Hiring an extra pair of hands

CHILDCARE isn't just an issue for "working" mothers, so-called "full-time" mothers in the home need childcare too. Bernice Duffy of Foxrock, Co Dublin gave up her career in architecture to be the full-time mother of three children: Sam (10), Max (8) and Madison (4) because she believed that they needed her. But she also had a clear idea of what she needed - help in the home with childcare and household tasks.

At every stage of her children's development, she has organised different kinds of home help depending on the family's needs. When the children were small, she found that housework was her main problem so she got help with that. When they were older, what she needed was a young au pair willing to play with the children. This autumn, however, she has an older au pair, Mara Gonzalez (26), the daughter of a Spanish university professor, who can help supervise the homework.

Bernice spends the afternoons chauffeuring her children between school, home and their various activities. Her children are still too young to be left at home on their own and Bernice felt it was unfair for all three of them to be "stressed out" by spending a couple of hours every afternoon in the car. What she needed was an au pair to hold the fort at home so that each child could go home and stay home when they were finished with school and activities. Having an au pair also "frees you up to spend quality time with one child at a time - and I get to have a life as well," she says.

Bernice believes that au pairs can be exploited by being made to work long hours and put in sole charge of young children when in fact they are really meant to be part of the family. She pays hers over the odds (£45) and asks her to do only five hours childcare a day (3 p.m. to 8 p.m.) on three or four days a week. Her evenings and weekends are "free and casual". Mara is "an extra pair of hands" who might help scrub the potatoes or fill the dishwasher, but never cook entire dinners or scrub the toilet, says Bernice.

Mara, who came to Dublin with the Freedom for You Agency, interviewed five Irish families before she chose the Duffys. "I am enjoying it. It's very nice - much better than I expected," she says.