One of the threads in humanites at the moment is driving me a little nuts.
For the most part it is a bunch of blokes talking about women being less ambitious then men as women have the
‘choice’ to opt of of a career or take a lesser job or job share and take less ambitious chore of rearing children

Less ambitious……. how is bringing another person into this world and looking after them and trying to see that they
have all the skills and opportunities they need to survive and thrive in this world while trying not to fuck them up
less ambitious ?

You know you can be sitting reading the whole of all the house cleaning and management done, the windows and skirting boards all shiny and the children are playing in the garden and you know what you are still working as a stay at home parent.
You are not leaving the children alone, unsupervised and fending for them, you are ready to tend their needs.
There is not 30 hours physical work in cleaning a house, doing laundry and cooking ( unless you are a neat freak and suffer from OCD ), but the tending to the children and errands easily adds at least another 20 hours on to that in a 5 day week.

Life is not simple it is not black and white or prepackaged.
Due to the fact no contraceptives are 100% accidents happen,
Due to the facts of biology women have to bear the children,
Due to the facts of biology women have a hardwired chemical process that
Starts the drive to need and care for the infant.
Due to the lack of work life balance and child care in this country many new
Mothers find them selves bewildered when they can’t find a life solution
That works with out being detrimental to them or their working life or the child.

Lets face it has usually been that only the reasonably wealth could afford to have a cleaner and a nanny to ‘pick up the slack’ until the child could be shipped off to boarding school from Victorian times up until very recently.

But due to the Celtic tiger, the rise in the cost of living, house prices, expected lifestyles (your not living if you car is 5 years old, you don’t go abroad on holidays or out on the town once a month) more women are struggling to go back to work and are being crippled (alone or with their partner) emotionally and finically due to the lack of good affordable childcare
Or opting not to have children at all.

We have to look at the impact on society of falling birthrates as the age demographics of this country starts to shift like Germany and France has,
The impact of substandard childcare and the impact on children that the ages of
14 on wards are becoming latch key kids.

They come home from school and are left to tend to themselves until their
Parents arrive in from work at 7 or later and end up not having the parent child
Interactions needed to guide them or to have their parents talk with them to advise them or just even to listen about them.
You end up with a bunch of strangers with the same gene code sharing a house and then the parents are surprised when it comes out their marry or john has a drink/drugs/selfharm/sti/depression/food issue at the age of 15/16/17 when the parents have given them every material want.

Are women less ambitious then men? No
Are women less career driven then men? No
Are parents faced with more important issues then career ambition? Yes

Yes having children should be a personal choice but it should not be THAT hard.
We should support families, children and the next generations.
There should be tax breaks for parents because they have children,
There should be proper state funded childcare,
Stay at home careers should have their work valued even if it was their PRSI payment covered while they rear the next generation.

We either value children and families or we don’t.