The rapidly changing nature of the Irish family is indicated by statistics which show that the number of couples where both the man and woman were working doubled in the 10 years to 1996.
According to the Central Statistics Office's Labour Force Survey, in 1986 16.2 per cent of men and women married or living together were both working. By 1996, this had risen to 32 per cent.
This figure underlines the trend of a rapidly rising female participation in the labour force over the past decade. This rose from 30.9 per cent in 1986, to 33.4 per cent in 1991, to 39.1 per cent in 1997.
Prof Jerry Sexton, of the Economic and Social Research Institute, suggests it is between 40 and 45 per cent now. This is still below countries such as Britain and Denmark, which have female participation rates of over 60 per cent.
Prof Sexton, a demographer, said there were both "push and pull factors" in this rapid growth in women working, with pressure on couples to raise money to buy houses on the one hand, and the huge increase in employment opportunities on the other.
His colleague, Dr Tony Fahey, put more emphasis on the second of these factors. He said the participation rate among younger mothers with children under five was nearly up to the European average, although among older women with no children or with their older children over 15, it was still low.
This is partly because of the considerable differences in educational attainment between the two groups, he said. Thus for those, usually younger, women with a university degree, the "opportunity cost" in terms of lost earning power of deciding to stay at home to look after children is far greater than those, usually older, women with a more basic educational level.
Dr Fahey said the current childcare crisis was a consequence of the overall labour shortages in the economy and their impact at the lower end of the income range. Because of the existence of so many more job opportunities now, traditionally low-paid childcare workers could increasingly expect to earn more. Dr Fahey foresaw creche charges of £150-180 per week, compared to a typical £70-90 in recent years.
At the same time, it makes more sense for a more qualified, potentially higher-paid woman to go out to work and pay for childcare than for a woman on a lower income, for whom the benefits after she has paid childcare and other costs are much less.
Dr Fahey said Ireland was now experiencing the "paradox" other European countries had already experienced: that for women on good incomes to give up their recently won earning power and stay at home to mind children was becoming increasingly costly. Demographers pointed to this as one of the main reasons behind the "historic collapse in the fertility of the Western world".
He said this had policy implications for the Government. He asked whether childcare should be regarded less as a private matter for parents, and more as a "public good" necessary for maintaining the future Irish labour-force with generous child benefits.