Empathic Parenting

"Our society will do nothing that acknowledges that children legitimately alter peoples' lives.

"It will not seriously consider financial support for a parent who chooses to be at home because people in this society are only paid for economically productive work and caring for your own children is not seen as such. And it will certainly not recognize parenting as a special, and especially valuable, segment of some long adult working lives because it does not truly recognize meeting the needs of children as a good investment.

"So people are left to struggle with the parent/worker dilemma, and the one thing they can be certain of is social censure when they fail on either count.

"We shall not create a child-friendly society unless we first create one that is parent-friendly. We cannot do that by looking back to earlier kinds of family; to earlier styles of social life. If it is to be done at all, we have to find ways of doing it within the context of today."

Penelope Leach