Should working grandmothers be paid or get time off to help out with caring for their grandchildren? Helen Brown looks at a cross-generational dilemma.
It is a truth universally acknowleged, to misquote Jane Austen, that an older working woman in possession of an extended family must at some point be in want of the time and wherewithal to look after them.
The recent report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), suggesting that working grannies who help with childcare should get up to six months of maternity leave or the chance to cut down considerably on their work commitments, is the latest attempt to deal with what is rapidly becoming known as a “looming care-gap” or “mid-life care crisis”, where public provision can’t give the necessary cover and family members have to step in to take up the slack.
These days, the golden age of available, willing, financially independent and self-sacrificing grandparents of both sexes capable of backing up the harassed working mums and dads of small children is a distant dream for most juggling parents. If it ever existed in the first place.
Nowadays, grandparents over 60 and 70, let alone those fit, lively 50-somethings beloved of TV advertising, are themselves having to continue to work full time (where jobs are available) to maintain any possibility of making ends meet into old age, let alone achieving a liveable pension.
Often, they are also financing or supporting offspring living at home into their thirties because of the distant prospect of getting onto the property ladder and who rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad to get them through education and the hazards of finding a job that pays a living wage.
And, with the “sandwich generation” in mind, the problem is, of course, that it isn’t even a one-way street any more. Grandmothers and grandfathers who are still working can also be looking after their own elderly and increasingly long-lived dependent parents.
Currently, many women in what might be termed late middle age either have to retire early whether they can afford it or not to help out with childcare, or find themselves having to take career breaks to assist their families, whether up or down the generational ladder.
With, it should be said, no certainty at all of getting back into the workplace, let alone at the level and salary scale on which they left it.
Here, it’s reckoned that grandparents provide childcare to not far short of 50% of families with children over nine months old, rising to 71% where the mother also works or is in education.
Britain has nothing like the social systems in place in Scandinavia, for example, where the flexible work culture and extensive and affordable childcare means that a huge proportion of mothers can return to work full-time.
In nations such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway, grandparents are still involved but very much on an ad hoc basis rather than in any organised or publicly supported way.
Elsewhere in Europe Belgium, for instance there is a policy that allows over-55s with a 25-year employment record the opportunity to cut working hours by up to a half albeit with lower pay for six months, to cover any emergencies.
In Germany, there is an “income-smoothing” scheme where employees can cut back to 15 hours per week for up to two years to care for a dependant, whether adult or child.
Part of the problem in this country is that caring still perceived as predominantly a female activity is not fully acknowledged by the political elite, even although it is known that voluntary carers for family and even friends save the Government literally millions each year.
This latest suggestion is being put forward at a time when, according to a BBC Radio 4 report last week, older workers may have to step into manufacturing industry jobs to make up for the lack of young, trained apprentices coming through the system.
Given the resistance with which many employers greet the concept of maternity or even paternity leave, it seems unlikely that many of them will welcome the notion of other sections of the workforce being able to step off the treadmill, however temporarily.
Rumblings are already being heard about the strain on small business and the adverse effects on economic recovery of what might, if these ideas are taken up, be another layer of employment regulation. Can the country afford it? is the cry.
But more to the point, if the alternative of financing full state care or providing increased benefits for those who have given up jobs and salaries for caring duties, is counted up in both the short and long-term, perhaps the question should be whether the country can’t afford to take a more flexible and supportive line where its current and future wealth creators are concerned?