RECENTLY the TV Sunrise program featured a panel (all women) debating how soon a mother should return to work after the birth of her baby.
One of the guests stated that two weeks was long enough. She couldn’t stand being at home (she was financially secure).
Under the heading “Chores bore single women” on August 7, 2003, a news article in the Daily Telegraph reported “women were rejecting marriage through fears of carrying the full burden of child-rearing and domestic chores”.
“Young women whose working mothers shouldered most of the workload at home feared a similar fate,” Monash University sociologist Naomi White said.
She interviewed 40 people aged 22 to 30 in Melbourne.
Respondents felt that if they had children, they would be burdened with domestic and childcare responsibilities and forfeit their careers, the report said.
“The men had also been exposed to the high divorce rate and so were less inclined to marry,” Dr White said.
I was saddened by the words “burden” and “responsibility” in relation to children. I recall reading an editorial in about 1995: “Children are a lifetime commitment from which we should never seek to be released” and family was the glue that held society together.
JUDITH LAW
GUNNEDAH