Forget the Magic, Give Mothers a Real Choice
21 Jun 2006
Evening StandardA completely apolitical friend of mine reported a sighting of Tory leader David Cameron recently. He was parading down Portobello Road very slowly, pushing his baby in a buggy. "Obvious electioneering," she said.
Young women nowadays reject the label feminist. Yet one of the unsung triumphs of Eighties feminism was the way we pushed childcare on to the mainstream political agenda. Twenty-five years ago, childcare was no more a serious political subject than pigeon fancying. When I had my son in 1987 there was no such thing as maternity leave for MPs. I would bring him into the office and leave him with my secretary (or once in the arms of an astonished House of Commons flunkey) and dash to vote. And I remember walking through the Commons with my offspring, only to have a genuinely astonished Nicholas Soames say to me: "Don't you have a nanny?"
This is how much things have changed: now Cameron feels obliged to warble on about "the magic moment of childbirth" and compete with Labour on childcare policy. Labour has much to be proud of on the issue. We have extended maternity leave (even Labour MPs are allowed to take it now), increased maternity pay and introduced paternity leave. And, despite, the administrative problems, the Child Tax Credit has benefited more than six million families. It goes without saying that Cameron voted against all these things - although I do confess to a certain sympathy for his point that, while a man can get tax relief on his mobile phone on the grounds that he needs it for his work, a woman cannot get tax relief on the childcare, which is absolutely necessary for her to work at all.
But the real flaw in the Government's childcare policies is the lack of real choice they offer to mothers who choose not to work. The first vote I ever rebelled on was the cut in benefit to single-parent mothers in December 1997. What I objected to was the underlying doctrine that if poor mothers wanted a decent standing of living, they should go out to work. I went back to work when my son was eight days old. But I do not think that any mother of children under school age should be forced out to work as a matter of government policy. Of course many will choose to do so. Some intrepid toddlers take to nursery with alacrity and never look back. But other children need their mothers for longer. Women should have a genuine choice - and at the moment, they're not getting one.
back ⇢