Realising that staying at home is not the easy way out

Here's a confession: somewhere in the dark recesses of my soul I always thought stay-at-home mothers were either stupid, lazy…

Here's a confession: somewhere in the dark recesses of my soul I always thought stay-at-home mothers were either stupid, lazy or conformist. I paid lip-service to the idea that what they were doing was worthwhile.

"Heavens above, you must have a lot on your plate with your four children, you're probably working much harder than I am as a journalist, you don't mind if I claw my way to the drinks table to end this boring conversation . . . "

I got my comeuppance in the form of three children in three years. And since then I've been spending my days puzzling why I thought this job was easy, unimportant or uninteresting. I have never worked anything like as hard as I have worked in the service of my children. I have never mattered anything like as much to anyone and never had so much fun.

An astonishing amount of social conditioning must have led me, a child of the 1960s, to devalue this work. Among the reasons for it are these, I think: that our mothers mostly had no choice but to do it, and we wanted to distance ourselves from them and their resentment; that the educational system does not put family life into the equation; and most of all, that it is unwaged.

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The political class, which has the power, is still under the sway of this social conditioning. And that includes the National Women's Council, whose pre-Budget submission, published on Tuesday, We're Still Waiting . . . for women to get a fair share, emphasises the need to maximise women's access to paid employment by providing a childcare subsidy and eventually, a State-subsidised childcare system.

The message is that women will only "get on" when they are not minding their own children. That's true only if you measure exclusively by the yardstick of material wealth and social status. It may be a pragmatic position, but it isn't radical. The real radicals are the parents content to throw the yardstick into the duck-pond.

I meet them at the park and at free library playgroups and they amaze me. They are mostly mothers but there is the odd father (and changing the gender balance in this line of work is crucial). All of them have given up or stalled careers to spend time with their children.

They have made huge material sacrifices and forfeited all social status. They have done it for love, but this is not the old story of self-sacrifice. They have done it, also, because the love goes both ways and they want to live the moment with their children.

"They're the lucky ones", you're muttering darkly. Well yes, they are. Parents in poverty should absolutely be helped to look after their own children or given access to childcare so that they can work. But for every parent in genuine poverty there are many whose definition of what's necessary has gone ballistic over the last few years. They lament loudly that they can't live on one salary but wouldn't even consider moving house, selling the car, giving up the foreign holidays or the dinners out. They have every right to want these things, but none, I contend, to define them as needs.

The fact that having children is now a choice has to be understood in assessing this changed mentality. A huge proportion of both men and women live as single wage-earners for close on a decade before they have children. They are used to the "dinkie" lifestyle and the marketplace (particularly the property market) loves them for it. They expect it to continue when they have children. Making childcare cheaper would help them do so.

But it would perpetuate the dangerous idea that both parents of small children can work full-time outside the home without detriment to themselves or to their children. Research shows it causes stress to the children, and it is self-evident that it causes stress to many parents.

Recruiting a proxy parent to do the rearing for you is probably the best way to lessen the stress for everyone. That costs a wage, however, and rightly so. It's still worth it to some parents because they earn so much more or because they love their jobs so much. Or because they will never be able to re-enter their career at any level if they take a few years off.

Still, you're left with the fact that a one, or a one-and-a-bit income household is the only viable model for parents of children under three. At three, the Montessoris and playschools beckon, and here the State should have a role.

The National Women's Council's submission suggests a payment for parental leave, but that's only 14 weeks long. Why not be ambitious - and realistic - and go for a means-tested parenting wage for either parent of children under three? That would go further towards alleviating child poverty than lumping another £25 onto the Child Benefit of all and sundry, as is called for in the submission.

And it might be enough to challenge the values of people who move swiftly away from stay-at-home parents at parties.

Victoria White is Arts Editor of The Irish Times. She is on maternity leave