I’m not convinced by the mother’s lament
JOE COSGRAVE, scion of one of country’s most famous building dynasties, paid a moving tribute to his mother Patricia at her funeral last week. In his eulogy, he told how the family matriarch had raised her five children while running the family farm after her husband Jack was stricken with serious illness. ‘She was always there for all of us and her grandchildren,’ recalled Joe. ‘ She was also there for Jack, who she loved dearly… and he often said she would make a poor man rich, not in monetary terms, but within themselves.’
It was a touching eulogy, made all the more meaningful in a week when the spotlight fell so unremittingly on the plight of working mothers.
A heartfelt letter sent to the Irish Independent struck a chord with many thousands of women juggling careers with raising small children and, in these hard times, for ever dwindling financial gain. ‘I will do whatever it takes to give my children back their childhood,’ wrote Donna Hartnett, announcing that she was giving up her job to stay at home and mind her two children. The looming water charge seemed to be the tipping point for the Cork woman, and her anger resonated with many young families who, like Donna’s, are saddled with boom-time mortgages, sky-high childcare fees and no way off the treadmill.
Donna’s bitterness at the ‘exhaustion, anxiety, fear’, she has suffered is understandable but perhaps the daily grind is blinding her to the bigger picture.
Because the decision to work outside the home is not the all-or-nothing dilemma she seems to present. There are probably more mothers who manage to keep one foot in the workplace and another at home with their children than there are women who work full-time and not at all.
Nurses can avail of all sorts of part-time arrangements, and the public service allows for job shares and two or three-day weeks. Teachers can take five-year career breaks – an invaluable perk for anyone who wants to start a family.
Even the ruthless multinationals have been known to allow mothers work around
BOB GELDOF says that reviving the Band Aid single to raise funds to fight Ebola is not all that it’s cracked up to be. ‘I don’t like doing this stuff,’ he says. ‘It’s boring organising it. It’s embarrassing calling artists you don’t know.’
Perhaps he should get his old friend Bono on the job. Bono seems to know absolutely everybody.
the school day. Doctors and pharmacists can hire locums to fill their shoes for part of the week, and in areas like retail or hospitality, part-time hours are built into the rosters.
The doom and gloom isn’t universal, nor is Donna’s harsh verdict on creches.
Her description of them as centres where children are raised ‘like caged hens’ is an insult to families who are doing their best, and to dedicated childcare workers.
As with anything in life, there are good and bad creches but not all fail the test of providing children with a safe and stimulating environment.
This idea of children being raised full-time by their mothers is relatively new – a result of suburbanisation.
In rural Ireland, children were often looked after by their grandmothers or older siblings while their mother worked on the farm or in the kitchen.
PATRICIA Cosgrave may have not been with her children for their every waking hour, but they don’t feel short-changed. There is no right or wrong way of raising children, and so long as there is love and stability, the rest is purely subjective.
‘No one will ever stand over my grave and say, “Wasn’t she great at paying her water taxes”,’ writes Donna. Her epitaph, she says, will be more about the quality of her children’s new life and to hell if it results in ‘ overdue taxes and unpaid bills’.
Stirring stuff, but there is a caveat. Playing fast and loose with finances is the root cause of our bankrupt economy and austerity. It would be unfortunate if Donna’s attempt to find a better work/ life balance turns out to be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.