Increasing childcare subsidies would not necessarily lead women back to work as many parents prefer to care for their children at home, research presented to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has highlighted. This is a major challenge to Government childcare policy which is funneling ever increasing public resources into institutional daycare.

“We get a sense that many households are in fact very far from changing their mind [about domestic childcare] and no amount of childcare policy is going to change their decision,” Dr Turon told the ESRI. “My estimates seem to suggest we’ve got a fairly small scope for getting more mothers back into the work force by making childcare more accessible.”

The study examined more than 3,200 two-parent British households followed as part of the British Household Panel survey which ran between 1991-2008.

The research revealed an interesting gender disparity: it found the mother was more likely to work part-time and look after the children even if the woman’s earnings were higher than the man’s value before their first child was born.