The question about babies that Government won’t answer

Marriage joins one man and one woman for life, and the home they make is still the safest place to raise a child. So here is the question no one will answer: is it good for a baby to spend long days in a nursery from nine months old? Anne Fennell has been asking it for years and getting no reply. She chairs Mothers at Home Matter and is President of FEFAF – the European Federation of Parents and Carers at Home. This month, Civitas has published a report she co-edited with FEFAF, answering that question. The report is available here and you can watch our conversation here.

Anne’s concern is not that every mother should be at home. It is that no one will question the current system. “What evidence is there that this is good for the child?” she asks. “We haven’t been able to get a reply from anyone... the best we’ve had is that it’s not bad for children.” An earlier Civitas review of 40 studies across 12 countries bears her out: not one could show that formal childcare for thirty hours a week from nine months old leaves a child better off in the long run than being cared for at home.

Nor is the money buying quality. A single funded place for an under-two is now worth close to £14,000 a year. Yet even in Scandinavia, so often held up as the model, a Danish Government study found just 13 per cent of nurseries for under-twos were of good quality. Fennell calls it “replacing good care at home with mediocre care”.

Even James Heckman, the Nobel economist whose research is used to justify this spending, says “the family’s the whole story”, and that the programmes which work are the ones that inform and engage the mother. His lesson is not to take a child from his mother, but to stand behind her.

Fennell asks for one honest thing: that before another generation of babies is moved into nursery, someone in Government is willing to ask whether it is good for them, and that the family which chooses to raise its own is never made to lose out for that choice.

A country that will pay to take a child from his mother’s arms, but taxes her for staying, has lost sight of what marriage is for. It unites a man and a woman for life and gives the next generation a home. This weekend, watch Anne Fennell and share the conversation with someone who needs to hear it.