Just one woman in every ten now stays at home to bring up the children. The way it’s being reported today makes it sound as though society itself is falling apart, and that perhaps a whole generation of young women are so selfish they’re sacrificing their children’s well-being for their own careers. All of this invective makes me so cross. The truth is that there’s a huge number of different reasons that women go back to work, leaving their children in the care of professionals. Many do it simply because they have to – because their wages are vital to the family’s survival. Others do it because they love their jobs and are not interested in a 24 hour day of nappies, washing machines and screaming toddlers. What’s wrong is that, if the government of the day is trying to financially help working mums in the form of childcare vouchers, then surely women who stay at home should also be offered some sort of financial aid too. Whatever you do, please do not let’s go on calling the stay at home mums “economically inactive”, the term coined by the Exchequer. Any mum doing her bit, either at home or at work, is anything but.
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