Open
Bringing up children in London
There are over 1.1 million families with children living in London. However, many families don’t have the support they need to thrive, and make the most of the opportunities London has to offer them.
What is your experience of being a parent or grandparent in London? What are the main challenges when bringing up children here? Do you think London is good place for a child to grow up? If not, why not?
13 Comments
The cost of bringing up children and in particular childcare and after school activities are far too high and stops some families from participating in leisure activities as they have to work long hours to afford to live and pay bills. Parents should be able to spend quality time with their children and attend school activities without the worry of jeopardising their jobs. This means that a more agile and flexible approach to working should be embraced by both small and larger organisations. I do not agree with mothers being forced to work so they can pay high costs for someone else to take care of their children it is a nonsense.
bring up children is hard enough, but schools are too full, there is no hope of many children getting accommodation in London of any sort. Everything costs too much. We do have some of the best parks in the country however, how many times can you take a child to a park for the day. Also teenagers have very little to do as again it costs too much. Even to travel on the underground for teenagers costs a lot of money. It use to cost me £180 a month to send my children to secondary School as it was out of our borough.
London is a good place for children to grow up: look at the world, what a mess. And here we take care of everyone, we love and hate each other, we breathe in the fumes from empty buses, and the unregulated numbers of black diesel cabs and construction vehicles, white vans and couriers ...and blame the pollution and congestion on the common motorist, but hey! I am pro London, we should be our own independent Republic. We have a MORE ADVANCED evolutionary sense of togetherness than the rest of the Kingdom outside of London. Not that we don't welcome people from outside who want to come here. WE DO! The main challenges when bringing up kids here are the same anywhere. Luckily, mostly, HERE we are more tolerant and intelligent than the rest of the Kingdom (who voted Conservative). The main challenges are to explain why there are so many exorbitant and gratuitously expensive office blocks being designed and built in the City, closing down public roads, strangulating the access and wayfaring of the Little People.
There are lots of positives about London: museums, parks, theatres, varied cultures. There are some key drawbacks compared with other cities: air pollution kills 10,000 a year, most roads aren't safe for children to cycle on, pretty much everything is much more expensive in London than elsewhere. And, when children are old enough to leave home, rented housing is exorbitant, and houses to buy beyond the reach even of the well-paid.
OK
but those "positives" don't put clothes on the backs of your kids and food in their tummies and that is more important than parks etc.
The working classes are not getting a fair deal, especially from the current government.
Austerity has forced some councils to close parks and adventure playgrounds or charge people to use them.
That's not fair and yet it is becoming the norm.
How long should we put up with this?
Until the debt is cleared?
Thank you for sharing your views.
Many parents use flexible working arrangements to balance their work and childcare commitments. Is this something Talk Londoners have considered in their work? If not, why not?
Flex working is fine as a part of a range of solutions, but the fundamental issue remains that schools are timed from 9am to 3pm. For working parents this is the worst time. Yes, flexi wedding can help some parents but not all given our working days are 9-5. Even for part-time workers, 9-3 straddles both the morning session and the afternoon session. Why not move London schools to a 8am to 2pm day?
I agree London is a great place for bringing up children, but there are not opportunities for everybody to find accommodation or work.
Many parents struggle to cover the cost of childcare. A range of support is available to disadvantaged families to help them make ends meet, including Healthy Start food vouchers, 15 hours a week funded nursery places for 2 year olds from disadvantaged families, 15 hours a week of free childcare in term time for 3/4 year olds, free school meals and Local Assistance Funds. But many eligible families do not take up support.
What is your experience of childcare in the capital? How do you manage the high cost?
Talk London
My wife's average London wage just about covers nursery costs. Does this make sense-of course not. Why are costs so high? Surely demand has something to with it. As per school places, demand is the elephant in the room that no one seems ready to discuss. What causes higher demand? Increased population. What causes increased population? Higher birth rates, lower death rates, migration. We can pretend this is not fact if we want, but we'll never solve the equation if we dismiss these contributors to the issue. By the way, increased population also, inevitably, suppresses wages as employers have more supply of staff to keep recompense down.
London is far too full and i read the mayor wants more immigration ,which is utterly ridiculous .schools are full.no housing.nhs cant cope ,two weeks for doctors appointment.roads are chaos .air pollution is awful ,indigenous londoners are all but gone .london has suffered badly from unchecked immigration .whats the point people coming here nothing for them
Children's rights and needs are left out of so many transport, traffic, planning and economic decisions. For example, the Oxford, Regent and Bond Street Business Improvement District made many changes to Oxford Street, but refused point blank to consider the impact on affected residents' safe routes to schools and local services. The same is happening with the proposals to pedestrianise Oxford Street. The traffic will be rerouted through residential areas with complete disregard for the impact on children's health. Because the Mayor's Ultra Low Emissions Zone plans are so weak, TfL and the GLA will be lifting restrictions on all-night deliveries etc. This means local children will not only have late evening deliveries under their windows night after night as they do now, but also through the rest of the night. Children are very vulnerable to noise pollution and sleep disturbance, more so than adults. Everyone living in the deliveries areas will have their health affected by the all-night noise pollution. But the GLA, the Mayor, TfL, they do not care at all about this. The Mayor is unable or unwilling to stand up to the powerful road freight lobby on this issue. The air pollution in those areas will increase dramatically. Also, the areas the traffic will be rerouted through are routes used by residents on both sides of Oxford Street to walk to local schools and other essential community facilities. Currently there are far, far too few traffic lights on junctions in the areas north of Oxford Street, and walking your kids to school is a nightmare experience. There is no indication in the pedestrianisation proposals that residents' needs for safe walking routes have been considered at all. There is no mention of adding new traffic lights or of adding-in full pedestrian phases for traffic lights in those areas. People, and their children, need to get around those areas on foot. Or do they want more people to get into cars and drive around?
I was thinking earlier today,
that despite all the talk from politicians about how they are on the side of the so called "jams" nothing much has changed since I was a kid in the 1970s.
I can still recall how my parents struggled to put food on the table and into their children's tummies.
It is the 21st century and people ( with jobs) are having to use food banks because after they have paid bills, they are lucky to be able to afford to buy a bag of chips for their kids let alone themselves.
It's hard to believe and yet it is true.
Whoever said that politicians only go into politics to better themselves was right!
As for the so called Prime Minister baring her soul last week and telling the media that she cried after she heard the election results...well I don't have any sympathy for her.
What she should be crying over is the failure of governments to address the long standing problem of the low wage economy
which more often than not affects the working classes despite the fact that they faithfully support the sham called democracy every five years.
Save your fake and selfish tears prime minister,
give the working classes a decent wage not tears.