Madam, - Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin. Of course, an tinteán is fast receding into fadó fadó, but the profound verity that is the essence of the seanfhocal will always be the truth of the human condition. More heart than hearth, it is a humano-spiritual rather than physical structure, a warm cocoon enveloping the very chrysalis of human society. To grow into it and out of it is the natural right of every person.
However - and, indeed, however well - non-parental childcare is funded, an tinteán is not to be found in creche or kindergarten, pre-school or after school, and hardly in a couple of nightly hours of "quality time".
Many women, perhaps most women, now want to "work", i.e. to go every day to a workplace and to take part in everything that passes there.
To acknowledge readily that most of them work very well is not to forget that a woman feels scant deference to logic and is wont to express the truth in such an oblique way that it is scarcely recognisable. Thus, the true statement, "I want to go to work", is instead expressed as "I need to go to work"; "I can't afford not to go to work"; "the ends that I think should meet cannot be made to meet unless I go to work"; "I must go to work to provide adequately for my children"; or, even, "my children will be better off by being without me for most of their daylight hours".
I feel sure that an tinteán will continue to recede until the women of some future generation become so alive to their own deprivation that they will resolve that their children must be preserved from tinteán-deprivation. - Yours, etc,
FRANK FARRELL, Lakelands Close, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.