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 ...
Only 1% of UK fathers are taking up shared parental leave, one year after it was introduced, according to news reports this week. Parents get 50 weeks between them, to share however they see fit, but the take-up by dads has been abysmally low. There are no similar statistics here in Ireland (as far as I could ...
Imagine a world where there’s no five-day work-week. Where employees choose their hours, depending on what’s required of them. Where employers can rely on the job being done, regardless of where staff are based, or how long they spend working. Where parents spend more time with kids. Where carers in every capacity are less stressed about ...
Playing Duplo trains with my three-year-old last week, we had a crisis. We couldn’t find the train driver. I picked up the girl who came with the set and put her in the driver’s seat. My little boy took her back out. “No, she is a girl – she can’t be the train driver. We ...
Would you consider working just to cover the cost of childcare? According to a recently released EU-wide study, that's exactly what huge numbers of Irish women are doing. The researchers used a “Participation Tax Rate” (PTR) to see what percentage of earnings are lost through tax, loss of social welfare benefits, and childcare costs. The study was based on ...
"Stop complaining working mums, you've got it good!" was the headline on one of a number of recent articles about Laura Vanderkam's book I Know How She Does It. The headlines are provocative, and message in the book is prompting mixed reactions from working mothers. For anyone struggling to keep it all together, hearing that it's all fine, when ...
"Because dads have harder jobs than mums," announced my seven-year-old, stopping me in my tracks, as we pulled into the playground. She was chatting about summer and playdates and conversations she'd been having with friends in school about seeing each other over the holidays. She'd worked out that one of her friends might be around, because ...
I've published 53 interviews with women about balancing work and home, and I've written dozens of posts about women in the workplace, but I haven't said much recently about my own job. I do have an update though - after seventeen years in the funds industry, six jobs, eight bosses, and far too many pairs of black ...
Are our families being damaged by the non-stop commuting lives we lead? Or are children with two employed parents doing OK after all? The media gives us conflicting answers to this - often on a daily basis. Most recently, there's are reports of a study that showing that children in families where two parents work are ...
It’s 8.30. The kids are finally in bed. Emmie will be down in a few minutes, to say her water glass isn’t full enough or she had a bad dream while she was awake, or her nose is itchy. I’ll kiss her again and in the same breath, I’ll ask her to promise to stay ...