Call me an old-fashioned fuddy duddy with the intellect of a nanny goat but when Archbishop Mgr Mercieca stated that a woman’s place is in the home and that her first priority was not towards her career but her young children, he was perfectly correct. Let’s picture the scenario of a married couple with two young children. Both the parents work full-time and the kids are left with a granny or a nanny, take your pick. What is the most logical thing to do after one comes home from work deadbeat but sleep? Cooking would be a tremendous chore after a hard day’s labour and the whining of frustrated children who are deprived of calling “mummy” first thing in the morning will be a cumbersome task for any mother who sometimes even take their work home with them. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for mothers working while the children are at school, with the children then going home to find mummy there. This can happen if the mother works part-time, but if both parents are working full-time, there will be no quality time, in fact trying to comprehend what your children are talking about will be as major a task as trying to climb Mount Everest on skates! For crying out loud, is it such a huge sacrifice for a mother to put her career on hold during her child’s formulative years? Is it so black and boring being a stay-at-home mother for the first three or so years of a baby’s life? Equality be blitzed, shouldn’t mum be the first person who sees her baby crawling and suddenly walking, shouldn’t it be mummy’s privilege to see baby’s first tooth, shouldn’t the woman who gave birth to her son/daughter be the first person to hear that magical three-letter word, “mum”?

Finding mummy home during baby’s first years is a refuge for kids, a breath of fresh air and normal and healthy, a safe haven from the hurts of a little child. What did Mgr Mercieca say that may have sounded irrational to most? Did he hit somebody with a fist in their solar plexus? Maybe Mgr Mercieca’s grave mistake was not being specific, that means he should have said that women could work while their kids are at school as long as mum not gran or nan is there to welcome them home.

The holidays abroad could wait, the bedroom suite should be shelved and keeping up with the Joneses is a shameful reason for a woman to take the plunge and go to work.

Work will always be there, albeit not by the quantity, but baby’s first years will never return. Bravo Archbishop Mercieca, you have captured my sentiments exactly.

Valerie Borg

Valletta