Time for Parenting...

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

Summer 2005 Newsletter

From the Chair; A Family Party?; The politics of motherhood; A New Arrival - starting a local group

From the Chair

"All you need is Love" is what the Beatles sang and one could be forgiven for imagining that the spirit of the sixties might have exerted a lasting influence on today's leading figures in Government as well as in Opposition.

Sadly, their letters to some of our members no longer convey any of their youthful idealism. As far as parents and children are concerned, the need for "love" and all that this implies has been resolutely substituted by the need for "childcare".

The variations on this theme are endless: higher maternity pay, flexible childcare support, more workplace nurseries, training grandparents to become childminders, breakfast clubs, after school clubs. Needless to say that no MP of any party had the courage or imagination to support the kind of parent who wants nothing more than the hands-on care of her family for a period of years rather than months.

But there are a few straws in the wind that indicate otherwise. Wise men like the Rt. Hon. Frank Field MP and the Archbishop of Canterbury are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and the book "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt ought to be read by all politicians who profess an interest in family policy.

Perhaps then, at last, they would know what the FTM membership already know only too well, which is that "Money can't buy me Love"!

Anna Lines