On International Men’s Day, won’t someone think of the fathers?
Personally, I’m a little surprised that we need a survey to conclude that increased parenting responsibilities tend to add to your stress levels, and that unpaid house and caring work on top of a paid job does indeed take its toll. All over Ireland, there are mothers who could tell you that.
A waste of space of a man – on mammy memes and narratives of fatherhood
I can’t escape the feeling that the labels matter. If, when we vent, we make parenting synonymous with mothering, we’re doing everyone – not least mothers – a huge disservice. If we want to change the fact that women are walking away from their jobs in droves because it just makes no financial sense for their higher-earning partners to quit, we need to change the notion of ‘woman’ meaning mother meaning maternity leave and sick days while ‘man’ means none of those things, ever.
Be grateful and stop moaning – or, why we need to talk about home-schooling
As thousands of households all over the country are grappling with this new normal, the narrative of maternal super powers isn’t helping. Let me tell you, I feel nothing like a superhero. I feel exhausted and sad and insufficient a lot of the time.
Toy guns and toxic masculinity
We’re all products of the society we grow up in. Put a toy gun in the hands of your three-year-old, and you can’t be surprised when they turn to violence in their teens or struggle to solve problems by talking things through.
To the woman who told me all my child needed was a hug
You came into our lives at about 8.10am this morning. I was standing outside my house, my youngest kid kitted out and ready to go, his older brother screaming hysterically at the top of his lungs, quite possibly waking every single person in Drumcondra our side of Griffith Park.
Why have kids if you don't want to spend time with them?
‘All this never-ending talk of me time. I hear it everywhere,’ the writer complained, insisting that the fact that a crèche even needs to remind parents to spend time off with their kids is a sign that our need for ‘me time’ has gone overboard.
Down Syndrome, reproductive choices and the need for a social welfare state
How narrow can the perception of the perfect child get? It’s an interesting and important question from a philosophical point of view, but when asked in the context of the reproductive justice discourse it becomes puzzling at best – not least because monitoring pregnant people’s motivations is tricky.
A feminist childcare model - and mammies doing it wrong
Such is the game of pitting mothers against each other: you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. This of course is nothing new; the stream of new studies seems never-ending, and media loves reporting on them – likely because new mothers never fail to fall for the clickbait, desperate for some sort of evidence that they’re doing something right in this most difficult job they’ve ever tried their hand at.
