Hard lessons for early years

Childcare has risen up the political agenda, in part because the economic and workforce benefits of better childcare services are finally being properly considered, beyond the case for gender equality. It’s often said (e.g. here) that it’s significant that childcare has stopped being regarded simply a ‘women’s issue’. 

Recently I heard the economist, Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, suggest that childcare was mainly a focus for dual-earner, metropolitan families, and that many parents did not use formal childcare in the early years, or not much of it. He has argued (as in this piece) that it therefore should not be seen as central to the cost-of-living crisis.  While I agree with him that raising benefit levels is crucial for the poorest families, I’m less persuaded that low take-up of the 15 hours free childcare available to the least advantaged parents of 2-year-olds, is evidence of choice.  Rather, studies show that a combination of patchy provision in low-income areas, lack of information for the most disadvantaged parents, and lack of opportunities to work to use the 15 hours effectively, has shut parents (mainly mothers), out of the system as it is. With stagnating wages and rising nursery fees, women are reporting being priced out of the labour market. 

What would a better system look like? In an ideal world, the early years system would be coherent and functional throughout the country, and both women and men would have opportunities to be employees and carers when their children are small.  The early years workforce would be better-paid and better-qualified, and all children, regardless of  where they lived or what their parents did, would have access to early learning. But regrettably, we are a long way from this picture in the UK just now.

Early years expert, Peter Moss, has argued that it is verging on a waste of time for government ministers to go to Sweden to learn about their system, as it is light years away from what we have here.  The Swedish success story has been achieved through substantial investment, not on the cheap. Moss summarises: ‘Sweden’s early childhood system, by contrast [to England], is not a mess and is not about ‘childcare’. It is a universal and integrated system of early childhood education.’

Sweden enjoys a well-qualified early years workforce, who deliver pre-school education to all children. Here, we have a mish-mash of provision and entitlements, which is often failing to deliver either for  parents or for hard-pressed, undervalued staff.  And Sweden – like other Nordic countries – also has a well-developed, relatively well-paid system of parental leave for both parents. This means that in the first years, it is a lot easier for mothers to take up employment, and for men to be involved parents, without huge economic sacrifice. 

Elsewhere, early educators in Canada, assert that we need to ‘turn the narrative around: children are not in early childhood education to provide employment opportunities for educators and guardians’. Lest we forget, the main beneficiaries of quality early years provision are children themselves, encouraged to thrive by skilled practitioners. Or at least that’s how it should be.

The UK Labour party has been looking to Australia, where the recent election success of the Australian Labor party was put down, in part, to a promise to deliver better childcare.  The challenges in Australia will sound familiar to British policymakers, as 35% of Australians are believed to live in ‘childcare deserts’.  Provision is rated ‘really expensive’ for parents throughout the country.  The Australian PM, Anthony Albanese, has set up commissions to look into childcare, and the government has pledged to increase the subsidy available to parents using these services.  Interestingly, experts have pointed to a change in language, where government ministers have begun to talk more about child development and the long-term benefits of early education.

Another lesson from Australia, is that researchers have found that ‘activity tests’ are not working.  There, the amount of childcare subsidy a family receives, depends on the hours spent in employment by parents.  The activity tests have been shown to ‘lock out’ the families who could benefit most: low-income parents are less likely to use their entitlement, because of the restrictions on hours. This chimes with my thoughts about low take-up in the UK.  

In a speech about childcare today, Bridget Phillipson, the Shadow Education Secretary, committed to reform of the early years sector, suggesting a move away from the current free hours model.  She was light on specifics beyond the existing pledge to roll out breakfast clubs in primary schools. She emphasised looking forward to new options, more integrated into education, rather than looking back to Sure Start, the scheme established by Labour in the Nineties.  There was recognition of need for a better deal for early years staff – the devil will be in the detail.

Another factor in the equation regarding childcare is employers.  When will we reach a point where flexible working is widespread and no barrier to promotion? When will men and women find that it is normalised for both of them to take some form of extended leave in the early years of parenthood?  When will ‘women returners’ become just ‘returners’ viewed for their potential, rather than with a bit of suspicion as to why they want to be employed again after a period of absence?

The ‘childcare problem’, then, is not just about economics, but is also a complex social issue. All the relevant actors need to be on board to solve it.  It will take a courageous government to set the tone. Are we likely to have one in the near future? That’s a question beyond the early years’ curriculum.

Spending more time with our families …

As Ruth Davidson steps down from the Conservative leadership in Scotland, citing the primary reason as being her commitment to her young son and the family life that top-flight politicians so frequently find it hard to balance with the rigours of campaigning, travelling and irregular working hours, I was struck by the difference that her being a woman has made to the accompanying discussion.

When male politicians resign ‘to spend more time with their family’ it is often treated as a kind of euphemism.  We routinely assume that they have committed politics. Or, find out that they have had an affair, that makes their position somehow untenable.  Either way, the ‘excuse’ is seen as standing for something else.  And in the case of affairs, it’s often met with a collective eyeroll, and the schadenfreude comments about how the wife must be delighted to have him around more …

However, when Davidson remarked that her son’s arrival in November had made her reassess her feelings about leadership and the possibility of future campaigning, with all the separations from home that that entails, the one thing people do not seem to have done, is disbelieve her account completely.  Sure, she’s known to disgree with Boris Johnson on a range of issues, and may even disapprove of his decision to prorogue Parliament, though she did not overtly say so.  But the pull of a child aged under one for its mother, has largely been viewed as a ‘real’ element of the story, in a way that is not broadly characteristic of treatment of men resigning for ‘family reasons’.

In the event, Ruth Davidson entered into the current Brexit crisis only in so far as to say that MPs should back PM Johnson’s (somewhat opaque) efforts to secure a new deal with the EU. In this way, she said, they could avoid the spectre of No Deal.  No criticism was made of the Prime Minister’s strategy – possibly another sign that a General Election may happen, and Davidson would be aware of the significance for her UK party, of retaining a Conservative presence in Scotland.

Over on Radio 4, towards the end of the PM programme, two women who happen to be mothers and involved in political commentary – Hannah White of the Institute for Government, an authoritative think tank, and Zoe Williams, the Guardian columnist – took part in a discussion about the issues in balancing career and family life.  They noted that there is still much more to be done to support female MPs in the midst of early parenthood, as the template of of work assumes a level of availability that is hard to maintain without resources of alternative care, and – especially relevant for Scottish and other far-flung representatives – proximity to place of work.  Making full parental leave available to both male and female parliamentarians would potentially mitigate against all these factors impacting female politicians disproportionately.  I have often written about these structural issues, and they do bring us back to some of the geographic and economic inequalities which have some role in how we got into the wider political turmoil we are all now part of …

Back with Ruth Davidson’s announcement, and the coverage it has received, which provides yet another example of the differential treatment of men and women in public life: she as truth-telling about work-life balance, men as finding an expedient getaway.  We could, alternatively, believe, that Davidson, like her male counterparts, is using ‘family reasons’ as political cover.  And if we did, that might be viewed as very of the moment ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

X marks the spot

The government has just published its Gender Equality Roadmap, launched with a flourish yesterday by Penny Mordaunt, in her capacity as Women and Equalities Minister. 

 

The Roadmap charts the types of disadvantage women encounter at different stages in their lives and sets out government initiatives in response.  So far, so good … but the trouble is that the roadmap is hardly new, and the responses aren’t big on concrete action either.  Researchers and policy analysts have been charting women’s lifetime economic disadvantage compared to men for years –  and counting the cost (and calculating the value) of childcare and elder care.  We know that women’s career trajectories leave them lower-earning in prime years, and under-pensioned in old age, compared to men.  We also know that girls are less likely to enter scientific careers, or to find jobs in the most lucrative sectors of the labour market.  Like many reports before it, the roadmap talks about engaging girls in STEM, but has little to say about enhancing the esteem in which traditionally female sectors of the labour force are held, or encouraging boys to get involved in them.  The Roadmap acknowledges that the benefits system has not always met the needs of women, and proposes that Universal Credit will simplify the process of claiming and improve  outcomes for women.  This claim is rather hard to reconcile with the evidence that Universal Credit has driven many to foodbanks during the long waiting periods before payments are made.  No mention is made of the single payment per household, a feature of Universal Credit which campaigners have highlighted as having potentially negative impacts for women. 

 

The Roadmap discusses Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and flexible working, as policies which can contribute to closing the gender gap in earning and progression at work.  While it is welcome that the government is reviewing the current SPL system, and ‘celebrating’ employers who offer beyond the statutory levels of pay, we already know that without higher pay levels, Shared Parental Leave is a non-starter for many families, however well-disposed towards it parents are in theory.  And we also know from international evidence that our current system falls well short of the conditions required for it to become a mainstream option – I’ve blogged about this repeatedly – e.g. here.  The Roadmap proposes a new digital tool to inform parents better of their leave and childcare options, but without more resources it is hard to see how this will make any significant difference to take-up.  Pilots for innovation in flexible working may be more promising, but we do seem to have been stuck at the pilot stage for a long time now ….

 

 The Roadmap does acknowledge a range of factors including direct discrimination and harassment which contribute to women’s disadvantage, and it makes mention of intersectionality and the value of care work as well as its costs. It also flags that the Government Equalities Office will now sit in the Cabinet Office, which should aid cross-departmental working.  But, as the Women’s Budget Group points out, identifying the issues is a first step, and the solutions to gender inequality require financial investment – in public services, in childcare and social care.  Instead of a Roadmap, perhaps we need a treasure map, with X marking the spot where a budget for women’s needs is to be found. 

 

Happy Birthday Shared Parental Leave

Happy Birthday to you

Daddies can take leave too

But you don’t replace their wages

So not many do

 

Happy Birthday to you

Mummies are employed too

But they have to give Dads their leave

So they can parent à deux

 

Happy birthday to you

Time to see culture change through

But we haven’t gone Nordic

No daddy months, boo hoo

 

Happy Birthday to you

A step the right way it’s true

But I’m getting impatient

For gender equality, aren’t you?

 

 

 

 

A (wonky) Christmas Cracker

Everyone loves a Christmas cracker – what could be better than a gift, a hat and a joke to share with your loved ones? So in the festive spirit I’ve imagined a wonky cracker of 2015, with contents from the world of gender and policy this year …..

The Gift:

Like all the best cracker gifts, Shared Parental Leave (SPL) is novel and shiny and looks great, but turns out to be a bit less robust than you first thought. The idea is great, but not enough has been spent on it, so its appeal is somewhat limited. FromApril this year, mothers have been able to transfer up to 50 weeks of leave to fathers, but the leave is only paid at a very low rate, so that not many families would find it affordable. The government estimates that only 2-8% of families will take the option up, while the rest look wistfully to Scandinavia where there are ‘daddy months’ of leave dedicated for fathers’ use only, and paid at a decent rate. The Nordic countries also have affordable, universal childcare – something which even the pledge of 30 hours free childcare for working parents in the UK cannot match. So if we do want more gender equality in care we’ll have to devote some funds for a proper present under the tree in future….

 

The Hat:

For the wonky Christmas cracker 2015, the only party hat is the hard hat, as worn by George Osborne on site trips during the election, and beyond. His decisions influence the spending, saving and borrowing of all of us. (You can tell he really likes it as the hard hat appears in cartoon form on his Christmas card).

There is an important gender dimension here too, as many argue that austerity measures applied to benefits and public services affect women most, due to lower earnings and greater caring responsibilities.

 

The Joke:

A mainstay of the Christmas cracker is the silly joke, recently updated for more modern society here. Regular readers will know of my interest in family policy, so from the new list, here’s a reminder that there have always been unconventional families, and refugees in search of shelter:.

          

 Merry Christmas and a Peace and Goodwill to all men and women!

 

 

 

 

 

An Egalitarian’s prayer for Shared Parental Leave

Our fathers

Who exist not only in the workplace

Hallowed be thy multiple roles

Your children come

And your work be done

At home, as well as in the office.

Give us – some day – a bigger proportion of your daily bread to cover paternity and parental leave

Meanwhile let’s find ways of coping with the debts you will run up

As we have found ways of coping with mothers’ debts up to now

And lead us not into the temptation of thinking no men want this,

But deliver us from gender inequality

For thine are the children too:

The daily mundanity as well as the fun and the glory

For ever and ever

All men (well, at least more than the government estimate of 2-8% take-up)

Shared Parental Leave: all jacket, no bike?

Back when I was a student, a motorcycling friend of mine introduced me to the expression ‘All jacket, no bike’. It was a phrase used to describe young men who wore well-scuffed leather jackets without having ridden, let alone owned, a motorbike: they looked the part.

Reading some of the commentary on the changes in parental leave – coming into force in the UK next year – (e.g. here and here) I remembered my old friend’s expression again. Shared Parental Leave has been heralded as an innovation to overturn what Nick Clegg has called ‘Edwardian’ patterns of division of labour, upheld by highly unequal leave structures for women and men, following the birth of their children. Under the new regime, men will be entitled to take up a mother’s unused maternity leave, should she qualify for it, and give permission for the father to do so. This, in theory, increases parents’ choice as to how they share leave after birth.

However, in practice, as I have blogged before, the fact that the entitlement to leave is granted to men via mothers – rather than given to individuals – and that statutory rates of pay are meagre, together mean that fathers’ take-up is likely to be low. As men continue to be more likely to be chief wage-earners in households, it will continue to make economic sense for women to take longer leave, and for men to remain in full-time work in a large swathe of families. And while the new arrangements allow employees to request flexible working, employers do not have to provide it for them. Many have pointed out that flexible working can still carry a stigma, with men fearing that they might miss out on career progression by asking for it. In our current turbulent economic times, these concerns are likely to be heightened, with few willing to put their heads above the parapet to make the request, or to contest decisions made against their preferences. For parents who do want to share employment and parenting responsibilities more equally, the costs can remain high.

So it does rather seem that we are left in a situation where the government has put on the jacket of gender equality, but not, as yet, invested in the bike. Whilst signalling towards equality is welcome, so much more remains to be achieved. Shared parental leave still needs a kickstart.