I thank the common sense of Australians who didn't vote for him, since judging by his insular irratic personality,we would now be all in a whirlwind of chaos.

Sam & tus, I’m glad you enjoy your lifestyle, and I hope your children enjoy your choices as well. However your arrogant assumptions that you have all the answers – and only your way of raising children is correct - are an insult to parents everywhere who don’t choose to your way. Who do, either for choice or necessity, live in cities where the cost of living is higher. How dare you assert that working parents cannot be good parents, that the two states of being (worker and parent) are mutually exclusive. Oh, unless you have a wife doing the parenting part for you of course, while you’re in the paid workforce, albeit for one hour less per day. Sorry, this does not make you a better parent than anybody else. But learning a bit more acceptance and understanding of other peoples’ positions – and teaching this to your children - just might.

Katyana,

Sorry if I came across as arrogant, that's not the intention.

Iwas just saying that for me personally I prefer to forgo a bit of earning capacity to spend more time with my family.

What I do is just one of many options but it is the right one for me and I did say that not everyone has total choice in this matter.

The article is about getting out of the struggle of the rat race, I proffered my idead of how you can do that to some extent.

Some people like the pressure and that it is their choice but the reality is it often leads to less time with the children - something I will not do.

I do not condemn anyone who does not get to spend a lot of time with their kids, because it is quality not quantity that is important.

Still though, I enjoy as much time with my children and wife as possible and it is possible if you sacrifice some things, just as Mark Latham did.

t.u.s.

katyana

I am not sure of the exact cause for your excessively emotive post but in it the answer of what you really think and feel about your life show and it also shows that you are doing the expected thing of toeing the official line to this so called over working parents can be good parents.

Eventually you are not the decider of how good a parent you are but your child is and if your child who are by the way are smarter than most of us think and have a good understanding of what their parents should be and do in caring for them and helping them grow then who grows as a effective mentally and emotionally balanced adult capable of handling challenges in life then you should be proud as a parent.

But if your child is fearful and under command to obey rules having little expression of who they are as you usually get in these government and institutional care when our children are spending most time and which number of parents acutually want and their nurturing care increasingly neglected by their busy parents then you are more of a failure as a parent.

Nothing personal and its the way it is and you make the decision of do you want your child to one of the obeyers or a independent individual.

Sam

I can honestly agree that from the experiances of my fahther who just recenlty passed away at the early age of 52 and who loved us dearly that I wish he was able to spend more time with us rather then working, but I understnad that he needed to work to put food on the table and care for us, and I don't blame him for wanting the best for us, but I still wish everyday that he was able to be there when i graduated year 12, or on my formal day, or my school award days. I am only 20 and now that he is gone he will miss my graduation from university, my engagement, my wedding the birth of my children etc.

A fathers love is so important... I wanted to share all of these experiacnes with him. I beg those fathers out there with children, try not to miss out on the really important aspects, my father was a generous loving man who worked 10-12hours a day down a mine to keep us going and becasue he worked causal he couldnt really take any days off.

I always just wanted to share these moments with my father as I wanted him to be proud of me, I wanted him to know how succesful I was going to become.

Eventually the stress of working long hours away from family got to much for him, and his heart couldn't keep up. the last few weeks he always told me how he wanted to spend more time with family when he retired, all of the things he missed out on he didnt want to miss out on anymore. But he never got that chance to enjoy hs family. He was going to retire in two years time when he worked up enough money to live off...