Madam, – My mind boggled on reading “On course for better parenting” (Sheila Wayman, HEALTHplus, May 25th).
I was born “illegitimate” (oh, how I take exception to that description) in 1937 and spent my childhood in “care”, first in a convent in Kilkenny and then in the infamous Artane Industrial School. I therefore had no practical experience of a normal upbringing in a house with a loving father and mother and siblings. Upon leaving (or should that be “discharged from”?) Artane at age 16, I hit-two-birds-with-one-stone as it were, by getting a job in a hotel, and “living-in” there.
In due course, I married and had three children. As a father, I had no difficulty in bringing them up; all three going on to university and subsequently to good careers and marriages. Leaving aside my own success as a parent without any precedent, how did the previous generations manage in what, in most cases, were large families? I would suggest that good old common-sense and a large dollop of a get-up-and-go attitude prevailed. – Yours, etc,