Don’t tell mothers they should ‘stay at home’ in 2023

Government messaging seems to have changed to: stay at home, save wives

‘Stay at home mother’ should be a choice, not an order (PA Archive)

Ladies, drop your placards and bin your suit – Tory MP George Eustice is here to save us all from the drudgery of going back to work safe in the knowledge we have affordable childcare.

While many women may still be cheering the (flawed, but we’ll get to that) move from Jeremy Hunt to extend free nursery hours to children from nine months old, George Eustice knows that’s not what we want.

No, we nurturing souls want nothing more than to tend to little Johnny while the men are out earning the money.

Eustice understands, you see, that women are just different from men when it comes to wanting to spend time with our children – men want to zip straight back to the office from the delivery room while we want to wait until our youngest born marches off to university before we even consider leaving the kitchen, let alone heading back to the boardroom.

In fact, I have no idea how I have managed to type this using my tiny delicate lady hands, which would much rather be cuddling an infant or stroking a baby kitten. Why god, why did you curse me with such a natural need to mother everything? It’s stopping me from working.

For those who missed the very tired script trotted out by the MP for Redruth, Eustice claimed following the extension of free childcare provision, that the rule change ignores the “natural nurturing role” of women.

“Many women do want to spend those first few years with their child,” he told The Guardian this week. “It’s a short period in life where they can perform that natural nurturing role. We shouldn’t belittle it, we should value it.”

Eustice failed to mention who was belittling early years care (mothers? fathers? Hunt? childcare campaigners?) but safe to say, he wants mothers to spend this period of time with their children. And he wants us to know this time goes fast. Thank you, Accurist.

“I think [motherhood and fatherhood] are different,” he added, having failed to alienate enough women with his initial comment. “And we should be honest about that.

“Fathers of course have a very strong paternal desire to spend time with their children but you can’t get away from the way we are biologically wired and the maternal instinct is a strong one.

“It is generally the case that mothers in particular will want, if they can, to spend that time with their young children.”

It is at this point, of course, that we must ask whether Eustice has met any women. Or men. Or whether he is visiting Earth from a planet whose information on early years parenting comes from 1920s cinema, when men saw their children once a day at the dinner table before patting them on the head and waltzing off for a stiff drink.

It is, of course, entirely possible that I misunderstood Hunt’s childcare changes in the Budget. I am, after all, naturally predisposed to process information more slowly than my male counterparts.

So, if anyone can point out the part where the chancellor said the new changes would be mandatory and women MUST return to work when their babies reach nine months, do let me know. Women like to be corrected right? Double check with Eustice.

Luckily for anyone wringing their hands over women being frog-marched into the office against their will, the childcare changes will take years to come into effect. So much so that if you were hoping to ship your baby off to nursery for free, you’ll need to be around the point of conception to see any tangible benefit. Still, an eventual win is better than none at all – that is, if you’re currently wealthy enough to lose one parent’s income.

I would wallow in the free childcare time delay, that our choices are limited by ever-stretched income, the patriarchal norms that have led us to believe that women rather than men are nurturers, and the way this hugely shortchanges both sexes – as well as the children who would benefit from care from both sexes, but I have chores to do.

Still, I might shed a small tear over the matter – we women are naturally weepy, after all.