A charity is today calling for grandparents in work to be given two weeks 'granny leave' to help care for new-born grandchildren and parents to be paid childcare tax credit if grandparents provide childcare while the parents go to work.

It is certainly the case that current policies, whereby child care tax credit is paid to parents using nurseries and registered child minders, discriminate against mothers who choose to care for their own children and against those who use more informal child care arrangements.

So, at first glance, this suggestion from Grandparents Plus might sound like an attractive way to strengthen the extended family. However, what about the three out of twenty of us who live more than 50 miles from our parents? Or the one million children who have lost touch with their grandparents because their parents have separated?

The 1990 Jubilee Centre publication 'From Generation To Generation' points out the integral role that older people have in the biblical account of family life and community interdependence - for example, Naomi's role in looking after Obed, the son of Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 4:13-17). It concluded, 'Welfare should always be provided with reference to an individual's relationships and should, as far as possible, serve to strengthen those relationships.' However, it also went on, 'Welfare policies should ... allow recipients of welfare to influence decisions concerning their own situations and promote their full participation in the wider society,' and 'The economic system should promote family and neighbourhood interdepedence, so that welfare is not so heavily reliant on the redistribution of income from tax revenues.'

The simple fact is, once you introduce payment for services or goods into a relationship, the dynamic of that relationship is utterly transformed. The proverbial cup of sugar borrowed from a neighbour ceases to be an excuse to strengthen a community friendship and risks becoming an alienating irritant, 'Who does he think I am, always coming by as though I'm the local corner shop?'

If we believe that childcare should be rewarded, or paid for, by the state, then surely all parents of all under-school-age children should receive an increased child benefit - leaving it for parents to decide who they think is best able to care for their children: themselves, another family member, a friend, registered child minder, or nursery. That said, notwithstanding that the state already knows more about our private circumstances than many of us would see as appropriate, do we really want the government to be interfering at all in personal family arrangements such as childcare?

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