Time for Parenting...

...because raising children is a full-time job

Autumn 2000 Newsletter

Editorial; Notice of AGM; Feeling under pressure; Marriage and Parenting; Motherhood mady sexy; Survey Results; Warning! Motherhood can damage your wealth; What the papers say

Editorial

The National Family & Parenting Institute has nominated 23-29 October as Parents' Week. The week's events are being launched by one of the highest-profile working mothers around: Cherie Blair. According to the Institute, the week is designed to carry home the message Putting Families First. To all those parents - especially mothers - who are sacrificing careers, income and personal ambition in order to put their families first, the presence of Mrs Blair may suggest some conflict between the message and the medium.

However, Full Time Mothers will be the first to agree that we should put families first, and we have responded to the Institute's request for 'one wish' to make Britain more family-friendly. Our wish: 'that mothers should not be under financial and social pressure to go back to work while their children are young, so that every mother can have the opportunity to care for her own children for as long as she feels is right'.

Thank you to all those members who took the trouble to fill in the detailed survey enclosed with our Spring newsletter; the responses have been analysed - click here for the results. They make for interesting reading. Thanks are also due to all those members who responded to our request for extra help in our Summer edition - emails and telephone calls came flooding in and we should have no difficulty getting our committee up to full strenght at our AGM.

The theme of the AGM is 'Baby to child: emotional well-being' and we have two excellent speakers lined up. If you can possibly manage to be in London on Thursday 16 November, do please join us. Click here for full details. See you there!

Jill Kirby, Chairman