Subsidies for working mothers: Keep it in the family A YEAR after he was elected in 2010, David Cameron firmly stated his support for married families. "I back marriage and I think it's a wonderfully precious institution," he said. But austerity and dithering delayed his corollary, a restoration of tax breaks for wedded couples phased out in the mid-1990s by a Tory government. They are now due to be announced, with civil partners included, in the autumn. A major reason for the dithering is that Conservatives have long been divided on the wisdom of rewarding families for their status, rather than their economic activity. On August 5th George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, announced new tax relief for families where both partners (married or not) work. Starting after the election in 2015, the Tax-Free Childcare scheme will cover a fifth of working families" child-care outgoings up to £6,000 ($9,000) per year and per child up to five. It will rise to cover children under 12 in subsequent years. Although Mr Osborne's plan does not supplant a tax break for marriage, the additional cost of his measures, around £950m, means that any sweetener for married or stay-at-home parents will be more symbolic than munificent. The chancellor's motives are both economic and political. He wants more women in employment: 67% of working-age women have jobs, compared with 76% of men. With a tight election looming, Mr Osborne is also trying to make the coalition more palatable to female voters, whose support for it has waned since 2010. The Women's Business Council, a government-backed study group, says that 2.4m economically inactive women would like to work if they had more financial help to look after their children, and many more part-timers would prefer longer hours. Elizabeth Truss, the child-care minister, has complained that British families face some of the highest child-care costs in Europe - some 27% of income, largely due to strict rules about the number of children per child-minder. International comparisons suggest Britain's tax treatment of families is stingy. France and the Scandinavian countries grant tax exemptions to families with three or more children and provide big childcare subsidies. Germany gives tax breaks to married couples, top-ups for each child and extra allowances for mothers who stay at home. Dealing with the last group is a problem for the coalition. Voters often interpret government spending decisions as judgments on the way they live. Some newspapers (the Tory Daily Telegraph loud among them) have been railing about government neglect of stay-at-home mothers. Some Tories worry about the political message this sends. Supporting work is a bedrock Conservative belief. But it should be balanced by supporting families," says Paul Goodman, a commentator for the ConservativeHome website. He favours matching Mr Osborne's plan with tax breaks that can be transferred between spouses or civil partners. But this would net the recipients only around £150, whereas the new child-care tax offer is more generous and includes those earning up to £150,000 each, the top income-tax band. This provides fertile ground for Labour, which intends to attack the Tories for favouring the well-off over the "squeezed middle" income groups. So Mr Osborne is likely to be caricatured as helping the posh pay for their nannies - even though those on lower incomes will also receive big allowances for child care if they work, and the better-off have already forfeited their entitlement to child benefit. By the time of the election, Mr Osborne hopes that working families will be grateful for the boost. To woo them in this way he will have to soothe noisy rows on the Tory homestead first.