I have a question

women in the workplace

If you're reading this, and you have children, do you work fewer hours per day or days per week than your partner? And if so, do you do that because you want to, or because you feel you've been forced to? I'm reading an article in the Independent this morning, which refers to Glassdoor survey results ...

Everyday Sexism and Girling Up our Kids

Laura Bates Everyday Sexism - Office Mum

I've never personally experienced any sexism. Or at least not as far as I can remember, which may mean it has happened, and I've brushed it off as a normal, unremarkable, everyday thing. And that's exactly the point Laura Bates was making when she set up The Everyday Sexism Project in 2012, a platform for women to talk ...

The Big Message in The Big Short

dollar bill - office mum

I remember standing in Oasis with my sister in August 2008, looking at a shirt-dress that I really liked. I put it back on the rail. "There's a recession coming," I said to my sister. She had heard the same. We didn't take it too seriously though, how bad could it really be? A month ...

Why Are Straight Women Earning Less?

Office mum work family balance

"Maybe sexist dynamics within heterosexual couples cause straight women to slip down the earning scale. Lesbians will never view their career as second fiddle to a male partner’s because they don’t have male partners." I was reading a piece by Una Mullally in the Irish Times yesterday morning, and the above two lines stopped me. The article ...

The impossible economy of childcare

childcare office mum

I remember the first time my Laser card was rejected. It was 2010, and I was just back at work after my second maternity leave. I was trying to buy some groceries, and couldn’t understand why my card wouldn’t go through. I checked my balance. Forty-three cents. Mid-way through the month. It took a few hours for it all to sink ...

Is Ireland child-friendly?

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Are we a child-friendly society - do we embrace children and their parents in all areas of 21st century Ireland? Or do we corral them into suitable times and places, conveniently out of the path of mainstream everyday life? Fiona Carey thinks we have a way to go. When the Bray-based mum of one was unable to ...

Prime Time childcare exposé – one year on

Office Mum post: handprint image

Exactly a year ago today, RTE's Prime Time documentary "A breach of trust" aired video footage that, to use a well-worn but entirely apt description, shocked the nation. We witnessed a child being slammed down on a sleeping mat and a blanket being thrown over him. We saw a member of staff swearing at a little girl for sticking her fingers into her food. We heard children being ...

Beauty pageant babies

So have you entered your daughter in the Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant this weekend? Me neither. Kind of a no-brainer. Kind of not worth writing a blog post really, as there's nothing to debate, the argument makes itself.And I've just read that the Bracken Court in Balbriggan, revealed this week to be hosting the pageant, has ...

School costs & the double-income contradiction

This week, the Irish Parenting Bloggers are writing about back-to-school costs, a topic that's causing frustration for some and fear for many more around the country this week.  In our house, we are at the early stages of the school life-cycle; we have just one of our three in school, and she's going into senior infants. ...