I WILL be voting Yes and Yes in the upcoming referendum. I welcome the Government’s attempt to deal with this thorny issue.

There has been more than 30 years of discussion on how to change or delete article 41.2. I find it gratuitously offensive. I find it offensive because it socialised both women and men to see a woman’s primary place as in the home. It further socialised people to see women as there to service other’s needs.

It also put the responsibility of care and housework in the home squarely on women’s shoulders.

I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s. My mother gave up her job as a dress-maker when my brother was born. I was born three years later and that was our family. She didn’t talk about whether she wanted more children or not.

In those days, contraception was difficult to get, if not illegal or certainly frowned upon. She stayed at home while my father went to work as a carpenter. They were happily married and worked as a team. My father gave my mother his pay-packet every Friday. She paid the bills and bought the groceries.

As I remember it, they discussed everything and decisions were made by the both of them. However, my mother would have said to me ‘Always have your running away money’.

She recognised the economic disadvantage that she was at by having to........

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