The government will this week announce plans to overhaul maternity wards to make room for extra beds and allow new dads to spend the first night of their child's life with their family.

Under the reforms the NHS constitution will also be re-written to give pregnant women a legal right to chose where they give birth, including the option of a home birth, the prime minister Gordon Brown revealed yesterday during an online chat with the Netmums website to mark Mothers' Day.

The plans are part of a five-year programme of the reform of children's services from birth to the age of five, to be announced this week by the health secretary Andy Burnham and children's secretary Ed Balls. The move is designed to appeal to middle-class families and mothers in particular.

Women with young children have been identified in polls as a key target for Labour votes in the election. There are 53 constituencies where mothers could swing the result prompting a run of family-friendly policies.

The work secretary Yvette Cooper revealed on Sunday separate plans to encourage more flexible working to attempt to break the culture where part-time work is seen as a dead-end in careers. All jobcentres are to ask employers to consider offering jobs they advertise on a flexible basis when they advertise. Brown revealed that he wanted to end the situation where the mothers' partner is not allowed to stay the night with their new child after their birth. Many hospitals already supply make-shift beds, and more are being built with private rooms instead of wards, but many still operate strict visiting hours asking dads to leave their new family at night. Brown said he wanted a change in the service to include fathers in their new families from the beginning.

He wrote: "Maternity services should definitely remain a priority for the NHS. We have almost doubled funding since 1997 and there's no doubt that our maternity services have got better over the last 10 years, but sometimes I think we haven't done enough to make sure they provide a really personal service for mums and dads.

"Over the next few years we want to see a legal right for mums to choose where they give birth, including home births for anyone who wants one. And we want to see services changed so that not just mums but dads can be given a bed if they need to stay in hospital overnight after the birth of their baby. We have also set a goal to recruit an extra 4,000 midwives by 2012."

Mothers can already request a home birth but the likelihood of getting one is almost entirely dependent on the availability of midwives. Ministers privately accept that maternity services have not been reformed enough and hope that giving parents legal entitlements will force further improvements to meet the aspirations of middle class families in particular. Under this week's plans, the NHS Constitution will be re-written to include a new legal right for pregnant mums to choose where and how they give birth including the option of a home birth. The proposals will be consulted on and introduced in the next parliament.

Plans to give both parents a bed for their child's first nights in hospital would also be completed within the next parliament.

Further reforms to improve post-natal care and an extension in post-natal support for teenage parents to reduce the chances of further teenage pregnancies will be set out on Tuesday.Mary Newburn, head of research and information at the National Childbirth Trust, said: "We support both those measures. But the key thing is that significant investment is needed to make them happen. So far we haven't seen the investment required to implement their current policies.

"Parents were supposed to be able to chose the place of birth by the end of last year – our research shows there has been some improvement but there is still a long way to go. It would take an enormous building programme to accommodate new fathers, so I'm not sure how fully that's been thought through.It would be fantastic if there was scope for more family rooms but it would mean a building programme."