Nursery World - To the point... (41)

Our weekly columnist Beatrix Campbell hails the arrival of childcare at the top of the parties' election agendas Now we know we're really in the new millennium - for the first time, childcare is going to be an issue in the general election. This is unprecedented. The political parties are foregrounding childcare because they've discovered a surprise about the electorate: women vote!

Now we know we're really in the new millennium - for the first time, childcare is going to be an issue in the general election. This is unprecedented. The political parties are foregrounding childcare because they've discovered a surprise about the electorate: women vote!

What matters to mothers increasingly matters to men, because women no longer expect men to be providers rather than parents. That electoral phantom, Middle England, is full of children, and exhausted and exasperated parents forking out fortunes on haphazard childcare. And because women expect men to co-operate in childcare, politicians are discovering just how difficult and demanding it is. Parents have been hectored by politicians but they've not been helped.

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