UK childcare is collapsing – and forcing mothers back into the home
-Spiralling costs, thanks to Brexit, the cost of living crisis, and government failure, are leaving some parents with no option but to give up work

英国的托儿服务正在崩溃，迫使母亲们回到家里带小孩
——由于英国脱欧、生活成本危机和政府失职，不断上升的成本让一些父母别无选择，只能放弃工作


(‘I know I’m not the only one who compares my wages with the cost of childcare, and wonders if the stress is worth it.’)

（“我知道我不是唯一一个拿自己的工资和育儿费用做比较的人，我想知道这样的压力是否值得。”）
新闻：

Nothing can prepare you for the birth of your first child – the joy, the horror, the total discombobulation, but also the humbling awareness of just how little you knew about the realities of raising children. Tired babies do not, as I had expected, just “nod off”. Nor do all newborns love the car (mine screamed with such ear-shattering persistence we had to stop driving). But ask any expectant parent about the state of British childcare and you will settle upon a seemingly universal understanding: the system is woefully unfit for purpose.

没有什么能让你为第一个孩子的出生做好准备——喜悦、恐惧、完全的混乱，还有你对抚养孩子的现实了解得如此之少的谦卑意识。如我所料，疲惫的婴儿不会“打瞌睡”。也不是所有的新生儿都喜欢汽车（我的孩子坚持不懈地尖叫，震耳欲聋，我们不得不停止开车）。但是，如果你问任何一位准父母关于英国托儿服务的状况，你会得出一个看似普遍的理解：这个体系严重不符合既定目标。

After a Brexit exodus decimated staffing levels in nurseries, the pandemic quietly pushed the early years sector past the point of no return, and this winter promises even more hardship. Deliberate underfunding means providers have little choice but to charge astronomical fees, which have increased at a rate that far outstrips wages, to cover their own sizeable outgoings. And as energy prices rise, so too will costs.

在英国脱欧导致托儿所人员数量大幅减少后，疫情悄悄将早教部门推到了不可逆转的地步，今年冬天可能还会更加艰难。故意的资金削减意味着医疗机构别无选择，只能收取天文数字的费用，而这些费用的增长速度远远超过了支付自己可观支出的工资。随着能源价格的上涨，成本也会上涨。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Trying to find a nursery place for my daughter this year revealed just how depleted the provision is, with 18-month waiting lists as standard, and some waits so long their lists were closed. Demand far outstrips supply, thanks to a staffing crisis that shows no signs of abating as low-paid workers jump the sinking ship in favour of better pay and less stressful jobs. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of childcare providers in England plummeted by 4,000, and 86% of early years providers say the government funding they receive for three- and four-year-olds does not cover the cost of delivering those places. One nursery owner in the north-east tells me: “I haven’t been able to pay myself since November 2021 … I’ve had to take a second job just so I can live.”

今年，我试着为我女儿找一所托儿所，结果发现托儿所的供应已经非常匮乏，通常需要轮候18个月的时间，有些等待时间太长，以至于名单都排满了。需求远远超过供给，这要归功于一场没有任何减缓迹象的人员危机——低薪工人跳槽，转而从事工资更高、压力更小的工作。在2021年至2022年期间，英格兰托儿服务提供者的数量骤降了4000人，86%的早教服务提供者表示，他们为三岁和四岁儿童提供的100万英镑资金不足以支付提供这些服务的成本。东北部的一名托儿所老板告诉我：“自2021年11月以来，我一直无法支付自己的工资……为了生活，我不得不做第二份工作。”

It doesn’t take much creativity to imagine how this crisis is spilling over into the lives of working mothers. I know I’m not the only one who compares my wages each month with the cost of childcare, and wonders if the stress of juggling both, only to be barely breaking even, is worth it. Nearly three-quarters of part-time workers are women, and 57% of them feel they have no choice but to work part-time.

不难想象，这场危机将如何蔓延到职业母亲的生活中。我知道，我不是唯一一个把每月工资和育儿费用进行比较的人，我在想，在两者之间兼顾、却只能勉强维持收支平衡的压力是否值得。近四分之三的兼职工作者是女性，其中57%的人认为自己别无选择，只能兼职。

Friends share their own nightmare stories: one in full-time work texts to say her child’s nursery is closing its doors permanently with just a week’s notice due to staffing shortages, leaving her scrambling for childcare cover. Another says their nursery, struggling to cope with rising energy bills, is suddenly charging an extra £10 a day for lunch and activities.

朋友们分享了自己的噩梦故事：一位全职工作人员在短信中说，由于人手短缺，她孩子的托儿所将在仅提前一周通知的情况下永久关闭，这让她不得不四处找人照顾孩子。另一个孩子说，他们的托儿所为了应付不断上涨的能源账单，突然每天要多收10英镑的午餐和活动费用。

But this winter, as household costs continue to rise, things could become even more dystopian. In the past year, the number of women not working in order to look after family has risen by 5% – a trend-bucking increase the likes of which hasn’t been seen for 30 years, with women between 25 and 34 most affected. Put simply, too many women can no longer afford to work. And as the cost of living and energy crises bite, this steady stream of mothers disappearing from the workforce threatens to build to a raging torrent.

但今年冬天，随着家庭成本继续上升，情况可能变得更加反乌托邦。在过去的一年里，为了照顾家庭而不工作的女性数量上升了5%，这是30年来从未有过的趋势增长，25岁至34岁的女性受影响最大。简而言之，太多的女性无法再工作。随着生活成本和能源危机的影响，不断有母亲退出职场的趋势可能会形成一股汹涌的洪流。

Florencia is being forced to make a maddening choice between working and staying afloat. She and her husband employ a nanny to look after their two-year-old daughter, who has special needs, while they both work. “With the spike in costs, we can no longer afford [the nanny] so I have decided to take time off,” she tells me.

弗洛伦西亚被迫在工作和维持生计之间做出疯狂的选择。她和她的丈夫雇了一名保姆来照顾他们两岁大有特殊需求的女儿，而他们两人都在工作。“随着成本的飙升，我们再也请不起（保姆）了，所以我决定休假，”她告诉我。

Laura, a 39-year-old Canadian who has two children, left her staff job at a top London university this year. After paying for childcare, she says, she “wasn’t even breaking even. It was like, is it even worth working?”

39岁的加拿大人劳拉有两个孩子，今年她辞去了伦敦一所顶尖大学的教职。她说，在支付了托儿费之后，她“甚至无法达到收支平衡。我就在想，这值得吗？”

Lauren, also 39, has been unemployed since she was made redundant during the pandemic. “I can’t afford to pay for a nursery until I get a job, and I can’t seriously look for a job without childcare,” she says. “My husband works, but we’re in our overdraft every month now as things are getting more and more expensive.” She says that her sense of identity has suffered from not “being something other than someone’s mum, or wife”.

劳伦也是39岁，自从大流行期间被裁员以来，她一直处于失业状态。她说：“在我找到工作之前，我负担不起托儿所的费用，而如果没有托儿服务，我就无法认真找工作。我丈夫有工作，但我们现在每个月都透支，因为物价越来越贵了。”她说，她的身份感因为“只能是某人的母亲或妻子”而受到影响。

These stories should frighten us all – they point to a growing trend of working mothers being pushed by force and en masse back into the home. Too hyperbolic? “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all. I think this is exactly what we’re seeing,” says Joeli Brearley, the founder of Pregnant Then Screwed. These are women who want to work but have no viable means of doing so, who are being failed by decades of government shortsightedness. “People still do not grasp this notion that if you invest in the childcare sector, you’re investing in the economy, because it enables people to work,” says Brearley. “What they think is: ‘My taxes are paying for your children.’ And that’s not fair.”

这些故事应该让我们所有人都感到害怕——它们表明，越来越多的职业母亲被强迫返回家庭。觉得太夸张了？“我认为这一点也不夸张。我认为这正是我们所看到的，”“怀孕后就完蛋”的创始人乔里·布雷亚历说。这些妇女想要工作，但没有可行的办法，几十年来政府的短视使她们失败。“人们仍然不理解这样一个概念，即如果你投资托儿部门，你就是在投资经济，因为它使人们能够工作，” 布雷亚历说。“可他们想的却是：‘我的税收被你的孩子给拿走了。’这是不公平的。”

At the end of this month, more than 10,000 families are set to participate in mass protests over political inaction on the issue. And it’s about time. Investing in childcare could boost the annual income of working mothers in the UK by £10bn, according to a study by the Centre for Progressive Policy. That translates to an additional 3% in their economic output – surely something even the most fiscally or liberally conservative governments can recognise as a positive. But for now, says Mary-Ann Stephenson of the Women’s Budget Group, “it’s a bleak picture. If women can’t afford childcare they either depend more on informal care from their families, which can lead to older women leaving the workforce, or they can only work part-time reduced hours, or they leave the labour market altogether”.

本月底，超过1万户家庭将参加大规模抗议活动，抗议政府在这一问题上的不作为。快是时候了。进步政策中心的一项研究显示，投资托儿服务可能使英国职业母亲的年收入增加100亿英镑。这意味着他们的经济产出将增加3%——当然，即使是最钱眼或最自由保守的政府也会认为这是一个积极的因素。但是现在，妇女预算组织的玛丽-安·斯蒂芬森说：“这是一幅暗淡的景象。如果妇女负担不起托儿费用，她们要么更多地依赖家庭的非正式照顾——这可能导致老年妇女离开劳动力市场，要么就只能减少工作时间，从事兼职工作，要么完全离开劳动力市场。”

Government proposals to reduce staff-to-child ratios in nurseries as a way to reduce fees are largely unsupported by providers and parents alike. I ask the nursery owner whether it will make any difference for nurseries already operating at a loss. Not a chance, she tells me: “There’s no nursery in the land that’s going to be able to reduce their fees.”

政府提议通过降低托儿所人员与儿童的比例来降低费用，但这在很大程度上没有得到托儿所服务提供者和家长的支持。我问托儿所的老板，这是否会对已经亏损的托儿所产生影响。不可能，她告诉我：“这片土地上已经没有一个托儿所能够再降低它们的费用了。”

As more working mothers are pushed to the fringes, the consequences will be felt in the gender pay gap – the monitoring of which is itself at risk. And in the long term, more and more women of retirement age will sleepwalk into poverty without the opportunity to build up healthy pensions during their working years.

随着越来越多的职业母亲被推到边缘，其后果将体现在性别薪酬差距上——对这一差距的监测本身就面临风险。从长远来看，越来越多的退休年龄的女性将在浑浑噩噩中陷入贫困，在工作期间没有机会积累起健康的养老金。

But work is also about identity. It is an anchor to society, a reflection of our self-worth, a life raft of normality when family life threatens to consume us. There’s a reason those chintzy “gin and tonic – mummy’s little helper” signs are so commonplace – a glib expression of just how awful it can be to be a stay-at-home parent. It should no longer be taboo to say that lots of mothers have no desire to stay at home, and that many children benefit from being looked after in organised childcare settings. Generations of women, not hundreds, but millions – from the very youngest, to the very oldest – are being failed. And slowly but surely, we are rolling back the clock on equality.

但工作也关乎身份认同。它是社会的支柱，是我们自我价值的反映，是当家庭生活威胁要吞噬我们时，我们能正常生活的救生筏。这些廉价的“杜松子酒加奎宁水——妈妈的小帮手”的标语如此常见是有原因的——这是对全职父母有多糟糕的一种委婉表达。许多母亲不想呆在家里，许多孩子从有组织的育儿环境中受益，这样的说法应该不再是禁忌。一代又一代的妇女，不是几百人，而是几百万人——从最年轻的到最年长的——都被抛弃了。我们正在缓慢而坚定地将平等的时钟往回拨。