The Government should appoint a Minister for Families to support stay-at-home parents, MPs have said.
A group of 44 Conservative MPs has written to the Prime Minister urging him to champion the rights of single-earner families, which they say help to meet his manifesto promise to ‘strengthen families’.
They say that parents who choose to stay at home to look after their children, rather than returning to work, deserve support but have been largely forgotten by policymakers.
Families minister
The letter’s signatories said: “As you take this manifesto commitment forward may we ask you to consider establishing a Cabinet-level minister for Families, supported by a Government Families Office.”
They added: “Evidence shows that the biggest factor in determining how people vote is the impact policies will have on them and their families.
“YouGov found that 81 per cent of British adults think stronger families and improved parenting are important to addressing Britain’s social problems.”
Undervalued
Ranil Jayawardena MP, a former Director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship and a Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party, praised stay-at-home parents in an article for The Telegraph.
He said that many parents “feel that staying at home to care for their children or their own parents is undervalued”.
“This is wrong. The unpaid care they provide is worth more than £1 trillion annually to our economy.”
He also said it is important to recognise that “many of the challenges we face today can be addressed by taking the best principles and aspirations of the past”, adding that such thinking “isn’t old fashioned, but ambitious”.