What kind of society do parents really want?

By Julia Hobsbawm

They say that this will be the Mumsnet Election. Parent Power at the polling booth will be more decisive, perhaps, than the money of a certain Mr Ashcroft ploughed into marginals.

But you could be forgiven for thinking that parenthood, and working parenthood in particular, is a marginal political issue unless you have ‘poor parenting skills’ or are just poor. Then there is money and some joined-up political thinking (Sure Start) coming your way. The main parties seek to cut budgets – how long before Childcare Vouchers get the push? – but it is time and the flexible use of time to combine work and family life which is beginning to matter as much. The working middle classes often have no choice but to work, even if they cut their Boden budget. They are less preoccupied on a daily basis with which eco-friendly nappy to buy but how to get to the office when the school is closed for an INSET day or why Parent’s Evening is really, in practice, Parent’s Afternoon.

Ask any business what productivity depends on and they will tell you: motivation. Motivation depends on inspiration, empowerment and control.

Yet many parents who work will say that by and large they do not feel inspired, empowered, or on control of the ratio between their family life and their work life. On any given day your needs as a worker and a parent change. Let’s say you don’t have children but you have an ageing parent or are going through a divorce. Or madly in love, just back from honeymoon. Or let’s say you hate your boss and are trying to move to another job. All distractions affect your focus and productivity.

If you are a working parent the chances are the distractions will be magnified. Finding short-term childcare if your kid gets norovirus (sweeping through a school near you as I write) is every parent’s personal sickness. Availability of school and nursery places have become perilously low under Labour: the logistics of getting children to different nurseries and schools on time and having different rigid pickups can be more demanding than a transatlantic daily commute.

A girlfriend of mine works in the public sector. A single mum who counts every penny, she lives in terror of incurring ‘late charges’ from her daughter’s nursery but is ostracised by her line manager if she doesn’t put in the hours behind her desk so he can ‘see’ she is working. Or a couple I know whose life is completely on hold until the outcome of the legal challenge they have been forced to mount to prove that their autistic son – because local government won’t think long-term about the savings made by treating SEN children expertly and early.

Parents may have the ‘right to request’ flexible working but the culture of work is still weighted to the old idea that the long hours culture, based at a desk, is best. We have in fact slipped back a decade. The term ‘work-life balance’ was actually quite chic in the 1990s; flexible working patterns featured prominently in the annual reports of major corporations keen to show their ‘good employer’ credentials; women began to feel as if they could perhaps ‘have it all’ without being accused of a dereliction of maternal duty or insufficient loyalty to the bottom line.

Something has gone wrong. Work-life balance has ended up a euphemism for self-indulgence, particularly in a recession and Age of Austerity. There are summits on just about everything, but none on what kind of balanced society we want across the public and private sector. Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all talk intimately about their children, but not about their children’s childcare.

Parentism, the politics of what it means to be a mum or dad and to work and live in some kind of harmony, should be a dominant question for any growing economy and graceful society. We should take pride in both our families and our work, so that they flourish equally. Both should be, literally, productive.

Politics needs to catch up and personalise the workplace, the school and the nursery if Britain wants to continue to call itself ‘First World’. And that includes whoever in this election wants to come first.