Sir, – I was exhausted after reading Jen Hogan’s article in Saturday’s Weekend supplement (“‘That’s another €250 down the drain’: welcome to the world of summer camp parents”, July 20th). Who’d be a working parent in today’s world? Well many of us are (including myself) and I can relate to the costs, stress, guilt and burnout that the parents in the article discussed.
I noticed as well that it appears that women still carry the burden of juggling children, childcare, and summer camps with work. We still have a long way to go with addressing this imbalance. In today’s world most families have two working parents and finding a balance between work and family life is difficult. There are a few things the Government could look at and act on quickly to make the lives of working parents and their children easier: reduce school summer holidays (I know this won’t be a popular idea with many but do children really need eight to nine weeks off?); increase the availability of Government-funded or subsided childcare into the summer months with longer hours for those who need to avail of it (this is urgently needed throughout the school year too); and make parental leave paid similar to paternity or maternity leave.
We have increased (and rightly so) paid leave for parents of babies but if we are to take raising children seriously we should be making parental leave paid, and this could potentially enable thousands of parents to take some time off to be with their children during the holidays and reduce the juggling, stress, guilt and burnout discussed in the article.
Working parents deserve better and their children deserve better. – Yours, etc,
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SIOBHÁN McDERMOTT,
Killester,
Dublin 5.