Bringing up the next generation: from research to policy

Family living arrangements in the UK are increasingly varied. While family forms do not determine outcomes for young children, this diversity in family life is an important context for parenting.

We don’t know whether expectations of parents are growing, but we do have a greater appreciation of the significant mental and emotional impacts of being a parent of a young children, including feeling stressed and judged by others.

There has been a marked rise in the proportion of mothers with young children who are in paid work whereas the proportion of fathers in paid work remains largely unchanged. Striking a balance between work and childcare and the associated pressures – time, financial, emotional – is increasingly important for many families with young children.

Virtually all young children now experience some form of state-financed formal early childhood education and care before beginning primary school. The accessibility, affordability and quality of formal education and childcare has become a key issue for families with young children and for society.

There have been increases in relative child poverty rates since 2013/14, particularly in families where the youngest child is under five, with a concurrent rise in in-work poverty. And while young children’s health has improved overall over the last 20 years, trends are marked by stark inequalities, with strong associations between poor health, geographical area, ethnicity and level of deprivation. In combination, rising poverty and deprivation makes it more difficult for early years and childcare, health and other services to mitigate its effects and reduce inequalities between children.

Two-fifths of children are not reaching the expected levels of development at age five, more than a third of families with a young child are living in relative poverty and all families are grappling with the consequences of the pandemic and sharply rising prices. There is a compelling case for an ambitious early childhood strategy, underpinned by clear objectives, sustained investment, joined up services and the principle of early intervention. We set out four policy goals for such a strategy.

We know that family-focused, joined-up services that take account of the complexity and dynamism of family lives are key; no single service provider can deliver good outcomes alone. These services need to provide a continuum of support for parents, from light-touch universal information and guidance to more intensive, sustained support for those in need of additional help. In the medium-term, the Best Start for Life’s vision needs to be extended up to the age of five and to connect across all services for families, including efforts to tackle poverty. While a comprehensive assessment of what needs to change in order to bring about this vision is beyond the scope of this report, our series has identified a number of priorities worth highlighting:

Empowering choices requires parental leave entitlements and creating family-friendly workplaces, requiring action from both government and employers. It also requires a step change in enabling both mothers and fathers to balance work and care. Priorities for reform include:

The pandemic has highlighted just how integral to the lives of families with young children early childhood education and care services have become. Given the rapid growth of this sector, its complexity and tensions between its objectives, we conclude that a whole system review is needed. Ensuring sustainable early years provision involves reviewing overall funding and an ambitious medium-term goal for a graduate-led early years workforce. This includes exploring how to bind increases in funding to improved quality. Priorities for reform include:

There is a pressing need for greater recognition of the harm poverty can cause young children, building consensus on the measures and investment required to tackle early childhood poverty. Tackling poverty in early childhood involves addressing its direct and indirect causes and impacts: quality jobs for parents that enable work-care balance and progression, improving social security

benefits to enable work and meet immediate and acute needs, support for parenting and mental health, and a tailored approach that understands and responds to the complex and inter-connected pathways into and out of poverty. Priorities include: