'Muddling' is the new norm for stressed parents like me

With childcare costs spiralling, friends, family and even dog walkers are being roped in at the last minute to take care of the kids. But this is no solution, argues Charlotte Cripps

- Charlotte Cripps

Last week, during lunch with a mum friend, a deal was proposed to me. If my friend dropped my two children at school every day, could she leave her newborn son at mine three mornings a week? Just until she's done at the office at around 11am? I nearly spat out my coffee. She then suggested that she'd happily pick up my kids from school if, say, she suddenly had a work lunch she couldn’t get out of, which would mean she wouldn’t be around until 2pm rather than 11. “He’s no trouble, I promise,” she said, with slight desperation in her eyes. “He just sits in his bouncer cooing.”

I told my friend I couldn’t do it – “I have to work, too,” I said. An unusual request, though, this isn’t. More and more middle-class parents are opting for “muddling” – meaning to forgo expensive nannies or nursery school, and just hoping for the best with friends or family stepping in to help when need be. On the surface, this sounds ideal – it’s totally free of charge, after all. But rarely mentioned is the mental cost of it all. That, surely, is priceless.

According to the government’s latest Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents, the number of parents using formal childcare has dropped to 47 per cent from 55 per cent in 2017 – something that highlights the new trend of juggling flexi-working and DIY childcare. The statistics are hardly surprising when spiralling costs are factored in – according to the Coram’s Childcare Survey 2024, the average cost of a full-time 50-hour-a-week nursery place for under-twos is £430 a week in London and £308 in the South East of England.