Letter to the Telegraph

I've just followed in Dan's footsteps and written a letter to a national newspaper!

First the article which offended me, and then my letter:

The article, from The Telegraph of 5th March 2005:

New laws mean nanny nightmare for parents
By Sarah Womack
(Filed: 05/03/2005)

It is the recurring nightmare of over-stretched parents. Just when they have found their perfect nanny, their Mary Poppins, she looks around the door, smiles nervously and announces: "I'm pregnant."

This week the Government announced plans to extend paid maternity leave to nine months by 2007 and to a year by 2010. But the proposals seems to be provoking more groans than applause with small businesses appalled at the prospect of longer maternity leave.

While Labour's plans may appear to be good news for mothers, women say the legislation will play havoc with their families when the nanny herself decides to have a baby and wants nine months' paid leave.

Career women can rarely afford, professionally or financially, to abandon their jobs for long and employing a nanny is often their only option.

If the nanny falls pregnant, however, and wants to return to her job after having her baby, it will have to be kept open. If she wants to bring her baby to work with her, the employer faces a dilemma.

Asa Nilsdotter of Nannytax, the payroll support service for parents with nannies, says the "nanny-plus-nanny's-offspring" scenario is increasingly common.

"It does raise all sorts of issues. For example, what happens if the nanny's child is ill and you don't want your nanny to bring the child to your house, or your child is ill and she does not want to come to you? It can be very difficult," she said.

There are also the legal implications. Assuming a nanny has been employed legally for six months or more, an employer must pay her maternity pay at 90 per cent of gross earnings for six weeks, and then £102.80 a week for 20 weeks, and hold her job open for a year.

Parents classed as small employers can usually reclaim all the costs involved but unless they sign up to a company like Nannytax (for £250 a year), this can involve a mountain of paperwork.

William, a father-of-two who did not want his real name used, remembers the moment the family nanny said she was expecting a baby. It was, he said, a hammer blow that led him to the conclusion that applying for redundancy and becoming self-employed was the only answer.

"My reaction was quite simply, 'Oh my God'," he said. "We had got through five nannies in five years and she was by far the best. My girlfriend and I had just had two years of complete upheaval – moving house, having our second child, my girlfriend setting up in business on her own.

"Everyone who works for her seems to have got pregnant, so the nanny was the one constant in our lives. She was our neighbour and we felt secure leaving the children with her. But the irony, of course, is that very good nannies are very maternal and tend to want kids of their own.

"Ours wants to take a whole year off. We didn't think she would get pregnant because she is only 20. Now I am applying for redundancy to help my girlfriend in her business and, between us, we can look after the children."

One mother who has also just learned that her nanny was pregnant said she was "devastated". She had been through the stress of finding child care three time since her 20-month-old was born. "How do you prepare a toddler of 20 months for the end of one of the most important relationships of his life?" she said.

Susan Carlton and Coco Myers, authors of The Nanny Guide, say the nanny "truly is part of the family framework, often a third and critical leg of a child-rearing tripod". Without her, the family can collapse.

Nevertheless, mothers with nannies are considered fortunate by parents who travel to a nursery every day, in all weathers, exposing their offspring to infections and, in some cases, themselves to £60 fines every time they show up 15 minutes late for collection.

And, of course, not all bosses are thrilled when an employee announces that she is pregnant.Small businesses, which account for 99 per cent of firms, feel the loss most acutely. Maternity leave can make or break a business when a trained employee disappears on paid leave and has to be replaced.

Sue Terpilowski, 46, the managing director of a small marketing company in London, employs eight people, of whom three recently left to have children. "One had an ectopic pregnancy and then a healthy pregnancy. She was off for nearly 14 months across the two pregnancies. "Then she came back, worked for two months, handed in her notice and got another job."

The episode left her reeling. "We were once 90 per cent women but now we have gone the other way."

So who are the winners here? Labour's plans may help a few well-heeled, professionally secure women who can give up hard-won salaries and careers for 12 months and then take up where they left off, leaving their children with a good nanny at home.

But how long will the nanny stay, will she want children of her own and how much time will be spent interviewing other candidates when she leaves?

In the end, increasing numbers of small companies may simply decide not to employ women of child-bearing age, even though that is illegal under age discrimination legislation.

To paraphrase Mary Poppins, the situation is "practically imperfect in every way".

My Response:

Dear Sir,

I was most disappointed at the editorial standards in your piece on the effect that changes to maternity laws will have on working women with nannies. I have as little support for this government of for increased harmonisation of laws across Europe as the Telegraph. However, I do prefer that opinion is kept on the editorial pages and feel that articles such as "New laws mean nanny nightmare for parents" should not be presented as "News".

The whole tone of the Telegraph recently has been changing, and it appears to be aimed at a very small, rich, upper/middle class elite, and no longer at a broader range of professional people. My wife and I are well educated and in well paid jobs, but the notion of ever employing nannies or owning our business is remote.

Your piece suggested that only rich people have children, and as such are affected negatively by the new laws. It also implied that if someone wanted to work as a nanny (usually for pitifully low pay) then they signed away their rights to have children or to have the choice of looking after them. Nannies (or indeed other employees) are not second class citizens who should plan their families to least inconvenience their employers. When it comes to families, work surely would come as a lower priority to any parent (mother or father) than the child's welfare. If it doesn't, as was implied by the article, then there is something wrong with the person's decision to start a family. I personally feel that parents should be able to spend as much time as possible (within the bounds of reasonableness) with their children in their formative years, and the use of nannies is often detrimental to a child's development. You quote people in the article who suggested that it was incredibly inconvenient for them should the nanny leave for whatever reason. This just seems incredibly selfish and self-important of the parents.

If a "family can collapse" should the nanny leave, does this not show something about the state of the family itself? The sentiment expressed that "how do you prepare a toddler for the end of one of the most important relationships in his life?" shows that such parents do not place enough emphasis on their responsibilities for their children, and are placing too much of the onto the nanny: the duties can reasonably be transferred to a nanny but surely not the responsibility. Surely the parents themselves have the right for themselves to change jobs, and to make their own life decisions? Why do they then want to remove these rights from a nanny?

You also quote a company MD essentially complaining at the health problems of one of her employees (I'm sure these were also inconvenient for the employee!), who left 2 months after returning to work. Might I suggest that the MD's sympathetic attitude had something to do with the person leaving? Does she also want to remove people's rights to change jobs, or does she want rules to force people to continue working for the same length of time that they have had off for maternity leave?

Generally the Telegraph remains extremely good value, and I remain a subscriber. However, you risk indulging in tabloid-like journalism with this sort of opinionated piece aimed solely at scoring points against the government. I normally expect this sort of bias in the Living and Weekend sections where all your readers are presumed to live in London with houses in the countryside, a large portfolio of shares, own their own business or work in the City, to be active members of a hunt, to have children at a private school, etc.

Your readership are intelligent enough to make their own decisions when presented with a balanced article. This is one of several recent pieces where you have produced blatantly unbalanced, anti-Labour articles. Surely it is far better to present the facts about this government, as they give plenty of ammunition for your readers to reach their own conclusions on their poor decision- and policy- making!

Yours,

Jonathan Hall (Dr)