The cost of childcare is enough to give anyone a tantrum | Eva Wiseman

So I had this baby in confinement, I mentioned him, I think - this fabulous, kinda onion, divine boy. He grew up slowly and without too much fuss, evolving over the next two years into a kind of Bernie Sanders, soft, fair, tender, which made a lot of sense when you think about it. Tenderness has been a big thing - he sometimes likes to stroke my cheek very gently and look at me solemnly, and has gone through phases of strong identification with mice. That's why his recent…change, to a child who screams until he's red at the suggestion that he might, say, put on a jacket, has been particularly infuriating.

This is not my first capricious rodeo. My daughter also “found her voice,” to use the lingo of parenting books, at a similar age, a voice she continues to find most nights and some mornings too. But while I may have spent the minutes when she screamed vehemently freaking out, today I use the time to quietly rock on the floor nearby and distract myself with the news. This is where I was when I read Jeremy Hunt's plan for a £4billion childcare boost in England. Sounded good, it sounded like he had listened to the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, which recently reported that three-quarters of mothers who pay for childcare say it doesn't make financial sense for them to work. But then the cries repeated and I wondered what that boost would look like.

Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow who campaigned (sometimes with her baby in arms) to show that child care is an integral part of a productive economy that works, compared Hunt's plan to Help to Buy, the housing program that pushed demand without supply, driving up skyrocketing price. She points out that the only way the government can deliver on its promise - to provide 30 hours a week of childcare next year to working parents with children aged nine months and over - is to scrap staff ratios. -child, which currently amounts to one adult for every three children under the age of two. And, I know these people are professionals, experts, angels, and way better than me at dealing with a room of people who are barely hip, eat nothing but plain pasta, and have the willpower of a Olympian athlete, but still. Still, I wouldn't wish a week in charge of five two-year-olds on anyone, no matter how holy. The tenderness I love, reading Frog and Toad is good, the game I endure, but diapers, nurturing, negotiating, cleaning, avoiding injuries and deaths, tantrums… not for me . And once by five? The collective name for a group of starving two-year-olds cannot be written, for it exists only as heat and noise, a dull, gargling howl.

It's a huge relief that child care is on the political agenda. As I returned to work after having my first child and was reeling from the reality of childcare in a country where it is more expensive than any other developed country, a friend m took aside. She wearily explained to me why the gender pay gap persisted and the financial penalty of motherhood, and advised me to do whatever I could to stay at work, if only for when my child would be of school age, I wouldn't have to start over from the bottom. I remember how shocking I found it then and honestly it still shocks me today, the clarity, the shame, the snatching of choice, of future, of ambition, of agency. The spring budget therefore seems positive. Full of hope, even. Women will be able to work.

But the Confederation of British Industry estimates that instead of the promised £4billion, government plans will cost almost £9billion. pound sterling. Joeli Brearley from Pregnant Then Screwed says: “Free childcare from nine months is great, but only if there are childcare facilities to access this care – without the proper funding there is no there won't be. Nurseries will have to close and increased ratios will lead to carer burnout, unable to cope with a whole herd of toddlers, especially, and with persistent excuses, if one of them is mine. If the structures - including appropriate compensation for these carers - are not in place to sustain the new plan, everything will crumble, potentially making the situation worse than it already is, for parents, for staff in nursery and for children, whose care and nurturing during their first 1,000 days has a huge impact on their long-term health.

When I first encountered a tantrum that wasn't mine, I did my research. THE