[Livia]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Do you actually stand at school gates regularly Livia? I'm not meaning to sound smart by saying that but you would be surprised, I drop my kids to school, my husband collects them, from what I see at the school gates that's a common occurrence among families now a days, I see it with my friends who have kids and from my kids friends parents, most of them are both working and they work the childcare/collecting dropping from school between them

No I don't spend a lot of time at the school gates, but you already know that. However, up until last year I drove past three primary schools every day to get to work and the people dropping off their kids were almost exclusively women. Likewise, I have been to school with my brother to drop my nieces off (my brother stayed at home with the kids while his wife went to work) and he was one of only two or three men dropping off their kids, and he was the only man at playgroup when they were really little. Also, I worked with lots of professional women who have kids and mostly it's their childcare providers who collect their kids and they are also almost exclusively women.

I don't think you can convince me that there's an even split with men and women when it comes to staying home and taking care of the kids, even though my brother was one of those who did just that.

Anyhoo, the crux of this matter as far as I'm concerned is this: if women want to take advantage of this and work for a particular company, then that's their call. I just don't understand why some people think it's a retrograde stop when no one is being forced or coerced into anything. These are professional women we're talking about. They're well able to make up their own minds.