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We don't have enough support for maternal leave and the kinds of things that some of the European countries do. So we still make it hard on women to go into the work force and feel that they can be good at work but then doing the most important job, which is raising your children in a responsible and positive way.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

The deal is that women have entered the workforce, but they have not been relieved of the domestic responsibilities.

Once you get married, women are still implicitly expected to do the majority of the housework and take care of any future children.

Every time a woman leaves the workforce because she can't find or afford childcare, or she can't work out a flexible arrangement with her boss, or she has no paid maternity leave, her family's income falls down a notch. Simultaneously, national productivity numbers decline.

If a guy works, and he has children, it's good, and he doesn't feel the same guilt about not being there for the children as a woman would. With a woman, there's that pull: 'Oh, I should be home,' when she's at work, and 'Oh, I should be at work,' when she's at home.

At times, it seems as if the only women effortlessly balancing their jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones on TV.