Sir, Aine McCarthy's article of September 11th demonstrates that men and women are equal in at least one respect. Both seem equally reluctant to concede that the other is capable of functioning perfectly well in roles which they regarded as traditionally theirs. The argument for equality for women has been largely accepted by men (though the required institutional and legal structures have been somewhat slow to emerge). It seems that women are now experiencing the same trauma over equality for men that men themselves have gone through over the past thirty years.
Women have not quite come to accept that men can be, and more often than not are, equally competent, caring and nurturing parents. Men are by no means all swabs, and it is time our society recognised this fact.
Those separated men who are willing and capable of jointly parenting their children should be allowed to do so as a first choice option, while those who are reluctant should be encouraged to do so. Men have a right and a responsibility to play their full part in the rearing of their children on an equal and fully participative basis, whether the relationship has broken up or not.
How long will we have to wait for our reactive legislators and judiciary to waken up to the fact that this is primarily an equality issue, and one which will not go away? Not long, I hope, and certainly not thirty years. Yours, etc., Sonesta, Malahide, Co Dublin.