Foundation for the Future Conference
Our children are our future. What foundations are we laying for them?
We convened this conference on the 21st February 2025 under the umbrella of FEFAF (a body of different groups led by mothers around Europe fighting for the value of care) and the London-based think-tank Civitas to challenge policymakers and ask the awkward questions.
What are the needs of infants and children in their earliest years?
Does public policy align with their needs?
Is this the direction we wish to be heading?
An international conference
Meeting in the morning at the House of Lords with lunch and the afternoon session hosted by Civitas in the afternoon, the conference was attended by international researchers, think tank leaders, academics, early years providers.
The conference was an opportunity for the all-too-often-silenced voice of mothers to be heard. It was a chance to explore the valuable role parents play in society when they care for and raise the next generation.
Worrying trends
We aimed to tackle three disturbing trends:
A negative narrative that children are burdens and obstacles to our careers, a narrative which our children hear too
A growing distrust and devaluing of the role of parents in favour of the professional providing care
A lack of understanding or even interest from our leaders and politicians of the childcare policies' impact on our children
Researchers from Finland and Denmark gave cautionary advice on the direction of travel in the Nordic countries. Childhood, once valued, seems to have become subsidiary to the demands of getting women in the workplace, while the quality of daycare has deteriorated on a large scale with cuts to funding.
We heard from James Heckman, Nobel Economic Prize winner who has spent a lifetime looking at the determinants of successful lives. He encouraged delegates to try to measure the value of parenting; this relationship is key to successful outcomes, yet it is missing from the debates
Erica Komisar explored the importance of attachment and ‘being there’ for your baby and we heard from speakers in public policy both from here in the UK and from around Europe.
What do we hope to achieve from this conference?
We want to push a new narrative, a better story. Children are not obstacles to our careers, they are our future.
We hope to move the dialogue forward to find a way of measuring and giving value to the work of raising children, and so it is not seen as economic inactivity.
We hope to find ways of giving families more economic freedom to make the choices they would like. A fairer family taxation system and a childcare system which supports the choice to care for oneself or enables a family member to do so as well as the State are answers to this.
We want to ensure the child’s needs are at the forefront of childcare policies. We are in the process of writing a report following the Conference and will share proceedings with some forward-looking suggestions of where we can go from here.
“Children are not a distraction from our work, they are our work.”
Sponsors included:
MAHM campaigns for:
Childcare subsidy to follow the child with parents allowed to chose whether they use it to stay at home, give it to grandparents, childminder or external setting.
Taxation should fall fairly on those who stay at home and those who work.
Public examination on short and long term needs of children (and the effect on infants of long hours in external settings).
Recognition of value of unpaid care (estimated at £77 billion by Carers UK).
Are you a MAHM member yet?
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