Being a mother is a full-time career

IT is a sad reflection of our society that even today there are still vulnerable children that a charity such as Barnardo’s have to raise money to help.

But that doesn’t surprise me when I think of Diane Abbott MP and others who campaign for women to be in full-time employment and yet she doesn’t consider being a homemaker and child carer and developer as a full-time career.

Thanks to ‘career’ women we have now got children running feral because ‘mum’ is working. Many of them are also ‘childminding’ because they have to collect their brothers and sisters from school and take them home to an empty house.

What would the working mother do if there weren’t any breakfast or after-school clubs to put them in because ‘mum’ is working paid for by the taxpayer? How many marriages could have been saved only one parent had to work and comes home tired? It would also mean that Sundays would be a day of rest and family time not a day to do the only time to carry out tasks in the home.

It is about time that our governments recognised that being a mother, homemaker and someone who has time to listen to their children recognises it a profession.

With so many young people unable to get work there would be more jobs for them. Government should recognise the need for a better housing and benefit system that means that families should need only one income and not two in order to survive.

Lacock Abbey inthe mist, by Elizabeth Oakley ofDursley