Picking up on your point, Kirsty, about equal education and opportunity, I think you’re right, this is a cause for optimism! Women do expect more. But despite there being so many women now in higher education, the vast majority of top positions of public authority are still held by men. I think that’s in part because career ambitious young women are still disproportionately responsible for childcare and domestic work, because, as I said before, “it’s natural”. Therefore, women who choose not to follow this pattern, so-called “career women”, (there’s no such term as a career-man”) are often made to feel guilty about their choices.
Additional solutions to 24-hour childcare (which could show the interrelation of class and gender - middle class parents leaving their children in the care of working class women? – maybe, I don’t know) would be more flexible work patterns for both parents, and models of fatherhood that promote more active roles for men in childcare. Hopefully this could go some way towards beginning to deconstruct the view that women are naturally better at and responsible for mothering tasks. There’s still a long way to go on this – obviously this week Mandelson’s attempts to halt flexible work reforms have emerged, and how often do you see baby-changing rooms in men’s toilets?
I think there’s plenty of interesting psychoanalytical theories, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Nancy Chodorow etc., about the benefits for children and men of alternative, nurturing models of fatherhood. But you’ll be better on that than me Kirsty!
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