Cherful,

Whether one agrees with it or not, men and women tend to get together so that they can reproduce. In whatever form this arrangement presents itself, the women in most societies are usually going to provide the primary hands-on nurturing during the child's infancy.
The problem that Western women have forged for themselves is that they haven't been able to discard their maternal obligations as easily as they have their aprons. As a consequence they are harried and harnessed by their new found "freedom" to such an extent that it ceases to be a freedom at all in the real sense.
You say: "That's when they began the fight for childcare and won the right to keep working after they had children."....or one could look at it another way and come to the realisation that that's when they won the right to institutionalise infants en masse. Childcare in a village is organic and naturally interwoven with the industry of its inhabitants.

The rise of the working woman was undertaken as a tacit agreement between the two genders in the service of consumer society. Isolation of women follows on from the breakdown of local communinity - something that goes hand in hand with our culture of growth.
Whether you like it or not, isolation is not so much a gender issue as a cultural one - born of late twentieth century capitalism and one to which the more radical aspects of feminist ideology has in no small part contributed

Poirot
You write some inciteful stuff. Your ability to cut through the spiel to the chase is admirable.

searching
We could both probably come up with a list of the effects of underfunding in some sectors and the gross overfunding of sport and art which are not essential. Art and music (and sport to some extent) is an important part of culture but individuals have been contributing in those fields for some time without government funding. It is something the private sector and individual endeavour could service quite well without the government other than a national gallery and one for each state. Some of the purchases could be sponsored or subsidised more via private means.

Paternity leave is in the 'wants' category rather than needs. There are already tax concessions for families which I think are worthwhile but adding more taxpayer money to the mix in the form of subsidised childcare (while its workers earn one of the lowest wages) and paternity leave overcommit funding to the middle class.

Why not a re-think of our values. Such as some questioning of the values inherent in seeing human beings only as economic units or looking differently at issues of overt consumerism and growth.

It would be great if we could go back to the "good old days" when women stayed home and looked after the little tykes and let hubby be the bread winner.

Well, times have changed and we must change with them.

Values were re-thought at one stage - the value of women in the workforce and society - thats why women can now have an education.

I think its wonderful that a women can contribute to the value of the family by an income and to her own self asteem at the same time. Because a women decides to have children and work, does not make her any less of a mother.

There are plenty of mothers who dont work (on welfare) who arent necessarily good parents because they stay home.

Its wonderful that a mother/father can have bonding time with their child in those first months.

Ok...then lets have it means tested. Set a limit. Those on incomes over a certain amount who are planning a family can take out an insurance plan that would cover all or a large percentage of the time they wish to take off after the baby arrives.

We continually look to the past and say "oh how wonderful it was". The past is only ever good looked at from the future.

I have heard people say - "look at the poor countries - they value families because they dont have anything else" - well, then why are they risking life and limb to get to this country if its sooo wonderful in their own country..

Poirot--You mention the part where I said that women fought for and won the right to childcare but you conveniently forgot to mention what I said about the injustice to women before that, being under the total financial dominance of men. You forget also that women had to fight for the vote. It was the fact that they did have the vote that made the male politicians eventually agree to what women wanted because they wanted to win elections.

As you say even in todays society most women are still the major hands-on carers for their children and they quickly realise once they have children in a marriage that the men are not bound by the rules of motherhood and can have a lot more freedom to come and go as they choose too. Like telling their wife they have to work back or having a drink at the pub on the way home while their wife rushes home to deal with the tiring,noisy,stressful evening chaos involved with the needs of children.

Consumerism is only part of the reason women work it also stems from women realising that men had the much better deal in marriage then they did. To the woman without children who still has her false romantic notions about the equality of marriage you'll learn if ever you do have children. This country as well as others owe women a whole heap of backpay for their unpaid labour which men exploited and took advantage of for centuries.

The least they can do now is pay them maternity leave and not just mothers who go out to work but all mothers.
I dislike it when all mothers don't support each other. The womens electoral lobby and a lot of feminists have been guilty of not supporting equal financial policies for women who choose to spend a few years at home looking after infant children, while claiming every sort of financial support for themselves. This denigrates motherhood as having no value.

ANTISEPTIC-- CHERFULS blithe--the country's got lots of money,I want some of it because I'm a woman is typical of the hand-out mentality that seems so prevalent among the ethically-challenged feministas.

I speak not for myself but for today's mothers,My children are grown and self-supporting with children of their own. I don't speak for any movement, and I have never identified with any movement feminist or otherwise, I just call it as I see it. My opinions may be the same as self-proclaimed feminists at times and at other times they may not be.

I'm looking more at how badly women,especially mothers have been treated by male dominated societies and still are in a lot of areas in the world. It's about time that was redressed. Society owes mothers big time and the least that can be done is to pay them maternity leave. All of them.

You men don't mind when they pay some thick skulled neanderthol footballer a million dollars to just kick a football around a field for a couple of hours. Hardly nation building.

CHERFUL, the fact that women have had it tough in the past does not justify handouts today. Men have also had it tough - frequently tougher than women, so the point is moot.

The fact of the matter today is that women have never had it so good and probably never will again, since the handout culture that has developed is simply unsustainable.

Once upon a time, my grandmother prided herself on being able to "make do", with the result that I developed a liking for tripe and tongue and so on, as they were the cheap meats that she had brought her own family up on and they had become a family tradition. She was not a middle-class princess, but the wife of a plumber who had been badly gassed in WW1 and was frequently ill as a result. I never once heard my Nan complain that she had to make do, she thought it was a very positive attribute. I do too.

Compare that with the pampered middle-class princesses of today who demand that someone else pay for their every cost of doing what comes naturally and that they regard as the ultimate expression of their femininity.

And you people wonder why I have no respect for you...