[Music] The UK's childcare system needs fixing.
So we're going to one of the world leaders to see just how much better it could be.
So here we are in Finland. This is the parliament.
Over there is Oodi, which is an amazing library that's here.
The sun is shining and we're going to find out
if it really is better to be a parent here.
The cost is here are less than 300 Euros. Full time?
Full time, 10 hours a day.
How can civilized country have legislation that discriminates men?
I can work the rest of my life but I can spend more time with my kids.
[Music] How much do you pay
for your childcare?
250 euros.
50 euros per month. 50?
50 euros per month.
Who's next? Which victim are we gonna get next?
How much do you think it would cost in the UK?
Let's say around 600 euros.
200 per month?
I wish it was 200 a month.
Kind of average is 1,500 a month.
Okay, yeah.
That's a lot of money.
Wow! Sounds a bit confusing.
Many parents in the UK would dream of paying as little for nursery
as they do in Finland.
But it isn't just the costs that are so different, it's the culture too.
It's a culture that puts children's rights at the heart of everything.
Hi! Hi! It's so nice to meet you.
We have here about 105 children.
Most of them are five days a week here.
One thing that we keep coming back to in the UK
is the fact that the cost of childcare is so crippling.
People are quite regularly paying between
£1,000-2 000 pounds every month for their childcare.
Yeah, that ... That's a lot. That's really a lot.
Yeah, the cost is here less than 300 Euros
Children get free meals.
Every daycare centre is open from 06:00-18:00 but we have also daycare centres
which are open in the evening.
And what about the weekend? Yeah.
We have here very permanent staff. Almost all are educated.
You have to go to university. They study about three years there.
What is the number of children that each adult can look after?
If the children are under three years old, there is four.
Over three years old there are seven children per one.
So why is it so much better in Finland?
The most important thing is the right for children to be here,
not the parents to go to work.
They want to come here, they want to have friends.
Their skills are developing here, social but also other skills.
That's so important.
OK, well that sounds great. Yeah!
Can I move to Finland please?
Do you know any houses that are free?
Yeah, I think that we have.
Have you ever worked out how much you've paid in total for childcare?
Oh, I did that. I think it was about £55,000 that I paid for my two kids.
And that's not even full time.
What we saw in this daycare is amazing.
Like, the kids were so well behaved, they're learning through play,
there's so many different areas for them, they've got this incredible outside play area.
Why can't UK children have that kind of idyllic setting?
Why do UK parents have to, you know, worry every month about their childcare bills
and if they're going to be able to afford them?
Or parents on low earnings know that they can't afford to put their children
into childcare, so their children don't get all of the benefits that these children are having?
Finland's daycare system is the product of long-term planning.
The first policy was put in place more than half a century ago.
But now the country is applying the same child-first thinking to paternity leave policies.
I've come to the Finnish Parliament, where I'm meeting Hanna Sarkkinen,
the minister in charge of these reforms.
Good morning. Good morning.
Hi, my name's Hanna.
Really nice to meet you Hanna, I'm Lexy from the Guardian.
You introduced, about a year ago, this progressive policy to really
encourage fathers to take more parental leave.
What was the big difference that it made?
Both parents are equal in legislation.
The child has the right to the same amount of the paid parental leave.
That gives a message to the society that parenthood is equal.
Employers would see it doesn't matter whether you employ women or a man,
they both do their share at the unpaid care work at home.
I think that point is really key.
In the UK fathers – not all fathers, but fathers who are working in permanent contracts –
have the right to two weeks paternity leave.
I don't understand how men don't rebel because it is such an important time
of your life to spend time with your child and if you're discriminated against
in the legislation, how don't men rebel? They should.
What could the UK learn from Finland about its early years education?
I think the best system is a universal and tax-funded system.
I think it should be completely free for everybody.
It's expensive though.
Of course, it is expensive but that's why we collect taxes.
So we need to tax people more in the UK?
Maybe tax the rich more.
Elections in April brought a change of government in Finland
and the new prime minister went into coalition
with the far-right Finn's party.
But progressive childcare is so embedded here that even their austerity programme
is unlikely to roll back on new reforms.
We've just come into the hall of parliament.
There's five statues here and they each
represent different things for the Finnish people –
so hard work or spiritual fortitude.
Here, there's a woman front and centre in parliament and she's holding a baby.
She signifies the future.
When you think about how they approach early years education here in Finland
and how they think about the rights of the child
and how they put that in in the centre of those decisions that they're taking,
I just think that's really significant and it really gives you hope
that even though there is a change of government here
and that government is significantly more right-wing, that that sense of progress
and investment in the future will continue.
[Music] There's no official data yet on how many parents have taken up
the new parental leave offer but research by Mothers for Business
suggests it could be as high as 40 percent in the first year.
We're on our way to meet a dad who has decided to take more parental leave this time
because of the new policy that's is in Finland than he did for his first child.
I'm also eating probably my seventh salmon based meal of this trip.
It's leafy down here.
Tiny little roses.
It's that one, I think
Hello!
How are you?
Should we, Edith, take something to eat, I think?
So how long are you going to take with Edith and how long did you take last time?
With our first kid I I took three weeks
and now with Edith in total it will be four months.
Did you feel like last time you hadn't had enough time?
We actually had plans that I would stay home a longer time, it just didn't happen.
With the new system I wanted to be home, for sure, it was just the question of of how long.
Are you OK with me playing with your baby? Yeah, of course.
She's so adorable. Yeah.
What was the kind of thinking behind it?
You hear more and more about how important the early phases of the childhood is
and how it might affect the relationship in the long-term.
I can work the rest of my life but I can't spend like more time
with my kids when they are this age, so ...
I mean, I genuinely think this is the single most, kind of, revolutionary feminist act
that you can take, particularly as a man, is to take time off of your kids
and to share childcare and the house as well, you know, share that equally.
Do you think in Finland that you've managed to kind of get rid of this negative image
around dads, you know, that dads are useless or they're not interested?
Definitely, I think so.
With our first kid, like whenever we were leaving home and going on a trip
I never knew what to take for the kid.
I was like completely lost.
When you're the main parent, then you like get to know those routines
and what works for them.
So where are we going now?
So we are going to the daycare to get Edith's brother Eliel.
What I keep coming back to is the sense
that it just doesn't feel so much of a struggle here.
The system has definitely made our life super easy.
Obviously, it could work that I, for example, would be now home with both kids
but I believe that it's it's good for our family, it's good for Eliel to have the opportunity
to be at the daycare.
You see, I couldn't take that decision.
When I had my second child, I took my son out of daycare.
I wanted to have one-on-one time with my baby but we just
couldn't afford to have him in childcare at the same time
as I was on maternity leave.
The daycare is in there in that old building there.
[Music]
What do you think the UK can learn from Finland?
I think we need to learn that it's not a zero-sum game.
Like, we don't have to pit parents against non-parents.
I think we also can learn you need to invest in this stuff over the long-term.
Like, it's not a quick-fix.
But just having that sense that the state might actually help
and policies could actually make a real difference,
it can have a massive impact on people's lives
and actually can make people really quite a lot happier.
In the UK, we're getting new policy that will make it a bit easier for parents
but you need the money behind it, you need the infrastructure behind it,
you need a workforce plan and we don't see that happening in the UK.
You have to hope that things will get better,
but I think that change in the UK has to come from civic society because,
unfortunately, I can't really see it coming from the top.