Up to half of nurseries set to close or reduce services they offer, survey warns

Requirement for parents to pay costs upfront, and then claim them back, is a burden on the poor, says report [...] The work and pensions select committee argues that the way some of the poorest in society are having to pay childcare costs upfront – then face weeks before they are reimbursed – is a significant disincentive to moving into work. &! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46649160 - The Universal Credit system leaves too many UK claimants with children facing a stark choice between turning down jobs or getting into debt, MPs warn.
*&! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAkxCAO9xp4 - Universal Credit: Is the system working? - BBC Newsnight

UK couple both earners two children pay 50% of their net income for childcare

Parents are subsidising a new flagship "free" nursery scheme for three- and four-year-olds in England from their own pockets, a survey suggests.

Nurseries are making up losses by upping fees for younger children and charging for meals and nappies, a survey of 1,662 providers suggests.

The survey, by the Pre-School Learning Alliance, suggests only a third are delivering the hours totally free.

The government says it is investing £6bn in childcare by 2020.

aggregate gender pay gap = gender pay gap

Given that equality is so central to EU law, and given the emphasis that has been placed by the prime minister on equality since her speech outside No 10 when she first entered Downing Street, it came as a surprise to me that the word “equality” does not appear once in the government’s white paper.

There is a brief mention of women’s rights in relation to maternity leave, but no mention of race, disability or sexuality and gender identity.

This cannot be credibly perceived as a deal that works for everyone in Britain if women, BAME, disabled people and LGBT communities aren’t even referenced in the white paper.

the closer we get to the September 2017 rollout of the extended offer, the clearer it becomes that this policy has been rushed through, is ill thought out, and crucially, is massively underfunded.

"Comprehensive analysis of the Budget with Evan Davis and guests." // During the election David Cameron said child tax credit/benefit was off the list of welfare spending cuts. - broken election campaign promise // --- SHOULD BE (Labour Party Policy for next election):: make work pay and eliminate child poverty AND help people (everyone) w education and support to find better and more gainful work that lift them and the economy by producing added value products. // no path to higher wages, no path to higher productivity, no path to added value British Products export increase (manufacturing, research, STEM, ...) // low wage jobs have no to very little economic multiplier ... take into account tax credits etc and it is net-negative for state and the council //

35 Millionen junge Menschen sind in den OECD-Staaten ohne Job oder Ausbildung. Gut steht laut einer neuen Studie allerdings Deutschland da - aber in einem Punkt haben es die Jungen hierzulande auf dem Arbeitsmarkt besonders schwer. - http://www.oecd.org/edu/oecd-skills-outlook-2015-9789264234178-en.htm // Berufsanfänger in Deutschland erhalten so häufig wie in kaum einem anderen OECD-Land nur einen befristeten Vertrag. [...] Wer einen Zeitvertrag hat, hat auch geringere Chancen, an einer Weiterbildung teilzunehmen. Im schlimmsten Fall können durch die Befristungen daher Kompetenzen verkümmern, warnt die Organisation. [...] Besserung verspricht eine frühe Förderung und der Ausbau von Kitas: Verschiedene Studien der OECD zeigen, dass Kinder, die im Vorschulalter eine Betreuungs- oder Bildungseinrichtung besucht haben, später besser lesen und rechnen. Kinder aus benachteiligten Familien profitieren besonders stark von der frühen Förderung.

[ nurture over nature ] via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9485850 // &! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility-shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9485850 "Based on the earnings records of millions of families that moved with children, it finds that poor children who grow up in some cities and towns have sharply better odds of escaping poverty than similar poor children elsewhere. The feelings heard across Baltimore’s recent protests — of being trapped in poverty — seem to be backed up by the new data. Among the nation’s 100 largest counties, the one where children face the worst odds of escaping poverty is the city of Baltimore, the study found. [...] How neighborhoods affect children “has been a quandary with which social science has been grappling for decades,” [...] “This delivers the most compelling evidence yet that neighborhoods matter in a really big way.” &! Obama on Letterman - bit.ly/1zxFZWn

"To ease the pressure on families and people on low incomes, we want immediate action, including cutting employee National Insurance and making childcare more affordable." The average couple with two children saw their income fall by £2,132 a year in real terms between 2009-10 and 2012-13, the CBI says. The business group is calling for the threshold at which people begin paying National Insurance to rise to £10,500 by 2020-21, a move it says would be worth an extra £363 a year in take-home pay to dual-income households. << ! AGENDA/Lobby Interest: Businesses also don't have to contribute to NI payments if employee doesn't have to pay.

"There is now a rising worldwide demand that policy be more closely aligned with what really matters to people as they themselves characterize their well-being," economist Jeffrey Sachs said in a statement at the time of the report's release.

The longer a mother breast-feeds, the greater the benefit to the child’s brain development, a new study says.

The strongest recommendation for preventing allergic disease was breast-feeding. Common sense. > http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-best-baby-formula/ - full six month. longer the better.

Trinkt eine Schwangere, leidet das Gehirn ihres Kindes - ein Leben lang. Die Betroffenen entwickeln Konzentrationsschwierigkeiten, sie sind hyperaktiv, ecken an. Werdende Mütter sollten besser aufgeklärt werden, fordern Forscher.

[...]

Laut dem Mediziner sieht man nur einem geringen Teil der Kinder die Alkoholschädigung am typischen Aussehen mit zum Beispiel kleinen Augen, schmaler Oberlippe und insgesamt kleinem Kopf an. "Sie sind nur die Spitze des Eisbergs", meinte er. Sind die Störungen versteckt, würden die Kinder in der Schule oft gehänselt, sie seien unruhig und hyperaktiv. Oft würden sie aus ihren Familien herausgenommen und in Pflegefamilien gegeben, die mit den Kindern ebenfalls schwer zurechtkämen.

A father's love contributes as much - and sometimes more - to a child’s development as does a mother’s love.
The finding was part of large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood.
'In our half-century of international research, we’ve not found any other class of experience that has as strong and consistent effect on personality and personality development as does the experience of rejection, especially by parents in childhood,'
[...] tend to respond in exactly the same way when they perceived themselves to be rejected by their caregivers and other attachment figures.'
results from more than 500 studies suggest that, the influence of one parent’s rejection, often a father's, can be much greater than the other’s.
at least one explanation for this difference: that children and young adults are likely to pay more attention to whichever parent they perceive to have higher interpersonal power.

And that fact, from both a physiological and philosophical standpoint, is perhaps why strength training for children is so important, a growing chorus of experts says. “We are urban dwellers stuck in hunter-gatherer bodies,” said Lyle Micheli, M.D., “That’s true for children as well as adults. There was a time when children ‘weight trained’ by carrying milk pails and helping around the farm. Now few children, even young athletes, get sufficient activity” to fully strengthen their muscles, tendons and other tissues. “If a kid sits in class or in front of a screen for hours and then you throw them out onto the soccer field or basketball court, they don’t have the tissue strength to withstand the forces involved in their sports. That can contribute to injury.”

visit strongkid.com

the ties between obesity and puberty start at a very young age. As Emily Walvoord of the Indiana University School of Medicine points out in her paper “The Timing of Puberty: Is It Changing? Does It Matter?” body-mass index and pubertal timing are associated at age 5, age 3, even age 9 months. This fact has shifted pediatric endocrinologists away from what used to be known as the critical-weight theory of puberty — the idea that once a girl’s body reaches a certain mass, puberty inevitably starts — to a critical-fat theory of puberty. Researchers now believe that fat tissue, not poundage, sets off a feedback loop that can cause a body to mature.

In addition, animal studies show that the exposure to some environmental chemicals can cause bodies to mature early. Of particular concern are endocrine-disrupters, like “xeno-estrogens” or estrogen mimics.

Family stress can disrupt puberty timing as well. [Evolution?]

"Amerikaner sind oft unerschrockener"
Kurz: In den USA bedeuten Kinder häufig große finanzielle Opfer, stärker noch als in Deutschland. Warum werden dort trotzdem mehr Kinder geboren?
Carsten Große Starmann, Demografie-Experte bei der Bertelsmann-Stiftung in Gütersloh, sieht den Grund vor allem in kulturellen Unterschieden. "Die Wertigkeit von Kindern und Familie, aber auch die Bewertung von Sicherheit und Risiko sind in den USA ganz anders als in Deutschland."
In Deutschland, sagt er, gebe es ein starkes Sicherheitsdenken und die Tendenz, persönliche Entscheidungen sehr behutsam abzuwägen. Eine "Kultur des Zweifels", wie der Lüneburger Soziologe Günter Burkart schreibt. Tatsächlich sorgen sich die meisten Amerikaner nicht allzu sehr um die potentiellen Hürden und Herausforderungen des Elternseins. "Ich glaube nicht, dass die meisten Frauen eine Rechnung aufmachen, ob und wann sie sich ein Kind leisten können", ...

The couple didn't have a written contract, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway since surrogacy agreements aren't legally binding in the U.K. Considering the circumstances, it seems cruel for the mother to demand payments from Mr. W after breaking her promise to give the couple a child. Yet legally, all that matters is that he's the girl's father. Whether the surrogate changed her mind, or really did intend to keep the child all along, the case highlights the risks of turning pregnancy into a business when there are no laws in place to hold both parties to their agreement.
Read more: http://jezebel.com/5791134/couple-told-to-pay-child-support-after-surrogate-decides-to-keep-baby#ixzz1JMvyuINT