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The complexities of delivering, collecting and ferrying young children between home, pre-school education or school,  and child care  is deterring mothers from taking paid work, according to new research.

Young children with school or nursery school places have to be picked up and dropped off  several times a day. When there were children of different ages in the family, using different sevices, arrangements could be even more complex. One of the most difficult stages was when a child started part-time pre-school education.

A study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by Christine Skinner of the University of York found that working mothers relied on a mixture of formal and informal back-up support to manage these arrangements. Fathers played an important role in transporting children between settings, especially when mothers worked full time.

Nearly half the non-working mothers in the study said inflexibility of pre-school education and employment hours was deterring them from taking a job.

The report concludes that co-ordination is as important as service provision for working parents. Tackling the lack of co-ordination between preschool education and childcare – perhaps by basing childcare provision within schools – was key.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/593.asp