Sir, – Bobby Carty writes of an easier family life, where mothers did not have to get up at unearthly hours to get kids up, fed, and out the door to childcare before working a full day (Letters, November 28th).
What a joy it must have been for women to be isolated with their children all day, no adult conversation, fully dependent on husbands for income, cut off from jobs, pensions, and career progression by the institutionalised gender discrimination of the marriage bar legislation.
Second, and I speak from personal experience here, nothing stops fathers getting up at unearthly hours to get kids organised, and out the door before working a full day and coming home to cook dinner for the family. If men are so worried about the impact of both parents at work, I suggest men think about lobbying for State economic assistance to permit men to look after the first two or three children at home until they reach primary school age.
Not only have I not seen any such proposals in the manifesto of any political party, I haven’t seen too many men in the general population suggest it either. More’s the pity. – Yours, etc,
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MARIA O’BRIEN,
Dublin 13.