Social education Can a mother be a feminist? Two-thirds of young women want to stay at home full-time when they become mothers, according to new research by the University of Bristol.

The superwoman mentality is fading fast as young women see their older sisters struggling to combine work and family.

Eva Feder Kittay, a feminist philosopher based SUNY, Stony Brook, believes that as a society, we have yet to appreciate the value of caring. She believes that full-time mothers should be paid a salary by the State to look after their children, but women should also be able to work outside the home and rear families. Such women should also be supported in that choice by workplace policies and by State finance for care of their dependents, as in Denmark and Norway.

Kittay became aware of these issues 34 years ago when her daughter, Sesha, was born with devastating mental disabilities. At the time, feminism seemed to be suggesting that a woman's most important work was outside the home. Kittay struggled with the concept that a woman could be a feminist, and also a carer. She also tussled with the idea that a feminist could be caring for a dependent person, who would never grow out of dependency and free the carer. This, in turn, made the carer dependent: "We need others to care for us," she learned.

She calls the dependency of someone who has a disability "inevitable dependency" and terms the dependency of the carer "derivative dependence".

"The feminist cause bothered me. While I embraced the idea that women could be as independent as men, I also thought: 'Who is going to take care of the children?' This has been the conservative cry, but it is actually at the very basis of equality. Society must allow women to care for their dependents by caring for the carers," she says.

Increasingly, men are finding themselves in this double-bind as fathers take greater roles in childcare, or care for ailing and aged parents, or children with special needs.

"I'm very much in favour of women pursuing their various talents and I think men are as capable of being good care-givers as women, with the right education and early training - and expectations. Schools should be teaching children about the caring ethos, and how to be carers," she believes.

An Irishwoman, Peggy Grennan, from Dublin, became Sesha's full-time carer 30 years ago and it was seeing Peggy's caring manner that helped Kittay realise how undervalued such carers were.

Kittay is writing a book on dependency and feminist critiques of equality, called Some Mother's Child: Essays on Equality and Dependency. She is also the chair of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Status of Women.

Eva Kittay is at IT Sligo tomorrow at 8 p.m. where she will address the question: Equality, Freedom and Caring - Are they Compatible? She will lecture on Disability, Equal Dignity and Care in the O'Rahilly Building at UCC this Friday from 12 to 2 p.m..