We have replaced the traditional family with a giant national Ponzi scheme

As every modern parent will be all too well aware, nursery fees in this country are staggeringly steep. So now Jeremy Hunt has ridden to the rescue. In his Budget the Chancellor promised 30 hours of free childcare a week for children aged nine months and above. I’m sure this announcement will be very popular.

But I also suspect it’s a big mistake.

That may seem a strange comment. Many families today, especially during this cost-of-living crisis, believe they simply can’t get by on a single income. As a result, mothers feel under great pressure to get back to work as soon as possible. So, unless the grandparents a) live nearby and b) are exceptionally generous, not to mention outstandingly fit, the child needs to be left at a nursery.

Hence Hunt’s intervention. He’s only responding to public demand. We wanted him to do this. I can’t help wondering, though, whether it would have been better for us to pause, and ask ourselves the following two questions.

Is this really how we want to live? And, even more importantly, is it how we want our children to live?

My wife and I started our son at nursery when he was only a year old. We live in Kent, but were both working full-time in London. So, most days, we would drop him off at nursery at 7.30am, rush off to catch the train, and then rush back to collect him at 6.00pm. Which meant he was at nursery for over 10 hours a day.

To be clear: he enjoyed it there. For an only child, going to nursery meant that he always had other children to play with. He’s still best friends with many of them now. And I think the experience gave him confidence. It ensured that he wasn’t nervous on his first day at school.

All the same, in the years since then I’ve often wondered whether it was the right thing to do. Oliver James, the author of several bestselling books on childcare, has repeatedly urged parents to keep their children at home till the age of three, if they can possibly manage it. He cites studies which suggest that children who have been raised in nurseries tend to be more aggressive, and more insecure in relationships. He’s also criticised politicians for acting as if “only people doing paid work are of any value” to society, even though they “have the evidence about how important early care is on children’s development”.

In any case, most mothers would rather be at home with their babies and toddlers, if they could only afford it. In polling cited by Onward, the Right-of-centre think tank, 62 per cent of mothers said that, if money were no object, they (or their husband) would stay at home and look after their children, instead of placing them in daycare. Obviously there are plenty of mothers who prefer to pursue their careers, and that’s fine. It’s their decision. But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that many mothers of small children are working when they’d rather not.

So here’s a suggestion. Let’s cut out the middle man – or middle woman. Instead of spending these vast sums on helping parents afford nursery fees, the Government should offer to pay mothers (or fathers) to stay at home and look after the child themselves. Existing child benefit (a mere £21.80 a week for the first child, £14.45 for each additional child) is nowhere near enough. I’m talking about a proper wage, just for raising children. At least for their first two years.

Of course, we know why the Government won’t do that. It doesn’t want mothers staying at home, caring for their children. It wants them all rushing back to work, for the sake of the economy. That, our Government considers, is a mother’s most sacred duty: nudging up the nation’s GDP.

One day, though, I suspect that we’ll look back and decide that, as a society, we’ve got our priorities wrong. Somewhere along the line, without even seeming to notice, we replaced the traditional family with a giant national Ponzi scheme, which dictates that, instead of raising their children, all parents must work – so that they can afford to pay someone else to raise their children for them.