It used to be that social pressures were hostile to married women working, to such an extent that 40 years ago only 5 per cent of married women worked, and in the public service they actually lost their jobs when they married.
As late as 1991 the proportion of married women working was only slightly over one-third, but by 2002 almost half of married women were working, peaking at five-eighths of those in the 25-34 age group.
A survey at the end of 2002 revealed a good deal about the childcare arrangements of parents of pre-school and primary schoolchildren. In some one-half of couples with children at school, both parents work, and this is also true of almost one-half of lone parents. Of course, because of part-time working, not all of these face childcare problems.
Two-fifths of working couples who need assistance with childcare for pre-school children have them looked after by relations, and one-third by paid carers, while a quarter send them to playschool or Montessori. Lone parents make much greater use of relatives and less of paid carers.
In the case of primary schoolchildren, greater use is made of both relatives and paid carers: two-thirds of lone parents of such children rely mainly on relatives, such as grandparents, showing that the extended family remains a very important feature of Irish family life.
The use of creches or Montessori schools is more common in Dublin, while there is greater use of paid carers elsewhere.
From the children's point of view it would be preferable for a parent to be available outside school hours, and while early socialisation in a pre-school is good for children from age three upwards, it would be better if this activity involved only part of the day, with a parent available the rest of the time.
But where incomes are low - for example, in the case of a lone mother on social welfare, or where one working parent has a low wage - the children's welfare may require income supplementation by a second parent working. And, apart from this financial factor, many wives, like almost all husbands, are unwilling to be confined to a domestic role.
The decisions as to whether a lone parent, or in the case of a couple both parents, work is a matter that is best decided by themselves. Attempts by the State to intervene in either direction with a view to influencing this decision - whether, as in the past, by banning wives from public employment, or more recently by rigging the tax system to provide artificial incentives for wives to work - seem to me to be inappropriate. What is abundantly clear, however, is that a problem exists for a substantial minority who do not have relatives nearby able and willing to look after their children.
What can the State reasonably be expected to do in order to remove obstacles to married women making as free a choice as possible with regard to working?
Women's freedom in this respect is most enhanced by paying adequate children's allowances that operate in a neutral way; helping them either to remain at home looking after their children or, should they prefer to work, to pay for the cost of childcare. The trouble is that children's allowances, at €62 a week for two, for example, cover too small a fraction of childcare costs, which for a woman working a 36.5-hour week in late 2002 cost an average of €185 a week in the mid-west and €245 in Dublin.
Radically improved child benefits would, I believe, be greatly preferable to the social engineering approach initiated by this Government some years ago through the individualisation of tax bands with a view to inducing more married women to enter employment.
Public pressure against that purely economics-motivated approach prevented the Government from persisting further with it. Whether children's allowances should be taxed is another question, made politically difficult by the well-intentioned decision of a government of which I was a member 30 years ago to pay them to the mother, who in many cases is not the taxpayer.
But in cases where there is a need for the mother to work in order to supplement an inadequate income something more is needed.
To start with, the existing pilot scheme which provides playschool facilities in a small number of disadvantaged areas should be extended to all such areas, either free or for a nominal payment.
This is desirable not only because it would help many families escape from poverty but also because it is precisely children in these disadvantaged areas who would most benefit from early socialisation, to give them a start in life and to reduce anti-social behaviour. There would be a huge long-term social gain from such a development.
It would, of course, be even better if play-school facilities could be provided, not just in disadvantaged areas but throughout the country. For financial reasons this is unlikely to happen in the near future, and the needs of poorer families living outside disadvantaged areas could in the meantime be met by assisting them with the cost of fees in private pre-schools. This would be preferable to tax reliefs for childcare costs, which are of no use to low-paid workers outside the tax net.
For both parents and pre-school children, by far the best arrangements would be to encourage the location of creches at workplaces where numbers would justify it. As one out of every 17 workers is a working parent currently paying for pre-school children to be looked after, workplace creches would be justified in many firms with upwards of 100 workers. The State could encourage such firms by offering suitable tax reliefs.
For primary and second-level school children by far the best way of helping working parents would be through a general scheme of after-school activity or homework clubs, located in school premises and supervised either by teachers or by appropriately-qualified parents. The state could play a useful role by encouraging larger primary schools and all second-level schools to establish a facility of this kind.
Alternative approaches in Scandinavia and France are also worth studying.