Last Monday my friend took her two year old to the creche as usual and when they arrived, there was a sign on the door informing parents that there was an outbreak of the winter vomiting bug on the premises, writes Ann Marie Hourihane.
My friend thought of how she had breastfed her baby so carefully, and of the little packed lunch they had brought with them, containing nothing but the choicest organic products. Then she dropped her child off and ran. She had a meeting starting in an hour.
By the time it has mutated into the spring vomiting bug, the winter vomiting bug will have taught us many things. In my experience these will include the answers to vital questions such as: how much sleep can one adult get in one 24-hour period and how long can a human survive ingesting only those twin packs of Sprite? However, I thought this episode at the creche the most revealing winter vomiting bug story of all.
On the doorstep of that creche my friend went through her options - or, more properly, her solitary option. She could turn on her heel, cancel her meeting and take the child home. But how long would she have to stay at home for - a week? She could bring the child back in seven days only to have it contract the winter vomiting bug anyway.
In any event - and this is my point, not hers - by the time she got the news of the outbreak at the creche, it was too late. If she had known about the winter vomiting bug the night before she could perhaps have tried to marshal babysitters to look after her child in its own home, and maybe even pulled in a few friends whose hours of work are flexible and could therefore be called upon to fill the child-minding breach for a little while. (Okay, but I've never pureed an apple in my life.) My friend has no relatives in Dublin. Her husband was on a business trip abroad.
But she didn't have the information in time to collect her troops. So, a realist to the last, she had to leave her child under the plague notification and rush back to the professional world: a pretty horrible moment. Naturally she has been on watch for manifestations of the winter vomiting ever since. So far so good.
It's just an added worry, an added stress in the day for her. A day which involves her being a middle-class professional during daylight hours and hitting the supermarket about 10 at night.
The supermarket is a doddle at that hour, she says, no traffic on the way there and plenty of parking. So then she comes home, presumably puts all the shopping away and is in bed in time for her six o'clock call the next morning.
I'm telling you, this is hidden suffering. From the young mother who every morning feels her toddler gripping her hand tighter and tighter as they approach the door of the day-care centre, to the parents who watch their children playing in their expensive creches (yes, yes they're all expensive, but we're talking here about creches that are expensive even in relation to other creches) via closed-circuit television.
This country is staggering under a silent epidemic of separation anxiety, and we haven't even discussed the parents who have to drive 60 miles to work, and back, or the more complicated logistical problems presented by older children. (By more complicated logistical problems I mean to denote ballet lessons, Brownies, football practice, swimming lessons and the "Sean says he's doesn't want to be my friend any more" type crises that older children are heir to.) There are some problems that money won't solve.
Professional parents like my friend are on the best salaries in the country, but there is a whole lot of stuff that you simply cannot buy.
And while the problems of single parents who have to pay for childcare are a whole lot worse, the problems of a single parent in possession of a co-operative and energetic granny who is prepared to care for a child on a regular basis are a whole lot better.
Not that anyone is suggesting that we should rely on the good nature of grannies for our national childcare system, not at all. We've done that for long enough.
But something has to change. The rest of Irish society thinks that if only it had more money, its childcare problems would be over, and this is not so. The structures of the working world will have to change, and we needn't hold our breath on that one, what with Irish management being the most cowardly, the least responsive and the laziest in the world.
Perhaps change will only come, like the eventual IRA ceasefire, when the next generation makes it clear that it is not prepared to endure what its parents did.
So there is no neat ending to this column. This is a problem with no visible solution, and that is one of the reasons that it is discussed in the media so little.
But we must talk about it more, and honestly, if we are to progress at all.