ON MOTHER’S DAY, the role of mothers is acknowledged with flowers and chocolates. But mothers need more than that. They, and other primary carers in the home, need genuine social support, and what the research is showing us about the mental health of young people now, they need it fast.

Research is showing that something is going badly wrong in the lives of young people in Ireland. One study points to young people being more miserable and anxious than their parents, with a quarter of school-age adolescents having mental well-being that was “bad” or “very bad”.

The Planet Youth Survey 2018-2023 reported that one-in-12 Irish teenagers aged 15-19 have attempted suicide in their lifetime, while more than one-in-ten have self-harmed, and one-in-five reported poor mental health.

“Our study shows that in a typical classroom of 25 senior-cycle students, five will report poor mental health, three will have self- harmed multiple times, and two will have attempted suicide in their life,” the researchers said.

This, at a time when our society continues to organise itself around a narrow definition of success, with a culture of long working hours, rising productivity and constant economic growth.

What has happened to the mental well-being of our young people? Social media may be playing a role – so also is the loss of what happened before this tech came along – when kids spent most of their time out of school at home, in their communities, running around with their pals and in and out the back door, where usually mothers kept a watchful eye.

That’s not possible anymore. The economic climate demands that both parents work in order to be able to pay their bills. Many parents work because they can’t afford to stay at home, even if they would prefer to be able to care for their children themselves.

On Mother’s Day, tomorrow, we will celebrate as we do every year, but the people raising children in Ireland need something far more meaningful: the time, security and social support to actually do that caring. 

We have the ludicrous situation where the State is opting to subsidise childcare so that parents can go out to work, instead of the alternative, which is that the State would pay parents a basic income to be able to mind their own children in their own homes.

Let’s be clear, children in formal childcare and parents who want to be in paid employment should be supported fully. The reality is that many parents go to work even though they would love to have the option of caring for their children themselves.

The State tells us that the workforce needs women, with a clear emphasis on economic growth over societal wellbeing.

Monetary value of homecarers

Recent research assessed the monetary worth of parents who provide full-time care and household management at home at €57,140. The survey of 1,000 adults, conducted by the insurance and pension company, Royal London Ireland, showed that the majority (82%) of respondents continue to undervalue the true financial worth of stay-at-home parents.

The duties assessed included childcare, cleaning, cooking, teaching assistance, gardening and transporting children to activities.

Even less visible are the inestimable non-economic benefits the family and wider community of stay-at-home parents accrue.

In ‘Thoughts While Cleaning the Living Room – Domestic Work is Undervalued but it Doesn’t Need to Be’, Donella Meadows wrote: “I gradually learned that an ongoing responsibility for a house or a child is a constant opportunity to practice fine human virtues – selflessness, patience, practicality, orderliness, intuition, love – womanly qualities not because of genetics but because of the way many women, and some men spend their lives.

“Why does anyone ever question the value of ‘women’s work’? Why don’t we honour it and the people who do it? I mean, really honour it with decent wages and personal respect.

“People who clean up or care for people – homemakers, nurses, attendants at day care centres or retirement homes, social workers, maids, launderers are at the bottom of the pay ladder and socially invisible. Most are women or minorities. Above them are people who care for machines; still higher, people who care for flows of paper; highest of all, people who care for money. Where did we get that set of priorities?”

What is missing from the debate on valuing the work of a parent in the home is the recognition of the value of facilitating parents to enjoy a stable, happy family life, rather than pushing both partners out to work to feed the capitalist machine. Nothing could be more important. We can see that clearly when we look at the lives of children today in a modern, wealthy society.

Despite all that wealth and opportunity, mental health challenges are soaring, and children are being bused from school to after-school to extra-curricular activities with little opportunity for independence or spontaneous physical activity.

Diets are predominantly ultra-processed, especially in low-income families where parents have neither the time nor the means to cook. Who has the time to listen to their children’s needs?

Economic and social factors pile on the pressure for women to work outside the home, whether they want to or not.

Child and adolescent psychotherapist with St Patrick’s Mental Health Services, Colman Noctor agrees, citing the most pressing issue for him over the next decade concerns loneliness in children and young people.

“In an increasingly individualised, technologically mediated world, we are seeing the first group of children who did not grow up on the street, road or green. The social atrophy is clear to see. Young people are struggling to connect and spend time together without a purpose.

“As they move through their over-scheduled lives, going from one adult-led activity to another, they are experiencing more and more disconnection from each other. A consequence of this is that assumed concepts of human kindness, acts of service to others or forming friendships are having to be taught through wellbeing programs without ever having the opportunity to be put into practice.”

Noctor suggests that the risk of AI chatbots is likely to become their “tutor, advisor, companion and even their voice,” and suggests that a potential solution is investment in after-school clubs for young people to spend time together, a revival of the Youth Club culture and a commitment to physical spaces for young people to gather.

“We have always functioned as tribes, villages and communities, and these aspects are being eroded from culture as we rarely have visitors to our homes and we celebrate when plans are cancelled.”

We rarely have visitors to our home because we are never actually at home, as parents work around the clock to pay for mortgages, childcare and household bills.

Universal Basic Income

One option to counterbalance this change would be to provide homemakers with a Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a way to recognise the value of unpaid care work, which provides financial independence while validating domestic labour and reducing poverty. Critically, it recognises the value of child-rearing as socially and economically essential.

As a universal payment, it avoids the stigma of means-tested welfare while offering caregivers the flexibility to return to education or employment.

There are counterarguments to UBI – it’s expensive, potentially increasing taxes or reducing available spending for other public services.

But a UBI would give parents the option to stay at home during critical early years to care for their children. That means having the time to invest in home-cooked food. To invest in time for free play and allow imagination and creativity to thrive.

Communities could be alive again with children at home with their parents. Both parents would no longer be committed to long commutes and constant work, which leaves little flexibility to spend time with their kids, invest in their communities or nourish their own interests and pastimes.

Parents would have the time and flexibility to help out with ageing relatives without the constant call of work limiting their options.

In Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labour (2025), history professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Emily Callaci, argues that when an employer hires a worker they get the value not only of that person’s labour but also of the person at home enabling them to work in the first place by looking after their children and housework.

Callaci suggests that “if you show how capitalism relies on that work and actually demand that it be compensated, you see that the system doesn’t work as it says it works.

“It’s supposed to be the most efficient way to organise an economy, but what’s hidden is how much work is extracted and exploited for free.”

Callaci and her partner both work full-time and pay for childcare, but she writes that they are uncomfortably aware that this “exploitative social arrangement” adds up only because skilled childcare workers earn less than professors.

In recent years, the idea of getting paid to stay at home has been hijacked by the US right wing with conservative politicians and “tradwife” influencers on Instagram. JD Vance has argued for a child tax benefit to bring back traditional gender roles so women can stay at home and raise children.

But paying parents to stay at home with their children is not about bringing back traditional gender roles. It is about giving parents the right to choose to stay at home when their children are small. It’s about recognising the value of caregiving in homes and communities.

Raising kids that grow into mature, empathic, independent and resilient adults that form part of a thriving future workforce is a societal economic benefit that is almost completely ignored.

Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor with the HSE in Cork.

© TheJournal