Seeing trees for the Woodwards

With regard to the granting of a day off to schoolchildren for the Presidential inauguration, I saw one of our letter writers inquiring about where to send the bill for child care payable by households where there is no parent at home during school hours.

Some people who write to the papers apparently don't read the papers. Most parents surely saw the colourful full-page advertisements drawing attention to the fact that Aras an Uachtarain was being thrown open as a childminding centre for the day, at no cost, and with the three-man Presidential Commission (the Chief Justice, the Ceann Comhairle and the Seanad Cathaoirleach) delighted to offer their services free on their last day of duty.

Obviously the facility was of little use to those outside the Dublin area, but the gesture is what counts where Presidential matters are involved. Anyway, everyone knows people in the country are never all that busy, or half as important, if it comes to that, as busy professionals in the city.

To judge by the eight thousand children who arrived at the Aras early last Tuesday morning, the idea was hugely popular, and by all accounts the day was a (resounding) success, with only a few minor accidents and no more emotional upheaval than might be expected. The seven children still missing are thought not to be too far away, and the Zoo is being carefully searched.

One of the Commission members was heard to say "never again, thank God: I would sooner fight alligators", but he is known to be a great man for the jocular remark and few doubt that in reality he enjoyed his child-minding duties thoroughly and will make a full recovery.

Now: am I going to comment on this highly topical and touchy business of childcare, risking the wrath of stay-at-work parents and social experts and releasing another deluge of articles about Ms Louise Woodward? No. I have no intention of adding to middle class guilt and anguish, though I have been there, done that and washed the tee-shirt.

But perhaps it is time children took some responsibility for themselves at an earlier age. After all the advances in modern society, it is scandalous that young children have not developed at all in terms of self-sufficiency, though it is a documented fact that puberty now arrives increasingly earlier.

Most animals are able to look after themselves from birth, provided the mother is at hand for a few weeks as a food source. Children, on the other hand, continue to be a nuisance for years, and in terms of looking after themselves, remain utterly inadequate into the late teens and often beyond.

Child self-sufficiency at an earlier age, with the ultimate target being set at perhaps 12 weeks (after which working mothers usually return to their jobs) should be our target. The work must begin forthwith.

Meanwhile I saw the American news columnist William Safire quoted by our own Joe Carroll the other day in connection with the Louise Woodward affair: "As families get smaller, single-parented and ungrandparented, we realise that even strange relatives can be better than relative strangers."

I would not go that far myself. There is a certain xenophobia behind those words, though as a journalist I admire the sound-bite, and Sapphire - beg pardon, Safire - is a of course a jewel in the crown of American column writing.

It was argued the other day in the London Times that the Woodward trial was also a battle of cultures. The trial of an English girl took place in the Massachusetts county of Middlesex, where the first shot was fired in the American Revolution. And the popular Boston Irish District Attorney Tom Reilly, with his home-grown prosecution team of Martha Coakley and Gerard Leone, was seen by one image consultant as culturally critical: "There was the undercurrent Boston Irish prejudice against the Brits, and Massachusetts against New York", (a reference to whizkid New York lawyer and O.J. Simpson's defence counsel Barry Scheck).

These are clear cultural differences but they do not constitute xenophobia. And when William Safire suggests that strange relatives are preferable to relative strangers, he obviously knows nothing about the strange relatives into whose care some of us were consigned in our early years.

I myself have still not forgotten Aunt Merzina, who was actually not an aunt at all, but something like a third cousin twice removed. Not, however, removed quickly enough, so to speak, though my siblings and I have long forgiven her. She has apparently been quite content in the secure unit for the last 40-odd years.

We were much happier being minded by relative strangers, among them being Adam, whom we hardly knew from - well, from Adam, I suppose.