Recently published research from leading children’s charity UNICEF suggests that whilst children in the UK seem to do well materially, they crave more contact with their parents. In other words, parents, for many reasons, are struggling to find the necessary time to spend with their children.

Why is this the case? UNICEF say that, of all families, it is those with the lowest incomes that appear to especially struggle with the work/family life balance as many parents in lower incomes households have to work more jobs at lower wage levels in order to make ends meet. Whilst this may ensure that the mortgage is paid on time and the children are well fed, there is quite rightly a concern that the ever increasing work hours required in order to provide the above is having a detrimental impact on the amount of time parents can spend with their children. Whilst introducing something like the Living Wage isn’t the complete answer, it will go some way at least towards boosting the incomes of the poorest families and enabling them to spend much needed quality time with their children.

However, let us not delude ourselves: this issue of family time affects households of all incomes, not just the poor. That’s why I think we need to have a look at our current Income Tax system. I’ve talked about this at length in previous blog posts so won’t rehash the arguments here, needless to say though that one earner families (i.e. where one parent is at home with the children) with two children on an average wage have a tax burden that is 73% of that of a single person on the same income. In Spain and Sweden (the other two countries in the UNICEF study), this figure is 65% and 70% respectively. Whilst I feel it would be unfair to argue that it is solely the UK tax system that is preventing parents from spending more quality time with their children, it surely doesn’t help that we have a system that penalises one parent families in the way it does.

All in all, I actually think it’s encouraging that in this age where we are constantly told we need to wear the right stuff and have the right mobile phone, children in the UK understand and are appealing for families to spend time more quality time together. It is also worth mentioning that if the evidence gathered by UNICEF of children’s experiences in Spain or Sweden is anything to go by, we don’t have to accept that the experiences of UK children are the ‘norm’. Finally, what I believe this report and evidence from CARE shows is that all things fiscal (i.e. tax and benefits) have a profound and long-lasting impact on individuals and families and therefore need to be treated seriously and given due consideration.