Sir, - Maryanne Kerr's story (May 15th) pinpoints the moral sickness which provides the shadowed backdrop to our lives today. Pleasure unmixed with reason.
We have run so fast from the excessive guilt of the past that we have not been able to stop ourselves. So we have reached a present where healthy guilt is obscured and people rejoice in being "free" not to care about others.
The words of Shakespeare seem prophetic. He wrote of a time when "mothers shall but smile when they behold their children quartered by the hands of war, All pity choked by custom of fell deeds."
Recently we read of Gail Sheehy's warning about the "danger of putting reproduction off until it's no longer possible". Career women leaving it almost too late to give time to having a baby.
How many people working with children note the fact that after babyhood the children, like trinkets once desired, are left to fend for themselves by parents who have once again picked up the threads of outside work and social life?
The "prime time" given to some children illustrates the emergence of a new, unholy guilt. Parents swing between overlooking the children and pampering them. Children need constant love, presence and availability. We are seeing in the lost children of today the lack of cherishing they so needed.
Today's world seems to belong to the powerful, the rich, the greedy and the obdurate. For many of our children there is no home. - Yours, etc.,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.