Sir, – Kathy Sheridan’s feature “Bosses, babies and body hair” (Weekend Review, September 1st), in which she interviewed several women about work-life balance, raised some interesting questions about how we see women’s roles in modern-day Ireland. What struck me about the article was how these women clearly wanted to work and succeed in the workplace, but also felt a duty to be the primary caregiver for their family and felt that sacrificing their career at some stage would be inevitable. This is rarely a problem men face, because it’s rarely an expectation that society has of men. If women want to be able to “have it all”, then we need to have a society which is equally as comfortable with men being caregivers and making career sacrifices as we are with women doing so.
At the moment those men that do want to take a more active role in caring for their children have little to no rights to their child if unmarried to the child’s mother, and even if married, family courts still favour mothers over fathers in the majority of custody disputes. A Luxembourg-style parental leave system (six months’ leave each for the mother and father, in addition to maternity leave) or something similar would surely shift society’s view of the role of child-rearing toward one that is more equally divided between mother and father. “Women’s issues” do not exist in a vacuum completely separate from “men’s issues”; it is time we let men take on the family roles they want to fulfil. Maybe then both genders will be able to “have it all”. – Yours, etc,