Stay-at-home mothers are being forced into paid work in huge numbers in the UK, as controversial Government 
reforms hit single income families, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph.
New official figures show that almost 200,000 women in two parent families with dependent children have re-entered the workplace since 2011. More women have moved from home duties into the workplace in the past two years than in the previous 15 years combined.
The increase comes after the Coalition Government scrapped child benefit for middle class families in which anyone pays the higher rate of tax. This means a double-income couple on the same level of income as a one-income couple next door can retain the child benefit if their individual salaries do not put them into the top tax bracket.
The change led campaign groups accusing the Government of forcing middle class mothers back into employment. They said the new figures had effectively destroyed David Cameron’s promise to lead Britain’s “most family friendly Government”.
The new figures, contained in a study from the Office of National Statistics, showed that number of mothers in the workplace had surged to record levels with large majorities of women, even those with very young children, going out to work.
According to the report, the total number of women with dependent children in the workplace has risen by a fifth since the mid-1990s, when comparable records were first kept.
The number of married or cohabiting mothers in the workplace has gone from 3.8 million in 1996 to 4.2 million in 2013, with the majority returning to work under the Coalition which came to power in 2010.
Seventy two percent of married mothers now work, compared to 67pc in the 1990s.
Spokesperson for the campaign group, Mothers At Home Matter, Laura Perrins, said: “I would say that the Government has absolutely failed to be in any way family friendly.
“They don’t seem to understand what family friendly means-they think it basically means separating mothers from their young children. The Coalition are more interested in ideology and the gender politics of getting more mothers back to into work than being family friendly.
“They have dedicated themselves to separating mothers from their young children. The needs of children are completely ignored.”
Ms Perrins said that the loss of child benefit was one of the reasons for the dramatic change in the past two years.
She added that the Government’s move was “very agenda driven” and not simply about the reduction of Britain’s deficit. “[I]t is about getting mother’s back to work, probably to increase GDP,” she said.