mahm - spring newsletter 2015 + online version
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Mothers at Home Matter - Spring Newsletter 2015 + ONLINE versionTRANSCRIPT
you can find it on our website. On Mothering Sunday we handed a
Mother’s Day card to No 10 and appeared on The Big Questions on BBC1. We have also taken part in other live debates on radio, including on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Our campaigning work is two –pronged. On the one hand we aim to offer support to mothers as well as to fathers and other caregivers. On the other hand, we lobby and campaign in the policy arena. Our two strands (support and lobbying) cover three broad areas: the economics of family life, childhood developmental needs and women’s lives as mothers.
We’re often asked ‘Do you make a difference and what have you actually achieved?’ Judging from the comments we get from all over the UK we’re confident that the ‘support’ element of our work makes a real difference to families. We know mothers derive strength and encouragement from finding a like-minded community, and from sharing information, research, personal experiences and ideas. On the policy front it’s less positive.
In the lead up to the General Election no Parties have any proposals to recognise the work carried out at home caring for children, so people tell us they have no idea who to vote for. Granted, some parents who are married will get around £200 annually because of the new tax allowance, but this doesn’t include all married parents. It’s a paltry sum and hardly compensates for the significant penalty in taxation and lack of allowances faced by single earner couples. Some families also face hefty bills from HMRC on household incomes of £60k, due to loss of universal child benefit, whereas couples on joint incomes
Spring 2015
of £300k will be eligible for help if they use childcare services. It’s clear that policymaking prioritises families where both parents are back in paid work as soon as possible after having children. There is more social and economic pressure on mothers not to spend too long at home than ever before, despite the obvious benefits to young children and teenagers of having a parent available to them.
We would like to see a more preventative approach to family health, recognising the protection that a strong family life gives to children and adults. As there are apparently more mental health problems than ever before, we’d suggest it’s not enough to treat the symptoms –rather it’s time to look at the underlying causes and the causal links between health and lack of support for family life. Families should be better supported with affordable housing, improved hourly rates of pay, fair allowances and taxation based on household responsibilities and income.
Parents tell us they are increasingly unable to access the basic resources they need to take care of their families, including time to care and to nurture relationships and that they face considerable stress over accommodation and paying essential bills, often on low income.
Our economy should be designed to work for the country’s citizens, for family life, and for the most vulnerable - rather than people being treated as nothing more than units of production, expected to work ever-longer hours with no time for caring. We urge you to keep supporting us and to please complete your subscription forms for 2015/16.
Like family, MAHM is about teamwork.
We’re immensely proud of what our committee of volunteers has achieved these past few months, despite limited resources. We’ve taken the microphone at seminars and All Party Parliamentary Groups; we’ve organised social media campaigns; we’ve written letters; our media team has pulled out all the stops to travel to interviews on radio and TV, often at short notice; we’ve responded to consultations; we continue to manage daily correspondence from all over the UK and increasingly from other countries; we’ve visited our MPs and other policymakers (and encouraged others to do the same); we’ve developed partnerships with other groups and we’ve organised our own events, inviting MPs and other experts to hear the evidence about the importance of family life to children.
We hope you’ll agree it’s not bad teamwork. People often ask us where our office is based and the answer is ‘in homes and kitchens all over the UK’! Notable highlights over Autumn and early Spring included our annual Open Meeting in London – a rare
opportunity to get together with other members. More
recently, we organised the launch of a
discussion paper, ‘Who Cares About the Family?’, in the Houses of Parliament. We
hope you’ve had the opportunity
to read through it and share it widely, Marie Peacock, Chair of MAHM
Who Cares About the Family?
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
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The number of mothers who stay at home to care for their children
themselves is declining. The implications of this fact have generated the latest whirl of national navel-gazing. Is it a good or a bad thing? It very much depends on who you ask and the answer isn’t that simple. Of course it is good that mothers are able to find paid employment, if that is what they would like. But if it is a question of sacrificing the needs of her children for love in order to meet the needs of her children for food, the working mother does not seem so much liberated as enslaved.
Mothers at Home Matter challenges the views that all mothers want to work as much as possible, and that spending long hours in day care or being home alone as a teenager is ideal for our society’s children.
In January 2015 Mothers at Home Matter launched a discussion paper in the Houses of Parliament to a room of MPs and child experts. Called Who Cares about the Family?, it examines in some depth the many issues facing families who would like to care for their children themselves. It is available on our website but these are our primary findings:
Most mothers would rather work fewer hours or not work at all if they could afford it, so they could look after their children themselves. This sounds like an obvious statement but who looks back at photos of their children when they were younger and wishes they’d spent less time with them? Although looking after children can be very hard, it is, at least eventually, very rewarding. More than that, instinctively we know that our children thrive on our love and attention. And if we don’t know it instinctively, there are many studies which confirm this.
Families are finding it increasingly hard to survive on one salary. The reasons for this are somewhat complex, although explored in depth in the discussion paper.
There are two significant factors. The first is that single income families, where just one parent is in paid employment, pay significantly more tax than dual income families. For example, a family on £20,000 will pay £2,955 more tax if it is just one person earning that £20,000 than if both parents are working. If the
family earn £60,000 (bearing in mind that Government tax breaks for working couples apply up to £300k joint income so £60,000 is not considered unduly wealthy), they will pay £6,520 more tax if it is just one person earning £60k than if a couple earns £60,000 between them. If a couple are earning £60k in total, they will benefit from two personal allowances, will be much less likely to be paying tax at 40% and will still receive child benefit, along with tax breaks from the Government to pay for replacement childcare. The Government, in this case, actually receives a much lower contribution from the dual income family, yet is still prepared to fund childcare costs to ensure the mother (usually) can work, and to penalise the single income family.
The second factor is what happens when the single income family tries to earn more. If a family is on tax credits, and half of all families are, then as the father (or main provider) earns more, so his tax credits reduce. This, combined with the extra tax contributions and National Insurance, means he is paying back to the Treasury 76% of every extra pound he earns. It becomes almost impossible for him to increase his disposable income. The only option the family have is for the mother to work.
If a family earns above the tax credit income level, which may be in the realm of an income of £35-£40k, then as the father starts to earn more to support the family he will be hit by the 40% tax rate and the subsequent loss of Child Benefit. If the mother works instead she can earn the first £10k tax free and they can keep their child benefit. The financial odds are stacked up against the family trying to support itself on one income.
The Government slavishly follows the ‘all mothers must work’ mantra because what they hear from mothers/voters is that they want cheaper childcare, ergo, those mothers must want to work. However, this is often a false deduction. Most mothers feel they have to work, often for financial reasons, and sometimes because ‘society’ says they should be juggling home and work life
with aplomb and, in fact, joy. As they feel they have to work, and have no hope of being able to afford to be at home, they demand cheaper childcare. However, given the choice, many would rather be supported for being at home caring for their children themselves, rather than be financially facilitated to leave their babies and children with
external professionals while they try to fit in work, managing the
home, feeding their nearest and dearest and, occasionally, sleeping. Of course there are mothers who do really value their careers and would rather be at work than
at home, but many mothers would love to have the time to
care for their children themselves and not have to ‘concertina’ (Vanessa
Feltz’s words) their children, their work and managing their homes into the few hours each day offers.
Instead of shoe-horning mothers of babies back to work ASAP, a family lifecycle approach should be adopted, which recognises there will be periods of time when mothers need to prioritise their children, and be there for them, followed by a time when mothers can return to work. Almost all mothers will return to work at some stage, particularly given the rise in the pensionable age. They don’t need to be coerced into work when every fibre of their being says that they need to be at home for their children and their sanity.
I hope you enjoy this newsletter. The newsletter’s aim is to encourage mothers at home that what they/you are doing is absolutely worthwhile by highlighting the latest research and sharing stories. I also aim to bring members up to date with the tireless (unpaid and fitted around the children) work of the Mothers at Home Matter committee in campaigning for the understanding of children’s developmental needs, particularly their need for their mother’s love, for changes in the tax and benefit system to allow parents more time with their children, and for the enhancement of the status and self-esteem of mothers at home.
From the Editor
Claire Paye, Editor
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
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Imogen Thompson, Media & Communications
Hardly a day passes without one of us at MAHM attending a parliamentary event, taking part in an online discussion, meeting with MPs or being contacted by the media for comment and debate on issues facing parents wishing to care for their children at home.
It is no secret that all the main political parties are putting election promises
in place for ‘more affordable childcare’. At every opportunity, Mothers at Home Matter have argued for politicians to broaden their definition of ‘affordability’ to include whether it is still affordable for parents to care for their children at home themselves, at no cost to the Treasury, but at substantial cost to the family in terms of income sacrificed and the disproportionate amount of the family income taken in tax.
As much as this is a key area to MAHM and our members, it is not the full extent of our campaign. We also keep a watchful eye on what is going on in terms of child development policy, mental health issues, cost of living and social matters, plus concerns facing mothers returning to work after an extended period away from paid employment. These are all areas interwoven with and affecting the choices available to parents wishing to provide care at home.
Over the last few months volunteers for MAHM have been present at events such as the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Social Mobility & Parents and Families launch, the Early Intervention Foundation Conference, the National Childbirth Trust (NCT)’s ‘Tackling the Cost of Childcare’ parliamentary lobbying event, the APPG 1001 Critical Days Antenatal Mental Health lectures, Demos’ Changing Families & Feminist Blindspots lecture, and we posed questions at the Resolution Foundation’s Pension Reform seminar. Attending these events often mean long days of travelling, meeting and questioning MPs, of raising issues with think tanks, policy makers and charities representing family interests. Without our presence at such occasions the value of unpaid parental care and the desire for families to afford this choice would often go unmentioned.
Notable recent media activity has
included taking part in a discussion on the ‘The Cost of Caring for a Family’ on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and being included as part of the London Evening Standard’s People’s Panel to gauge opinion of proposed party policies over the forthcoming weeks. MAHM has also been asked to take part in numerous BBC local radio discussions on the much publicised low numbers of mothers now ‘staying at home’ to care for their family. More recently, MAHM was invited to appear on BBC 1’s Sunday morning TV debate show The Big Questions discussing ‘Do we discriminate against Mothers?”
Twitter has proved to be a useful additional platform for the MAHM campaign. Quite apart from the regular, ongoing tweets to our followers from @mumsdadsmatter we also posed several questions to a panel of five senior female MPs representing the main political parties taking part in a ‘Virtual Question Time’ organised by Marie Claire UK. The questions and (lack of!) responses given can be viewed via #MCElection.
Our volunteers usually have to react quickly when being contacted by the media – often during the school run in the morning or late at night preparing for a television appearance the following day. Other activity comes to fruition over many months. MAHM was pleased to read of our inclusion in the House of Lords’ Select Committee Report on Affordable Childcare, published in February 2015. Despite being told towards the end of the televised oral evidence sessions that the remit of the Committee was to only look at the affordability of paid for childcare, something that was not stated at its formation in July 2014, the final report did include written evidence submitted from both MAHM and individual members.
I hardly have to add that Mothers at Home Matter looks forward to making sure the voice of parents wishing to have more family time and genuine choice in caring opportunities is heard loud and clear in the run up to the General Election and beyond – being described by the House of Lords’ Select Committee, ‘a small but vocal minority’.
In the news on Mothering SundayThe pressures our teenage daughters are under is leading them to self-harmThe Independent, 15 March 2015, Yasmin Alibhai BrownGirls are turning to self-harm to cope with the sense of pressure upon them to succeed, coupled with the very public persona they feel they have to create. Lucie Russell, the director of campaigns at YoungMinds said ‘This is the first generation of children that live their lives in the public domain and are under pressure to create a ‘brand me’’. [Sue Palmer explains the background to girls’ need to be seen to be successful and their awareness of the expectations on them brilliantly in her book ‘21st Century Girls’]Mothers deserve £172,000 a yearThe Independent, 15 March 2015, Hannah BolandAlthough involving somewhat spurious accounting methods to arrive at the suggested salary for a mother, this article tries to outline the different roles mothers play and how much they would be paid if carrying out those roles professionally. Imogen Thompson of MAHM was quoted, saying, ‘Although [the survey] is light-hearted, it shows mothers matter all year long and not just on Mothering Sunday. The emotional, physical and mental energy mothers devote to their children can be relentless, but children are also sources of immense joy and happiness. Investing in time for parenting and nurturing relationships is money well spent.’
News and Media Update
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
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Global Women’s Strike is an international feminist organisation co-ordinated by Selma James. GWS is asking for all care work, including raising children in the home to be paid. All Mothers Work is a blog and feminist campaign group set up by Esther Parry to promote maternal feminism and support stay at home mothers.Feminist academic, Andrea O’Reilly, set up the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. She writes, “Motherhood is the unfinished business of the feminist movement. That’s why I started MIRCI, largely because of the invisibility and marginality of mothers’ ‘work’”.
Yes, some feminists have been hostile towards SAHMs but many others have campaigned for recognition of the huge amount of unpaid work that we do. Stay at home mothers must acknowledge and challenge the hostility we have experienced from some feminists but this doesn’t mean that we should reject feminism, rather we should embrace it and claim it as our own.
So can you be a feminist and a stay at home mothers? Absolutely, you can! In fact I would argue that my decision to stay at home to raise my daughter was informed by my feminism and my identification as a feminist has been deepened by my experience of being a stay at home mother.
I am happy to call myself a Maternal Feminist but I am also happy to call myself a Feminist without any further qualification. I refuse to let the term ‘feminism’ be misappropriated by people who want to judge and exclude certain groups of women. As bell hooks says, ‘Feminism is for everybody’ and this, of course, includes stay at home mothers.
Can stay at home mothers be feminists too? MAHM committee member, Kerry Hedley, explores the subject.
In 1981 Barbara Smith wrote, ‘Feminism is the political theory
and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism’. Hear, hear to this. Perhaps we need to add stay at home mothers to her list. We are an increasingly marginalised group, penalised and discriminated against in the tax and benefit system, derided as old fashioned in the media, erased from the political agenda and simply defined by our usual location.
Have SAHMs been included in feminist debate? Not always. And do stay at home mothers need feminism? Absolutely! A recent Mumsnet survey found that 88% of women with young children who work full-time would prefer either to work part-time or to be full-time carers for their children. Yet fewer and fewer women are able to afford to stay at home with their children due to low wages, the rising cost of housing and other expenses. Millions of women are finding themselves unable to give their children the kind of care that they feel they need. This surely is a feminist issue, yet the difficulties facing women who want to look after their children at home have been overlooked by some feminists in favour of a focus on getting more women into the workplace and the provision of childcare to facilitate this. In our neoliberal society we often see women’s worth equated with our earning capacity. Women’s ability to earn the same as men and have the same kind of careers as men is seen as a simple indicator of equality. Equivalence of role has been confused with equality of value. In other words, women must carry out the same roles as men in order to be considered equal. Of course these are important issues and need campaigning for but sadly this focus has sometimes led stay at home mothers to feel excluded from feminism and has created the impression that feminism and being a stay at home mother are somehow incompatible. This is simply not true.
Feminism is about fighting for equality and an end to discrimination. SAHMs experience significant inequality in the tax and benefit system but this issue has yet to be given the same attention in the feminist movement as workplace inequalities. This needs to be addressed. Feminism is also about acknowledging, valuing and celebrating the things that make us women. Crucially, women have babies: we carry them in our bodies, give birth to them, breastfeed them and are overwhelmingly the people who care for them in infancy and beyond. Motherhood is a significant, valuable and enriching experience in many women’s lives. It’s not an inconvenience to be managed and childcare shouldn’t be seen as a ‘problem’ as it is so often framed by our politicians.
You are not a slave to your biology if you feel a desperate longing to be with your child and raise him or her yourself. You are not letting down the sisterhood if you find more fulfilment in caring for your children than in paid employment. Irish Journalist, David Quinn recently wrote, ‘It is amazing to see how the old adage, “a woman’s place is in the home” has completely transformed into “a woman’s place is at work and a child’s place is in day care”. The old attitude was authoritarian and the new attitude is equally so’.
It is important to remember that although some feminists have criticised women who choose to stay at home with their children, there have always been feminists who have acknowledged and championed the huge amount of unpaid care work that women do in the home and who have supported stay at home mothers in their choice. Here are just a few examples:
Feminist Economist, Marilyn Waring has challenged the use of GDP as a measure of a country’s production as it takes no account of the vast amount of unpaid care work done mostly by women. She argues that this unpaid women’s work is the largest sector in any country’s economy, it makes all other work possible and that the market would collapse without it. [An Office for National Statistics survey in 2010 calculated unpaid care as worth £343bn, or 23% of GDP ed.]
Reflections of a Stay at Home Feminist Mum
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
Kerry Hedley
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The MAHM Open Meeting and AGM is a chance to meet up with other members, be re-inspired by our speakers and hear about the committee’s work. Here is a round-up of two of the talks last year. Speaker: Anna Firth‘When mothers speak, the voice of children is heard’.
That summed up Anna’s passionate cry for mothers to be involved at all levels of public life to promote the needs of children. ‘If we want society to succeed, we need the family to succeed. It’s social engineering to have a tax and benefits system which penalises stay at home parents.’
According to Anna, care is spelt T I M E, but time is the one thing that is being removed from parents who are forced out to work at the expense of their family’s well-being . Worryingly, whereas nine years ago, 45% of mothers worked inside the home, now only 30% do.
Children’s needs are being ignored in the inexorable commercialisation of childhood and the digitalisation of childhood and care. Children between the ages of 12 and 18 are spending an average of six and a half hours on a screen daily. There are very many seriously troubled families in the country and an increasing number of children with learning difficulties. The oldest and youngest in society are being neglected and abused.
In France, you aren’t allowed to leave your children in childcare longer than is determined good for them according to each one’s individual needs. In contrast, Anna pointed to the advice of a former Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit, who recommended school hours of 9am to 6pm, and reduced school holidays of 7 weeks instead of 13, stating that this would enable teachers to have a broader role in bringing up the children they’re supposed to be teaching!
What he failed to recognise is that many teachers entered the teaching profession to allow them time with their own children, not to force them to bring up other people’s. He also makes no
Keynote Speakers at the 2014 MAHM AGM
reference to the well-being of children, or what their needs are.
Anna spoke with great conviction about the horrific way in which we are replacing intergenerational wisdom with institutions. Individual choice is taking precedence over the well-being of
society, and this is an unsustainable economic model. Society has to
recognise that time spent caring is very valuable. It makes much more sense to invest in mothers. ‘Mother love is the fuel that
enables a human being to do the impossible’. Anna Firth is the MAHM Advisor on
Women in Politics.
Speaker: Dr Richard House ‘Too much too young’
Stay at home mothers are swimming against the tide of society’s obsession with getting mothers out to work: George Osborne wants 500,000 more women in the workplace; a CBI conference which calls for free childcare for all one and two year olds; all parts of the political spectrum say we need more childcare. There are two books which illustrate this very well: ‘The Selfish Society’ and ‘The Mind Object’.
Sue Gerhardt’s book, ‘The Selfish Society’ dissects the negative effect on society of what she calls in her subtitle, ‘How we all forgot to love one another and made money instead’. She highlights the concept that children are being forced to grow up too fast so that they can be as little trouble to their carers as possible. Everyone is supposed to be emotionally self-sufficient, even babies, who apparently just need company and stimulus, it doesn’t matter from which source. She also argues that politicians are limited by their own childhood experiences, and if these are negative in any way, that limits their ability to form good parenting policies. Sue Gerhardt cites research which finds that the brain itself is reshaped by social conditioning so the materialistic society we live in may be having a major impact on the neurology of infant brains.
What a healthy early childhood involves is love, stability, consistency, reliability, good quality attachment,
low stress and feeling appropriately valued. A 1995 book, ‘The Mind Object: Precocity and Pathology of Self-Sufficiency’, outlines a pattern that therapists have discovered in children whose early environment isn’t emotionally good enough: they turn inwards to their minds and seek to develop their minds above all else, negating the value of the body and emotions.
What’s the hurry? Why are children being coerced into becoming independent beings as soon as possible? It is very difficult in the academic world to mention love. And it is not anti-feminist or anti-women to advocate the importance of family live and its stability for the well-being of young people [See
our article on Feminism on p4, ed.]. The Left in particular feels
women should have all the same career paths as men, but fails to acknowledge the differences between men and women.
Our society is extremely unequal. This is having a massive
effect on the life chances of our children. What is society going to do about it? It is in good quality early attachment relationships that a child learns to love, so we should maximise the quality of those early relationships. We need to focus resources on building local caring communities.
The Government pours resources into early education, trying to make up for the deprivation of good quality early childhood care, but it can’t. All they’re doing is introducing children from deprived backgrounds into education they aren’t ready for. Ninety percent of the world’s countries have school starting ages of six or seven. A starting age of five in the UK (it’s rising five now) dates back to the 1870 Education Act, and was introduced to stop child labour at a time when many parents couldn’t live without their children’s income. Therefore, it has nothing to do with the well-being of the child. However, it has remained because it is economically expedient, as it makes it easier for mothers to work and, as we all know, society is obsessed with working mothers.
Dr Richard House is the MAHM Advisor on Child Development and Early Learning.
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
Claire Paye
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Motherhood - the Essential Role
We are constantly finding out more about the importance of mothers and their children spending time together.
Mothers at Home Matter draws on this research to justify our
campaign to enable mothers and their children to be together, in the face of politicians and journalists suggesting that mothers can easily be replaced by childcare workers.
Further details about the research outlined here can be found in the links given, or by reading the Research pages of the excellent, science focussed campaign group, What About The Children? or on the research pages of our own website.
Children born into poverty thrive most when they have been cared for well by their mothers. A new study has found that the quality of children’s early maternal caregiving experiences has an enduring and ongoing role in promoting successful social and academic development, not only during childhood and adolescence, but into adulthood. If children receive responsive love from their mother, they are much more likely to form better social relationships and perform better academically.
The study used information from 243 individuals who were born into poverty, came from a range of racial/ethnic backgrounds, and had been followed from birth to age 32. Sensitive caregiving is defined as the extent to which a parent responds to a child’s signals appropriately and promptly, is positively involved during interactions with the child, and provides a secure base for the child’s exploration of the environment.
According to Lee Raby, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Delaware, who led the study, “This suggests that investments in early parent-child relationships may result in long-term returns that accumulate across individuals’ lives. Because individuals’ success in relationships and academics represents the foundation for a healthy society, programs and initiatives that equip parents to interact with their children in a sensitive manner during the first few years of their children’s life can have long-term benefits for individuals, families, and society at large.”
MAHM comment: this research questions the focus on putting children from poor backgrounds into day care so that their mothers can work. It is difficult for mothers to offer sensitive caregiving to children if they aren’t actually with them. Rather than removing children so that mothers can work, there should be more focus on helping mothers to mother their own children instead of paying others to do it for them. K. Lee Raby, Glenn I. Roisman, R. Chris Fraley and Jeffry A. Simpson. The Enduring Predictive Significance of Early Maternal Sensitivity: Social and Academic Competence Through Age 32 Years.
Children who have been nurtured by their mothers have brains with a larger hippocampus This research, from the Washington University School of Medicine in 2012, shows that the love and care given by the mother makes a difference in the child’s brain development, specifically in the size of the hippocampus, the area of the brain which is key for learning, memory and stress response. Joan Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry, commented on her research ‘we should pay more attention to parents’ nurturing…because clearly nurturing has a very, very big impact on later development’. She also commented that good quality nurturing from any primary caregiver, including fathers, grandparents or adoptive parents, would be likely to have the same response. MAHM comment: So the focus on encouraging toddlers into childcare settings ostensibly to help prepare them for school is possibly misguided. They would do better being with their mothers and working on their hippocampus at home!Luby JL, Barch DM, Belden A, Gaffrey MS, Tillman R, Babb C, Nishino T, Suzuki H, Botteron KN. Maternal support in early childhood predicts larger hippocampal volumes at school age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, Jan. 30, 2012.
Babies’ smiles and tears affect mothers’ brainsMothers who were shown a series of photos ranging from their own babies smiling or crying to unknown babies smiling or crying. Brain imaging revealed that the areas of mothers’ brains
involved with emotion processing, cognition and motor/behavioural behaviours were stimulated by pictures of their own children smiling. These areas were not affected by their children’s neutral or sad faces, or by other children’s smiles, or neutral or sad faces.
All crying infant faces had an effect on mothers, but they were more significant where their own baby was in the picture. The report suggests that when a mother sees her child smiling, this stimulates the release of dopamine (associated with reward and pleasure) in the brain, which in turn may promote responsive maternal care. In other words, this means she is attentive to the baby’s needs in a way she wouldn’t be with a non-related baby. MAHM comment: Seeing her baby happy encourages the mother to repeat the behaviour which caused this happiness, which creates a virtuous circle. If non-related children don’t have the same effect on adults, childcare professionals will never be able to respond as naturally as a mother would. What’s in a smile? Maternal Brain Responses to Infant Facial Cues
Levels of maternal care in rats linked to the amount of time spent with their babies.In a fascinating study into the role of oxytocin in stimulating maternal care in rats – demonstrated as licking and arching their backs to make it easier for the babies to suckle – researchers found that when baby rats were separated from their mothers for short periods (15 minutes once a day), their mothers respond by increasing their maternal care. But rats who are separated for three hours a day receive less maternal care. The rats that receive more licking and arch-backed nursing demonstrate more of this when they themselves are mothers. So the mother’s nurturing behaviour has a long-term effect on rats’ oxytocin receptors and ability to love their babies. MAHM Comment: Rats are considered similar enough to humans to make studying their behaviour relevant. Could the separation of mothers and babies through work and childcare make a difference to how (not whether) human
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
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mothers love, and have long term implications for how their babies love their own children? The First and Forever Bond, Angela Spivey.
Emotional Needs of the Under 3s I have reproduced this list from the excellent organisation, What About The Children? www.whataboutthechildren.org.uk, which focusses on the needs of the under threes.• To be touched, have frequent cuddles and warm physical attention • To feel loved • To have a secure base • To be able to fully trust • To receive a high level of responsiveness from adult carers • To have constant sensitive attention • To be talked to in an interested attentive manner • To have total absorbed individual adult attention as much as possible • To have real communicative eye contact when adults speak to them • To be allowed to move at their own pace and not be rushed • To have companionship with both familiar adults and children • To be allowed to develop peer friendships where they happen naturally • To have fun • To experience joy • To experience no fear • To receive encouragement and praise • To receive reassurance • To experience consistency of care • To experience continuity of care • To have a genuine close relationship with their regular care giver • To be protected from constant changes of care giver • To have carers who know their experiences and are ‘in tune’ with them • To be allowed ‘down time’, personal ‘mooching’ • To be allowed to explore and take a few little risks • To be valued as pleasurable to be with • To be known • To experience respect and acknowledgement of their range of emotions • To have freedom of movement • To have activities that are appropriate to their own personal development level • To be kept informed of what is going on • To have a level of predictability, as well as flexibility, in the day • To have realistic expectations for their level of development from adult carers • To experience the comfort of having their own personal and developmental needs, rather than their age, considered as the benchmark for assessing their emotional and practical requirements.MAHM comment: This list was formed
from contributions from professionals interested in childcare issues. As
mothers, many of us will meet these needs instinctively, in a way that childcare workers may struggle to do consistently given the number of children under their care.
Adolescents benefit when they spend time with both parents togetherA new study, ‘Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend with Children or Adolescents Matter?’ has found that for children over three, just spending time with their mothers doesn’t have an impact on their emotional or behavioural outcomes. But for adolescents, more time spent sharing an activity with their mothers resulted in slightly fewer delinquent behaviours, whereas time spent with both parents together was linked to fewer behavioural problems, improved academic results, less substance abuse and less delinquent behaviour. MAHM comment: The authors of the study are at pains to point out that the study didn’t measure the warmth or sensitivity of their parents, or the actual activities engaged in, and as such did not suggest that time with mothers was not important at all. Rather, that time with both parents together was very beneficial for adolescents. Milkie, M. A., Nomaguchi, K. M. and Denny, K. E. (2015), Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend With Children or Adolescents Matter?. Journal of Marriage and Family, 77: 355–372. doi: 10.1111/jomf.12170
Older children with stay at home mothers have better educational resultsEric Bettinger, Associate Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, carried out the research into the effect on school age children of having a mother at
home as a
result of the ‘cash
for care’ subsidy given to parents of
under 3 year olds in Norway who didn’t use publicly subsidised daycare. The research focussed on the educational attainment of any older siblings while their mothers were funded to look after their younger siblings. They found that school age children’s grades improved significantly if they were at home with their mothers after school rather than in after school care. Dr Bettinger concluded, ‘our study indicates that parental care is not easily substituted. This suggests that the increases in female labor force participation in Europe and the USA may affect child development. At least in Norway, the after school care that was available to the students in our sample does not seem to be of sufficient quality – in scholastic terms - to be an adequate substitute for parental care with respect to educational achievement’Eric Bettinger, Torbjørn Hægeland and Mari Rege Home with Mom: The effects of stay-at-home parents on children’s long-run educational outcomes
by Claire Paye
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
8
In 2008, UNICEF published the Child Care Transition report, which
reflected: ‘A great change is coming over
childhood in the world’s richest countries. Today’s rising generation is the first in which a majority are spending a large part of early childhood in some form of out-of-home child care….. Whether the child care transition will represent an advance or a setback – for today’s children and tomorrow’s world – will depend on the response’ (UNICEF 2008, p.1).
The report was prepared in the midst of cultural change for families throughout the western world. In both England and the US from the mid-1980s onwards, increasing numbers of families began to rely upon both parents working full time, added to a steady increase in parents of young families working many miles away from their home locations. The emergent result was that increasing numbers of infants were routinely removed from their homes and sometimes their local neighbourhood between 8am and 6pm during the working week and placed in commercial care facilities, frequently day care settings structured to house large numbers of children. Such a culture of child care became increasingly at odds with Bowlby’s theory of infant attachment (Bowlby 1952). The theory proposed that a lack of bonded attachment to the mother in early infancy creates psychological problems for human beings on a lifelong basis; in particular, their abilities to create healthy relationships with others.The fundamental significance of attachmentBowlby laid tremendous emphasis on the role of the mother within attachment, proposing that the attachment process between the human mother and baby was innate, implying that this was as automatic as the imprinting process in birds. Bowlby took into account subsequent attachment research, notably by Schaffer and Emerson (1964), and shortly before his death in 1990, he expanded his core thesis to take in the possibility of forming a secure attachment with someone other than the mother. When children’s first experiences of interactions with significant others within an intimate family circle communicate to them that they are lovable, and that other
people are interested in and sensitively responsive to their attempts to communicate, they are provided with a secure base from which to venture out and to which they can subsequently return for help (Bowlby 1988). If such attachments are not securely formed in infancy through experiences of relationships where affection is both given and received, Bowlby reiterated, this would have lifelong consequences.Behaviour problems associated with day careWith the growth of developmental neuro-biology, additional neurophysiological evidence has emerged to support the importance of secure relationships in infancy. A range of studies discovered abnormally raised levels of stress hormones in young children placed in situations where they do not feel secure in the care that they are receiving, particularly young children spending full days in collective daycare. Several research projects found that when care at home was compared to care in collective settings, children showed less physiological signs of stress at home (e.g., Dettling, Gunnar and Donzella, 1999; Watamura, Kryzer, and Robertson, 2009). Developmental researchers Raikes and Thompson (2008) additionally found that children with poor attachment security before 36 months suffered problems with peer relationships and social problem-solving skills, while Lowe Vandell et al. (2010, p.751) argued that a ‘consistent finding in the literature is that more hours in child care and more centre-type care are related to higher levels of behaviour problems in young children… [and that] more hours in child care and more centre-type care are related to higher levels of ...problem behaviours at age 15’. Instinctive responsiveness of mothersWhilst it would be naive to argue that all home environments are inevitably less stressful than all day care environments, the indication seems to be that to be cared for within the average home is less stressful for an infant than to be cared for within the average day care centre. Why might this be? Zeedyk (2006, pp. 322–323) described the human infant as a creature who arrives in the world prepared to swiftly tune into the rhythms of the main carer, who in turn responds to the child’s noises and movements to the point that ‘parent–infant interactions
have been likened to a jazz duet, given that the two partners are not dancing to someone else’s tune but are creating one of their own’. As any jazz musician will understand, it is far easier to ‘jam’ with a person with whose rhythms one is comfortable and familiar, and what we currently understand about infant interaction indicates that this is a highly salient analogy for the ways in which infants initially learn the most important human skill- how to communicate with others. Commodification of childrenBowlby (1988), writing at the beginning of the cultural slide towards mass daycare argued:
Man and woman power devoted to the production of material goods counts as a plus in all our economic indices. Man and woman power devoted to the production of happy, healthy and self-reliant children in their own homes does not count at all. We have created a topsy-turvy world (Bowlby 1988, p.2).
It can be argued that one of the core reasons for our culture’s slide into this situation is the dominance in both England and the US of the ‘free market’ economy, where the links between business and education are vast and complex. However, this is not compatible with human psychology, as Bowlby (1988) intuited; rather than ‘working to live’ we now ‘live to work’. All that young children have to offer to such a society is as a commodity within the child care system, making money for the economy through the tax paid through the wages of professional child care practitioners. This is not a situation into which we as a society should be ‘sleepwalking’; UNICEF’s (2011, pp. 8-9) warning: ‘there is a clear danger that the child care transition may follow a course that is determined by the needs and pressures of the moment, uninfluenced by long term vision or choice’. This is one of the most important issues that we need to discuss and deeply consider. The time has come to break free from models of human society that are narrowly predicated upon human beings as economic capital, and to consider our responses to the child care question from a position rooted in initiatives which, above all, seek to nurture the social and emotional resilience of our rising generations.
Some reflections upon infancy in the 21st Century
Published with permission from Dr Pam Jarvis - A longer version of this article, and full references, can be found on our website www.mothersathomematterco.uk/viewpoints. Dr Pam Jarvis is a historian and graduate psychologist, and her key research focus is that of ‘well being’ in education across all ages and academic levels
Dr Pam Jarvis
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actually I could expect a bit more of my children.
Each chapter is designed to be read on its own, so it is a brilliant book for dipping into, although many of the issues raised are interconnected. In the chapter on school, “The Best Days of their Lives”, Sue Palmer, a former head teacher, explores why more and more children are behaving badly: ‘diet, lack of sleep or outdoor play, inadequate attachment or opportunities for real-life communication, family problems ….[the] national obsession with “selfish materialism”….exposure to screen-based violence and bullying behaviour…a culture that has forgotten the essential elements of successful child-rearing.’ All of these elements are explored in the book. As well as a recap of suggestions made at the end of each chapter, there is a case study examining what is happening in the lives of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
I was particularly interested to read the chapter on ‘Who’s looking after the children?’ As a working mother herself, Sue Palmer does not flinch from suggesting that what babies and young children really need can be found in their ‘normal environment’ where that is a ‘happy family home.’ She also endorses the value of teaching all parents about the importance of attachment and attuned parenting and questions ‘how far an institution [can] duplicate the security and stability of home and the sensitive, personal, human engagement of a single familiar carer?’ These are such important questions, but so rarely debated for fear of upsetting families who can’t find a way to have a parent at home most of the time, that it is refreshing for them to be raised by someone who has researched the topic at great length and is a neutral observer.
Moving onto less emotive ground, the book highlights a number of areas which all parents need to focus on, whether they work outside the home or are full time carers for their children. The book opens with a chapter on the importance of the family meal, both in terms of its content and of the importance of time spent eating together for communication and the passing on of manners. I was reminded AGAIN not to have my mobile at the table, a fact which is picked up at length in the chapter on communication: ‘It’s good to talk’. Sue highlights the
Toxic Childhood - How the Modern World is Damaging our Children and What We Can do About itby Sue PalmerPublished by Orion My response as I devoured Toxic Childhood in record time alternated between ‘oh dear’ and ‘phew’. The ‘oh dears’ were related to the many challenges facing children and their parents in the world we are unwittingly creating today. The ‘phews’ were that many of the solutions suggested are much easier to carry out when there is a parent around for the children a lot of the time, which I am.
There is some good news in this book. There are fewer TVs in childrens’ bedrooms than when the first edition was published in 2006. The bad news is that this is because of the increase in handheld devices which children are using in their bedrooms, having eaten their individually microwaved meals on their own, after being driven home from school and kept indoors. The subtitle of the book, ‘How the modern world is damaging our children and what we can do about it’, sums up the content of the book brilliantly. It is worth reading for the suggestions alone. Reading through the ‘life skills for children to learn by the age of 6 or 12’ made me realise that
importance of face to face talking in developing babies’ ability to communicate and express themselves. She explores why it is that technology can never replace communication with a live human and suggests ways of developing a conversation with a child – although she doesn’t cover why it is no child can ever answer the questions ‘what have you done at school today?’ or ‘what was the most interesting thing you learnt today?’ or ‘who did you play with at breaktime?’ or any number of open questions designed to elicit information about that day’s activities at school! In spite of this, Sue states that the best way we can help our children do well at school is to ‘talk and listen’, or rather, ‘listen and talk’
I think Sue sums up what children need and why they aren’t getting it in today’s society in these words: ‘Our consumer society leads us to believe that the more costly and complex an item is, the more its value – this is not the case with children. (Although in a way it is true: human beings are complex and these days their time is costly…and time with the human beings who are most special to them is what children most need and crave.)’
So, the primary weapon against the toxic childhood our children are experiencing is time with us, their parents. But we need to use this time wisely, being fully engaged with our children, providing for their physical needs for food, play and sleep, providing a safe haven from which to explore the world and to which they can retreat when the world gets too much.
There are so many more words of wisdom and warnings about the age our children live in that I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The book confirms the vital role all parents play in our children’s lives and it equips us to recognise and confront the challenges that our children face so that we can ‘detox’ their childhood.
Book Review
Claire Paye
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
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There are many ways you can get in touch. We love hearing your comments and supporting you through Facebook, Twitter, emails and letters. Here is a selection of the
comments we have received.
I am a stay at home mum having happily left my successful career to be with my daughter of now 14.5 months. I have no regrets and am enjoying every minute. I am pretty disheartened by the way women or men are penalised by the current government financially because they choose to stay at home to look after their children and do not want to find work. I find it crazy how far the other way parenting has swung and I question whether it’s really the answer to safeguard the future of our society and future generations.
Thanks, Joanna McFarlane
By Twitter@mumsdadsmatter or #valuecare
@Platform505Mothers Day card
delivered to #No10 @mumsdadsmatter addressing major issues concerning stay at home parents (with link to article)
@SheffieldMummy#Labour candidate leafleting at the
schoolgate - didn’t know about @mumsdadsmatter - does now :-) #valuecare
@MRS_SRM@mumsdadsmatter @PTAUK - Not
only do my 3 benefit from me being SAHP, but others do too. I volunteer in sch and local clubs #volunteerarmy
@AnnaBramble@mumsdadsmatter Fab debate on the
Big Questions re discrimination against stay at home mums, about time it was properly discussed - go Lynne!
@DanielsDenUK@mumsdadsmatter This article reminds
me of how I find all parties policies
troubling - stay at home parents so undervalued.
Through FacebookMothers at Home Matter TooWe have two main pages, a public page: Mothers at Home Matter Too and a closed group page specifically for members: MAHM Members’ Community.
Here are some comments from the public page following in response to a post about Chitra Ramaswamy’s article, ‘I love being a housewife and that doesn’t make me any less of a feminist’, which had 352 likes, 24 comments and 55 shares.
“I am very proud to say I gave up a career (as a doctor ) to bring up my 4 children - best decision I ever made and happy to shout it from the roof tops”
“Ditto. Gave up being head of English in secondary
school to have and raise family.
Haven’t looked back since. In fact, I will go as far to say I’m more fulfilled now and have more
satisfaction in being a stay at
home mum than I did in teaching”
“I do miss aspects of my job (as a clin neg lawyer) but
I certainly wouldn’t change the decision we made that I would become a mum at home. I have no regrets and I’m sure I’ll have no regrets in future years, whatever I’m doing during the working week, when I look back on being able to spend these early years with my wee boys!!”
“I’d be a stay at home mum in a heartbeat- wouldn’t care whether it was sexist or not- I love being off with the kids.”
“One of the biggest misconceptions with being a stay at home mum is that your life is entirely menial. Mothers in the past were extremely active in the community both socially and politically...they didn’t just cook the dinner, do some dusting then sit in front of the t.v.
I have done a tremendous amount of studying since I had my children and have acquired many useful skills from carpentry to traditional cooking to biodynamic farming. I simply do not understand where the idea of the brain-dead house wife comes from! In fact it is typically people married to their jobs who are the most tedious and politically ignorant.”
“There is so much feminism about the Right to Work and the Right to a Career. But not enough feminism about the child’s Rights to his own parent.“A mother’s Rights to her children is a luxury, not many can afford. That is feminism for the rich only. A child’s Rights to his mother are ignored.”
“Women choose to stay at home with their kids and give up careers because that little person becomes the most important thing in their lives and they want to experience every one of their child’s experiences ..a luxury these days? maybe ..a duty?..not really..an act of selfless love?..yes ..a risky short term career break?..Unfortunately and sadly in todays unfair times ..yes.”
“I am sick and tired of this ‘career choice, fulfilling ambition and wasted potential’ speak. Fact is we are not all high earner career women. Some stay at home mums like me have no degree, few qualifications and didn’t earn a great deal before having our children. Do I really want to return to the mundane daily routine of an office and waste my potential of being there to raise my kids. Big fat No. At the end of my life I will not be saying I wish I had been at work more. It annoys me that all the talk of women going back to work is of women who have careers to go to in the first place. I find more fulfilment in reading to my kids or cooking their tea than I ever did at work. However society has made me feel worthless and invisible. Like I don’t count. I still paid my tax for 11 years before leaving work and have never had any benefits so why am I classed as a drain on the system and targeted by policymakers to get back into work?”
Letters & Messages from Supporters
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
11
The role of a SAHM is clear during the early years, but once children start school, the pressure to ‘return to work’ increases. Mother and MAHM member Poppy Pickles explains how this feels.
I am a mother of two children, a son aged 10 and a daughter aged 7.
I have not been in any form of employment, full, or part time since my son was born, now ten years ago.
This makes me a kind of non-person. I am not a housewife. I am not an employee. I am not a business owner. I am not unemployed. I am nothing.
It is even excusable to be a stay at home parent of pre-school children. The reason for my opting out of society is clear as I breastfeed, hold my toddler’s hand in the playground and parade my mothering. But now my reason for being at home is bizarre and inexplicable. It is lazy, or even worse, a waste.
‘I’m genuinely curious’ patronised one of my full time working mother friends, ‘what do you DO all day?’ It’s this kind of question that actually hurts the most, makes me desperate for a job, not for the benefit of myself or my family, but purely so I have an answer to that question.
So, for the benefit of those that are ‘genuinely curious’ I will explain what it is that I do all day.
Since having my children nearly a decade ago, I have been busy. Within the first 6 months of my son’s life I’d set up a book club, re-painted our first little flat and taken my son to see his dying grandfather twice a week.
I became an involved member of the organisation Mothers at Home Matter, writing articles and eventually becoming a committee member and editing their newsletter.
When my children started school I became the Chair of the PTA and ran that for three years. I am still an involved parent, going on school trips and helping out at fundraising events.
I set up a retro singing trio called The Frockettes and we perform at private functions and at local events.
I have done a freelance writing course, run 2 half marathons, begun my training as an Iyengar yoga teacher and overseen building works on our house for the last 4 months.
I manage the household, which involves: cleaning, laundry, minor diy, paperwork, birthday organising, family appointments and the family social calendar.
But none of these things are really what I do, they are things that fit into the 6 hour window in the middle of the school day or at the weekend.
I am a mother first, and everything else second. I have sacrificed my own career dreams - what there were of them - to be available and active in my primary role of mother whenever it is needed of me.
There is no conflict about who will look after my children if they’re ill or during the school holidays. We walk and talk to school. They practice the piano every morning (while I offer ‘encouragement’ from the kitchen where I’m making their packed lunches). I collect them from school every day, pick them up off the floor where they collapse to from hunger, take them to clubs. I am present and permanent, and it is where I want to be.
This doesn’t mean I’m a perfect mother - far from it.
Nor am I a 50s housewife, waiting for my husband to get home to his perfectly
clean and tidy house. I do do all the cooking because my
husband has a total lack of interest in food and would eat pasta every single day. He does the clearing up in the evening though.
My husband and I are a team of equals and always
have been. I work hard at home and he works hard at work; the
money that he brings in is our money. I know what I do all day and why I am doing it.
I look forward to a time when society and the government recognise me for who I am too. Something.
Mothering School Age Children
How can YOU help? This is clearly a time when MPs are likely to be receptive to being informed that the vast majority of the female electorate would rather look after their children themselves than be offered subsidised childcare.
Please take a minute to email your MP to mention this. There is lots of information in this newsletter which you could include, but you could ask your MP to adopt this policy:
Introduce a transferable tax allowance for single income families to reduce the discrimination in the tax system and allow children to be looked after by their parents.
The reason they should consider this is:
It is cheaper for the Treasury to enable mothers to look after their children themselves rather than subsidise external childcare.
Only 13% of parents at home full time cited the cost of childcare as the reason, 87% of parents would not be influenced by subsidised childcare.
A recent study found that it cost £65,000 in free nursery places for each parent helped back into work as a result.
Children (and, therefore, society) benefit from being looked after by their mother or father.
Long hours in childcare are not ideal for many children as their stress levels increase and they are left with a care deficit – ie they aren’t spending enough time with the person they need to be with the most, which has implications for their long term ability to form relationships and perform well at school.
MPs have to take into account all correspondance they receive. The more letters we send them, the more they’ll realise that if they don’t sit up and listen, we won’t get up and vote for them.
A growing number of MPs can be contacted by email. You can check the list of MPs email addresses at the Parliamentary website by following this link – www.parliament.uk
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
Letter to MPs
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Subscription Renewal
If you’ve already organised payment of this year’s membership subscription or have joined in the last 6 months please ignore the request for membership renewal. However, if you’re a long-standing member, please don’t forget to increase your Standing Order at your bank to £12.50 for single members or £15 for couple membership.
If you have changed your address or email, please let us know. If you would like to set up a Standing Order please print out and send us the Renewal form and Standing Order form together with your cheque payable to Mothers at Home Matter to our PO Box. Alternatively you can pay online using Paypal.
For any additional information, including our bank account details so you can set up a standing order yourself, please contact [email protected]
MAHM delivers Mothers’ Day card to Number 10 Downing StreetThe card stated simply, ‘We love mothers, do you?’. The card was the public face of the letter, which was backed by a significant number of our supporters and was included with the card.
Dear Mr Cameron and Mr CleggIt’s great to honour mothers on this special day of the year, but don’t forget… ALL mothers work hard, ALL year round.Mothers at Home Matter is calling for the proper recognition of the work done by parents who care for their children at home. The ONS calculates the value of informal childcare as £343 billion per year - 23% of GDP.Children, their families, communities, society and the economy benefit from our care. Yet our contributions are ignored and our needs sidelined in policy after policy. Polls consistently show that more parents want more time at home caring for their own children.In 2015 we’re calling on all political parties to properly value care, to overturn the economic penalties paid by single earner families, and to give parents real choice about how they raise their children.Last year the Prime Minister announced that every domestic policy would be examined for its impact on the family. Time and love are the gifts all parents want to give the next generation. Time for parenting should be affordable for everyone. Can you help ensure it will be?Sincerely,Mothers at Home Matter
ChairMarie Peacock07722 [email protected] ChairAnne [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] SecretarySine Pickles [email protected] MembersHeather Ticheli, Kerry Hedley
MAHM Committee
web: www.mothersathomematter.co.uk email: [email protected]
Media & CommunicationsImogen Thompson07913 464323 [email protected] EnquiriesClaire Paye - 07972 727544Lynne Burnham - 01737 768705Mel Tibbs - 07929108586Anne Fennell - 07957 232504Imogen Thompson - 07913 464323MAHM BlogMel [email protected] Officer Alex [email protected] EditorClaire [email protected] Design Editor Poppy Pickles
MAHM Media Team
www.mothersathomematter.co.ukP.O. Box 43690, London SE22 9WN
@mumsdadsmatter #valuecare
Membership of MAHMThank you to everyone who is a member. Your membership fee helps us:
Print and distribute this newsletter to membersLobby MPs and have a presence at vital meetingsOrganise events such as our Who CARES for the family? Houses of Parliament event in January (details on p2) to make our case for family time. If you aren’t yet a member, please consider joining us. The cost is £12.50 p.a. for individuals or £15 p.a. for couples, and you can join online through our website.
Media RequestsThe media often contact us for case studies. If you would be happy to talk to the press, please do let Imogen Thompson know on [email protected]. We are happy to give you some pointers or advice. If you would like to help in any other way, we’d love to hear from you. Please email [email protected]