How much does childcare cost?
According to the Money Advice Service, the average cost of a full-time nursery place in the UK is £263 a week, and £138 a week for part-time care (though these figures will look strikingly low to many parents in London and the south of England). So if you have two young children, that’s an average of £526 – or not far off the median salary of £585 a week. “I have been paying for full-time childcare for almost 14 years,” says Isabel Oakeshott in The Spectator – and like most people I have tried to remain “in denial about the crippling cost”. After totting up the total payments, it came to at least £500,000 – and counting. Going for a nanny instead isn’t that attractive either – an average salary of £35,000, plus all the hassle involved in becoming an employer.