We know that Westminster politicians do not always listen to ordinary voters. But there are few issues on which our representatives are more impervious to entreaties from their electorate than childcare. Too many politicians look on children as the impish impediment to both parents being in paid employment, the obstacles to Mum and Dad paying into Treasury coffers through taxes and national insurance contributions. Parents look on children as their life’s work.

There is a particular cohort for whom this clash of priorities has been uniquely painful: parents who stay home to raise their own children. Conservative governments always talk of choice; but this government’s childcare policy robs these mothers (mostly) and fathers of their choice to bring up their children the way they see fit.

Their admirable campaigning group, Mothers at Home Matter, has dedicated 30 years to ensuring that government recognise their position. Anne Fennell, the group’s chair, routinely invites ministers and shadow ministers to attend her group’s events – only to be routinely turned down. This was true of their annual conference, earlier this week: the ubiquitous Miriam Cates MP attended, and expressed wholehearted support. But she was the only Conservative party representative to do so.

Pushing all parents into paid work ignores the very valid role being played by mothers (and fathers)

‘It is going against the mainstream to make the choice to stay home to care for our children,’ Anne Fennell told delegates in her welcome. In truth, hers is not a minority opinion: a recent survey of 1035 parents of young children by the Centre for Social Justice and Public First pollsters found that the majority (78 per cent) wanted to spend more time with their children, but could not afford to take time off work. And 81 per cent wanted government to help parents stay home for longer, rather than pressure them back into work as quickly as possible.

Yet this majority view is unpopular with government. Politicians dread supporting anyone who prioritises mothering over earning, and parenting over professionalism, lest they be accused of winding back the clocks to a 1950s sepia world.

But parents who choose to raise their own children are drawing on neuroscience not nostalgia. They can point to the way brain development, especially in those first years but also beyond, benefits from the kind of continuous caring presence that parents can best provide when one of them is at home. Research carried out by Lee Elliot Major, the first professor of social mobility, found that the home environment is crucial for children – making more of a difference to their outcomes than their parents’ income or education.

Attachment theory is now so familiar as to risk becoming a platitude, but it clearly links a strong bond between mother and infant with that infant’s positive cognitive development. Any parent of adolescents knows that being available to a moody, peer-pressured, risk-taking teen can be just as invaluable.

Yet while the evidence shows the advantages of having a parent at home, government continues to ignore this, and is designing policy accordingly. From next April working parents with two-year-old children will be able to access 15 hours of free child care. From September 2024, this will be extended to working parents of children as young as nine months.

What will be the unintended consequences of this policy? Mothers and fathers will feel belittled, as in its materialist worldview, the Treasury clearly places little value on parenting. They will feel under suspicion too, as government seems to prefer the paid-for care that a nursery can deliver rather than the informal nexus of relationships that family life entails.

No one would dispute the importance of employment – work is the route out of poverty, and confers important benefits, like a sense of purpose and confidence. The current ‘economically inactive’ figures rightly exercise the Treasury. Materialist calculations only go so far, however, and well-being, good values and aspiration are better measures of a flourishing individual and society. Pushing all parents into paid work ignores the very valid role being played by mothers (and fathers) who are on hand to oversee that flourishing. Let parents decide whether that is the role for them.