Boys - read our lips. Listen to what a woman says, especially what a feminist says, and learn from it. Also, stop thinking that you can figure things out all by your male selves. You only have to look at recent examples of two especially powerful men who made spectacular eejits of themselves to see what I mean. The first guy is the London judge who presided over the libel case which Jeffrey Archer brought against a newspaper, and the other guy is our own otherwise loveable Charlie McCreevy.
The judge found that Archer wouldn't dream of going to a prostitute because Archer had what the judge called a "fragrant, radiant wife". A man with a wife like that wouldn't engage in cold rubber sex with a stranger, said the Judge. Sweet Jesus - do these guys not read books written by feminists? Was the judge totally unaware of The Zipless Fuck, wherein it was acknowledged that women and men alike, happily married though they be, just love having a fuck with strangers? And that they responsibly use rubbers? And that rubbers, far from being awful, can actually add to the joy of sex because they prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease?
Is the Judge, furthermore, totally unaware that many men, regardless of class, are sad sexually dysfunctional bastards who can only engage in intimate congress if they believe the woman is inferior, which is why they hire women who are forced to work as prostitutes? If this judge is that stupid, he shouldn't be let out.
Still, maybe he is capable of learning. Maybe he has kept in touch with the Archer saga. And maybe (which is more likely) the judge was in classic denial about the antics of the class he symbolises, which is notoriously dysfunctional in matters sexual and had already been exposed: before the Archer case, the British Attorney General was forced to resign after being nicked for kerb-crawling (his fragrant wife subsequently divorced him).
Now let's look at Charlie. He gave a bigger tax break than usual to rich, married people who both work outside the home. It didn't matter if these people had no children. They got a tax break just for being rich, married and engaged in paid labour. Then Charlie added that the wife could keep her share of the tax break (before that, a husband was entitled in law to claim his wife's tax allowance.) Then Charlie threw up a smoke screen - if the couple had children, didn't they deserve a tax break? It cost money, after all, to pay for childcare outside the home.
Fine, as far as it goes, had Charlie realised that it also costs money to stay at home and rear children. The stay-at-home parent gives up a wage packet to do so, and saves the state a fortune on child-rearing. Being home all day, there are extra costs - for heating the house, for lighting, for extra wear and tear - the same costs as are run up in an office. Charlie never thought of that. As he didn't think that there are some parents who can't afford to work outside the home because the low pay offered wouldn't cover the cost of childcare.
Charlie tried to cover his tracks again by offering a belated tax credit to the spouse who stays at home. The spouse didn't have to be a parent. As far as Charlie was concerned, you get a tax break just for being married and staying at home, painting your toenails or shaving your chin, or whatever. More uproar.
All right, said Charlie, extending the same tax break to spouses who rear their own children at home. Not as big a break as that given to married couples with no children who work outside, which is bigger than that given to married couples with children who work outside and have to pay someone to look after the children, which is in turn bigger than that given to the spouse with no children who just stays at home watching football on the telly, but still - a little something for the spouse who rears a child at home.
Thanks very much, Charlie. You're beginning to get the idea. The idea is this: anyone who rears a child at home is doing work which the state should pay for. All production and service industries should be paid for and we need children, just as we need roads and computers - if only so that, when we retire to a well-earned pension, the grown-up children can do the work we used to do.
That idea has been around since feminists came up with it a hundred years ago. We floated it, successfully, in the '70s with the insistence that mothers who are not married should be given a single parent's wage. Charlie didn't listen, Charlie made a mess of his budget, Charlie is now paying for his silly mistake, and Irish people are reaping the benefit of an idea whose time has come: money for doing the job of parent. Charlie still hasn't got it right, though - he is not giving money directly to the parent who rears the child, he is giving a tax credit in that parent's name to the spouse who works outside the home.
Jesus, Charlie, listen. It's utterly simple. Pay a proper wage, formerly known as the children's allowance, directly to the parent who rears the child at home. Let them pay tax on it. Let people working outside the home pay tax on their earnings. And let the great debate that originated within feminism be taken up now by everyone - what exactly is a just wage for the person who rears the child?
Tentative answer: more than Charlie is being paid, given the mess he made of our finances. Sure any female, with or without child, could have told him what to do, because every female with a working womb has had perforce to think about pregnancy, and females have been thinking about this since they first gave birth to the rest of the human race. It isn't just the womb that has made us wise - females who are without a working womb have been thinking of the importance of children. They have adopted, mixed their eggs, done all they can to see that children are brought into the world. They know it makes sense. They know it can be joyous work.
However, the party stops here Charlie, on the eve of the millennium. No harm to the baby Jesus, his virgin mother and the holy spirit who impregnated her - God bless them indeed on this, birthday two thousand, and weren't they lucky to have three kings shelling out the gold, frankincense and myrrh - but: it's payback time, Charlie. Married parents must be paid for the job, just as unmarried parents are, and all full-time parents must get a full-time wage. Including productivity bonus. n