More working mothers mean society is changing—and not necessarily for the better

Remarkable figures just published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies reveal a seismic social change. The IFS found that only half of mothers aged between 25 and 54 were in work in 1975. By 2015, 72 per cent went back to work, leaving others to change their babies’ nappies and rock them to sleep.

Invariably, we are invited to cheer these great leaps forward for womankind. Even the Conservative Party, long-time guardian of family values, has started boasting that it has got “more women than ever before into work!” Pausing for a moment to hear a small inner voice that whispers “But what about the children?” makes you a party pooper, a deluded dinosaur hankering after the dark days when wives were tethered to the twin-tub and had to ask husbands for housekeeping…

This is the sad state of affairs in 2018. A mother looking after her own small children is considered a luxury, even though, in survey after survey, most women – the poor unenlightened things! – say they would prefer to be at home in the early years.

They’re caught in a trap. As successive governments encouraged mothers out to work, the more couples could pay for a house which saw property prices rocket. Only dual-income families could buy a home in certain areas so, even when one parent would prefer not to work, that choice became increasingly unaffordable.

The share of working-age mothers with a job has risen by a staggering 50 per cent in the past four decades. This has probably been the single biggest contributor to the growth of GDP. No wonder politicians rub their hands in glee at increased female participation in the workplace. But what about the work that has no economic value, the work whose product is nothing less than the next generation? Who is counting the cost of anxious and depressed young people whose parents have both been unprecedentedly on their case while frequently absent? What price the patient inculcation of knowledge and values?…

We don’t yet know the price society will pay for making it practically impossible for mothers to look after their own children. Anecdotal evidence is building that things are amiss. Two teachers in their fifties that I know, one who works in a smart London prep school, the other in a state primary, talk of pupils who are five, six, even seven are still not potty-trained. Increased aggression, lack of basic table manners, an alarming growth in speech problems that simply weren’t there 30 years ago.