How we killed the Enid Blyton summer

It's a Dad's Life:It's during the summers you feel the burden of work on the kids' lives. They should be out there, living an Enid Blyton idyll of an existence, scarfing down treacle tarts, collecting tadpoles and having daily adventures. They need a time machine back to England in 1950.

Instead they're stuck in the creche three days a week and marvelling at how the sun never shines the rest of the time. The summer isn't happening for them. The creche they both attend is one of these old-school places in a terrace of red-bricks and it's fantastic. The staff turnover is low, the price is reasonable, and they know the kids well. Last week, the owner, on seeing that the Elder was a little bored because her buddies were all away on holidays, took her on a "mystery tour" with one of her own children.

They wound up in the Croke Park GAA museum, which is as close as the Elder has ever got to expressing an interest in football.

I was delighted. You just wouldn't get that sort of thought or effort in one of the larger, more homogenised creches where they - rightly - have to be continuously aware of health and safety implications. Then the guilt kicked in. I had long been thinking of checking the museum out myself and bringing her with me, but had managed to find excuse after excuse not to do it.

It boils down to me and the missus being too busy. We try to work our schedules as much as we can around the kids, but there's no way they're going to experience the summer daze of summer days that we had. The result is that we're tired when we have them and they, for the most part, are beyond cranky - to the point of demonic possession.

A survey by www.irishjobs.ie then caught my eye. The workforce is now dominated by members of two generations: the well-established Generation X (born 1965-1981), and newcomers Generation Y (born 1982-2000). There are marked differences between the two groups: Y seem more confident than X, who come across as slightly over-sensitive and unsure of their own value. But both suggest that their key motivation in work is "to be happy in their job", with good opportunities being key. They both highlight flexitime being important, as family is a priority.

I thought it was a great survey, because it reflected a feeling that had been growing in me for a while. We, and I particularly here mean the Generation Xers of which I am one, are all talk. We're smoke and mirrors and hot air.

Flexitime does not mean that we work any fewer hours, it just means we squeeze work into conventionally anti-social hours. Prioritising the family means we pay the needs of the kids lip service so we feel better about ourselves as we continue our "flexible" march on the corporate treadmill.

In the 1980s and 1990s we decided we had to work harder and longer to have more stuff. We kept having kids and, unsurprisingly, they needed stuff too. Hmmm, tricky choice coming up. It could look rather insensitive if we continue to work to get our stuff but neglect our children, so what should we do? Cut back on the work and have more time with the nippers but less stuff? Don't be mad. Develop a way of working designed to make us feel better about how we get our stuff. Then we can all walk around talking about families being our priority while we work our faces off not only in the office but also at home. Genius.

It's mid-summer. I have a house full of bored kids and stuff. I think we should all go out and play in the mud.