TOMORROW morning I’ll deliver my 19-month-old son, Joshua, to his crèche for an activity-packed day. He’ll play a bit with his friends indoors, and there will be organised games and songs. Then he’ll be ready to tuck into a lunch of tarragon chicken and carrots lightly dusted with parsley, followed by cheese and a dessert of stewed peaches, before toddling outside to play in the sandpit and on the climbing frames under the shady mulberry trees. After a light tea of fruit yoghurt and biscuits, he’ll have a sleep in his own little cot to recover his strength before I pick him up. And all for £60 a month at the crèche considered to be the best in the area, open all but three weeks a year from 7am to 6.30pm.
But before you rush to put your children’s names down, this nursery is not in Britain but France. The South of France, to be exact, in the next village to the one in which I live. To get there, we drive through ten miles (16km) of sinuous roads lined with vineyards and framed by tree-covered hills. Petrol, even at France’s cheaper fuel prices, costs me more than the crèche fees.
Envious? Don’t be. I’d much rather be in London. But the simple truth is that I can’t afford to come home. I’m stuck in France after the death of my French partner, killed when our son was just two weeks old. I absolutely have to work, and not just for the money but because it’s my lifeline. It keeps me in contact with a world outside my own grief, not to mention the daily grind of dealing with a small child. And I do it because I refuse to let people think I’m a pathetic remnant of a woman who can’t hold it together in the face of tragedy. But my family is in Britain, and nearly all my friends and my home (currently let) are in London.
Living in the middle of nowhere, I know few other mothers of young children and I don’t really have the time to meet any. When I want advice on potty training or crying at night, I ring my sister in Pembrokeshire or e-mail my friend in Herne Hill. I’m lucky enough to have Joshua’s grandparents near by to lend a hand, but, when all is said and done, without the person I came here to be with, being in Provence is no longer the same. Yet it’s so much easier to work when you’ve got a young child than it is in the UK and that, more than anything, is what keeps me here.
In France, all but a handful of crèches are subsidised by the state. They are strictly regulated and well organised. All fees, which are eligible for tax relief, are means-tested, with the same sliding scale applied across the country, from Paris to the poorest rural community. However, no one will pay more than about £1.80 an hour. Most pay much less. To fork out that sum, which French parents consider exorbitant, you have to be earning £35,000 a year or more. So if little Jean-Paul spent ten hours a day at nursery five days a week, however rich Mummy and Daddy might be and wherever they lived, it would never cost them more than £400 a month. My earnings are nowhere near that heady figure, yet a nursery in London would almost certainly set me back £600, ten times more than I’m paying at the moment.
A friend of mine in North London has just found a place for her eight-month-old for £987 a month, with other crèches quoting between £1,150 and £1,240 for a child under 2. “You really need two incomes to afford childcare in London,” she said to me the other day.
Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, not even in France. As a self-employed person I expect to pay 40 per cent of my income in social charges. But I’m still quids (or is that euros?) in on childcare. The other downside in France is that there are not enough crèche places, state-registered nannies or childminders to meet demand, though the Government has made it a priority to create more state-supported company crèches. At the Crèche Frimousse (Sweet Little Face Nursery — yes, I’m afraid French crèche names are just as twee as English ones) where Joshua goes, the waiting list is 70 strong. For a new baby, the wait is a year. When would an older child get in? “Never,” says Florence Kersebet, the director. “The babies who are already in the little section will move up to the middle section and then to the ‘grands’.” I count myself lucky that I put Joshua’s name down when I was five months pregnant.
I should be even luckier when Joshua goes to school aged three. In common with most other communities in France, my village, population 1,500, has an after-school club for pupils from three to 11, from 4.30pm, when school finishes, to 6pm. The Mairie pays for this, though other communities may levy a small charge per child. That said, some communities also offer childcare for an hour before classes begin at 8.30am, which mine doesn’t.
The after-school club is run by the same young and dynamic qualified carers as are responsible for the village’s Centre de Loisirs (leisure centre), which is open to children on Wednesdays, when schools are shut, and every day from 9 to 5 during all holidays except Christmas. This long-established service to working — and non-working — parents operates in most communes in France. In my village, children aged 3 to 12 take part in activities as varied as boules (well, this is Provence), cooking, singing and dance, canoeing, camping, even trips to Corsica and exchanges with youth clubs in Britain. Once again, the fees are means-tested. Parents pay from £10 to a maximum of £30 a week, and children often discover places and pursuits to which they would never otherwise have access.
So how cheered I was to hear that the British Government is to invest £680 million in high-quality childcare from 8am to 6pm all year round. By 2010 all schools catering for under-14s will have to offer this. Maybe one day I’ll be able to move back to London, knowing that in Britain too there will be structured childcare while I try to earn enough to give Joshua, already deprived of a father, some advantages in life.
And how important, too, for so many other single mums — one family in four in Britain is headed by a lone parent, nine out of ten of them mothers. Surely it makes sense for them to go out to work if they can and bring home money — and self- esteem — knowing that their children are being cared for in a safe environment?
Apparently, children from one-parent families are more likely to turn to crime and less likely to succeed academically. I for one am not prepared to accept that fate for my son, even if it means being in France — and being miserable here. At least Joshua will grow up bilingual.
