Cost of Living

Debate between Malcolm Wicks and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Malcolm Wicks]

May I pursue my theme for a while? The hon. Gentleman must remind me later that I was going to give way to him.

This is not a painless revolution. I do not want to compete with the Secretary of State’s soundbite, but for many women and men there is what might be called a care-career collision.

[Mr MacNeil]

That is much better.

[Malcolm Wicks]

The alliteration is better.

What I mean is that the time when young men and women in their mid-to-late twenties and thirties are working hard at their careers, and when their employers are watching them, is precisely the time when they think about the need to have children. That is a dilemma and a difficulty that we have not entirely thought through.

One consequence of the fact that women as well as men are working hard during their period of maximum fertility is the inability of many women to have families of the size that they would like. There is interesting evidence to that effect in a 2006 study by the Eurobarometer, the most recent that the Library could find for me. It states that in the UK in 2006 the mean ideal number of children for women—as it is an average, a funny statistic emerges—was 2.5, but the actual number of children achieved by women aged between 40 and 54 was only 1.9. As I have said, it is possible to laugh at such statistics, but we can see what lies behind them. Many women, and men, who would have preferred to have, say, three children end up with two, many who might have wanted two end up with one, and others may not be able to have children at all.

I am not suggesting that there is some Utopia in which everyone can achieve their ideal family size, but I do believe that there are economic and employment pressures that make achieving an ideal family size difficult in Britain and, indeed, throughout Europe. That ought to concern us, not least at a time when data show that birth rates are below replacement level in this country.

Another consequence of the care-career collision is the sheer hassle and difficulty that many families have to undergo in order to organise substitute child care. The growth of child care is wholly beneficial—it has improved the lot of families and, in many cases, children—but whenever I discuss the issue with younger families today, I have the impression that there is barrier after barrier. Often it is not just one substitute child carer whom parents need to employ. Because of career patterns, children may have to be dragged out of bed early and sent from one carer to another. What happens when a childminder is ill? What happens when the mother herself, who should be working, knows that her child is ill? Many parents have to resort to fibbing to their employers that they themselves are ill, rather than their children.

What I am saying—not too controversially, I hope—is that I do not believe the development of child care has led to some kind of nirvana. People may say, “It would be better if we had more child care, if the training and the quality of child care were better, and if it were cheaper”, and I understand their argument, but I want to challenge more fundamentally the proposition that we have reached a nirvana. I believe that family decisions made by men and women, by dads and mums, would be better decisions for families and for children if parental leave became a much more important feature of our employment and social policy. We have made some progress and I welcome that, but the average citizen of the 21st century will live until her eighties or nineties, and we are threatened with the possibility that many children born today will reach the age of 100. That is a long life span. Are we really saying that, during the two or three critical years after a child is born, substitute child care is the only way of ensuring the well-being of our children and their parents?

Now I will give way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), as I promised to do a long time ago.