The true cost of childcare? More and more women paying too high a price

By Susan Riley, Head of Brand

The first thing that happens when I’m invited to a work dinner or out of hours networking event - aside from flicking through my delightfully old school Papier diary - is some quick fire mental arithmetic. How much will that cost me? 

 If I’m out for just a few hours it might be £40. If it’s an all evening thing, double that. If it’s an overnighter, well you do the math. I have, and, as living costs continue to rise, it means that ‘no, sorry’ has become a regular phrase in my repertoire. The times I do say yes, my overdraft takes a hammering. Either way I’m paying - be that with income or opportunity. What do they say? Hang around with people who will mention your name in a room of opportunity? Well I’m going to have to because I certainly can’t afford to be there myself.  

 Being in ‘the room where it happens’ (yes I have just quoted Hamilton the musical) and its link to career progression is something that’s not talked about enough in relation to childcare costs. Probably because we’re busy focusing on how the hell to afford childcare for the working day, never mind the working night. But its impact is vast. Being able to say yes - to networking, to events, to making your presence felt when you come out from behind that laptop - is invaluable. And yet all too often it’s the mothers who are missing.  

 Yes yes, I know some fathers are missing too, but based on my personal observations not many and not often. The dads I know always say yes. To the business golf tournaments, to the overnighter in Zurich, to the conference in Costa Rica. They can’t miss it, they say. It wouldn’t look good, they say. No it probably wouldn’t. Welcome to the club.

 Comparatively, I shouldn’t grumble. The age of my daughter (10) means the days of crippling full-time nursery fees are behind me (the BBC reported a further 6% rise in childcare costs this year, with full-time nursery now averaging £15,709 a year), but taking their place rather aggressively are after-school clubs, holiday clubs and a regular babysitter who I employ two nights a week. Every hour I’m not with my daughter, I pay out. During school holidays, that’s £100 per day for wraparound care. Kerching. Kerching. Kerching. My savings have helped plug the gap but now they’re nearly gone.  

As a solo parent who works full-time - no parents, no co-parent, no back up - I realise that I’m a particular type of screwed, but then everyone I speak to is also screwed, just in their own unique way. Whether they have partners, parents, one kid, four, society is doling out 2024 prices and productivity while keeping wages stagnant and operating on the 1950’s assumption that ‘someone’ is magically around to pick up the domestic and caregiving slack. Psst: that mythical creature scattering fairy dust is women by the way.

 This square peg round hole system is why childcare - the logistics, the making the maths work, the forgoing your career ambition when all else fails - continues to be largely a motherhood problem as opposed to the parental one it should be. Despite the unrelenting strive for equality, it is women taking on more and more. It is women having to say no to things that would make them flourish.  

 Millennial women have told us they see childcare costs and responsibilities as being the Number 1 challenge for women right now. Backing this up in spades is recent research from Pregnant Then Screwed, a charity dedicated to ending the motherhood penalty, which has found just under half of parents have gone into debt or accessed savings to pay for childcare (that rises to two two-thirds for single parents). They also found a third of mothers in England are unable to return to work full-time due to childcare costs or availability, compared to just 11.9% of fathers. 

So there we have it. While the world at large seems hellbent on ensuring women keep having children, finding a way to support them while raising them is another matter entirely. And as for the Gen Z-ers who might want kids in future but don’t fancy being left broke or broken? They’re going to be asking themselves the same question I have to almost every day: “What’s this going to cost me?”  

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