Timesonline.co.uk | Unemployed mothers need free childcare ‘for welfare of children’

Timesonline.co.uk article by Alexandra Frean
12 April 2007

UK thinktank CentreForum recommends 20 hours of free childcare be provided to non-employed mothers so that their children may reap the apparent benefits of extrafamilial childcare instead of being 'stuck' with at-home mothercare (which heretofore was assumed to be the gold standard).

We see here that mothercare is not mothercare, however, and critics have noted that the report suggests that poor mothers on the whole are not up to the task at hand and thus need extrafamilial childrearing support. CentreForum's report claims that whilst attaching childcare to employment might have been solid labour-market policy, it has disadvantaged the children of non-employed parents in educational, academic-readiness terms. Whilst the report draws on well-known pro-nursery school and pro-daycare arguments (especially those regarding long-term economic value-for-money coming from the USA these days), it seems to me that some of the recommendations mix apples and oranges when it comes to defining what makes 'child care' different from 'nursery care' and how education (by any definition) fits in. The report, entitled "The Surest Route", does not yet seem to be available from CentreForum's website.