Developing Early Years Childcare in England, 1997–2002: The Choices for (Working) Mothers

The UK has long been near the bottom of the EU “childcare league”. Attitudes of policymakers towards employment for the mothers of young children were ambivalent up to and including the Thatcher years, and the problem of “reconciling” work and family was historically deemed to be a private decision. This changed in 1998, when the Labour government put forward the first ever national childcare strategy. This paper argues that the aims behind the strategy were intimately linked to the attack on poverty and social exclusion in that: (1) efforts to stimulate provision focused on disadvantaged neighbourhoods; (2) subsidy was provided for early years education , rather than care (in order to give children a better start in life); and (3) stimulating provision was intended to promote women's employment, especially among lone‐mother families, thereby improving the material welfare of poor families. The means of expanding childcare have taken the form of a complicated set of demand‐ and supply‐side subsidies, reflecting the ongoing commitment to a mixed economy of childcare. The paper argues that this has implications for access and quality, and that there are tensions between the social investment approach to childcare on the one hand, and the desire to promote mothers’ employment on the other.