few decades to have come to define how parents relate to their children. As Payne observes, our ‘fears and concerns for our children have eclipsed our hopes for them, and our trust’. One of the key contributors to this is over-exposure to media and the hyper-sensationalism of bad news. Anxiety sells, and it is being delivered, nicely packaged for maximum impact, right into the heart of our homes and bursting out of multiple screens all clamouring for our attention. The diet of fear and exaggerated risk to which so many of us have become addicted is compromising our sense of perspective, and that in turn is polluting the way our children see the world. ‘Too much information doesn’t ‘prepare’ a child for a complicated world; it paralyses them.’ Much has been written about the harmful effects of television in recent years and Payne makes as convincing a case as any of the merits of ‘kicking out’ that ‘black hole of a house guest’. Unrestricted television and other forms of screen media work against simplification at every turn.
A decade ago Simplicity Parenting inspired a movement. Very accessible and brimming with valuable insights, it can be dipped into and out of as a reference or read as a comprehensive step-by-step guide. it will appeal to parents who are uneasy about the status quo but need practical suggestions for change. Likewise it will appeal to those dealing with specific problem behaviours but seeking a different set of answers from the conventional, frequently medication-based approach to child health. Payne’s observations and recommendations are made with great empathy and respect for the challenges parents face, as well as their motivations. Harnessing ‘the power of less’ is certainly an important step in re-attuning to the true needs of children today, to seeing the world from their perspective and ensuring that perspective is allowed to matter.
The task ahead is for parents and teachers – those with immediate responsibility for every individual child – to review their rights and responsibilities so that “A child may be a child in order for him to become a complete human being”.iv
Universal Childcare: Is it good for children?
for CIVITAS
Maria Lyons
4 February 2024
I have just had a report on childcare published, I thought it might be of interest and please circulate to anyone who might find it useful.
https://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/universal-childcare/
The Daily Mail wrote an article about it which you can see here:
Maria Lyons
Email: maria.s.lyons@gmail.com
Mobile:07928 370 696
iHouse of Commons Treasury Committee, Childcare, Ninth Report of Session 2017-19 (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmtreasy/757/757.pdf)
ii For more information and analysis on how the tax system penalises parents who choose to remain with their children rather than seek employment outside the home, see the excellent organisation and campaign group Mothers At Home Matter (https://mothersathomematter.co.uk/).
iii Kim John Payne (2019) Simplicity Parenting: Using the power of less to raise happy, secure children, Hawthorne Press.
ivEvelien van Dort (2018) Why Don't Children Sit Still? A Parent's Guide to Healthy Movement and Play in Child Development, Floris Books. p93
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