In childcare for more than 50 hours a week?

Apparently there are more than 40,000 children across the country who are in childcare for more than 50 hours a week. It is said they are there because their parents need to work to make ends meet.
There is also a push to raise the pension age from 67 to 70. 
And some people who want to work cannot find work.
As regular readers of this blog know I ended up creating my own job because I couldn't get one anywhere else - although I kept applying even while I was self-employed. I was over-qualified and seen as disabled.  Perhaps if my qualifications had been in a different area, such as IT, I might have had more success. The reality though is that I know other people in my position. We have degrees, higher degrees and even doctorates. I know three people with doctorates who are serving in shops because it is the only work they can get.  One is doing another degree in teaching in the hope that it will get him into teaching at a technical and further education college. He isn't holding his breath but, as he said, "At least I am trying. I thought there was work for an engineer when I started out." 
And yet we have other household where both parents are working so many hours that their children are in day care for incredibly long hours.  
I wonder what the economics of this really are? Does it actually pay to put your child(ren) into daycare for so long? Is the amount you earn really worth that effort? Why do you need to do it in the first place? 
I know. I've said it all before - said it elsewhere and more than once. 
But there is the other thing I worry about.  What is happening to those children who spend such a long time in daycare? 
If a child is spending that long in daycare and then going home to sleep at night how much time are they getting with their parents? When they get home their parents still have all the normal household tasks to do. It is  unlikely the child is getting much attention.
    "Oh, it's the quality of time, not the quantity."
I've been told this more than once. Really? Of course the quality of parenting is important but if it comes in minuscule amounts is that going to be enough? Will the children understand who their parents are and the role they are supposed to play in their lives? What sort of relationship will they have later on? 
And if grandparents are also going to work until 70 then there is even less chance of children learning about life at home. 
Many readers of this blog will know Lois Lowry's book, "The Giver". There are faint, almost imperceptible, hints of that book in the idea of a child spending so much time in childcare - time where things are inevitably done in ways that mean "sameness" is more important than diversity.
I ended up doing something completely different and I have been able to pass that idea on to others. Perhaps I was lucky not to have been employed  by someone else.