Natalie Solent Tells It Like You Wish It Wasn't

Natalie Solent writes:

Following a link from Public Interest I found this article by Joanna Moorhead. Just look at the title and wonder: "For decades we've been told Sweden is a great place to be a working parent. But we've been duped."

In the article Ms Moorhead quotes approvingly (as will I in a moment) an London School of Economics sociologist called Catherine Hakim. Yes, A lioness hath whelped in the streets; And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead and I am about to cheer on a sociologist from the LSE.

Although many of us would love to believe that it's true, and many countries (including Canada) have modelled their social programs on those of Sweden, they turn out to have been economically unviable.

The unpalatable fact, she says, is that there are only so many hours in the day and only so many days in the week and whatever else we expect of the UK and EU the one thing their legislation cannot give us is the one thing that working mothers so desperately crave: more time. "The bottom line is that as far as investment in a career is concerned, policies actually don't make that much difference," she says. "The major investment required is one of time and effort: if you are seriously interested in a career, you don't have time for children and if you are seriously interested in bringing up more than one child, let's say, you don't have the time, effort and imagination for getting to the top of a career."