Ailish Connelly, a Yammy (that's Yummy Mummy, Irish style) has identified her kind's latest 'must have' status symbol . . .
I was out for coffee last week with a Yammy, the Irish version of a yummy mummy - a yummy mammy. The reason I tell you about this Yammy is because I find Yammies are uniquely tuned into the zeitgeist, this yammy having a particular field of interest - status symbols, Irish style.
We all have our own slant on the current obsession with such symbols.
Boys have their "mine's bigger than yours car", or the smaller the better phone linking them at the touch of a button to Nasa, where of course they are needed.
The girls have similar, with the added extra of thousand-euro handbags and sleek designer hair and the bang up to the minute shoes.
Your house has to have walls of glass, with very little inside, your garden has to be conceived by Diarmuid, your cooker has to have a mind of its own, your summer house blah blah and your children . . .
I was reliably informed that the very latest status symbol is a fourth child. Oh yes! The first, second and third are, ho hum, run of the mill, two up two down. Or suburban estate. But your forth child screams: "I've made it!"
Yes, it seems that in our post Celtic world where we all know the value of every house on the road, the right investment art and the best type of roll-out lawn, the latest, best, brightest, designer accessory is . . . a fourth child to add to your brood.
Surely, this is not true, it's wrong, some sick joke of superiority.
But no, it's not wrong. In certain circles, it's the very latest thing to add to your vast store of things. A fourth child, gorgeous of course, blond to go with the rest of the blond clan, (since when did Irish people become a race of Nordic blonds?).
Clever, natch. The photographs will look great. Yummy in fact. And most importantly everyone will know how supremely loaded and fecund you are. Here, you yell, I've made it, I can afford four!
And that's the bottom line. Having children is incredibly expensive, €250,000 worth of expensive, in or around, to get them to 18. And after that, it's college so add on another, say, €75,000.
However, let's face it, having a child is a selfish act. They didn't ask to be born, it's the parents that want them. So maybe that's where the status thing comes in?
Have we really sunk so low that we are using our children as status symbols. Haven't they always been such, some will argue? The designer child on the model hip. The Osh Kosh-dressed little beauty, who stays quiet in a corner till summoned. Perhaps, but that was one or two children. And it was just sad needy, media types who did that, wasn't it?
Not a fourth? What about our forebears and the huge families that were common in Ireland until the 1970s? They didn't do it for money. It was cultural then, we were Catholics and good Catholics had children like bejaysus. It was just the way it was. And it certainly wasn't because they were rich and in need of a good ego boost. Years ago, the more kids the less you had. There was probably lots of love in the majority of those families, but little in the line of designer goods. And were they worse off?
Did they go around patting themselves on the back, delighted with their little status symbols? Did they heck! They were glad to get them out the door, to get them to adulthood, hopefully avoiding illness and catastrophe. They must be turning in their graves, all those worn-out frazzled mammies and daddies of old.
And here we are in the spanking fresh new century, losing the run of ourselves, whipping around in our Fenian Carriers - what the Northern Prods call people carriers - and our SUVs, the bigger the better, stuffed with children, wrapping the green flag round them, chanting Éireann go Bráth. We're fabulous, we Irish, we're loaded, look we have four. Four!
Sorry but it all makes me feel ill. And I'm far from a saint. I just wonder where it will all end?
Children are wonderful, exasperating, exhausting, challenging, full-on 24/7. You never stop worrying and hoping and laughing and crying. You are responsible for them until they reach adulthood, and then some. A child is a blessing, boringly cliched but true. A second third or indeed fourth, fifth or sixth child is an even greater blessing. And damn hard graft.
They are yours on loan and you just have to do your best. They are not and never can be a status symbol. I don't care if it's said in jest or if some sad individual ever believed it for a second to be true.
For the day will come when your status symbol will swagger out the (glass Swedish) front door and Yummy you will be left staring at your cool, white, rendered walls, casting round for your next status symbol, lonely in the midst of your gorgeous things.
Unless of course, you wanted all your little status symbols with all your heart, and you loved them each for themselves, for their individuality. And you'll be rewarded just as the frazzled mammies and daddies of old were rewarded. With love and kindness in your old age.
We are not so different from anywhere else on the planet after all - us Irish . . .