Why does childcare cost so much?

Great debate on "Why does childcare cost so much?" on the Wright Stuff this morning. This really hits home as we are just about to visit the world of childcare and are wondering how they hell will we pay for it.
If our little man goes to a full time childminder which will be 50 hours a week it will cost us £700 a month which is nearly the same as our monthly mortgage payment.
I am due back to work full time in April but my husband is being made redundant at the end of March, he is looking for jobs and going for interviews but we are wondering if we will be better off him staying at home for a little while with our son. We are also concerned that if we both work full time neither of us will see our son much if I get home by 6pm and a current job my husbsnd is waiting for a reply would mean he would get home 7.30-8pm. Why oh why would we want to spend all that time away from him.

It's just awful, we waited until our thirties to have children but we are definatly not better off and not sure we ever would have been in a better financial state especially after taking on a house with high monthly payments and we don't even like the house anymore. Ideally I would like to continue to be at home but it doesn't seem possible now with my husbands redundancy. My employer refused any sort of flexi-time before we knew anything about the redundancy which is another debate which has been touched on in the Mother's Work Meme!.

Why does life have to be so difficult and expensive? If anyone has the answer please let me know.

I Like:

• Interesting read from Bounty

A Mother's Work MeMe!

After reading fellow bloggers, Bargain Mummy Buys and Mother.Wife.Me. About the working parent and how society doesn’t value or support mothers / fathers as well as it could and just expected to "get on with it". It struck a cord with me as i'm soon to return to work.


Step one is to start a meme. So here it is:

A Mother’s Work Meme.

Rules:

1. Please post the rules
2. Answer the questions in as much or as little detail as suits you
3. Leave a comment on mother.wife.me so we can keep track of the meme
4. Tag 3 people and link to them on your blog
5. Let them know you tagged them
6. Tweet loudly about taking part (well ok, that isn’t a rule, but how about if we start a hashtag – #amothersworkmeme

Questions:

1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
2. What is your current situation?
3. Freestyle – got your own point you’d like to get across on this issue? Here’s your chance…

And, most importantly…. you’re tagged!!
just another muther, Melksham mum, Grace and Me, Bizzy Mum



My attempt at completing the meme

1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
I have always worked, from a young teenager baby sitting to earn a little money to buy clothes to a fully fledged adult paying for a house and the bills to go with it.
I've not found my ideal career as yet but Internet Marketing seemed to be my thing for a while and before knowing i'd become a mum I was offered a great course to gain a reputable Marketing qualification but as things go after trying for some months I found I was pregnant and had to turn it down. So I have found myself to be a Customer Service Advisor.

2. What is your current situation?
Just 6 weeks left of my maternity to go and I have to go back to my position full time not by choice after asking for flexi-time or cutting my full time hours into 4 days so I don't have to send my little man to full time childcare but it was refused. I'm expected to go back to the way it was before I left for maternity (a year ago) even though everything has changed within the company as have I. So as you can imagine it's not something I am looking forward to especially as I don't feel I have any prospects there and that they aren't particularly child friendly.
To add to the frustration my husband has just been made redundant so even more pressure on me but if he doesn't find something else he may find he's the one looking after our little man, but we will struggle being on one wage.

3. Freestyle
I think employers should be more sympathetic towards mothers/fathers juggling reponsibilities especially as childcare is so expensive, it's hard enough for parents to leave their children but the hugh expense involved is crippling. Flexi-time, providing care onsite or some help towards childcare payments as an incentive to go back to work would be a godsend. It would to me anyway as we only just got by when we both worked full time and now we are expected to cope with the ever increasing costs of utility bills and childcare (which is almost half my take home wage). So how we can carry on as before I really don't know.