I remember the days before being a mother. Looking back it all seemed so easy. Bring kids into the mix and things get complicated.

There's things like childcare (and costs) to consider - not to forget the guilt of leaving them with someone else. There's the pressure from the modern day world to be supermum - ie work and look after the kids. There's things like school holidays to work around. And also what happens when the kids get poorly and you need to go to work.

Yes it rewarding. Yes it's fun. An no I wouldn't look to get a refund on my kids :) But it's hard and expensive.

The government want mothers to go back to work, but there's no support till they turn 3. If you have more than 1 child it almost becomes pointless to pay for childcare as the majority earned by the average person goes into childcare costs. Crazy, but true.

But to top it off there has been recent news going around about two mothers (who were also very good friends) who chose to do a jobshare and also look after each others kids. OFSTED came knocking on their door telling them they were operating illegaly and could face prosecution because they believe they are getting a reward for helping each other out. The reward being 'childcare' This naturally scared the mothers, especially as they worked for the police!

I personally find this shocking and sickening. I rely on friends as much as they do on me in helping each other out. To think that this could be illegal is just crazy.

There's an article about it on the Daily Mail and the BBC.

It's all going around the web at the moment and a petition has been created to try to change the law.

I've signed it, will you?

Rosie likes to build communities through Schux with a helping hand from the web.