I do bush there was a bit more understanding of how difficult, how awkward and how torn you can be if you are a working parent on a low income.
In my professional life as a teacher, if I needed time off for an ill child it was granted, albeit sometimes with a snooty comment. If I needed time off for illness, it was paid. It was a fixed working day (not shifts) and I had a union I could ask for support.
I'm using that as it's my experience but come on - really - do you need that much imagination to know that if you work on low pay, you often don't get paid for illness and sick children? Can you really not appreciate that if you're in a zero hours contract and turn down some hours one week you run the risk of getting next to none the week after, or awkward ones and shifts no one wants? Have you honestly never experienced a horrible boss shouting at you or saying you CAN'T do something?
It's so easy to piously insist none of that matters, your child comes first. Well, great - that's probably why you need to keep that job to pay your mortgage and pay for the school trip and shoes and maybe even have a holiday. The fact that once in a blue moon your child is ill can't cost you any of that.
I'm going to hold my hands up now and say that even as a SAHM I find being solely responsible for a seven year old and a baby relentless. Don't know how people with smaller age gaps do it. I am probably crap! Working as well would spend me spinning into a panic.
It's a bloody tough life and someone who does it is not, I can guarantee, thinking 'ach, never mind little johnny, he will be OK'. They are probably miserable as well.
Is it not maybe the fault of our nation that has pushed housing prices up so far that two parents almost have to work? Is it not something to do with lone parents having to work when their children start school? Isn't it also to do with lack of employment rights and security and legislation?
No, no, no. All - ALL - upon the mother.