Mums being forced back to work, warns minister

Stay-at-home mums are being forced to go back to work as families struggle to pay the bills, the employment minister has warned.

Chris Grayling said that the demise of the stay-at-home mum was one “very obvious” trend from the current jobs market.

He said: “I think we are seeing more stay-at-home mums saying, ‘I think I’ll look for a part-time job’.”

Majority

When asked if they were returning to work for financial reasons, Mr Grayling said: “I suspect so.”

Siobhan Freegard, founder of the parenting website NetMums, said that Mr Grayling’s comments were “100 per cent right”.

She added: “The vast majority who are going back to work, or who are working already, are doing it because they have to, not because they want to.

Women

“Most women who are going back to work have a job, not a career. They are doing soulless, heartless jobs, such as working on a cash till at a supermarket.”

Official figures show that the number of women who do not have a job and do not want one fell by 72,000 in the past year.

In 2009 a report criticised the policies of the then Government which pushed women into employment after finding that most find fulfilment in motherhood rather than in full time careers.

Work

The report was written by Cristina Odone, a former deputy editor of the New Statesman magazine, and published by the Centre for Policy Studies.

Using figures from polls conducted by YouGov, Miss Odone found that only 12 per cent of mothers wanted to work full time, while almost a third did not want to work at all.