Madeleine McDonald: Osborne’s contempt for work of raising family

In an attempt to justify his plan to give child care vouchers only to mothers in paid employment, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dismissed the plight of stay-at-home mums by claiming they have made a “lifestyle choice”. He could not have picked a more insulting term. Does he imagine them sipping tea while dithering over which colour nail varnish to wear that day?
By The Newsroom
Published 28th Aug 2013, 10:10 BST

It doesn’t matter whether you spend two hours a day or twelve looking after your kids, childcare is hard work.

I would never have placed my baby in a nursery. I believe the greatest gift we can give new babies is love, security and space to grow into being a person. There is an increasing body of evidence that lack of love and lack of stability stunts babies’ physical and mental development. But security does not necessarily mean that Mum is chained to the home front. Fathers, grandparents, friends or trusted childminders can all provide the stability children need to thrive.

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I speak as someone who resumed work ten days after giving birth. In the years that followed, despite a supportive husband, my sanity hung by a shred as I juggled domestic chores with paid work at home. Nor does the load lessen as they get older. In the fraught teenage years, there were times when I would gladly have subcontracted care of my ravenous, untidy, moody, argumentative offspring to someone possessed of more patience than me. Somehow we survived. As families do. Families make choices in the light of their own circumstances.

Women in well-paid jobs can afford good quality child care. They use their training and undoubted talents without having to worry about their children’s welfare. Unfortunately, at the opposite end of the scale, in the world of minimum wage and zero hours contracts, child care is often a precarious game of dominoes, a jigsaw of one day a week with grandma, plus days here and days there. If one domino falls, so do all the others.The woman at the supermarket checkout is probably praying that no disasters happen before she finishes the day’s shift.

Dragging children from pillar to post is no way to give them security.

The government could give low-paid households practical, flexible help by adopting the simple French system of fully transferable tax allowances for married or cohabiting couples. Instead the Chancellor has chosen to short-change those mothers who make the decision to forgo income, material possessions, promotion and the camaraderie of the workplace in order to bring up the next generation.

I applaud their choice. To dismiss it as a lifestyle is obscene.