Desperate housewives

SINCE when did stay-at-home mothers become the bad guys? Once upon a time it was all about choice – a woman’s right to choose and all that – but now, in less than a generation, the choice has turned full circle. You can hardly call it progress.

Mothers used to be demonised for going out to work. Now they’re ignored for staying at home.

Whatever adjustments the Government might eventually make to tax allowances, the hard truth is that on Monday this week, they gave stayat- home mothers a slap in the face.

Families with two people earning £80,000 will keep their child benefit.

Those with one earning more than £44,000 will lose it.

No wonder mothers at home were protesting loudly. It wasn’t just the money –- it was the snub, the idea that full-time mothers aren’t even worth considering, that the Government hadn’t even thought about them.

How did that happen?

Back in the Fifties my mother worked full time, to much tut-tutting from neighbours, who thought she should have been there in her pinny when I got home, to fuss over me, force-feed me fairy cakes and make me do my homework.

It would have driven her mad. Me too. So from the age of eight I came home to a large empty house and my dog. Suited me fine.

Thankfully, attitudes to working mothers have changed. So much so that they’ve now swung too far the other way. Now it’s mothers who stay at home who are considered the selfindulgent ones.

Improved maternity pay and free nursery places have subtly, stealthily made working mothers the norm, so that many mothers who might have quite liked to have stayed at home until their children started school, are being eased back into the work- place, while someone else looks after their children.

Thirty years ago, fewer than a quarter of mothers went back to work in their baby’s first year. Now three in four are back in 12 to 18 months – a complete turnaround.

Yet a survey this week showed that one-in-eight working mothers would rather be at home. More would rather work part-time.

It’s fantastic that it’s now easier for mothers of young children to get back to work. But it’s appalling that they are expected to do so, whether they really want to or not.

Like my mother, I would have hated to have been at home with no outside work to do. But I sort of envied and admired women who made a full-time job of it. And think they should be free to carry on doing so without being marginalised. Or ignored.

Or made to feel guilty. Or worse off.

All choices are valid and deserve equal respect. Someone tell the Government.

REPORTS written by new graduates working for the Leeds Building Society were so full of spelling and grammatical mistakes that senior executives couldn’t understand them. Result – back to school for the graduates, who now attend traditional English classes to get them up to standard.

They are not alone. According to the Confederation of British Industry, about one in five employers now run some form of remedial teaching so that employees can reach a fairly basic standard.

These are people who often have stunning exam results and brilliant degrees, but can’t read, write, spell or add up properly. Yet every year we are told that teachers are better, students have worked harder and so standards are soaring.

Those statements just don’t add up. And you don’t need A* maths to see that.

THE opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi was stunning. It must have cost a fortune.

And why? The whole point of the Commonwealth, I always thought, was that it was a sort of family. And when the family comes round for tea you don’t spend lavishly in a bid to impress, because you know and your family knows that you can’t really afford it. So they will be content with something much more humble.

Come to that, opening ceremonies are just a huge showing-off exercise anyway. No chance, I suppose, that when it comes to the Olympics we can do something less ostentatious and a lot cheaper?

A GREAT exhibition opened at Tennants, in Leyburn, last Saturday, all about people who left the Dales and ended up all over the world. So many wonderful stories. Essential if you have family connections with Wensleydale, Swaledale and Arkengarthdale and still fascinating if you don’t.

But take a hanky – some of those letters home are desperately moving.

■ It is on until October 16, 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday, 10am to 2pm Saturday. Closed Sunday.

HOW ignorant was I? When I mentioned the lady in the bank who said our handbags were big enough to hide Hitler’s yacht, I had no idea that said yacht, taken as a prize of war in 1945, had ended up in the coal dock at Hartlepool – oh, the glamour! – where the public paid to look around the cabins where Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun had lived.

Elma Glendinning Ebblewhite knew it well. She emailed to say that she had worked on board as a shorthand typist for Mr Georges Arida Jnr and Commander Piper. We are intrigued and hope to learn more from Mrs Ebblewhite.

Son time

WHETHER new Labour leader Ed Miliband is married to his partner Justine Thornton is really neither here nor there. They’re grown-ups, so it’s their choice. Nothing to do with the rest of us.

But for a father to admit that he was “too busy” to get himself down to the register office and put his name on his son’s birth certificate strikes me as... well... a little strange.

What can be more important than formally acknowledging his son? And do we want a party leader with that sense of priorities?

Backchat

Dear Sharon

I WAS not surprised to hear you were foaming at the mouth after reading of the difficulties you had getting a rabies jab for your son.

Since there is now much more movement of of animals in and out of the UK, you would think it would be simpler.

Had your son been a dog, you could have toddled down to your local vets and got him one within the hour.

Which proves my philosophy that it’s better to have dogs than children; they don’t eat as much, don’t ask for money, and if they get pregnant, you can sell their children.

Kathy Harris, Barnard Castle

Dear Sharon

ABOUT your reference to the Harriet Harman remark on motherhood, may I suggest you check out a song, written by Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal. It’s on Shawn Colvin’s 2001 album, Whole New You, and it’s the last track on the CD. It’s called I’ll Say I’m Sorry Now.

My mum, 83, alive and well in Darlington, has no need to say she’s sorry and I’m sure she, you, Harriet and millions of others have no need to feel guilty either.

Not Always A Perfect Son, Darlington