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Instead, we subsidise childcare and childminders to replace parents. We hand out billions in benefits before a child even starts school, often to encourage parents of very young children to get back to work as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t that money be better spent allowing parents the time to raise their own children? The Treasury is eyeing up further subsidies to hand out ‘free’ childcare places for two-year-olds, eager to get parents back to work more quickly – to pay more tax.
Yes, government might need more cash, but we should listen to the science. Neuroscience is very clear about the fact that babies need a mother’s love to soothe and calm them: mothers literally build a baby’s brain and in doing so set them up for later life. If we listen to the science, we’re told that it’s oxytocin produced by mums that builds the social bits of the brain in the first three years of life. Put simply, mothers are uniquely placed to build secure attachment for babies – which in turn means they stand a better chance of dodging future mental anguish. This is something American author and psychoanalyst Erica Komisar calls ‘the uniqueness of mothers’. This doesn’t mean fathers get off the hook: there is plenty of evidence to show that their involvement improves cognitive ability in toddlers.
We need more motherhood and apple pie. Certainly the motherhood bit, the apple pie part might fall foul of obesity campaigners – another group who oddly ignore parents. Policymakers talk cryptically about the ‘home learning environment’ rather than parents. And that means they think about state interventions and funding formulas rather than giving mothers and fathers the tools to be good at raising children.
We expect nothing in return for the billions doled out to parents, unlike Universal Credit where cash comes with expectations. We could, for example use birth registration, a point when almost all parents turn up, as a time to nudge parents to take up parenting classes or seek support if it is needed. Our tax and benefits system is woefully out of sync with parents. Every year the Department for Education conducts a mega-poll of parents – and every year frazzled mums (and dads) say they would prefer to spend less time working and more time with their children. Our tax system is cruelly biased against parents and the benefits they can claim can only be used to subsidise someone else to look after the children. Later this year backbench Conservative peer Lord Farmer will call on the government to back a private members bill to ‘frontload’ child benefit to parents of pre-schoolers, giving them more money in the first few years and a little less later on. The government should give it careful thought.
The pandemic has been unkind to the nation’s children: gaps in learning have grown, with better off kids striding ahead. Poorer children starting school at four are already, on average, a year and a half behind their wealthier classmates. We can tinker all we like but, as the royals know, it’s family life that matters most. But that’s not something that you’ll hear much in Westminster or Kensington Palace, where talking about family really does remain the last educational taboo.
Because you read about children
Also by Frank Young
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