The Mother of All Issues

Why aren't women angrier? Or at least, why is their anger so politically silent? There should be a ground swell of fury about their lives: instead the same few worthy organisations make the same good points over and over, but cause not a ripple on the political pond. There are more mothers than there are hunters, yet no mighty marches demand "liberty and livelihood" for them - the right to survive while working and bringing up children at the same time. Young women outshining boys at school have a habit of thinking all the great feminist causes are won: but once they become mothers and are shocked to find it isn't so, they are too exhausted to do anything about it.

New research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation captures the struggle of mothers trying to combine work and childcare. It draws a terrible diagram of their lives: a mother with primary- and nursery-age children sets off to take one child to school, drop the other off at a childminder and then heads off to work. The childminder takes the youngest to half a day of state nursery school (five inconvenient half-days is all that's statutory) or to a pre-school playgroup and then goes back to collect it again. Next the minder collects the other child from school, and the mother comes back from work to collect them both and take them home. That is nine daily journeys between the two women (and the minder may have other children). Mostly male middle-class rail commuters get plenty of grumble time on television about trains - while poorer mothers' hellish child commuting is a silent subject. No surprise that the New Deal has made slow progress in getting more single mothers into work.

For most women, the difficulty is getting any childcare: there is still only one place for every seven children, according to the Daycare Trust. Then a mother has to earn enough to pay a childminder some £118 a week (more in the south-east) but most women don't earn enough: the pay gap between women and men widened again last year. Childcare credits for low-paid mothers have a low take-up because they only cover 70% of the cost. A standard private nursery costs £168 a week, and many are much more: the cycle of women's low pay means that nursery workers cannot afford to have their own children in nurseries. All mothers depend on back-up from friends and relations: holidays are a nightmare; on inset days schools close; children or childminders get sick or have problems of their own. Parents hardly see one another, working alternate shifts: mothers work weekends and evenings. Meanwhile, most nurseries struggle hand to mouth on short-term grants, with no permanent funding.

None of this litany of misery comes as news, it's so ordinary. In backward Britain it's just the way things are - though other European countries have had universal childcare for decades. Maybe women are too frantic to protest, now that two incomes are necessary for most families to pay the mortgage. But why do women tolerate it? If men had to do this every day, there would be a sudden shift in priorities. Children's centres with creches, nurseries, health and parental support would adorn every local primary school, making just one commute a day. Considering the urban hell of so many journeys a day, the children's centre programme should steal cash from the transport budget as it would save so many journeys.

The trouble is, there is no politics in children. When politicians talk about early years, people yawn and wait for them to stop do-gooding and return to proper politics. I would bet fewer people - certainly fewer men - will read this column than if I were writing about almost any other political or educational subject: back-door selection in schools would be a hotter topic, yet this matters more for equality. How to make toddlers a political issue has perplexed Gordon Brown: he helped set up the End Child Poverty alliance of charities to create extra political pressure on him for funds - so weak is their voice.

Yesterday Charles Clarke launched National Sure Start Month at the Pre-School Learning Alliance conference. He had plenty to boast about: before Labour, there was virtually no under-fives provision. Now all three-and four-year-olds get their five half-days a week. The Tories denied childcare was a state function but Labour has a national childcare strategy that has delivered places for 1.1 million children. By 2006, 650,000 of the poorest children will have places in Sure Start children's centres, supporting families from birth with childcare and education. Not bad - but in nine years nothing like enough. It will still only cover a third of the children who live in the 20% most deprived wards.

Charles Clarke knows what has to be done but he is up against public apathy: the government can only divert limited funds to an expensive cause that has scant political muscle pressing to give it higher priority. "If I was a proper socialist," he said yesterday, "I'd move all higher education funds to early years." His department's sponsored research from the Institute of Education is starting to show what a strong effect nurseries have. Following through the lives of 3,000 children, it compares those with various kinds of early care/education with children who have had none - and it is already proving his case. Among children at risk of failing, many fewer of those who had a good nursery start were designated SEN by the time they reached primary school, compared with the children who never went to nursery. Where staff had the highest qualifications and where children started youngest, the results were best. Those with wrap-around childcare and nursery education in the same place did best of all - no disruptive commuting. Among children of the same background, the intellectual, cognitive, social and behavioural results were remarkably better for those with the best early years start. This study will follow them through life: it hopes to repeat US research showing how the effect of a two-year "head start" programme for poor toddlers lasted for ever. By the time they were 30, every $1 spent on their nursery years saved the state $7 later: more of them went to college, owned their homes, were never unemployed, drew benefits nor committed crimes. But everyone has known this for years. Study after study show how children's fortunes are made or broken before they reach school. And yet early years education features not at all on the political horizon. No heated rows bat back and forth at prime minister's questions. No students wave banners about it. While every other aspect of education is a political battleground, this is a political dead zone. The best hope is for protest from working mothers, demanding childrens' centres for all now - not in 10 or 20 years. But who is to unroll the old banners and get mothers marching for guaranteed universal childcare?

· JRF research: How Parents Co-ordinate Childcare, Education and Work by Christine Skinner, York University