The long periods of time some parents have to leave their children at childcare while at work have been described as "dehumanising and demeaning" by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Robin Eames.
In his address to the annual General Synod in Dublin today, Dr Eames said: "For many people, their recent experiences of 'progress' in Irish society is both dehumanising and demeaning.
"Children are dropped with minders as early as six or seven o'clock in the morning and may not be reunited with parents until 12 hours later.
"I hear of young mothers whose only waking time with the baby is when the little one wakes crying during the night before a working mother has to stagger back out on the commuter trail at an astonishingly early hour next morning," he said.
The sacrifices made to commute to jobs by households where both parents are working "reflects the failures in infrastructural planning where families are forced further and further away from economic centres to find affordable housing", he said.
Urging the Government to address the needs of families, Dr Eames called on the governments in the Republic and Northern Ireland to find "solutions that enhance the experience of family for children - however that family may be composed".
Dr Eames also asked the governments to do more to assist children caught in the "intolerable" poverty trap.
He intends leading a forum of government and church representatives, aid organisations and charities to look at the issue of child poverty.
The Primate of All Ireland said his initiative - Decoding the Culture - follows recent studies that showed 8 per cent or 32,000 children in Northern Ireland were severely poor.
A further 42 per cent were classified as living in poverty, while in the Republic 15.7 per cent were living below national poverty lines, he said.
"The Christian conscience demands that more is done for Irish children who are enduring the poverty trap in their earliest years," he told the Synod.
Dr Eames also said racial hatred was the "latest challenge to Irish normality and democracy" and said that immigration was now a key feature of life in Ireland.
He paid tribute to the late Pope John Paul II and conveyed the Church of Ireland's sympathy to the Roman Catholic Church at his death.
