Mothers at Home Matter

An article in The Telegraph on the 14th May highlights how "The Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales has told the Treasury that the controversial plan to deny the benefit to families with a high earner “is seriously flawed in principle and in practice".

For more details read here.

A recent study for the think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Nuffield Foundation has found that children looked after at home by grandparents have better vocabulary and are more emotionally secure. 

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood says, “You get a variety and a range of abilities but it is the element of personal care which is the most important thing up to the age of three – once they are beyond three company of other children comes into its own".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9156424/Grandparents-better-than-nurseries-for-young-childrens-development.html

A recent article in the Evening Standard, by the journalist Anne McElvoy, has defended mothers' rights to stay at home to pass on their education to the next generation.  This could never be classified as a 'complete waste' regardless of what the Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt thinks.

What's more, she also brings up David Cameron's notion of the Big Society and points out that educated women at home are often 'the ones on school governing bodies' and filling out a range of other roles that add 'to the mix of city life', thereby benefitting not only their children's lives, but the lives of the community in which they live.

For the full article, go to the link below:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24039613-intelligent-women-can-be-full-time-mothers-too.do

On the 15th February The Telegraph published a piece by Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, author of a recent report on Child Development in the under 5s.

His findings show that worryingly, 41 per cent of children don’t achieve a good level of development at age 5. How does such failure come about? The determinants of early child development start with effects from the children themselves, probably biological in nature, but are importantly influenced by quality of parenting and are related to inequalities in society.

Sir Michael suggests that ancient wisdom and modern science come together to provide the answer: cuddling, playing, talking, reading, and generally loving children have a huge influence on the quality of early child development.

So instead of focusing on those parents that may be getting in wrong, could the attention not be given to those that are giving their children all the basic...