In this book, I have explored a distressing situation: the poor record of the UK in providing nursery places, the poor record of supporting mothers (and fathers) at work, and the poor record of providing quality experiences for the young children who do spend time in nurseries. This last chapter puts forward some suggestions for changing the situation.

Part of the explanation for these circumstances concerning nurseries is that we live in a society with growing and shattering inequalities. We live with broken, barely functioning services, with weak and ineffective regulatory bodies: from health, care and education to water, transport and energy, from the postal services to the penal services. Many of these services are now run by piratical global companies who prioritize and normalize relentless profit seeking, especially in low-wage industries, and hide from scrutiny in complex offshore accounting. We have devastating, shameful levels of child poverty for a rich society. We have a highly centralized government that has undermined local authority autonomy and starved local authorities of the money that they need to sustain local services. We live in a grossly nature-depleted environment, and, in urban areas particularly, we breathe polluted air. We persecute refugees and demonize foreigners. And because it is so difficult to do anything about these wider issues, we think small, and carve out our own small survival niches and strategies. Of course, there are many redeeming features to being in the UK, but, unless you are well-to-do, and even if you are, it is no longer a pleasant country. It does not need to be like this. There are times when the government has had more of a commitment to equality and providing decent basic services that support children and family life and has had a vision of a better and more responsible – and responsive – society.

Any arguments for better childcare unfortunately take place in this context. Local authority services do not, as in most countries that have good provision, provide the backbone of nursery places. Instead, there is a privatized, atomized, childcare ‘industry’ that originally consisted of small well-meaning entrepreneurs, struggling to compete, but that is gradually being swallowed up by relentless private equity companies, who maximize profits at the expense of staff and parents.