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The other related issue is the extreme difficulty still of professional working mums (or indeed anyone with significant caring responsibilities) being able to find meaningful, brain challenging, part-time work. Many mums end up leaving their chosen profession because big businesses, particularly, always think in 'full-time job' units, meaning that when women manage to negotiate part-time hours, it is often simply a full-time job that has een 'carved up' and this tends to mean they get the less complex and more menial aspects of the job, or find that they are required to try and fit a full-time job into part-time hours. It would be fantastic to see businesses 'thinking' part-time and actively seeking to 'create' proper, meaningful part-time roles along-side full-time ones: It would be even greater to see the HR profession leading the way!

This sort of attention on this thorny issue is very welcome as it affects many people,but will anything be done?And fast? I have two kids and if i want to go back to work(after maternity leave),we have to pay almost £1,600 for both of them to go into childcare.Our take home pay after taxes will about £2,000.How on earth are people supposed to cope? I have been considering not going back to work too,but I don't want to give up my career because I want my kids to learn the ethics of hard work etc.It's absolutely ridiculous that this is the situation parents and mothers who want to work are faced with,and for this I rate the UK as a third world country.

I agree with a lot of the points that are made above by Justine Roberts and also the statistics provided by mumsnet. However is this really new news? I think there has been a recent generation of mum's that have quit their jobs after giving birth because it is more economical and it has been going on for a while. <br/>With companies freezing pay rises, promotions being limited and redundancies on the brink, childcare is starting to become a luxury. Disposable income tends to cover child care cost and only a fraction of your salary is left. Mums are increasingly looking at how cost effective is it to actually work? The 1950’s women ideology is starting to becoming increasingly appealing by some (in a limited respect!).<br/> It doesn’t surprise me that mums are choosing not to work because it more economical. Childcare costs have rocketed over the recent years with the generation of working mums, increase in demands, and extensive range of services that can be included. A lot of mums have decided to set up day care centres to care for other children as well as their own as it makes good business sense and helps cope with childcare costs. <br/>With the trend in economical climates businesses are becoming stricter on flexible working and over the past 5 years the number of requests for flexible working hours has increased but the number of applications actually accepted has decreased. I think companies need to recognise the benefits of flexible working hours or working from home to help mums. This would ultimately lead to increased employee satisfaction and productivity and the old fashioned view of ‘not in the office, not working’ really needs to be revamped. <br/><br/>Nisha

Childcare costs are a struggle - I feel annoyed that I earn too much for tax credits, yet a third of my take home pay is spent on child care during term time - its the same cost as my mortgage every month. For us full-time working mums who have consistently worked hard to arrive at a salary over the government threshold - many of us struggle every month to meet our childcare costs, and come the summer holidays, not only are we away from our children...but to add to that pain and guilt, financially its not worth going to work anyway!