In the News

[ailbhe]

A woman has been arrested after her baby was rescued from a smoke-filled house.

There were three children alone in the house, aged about 1, about 2, and about 3 (the one-year-old is the "baby" of the headline). Clearly she was wrong to leave them alone in the house.

But oh, by all the gods, I can think of so many ways to talk myself into thinking it might be ok. One year, two years, and three years. Gods.

I wonder have they any other parent, and will that other parent also be charged.

Comments

[rmc28]

Also I am that rare category of mother who out-earns the father, and did so before getting pregnant. This put me in a much better position to argue the "we need to divide childcare equitably" than if I was earning less, as is often the case.

The seeing childcare as coming out of the 'second' salary problem comes out of viewing household finances as only made up of 2 full-time salaries, and of course as viewing the money as the only measure, rather than the happiness. Plenty of people would take a reduction in salary over being happy (e.g. Parent High-Earner works a 4-day week and Parent Low-Earner works a 2-3 day week and childcare is covered out of the joint account and everybody is a bit poorer and a lot happier).

[naath.livejournal.com]

And leads to the dreaded "but you earn less than childcare would cost, so you clearly should do the childcare yourself!" argument; which makes some financial sense but doesn't at all address the happiness question. And why, oh why, is childcare so expensive? (well, yes, skilled job and all that... but why can't it be subsidised?).

I think I'm probably just lucky that I plain old don't like babies and am not facing making my way through all of this.