Timkins, I have made no insinuations regarding yourself. I don't know you. I have just provided you with a solution. Where is yours? .... Furthermore, I refuse to respond to any of your 'demands' until you start reading the rejoinders that people present to you. What are you anyway, the dictator of a small country or something?

"I also will be asking you to not be making any further insinuations regards myself, or be purposely misinterpreting what I have said." Har, har, pot calling the kettle black.

I agree with you Timkins that we need to start talking about "mothers and fathers". We need to acknowledge the partnership that exists between a couple and the mutual decision they have to make about caring for their children. That could be the mother staying at home or the father staying at home, or both of them working while their children are in childcare.

We have to start talking about the decisions of a "mother and father" so that couples discuss their options. That way, hopefully people will stop whinging about the sacrifices "I" make and start realizing the contribution "we" both make to child raising.

Tracey -

Keep an eye on this new attempt by politicians to weigh into the debate about rights to terminate pregnancies. Picture a family of aspirationals in the electorate of Werriwa. Mum may have taken the economic decision to end the third pregnancy. Now daughter #1 is 12, just started at private school. They are mortgaged out to the horizon, and they want only to see young miss in a prestigious profession. Between now and when she leaves home, the lass will have numerous occasions to slip up, and find herself pregnant. I do not think this family wants to have an cardinal, a senator or the HIC looking onto their kitchen table while they can have the private option to end an unwanted and very inconvenient pregnancy.

If the PM lets Abbott & Pell drag this one out for more than two days, Beazley only needs to reassure his support for the status quo.

Ahhh... the media hacks just love to forment contrived social divisions. They are so tediously predictable. Yet again its undertones of that hackneyed old gender snore. Thankfully for them, the internet is keeping their views in the public domain, what with the en masse abandonment of mainstream press. But not thankfully for the rest of us, whose consciousness is kept firmly weighed down by their limited perceptual dross.

Its hardly a mystery that politics is very conservative. And that families form a huge demographic in our society. l haven't seen a single, childless man become leader of a political party in recent times. In fact its a bugbear of mine that the PR hacks thrust a politician's family out front on the campaign trail. Who cares about them? Its not like we are voting for them. Maybe people like to see the greatness 'behind' the great. Although l doubt greatness lurks in the shadows and in the backrooms. Nah... l think its just because we are a family oriented society, we are conservative, we like to see something we can relate to and we like all the PR spun personality that a family man/woman invokes in our minds when we tick and number boxes every 3 or 4 years.

To Audrey, your quote...

So I challenge you Timkins and all the other men who staunchly disagree that child-rearing is only women's work, to spend a week, a month, a year! at home whilst forgoing your career, and take the place of the primary carer, and then write to women and tell them how much you easier you have found it. Debunk the myth first hand.

l know at least one man who is the homemaker. He also earns top dollar in his home based business. In his opinion its a cakewalk. Little fella is in school now and its a cakewalk floating on a breeze. The only time it gets difficult is when his partner gets home from works and she chews him out for whatever greivance she's mulled over during the day. And when his son is on school holidaze. He doesn't go around creating housework and filling an 8 hour day with 1 or 2 hrs of domestic duties. Otherwise, with childcare, grandparents, cleaning services its a breeze. Oh, and he doesn't hesitate to let her know how easy it is. He wont let her off the hook tho. If she wants to quit work, she better figure out a way to pay her own way, seeing as we're equal and all that.

l suspect that, contrary to what many women say, the last thing in the world that many of them would want is for him to become a home maker and for her to return to the sole destroying empty promises of career and wage slavery. For most men who grew up in the last 40 yrs, we know what it takes to maintain a household and look after ourselves as we've been doing it. Sure its not at the same lofty and retentive standard of the superior sex, but its good enough for us.

Trade215,

Please make sure of your facts before making your generalised assertions regards myself.

I look after a child for many weeks at a time and enjoy it. I also find no problems at all in such things as housework. Look carefully through all my previous posts in various topics before making your assertions, particularly my two previous posts to this.