How to fix Britain’s childcare problem

Childcare in the UK is among the most expensive in Europe. A full-time nursery place for a child under five costs in the region of £14,000 per year; if there are multiple children, this easily rises to an amount that means women would be paying to go back to work after maternity leave. The result: if a couple can’t afford to support a family on a single income until children are school age, then quite likely they can’t afford to have a family at all.

One typical reason given for these high costs is that regulations for the number of adults per child are more stringent than in many other countries, meaning more staff are needed to take care of the same number of children. Other European countries allow more children per staff member, and Denmark, Sweden, and Spain do not give any legal maximum.

In a bid to lower costs, the government has announced plans to slightly relax these rules. Currently, one adult is required for every four two-year-olds – that number will now be increased to five (ratios are specific to the age of the child; other age groups remain unchanged). This looks like a step in the right direction: if providers take on more children accordingly, and if they pass savings on, this could save parents up to £40 per week.

But child-to-adult ratios are barely the tip of the iceberg. We often hear calls for more help with childcare costs. What’s mentioned less is that public spending on childcare as a percent of GDP has roughly doubled since the 1990s. How is it possible, then, that Britain is still one of the most expensive places to have someone look after your child, with real-terms costs steadily increasing year by year? If years of subsidies have not made it cheaper for parents to sort out childcare for their kids, then what are the subsidies for?

At least some of the increase in spending will have been eaten up by regulatory changes making childcare more expensive. To legally operate as a childminder (looking after up to six children in your own home; often a good option for mothers who can earn while caring for their own children at the same time) one must jump through multiple hoops to become certified, and then pass an Ofsted inspection. You’ll also need to hope the proposal is not vetoed by your local council, or fall foul of the deeds of your house. This is true even if you’re looking after the children of your friends, and receiving payment in kind rather than in cash.

Since 2008, all nurseries and childminders have had to follow an Early Years educational framework: children are required to progress in maths, literacy, 'understanding the world' and 'expressive arts and design'. This all sounds lovely, of course; you’d have to be a real Scrooge to argue that preschoolers shouldn’t have the opportunity to explore all these areas. But let’s remember: this is for children aged five and under, so before the start of compulsory education. If children of this age are cared for entirely by their own parents, we do not insist that they work towards these goals (like we do for older children who are home-schooled). So what is the justification for introducing this mountain of mandatory box-ticking, assessment, and submitting of paperwork as soon as the care providers are not a child’s immediate relatives?

All these onerous impositions create an artificial constraint on the supply of childcare. It ought to be possible to keep a child safe and happy while his or her parents are at work for less than the cost of a second mortgage. But supply is not increasing to meet demand: instead, waiting lists for nursery places can be so long that parents are advised to sign up before their children are even born. Why are there no marginally cheaper childcare centres that say: 'OK, we don’t teach toddlers maths or PSHE, but you can drop them off here and we will attend to their basic needs'? Such a facility would probably be swamped with demand; but the government has effectively made them illegal.

The struggle families face in securing childcare is a big problem. Children are meant to be looked after collaboratively. The menopause may even have evolved for this reason – encouraging grandmothers to devote their energy to grandchildren rather than have more kids of their own. And for most of human history, women’s work could be done with a baby strapped to them; once children were old enough to walk, they could help with the tasks of the home or be left to entertain themselves relatively safely, surrounded by the many watchful eyes of neighbours and older siblings.

We are not meant to raise children as isolated couples or single parents, with few relatives nearby to help. Today’s separation between home and work, which has prompted an expansion of extrafamilial childcare services, was not designed with the welfare of either children or parents in mind.

Not only is the load of childcare no longer spread like it used to be, but there’s more of it, too. For many families living in the suburban sprawl, children can’t take themselves to school or to a friend’s house: chauffeuring by parents is the only practical way to get around. Today’s youngsters might never venture outside the home without adult supervision until they reach their teens. A ratcheting social norm is set up, where what was normal for one generation becomes negligent for the next, all of which means more responsibility heaped onto parents.

If the government wants to make having children easier and more affordable, it should not be piling restriction upon restriction upon childcare providers, or reinforcing the idea that anything less than constant one-to-one nurture is child neglect. Policies should be aimed at helping us to recreate where possible the organic, informal arrangements of the past, instead of finding petty bureaucratic reasons to prevent them. With very few exceptions, parents are highly motivated to look out for the safety of their children. They should be trusted to find satisfactory childcare arrangements with the minimum possible red tape.